LucienL

The metalwork on the transom was one of the more difficult parts of the build so far. I was a bit messy with the CA glue at first and continued to clean it up for a while. I planked both sides of the transom after bending so that the planking would still be visible on the poop deck. The top rail was a bit of a challenge as it almost needed to bend in two directions Here is my first scrappy attempt at the decorations, you can see a lot of the CA glue residue as I kept taking it off and bending it again to get it right. I've realised now that it is good to have some soft-nosed pliers for this work as well as the flat nosed ones for bending and straightening respectively. I think I was hoping that the CA glue would hold the brass in a bend, which was a mistake. I think it would be better to make sure that the brass piece was fully bent to shape before gluing on. I also varnished the paint to make it dull again It might be difficult to see, but the varnish did make the white look a bit dirty and yellow Here are the davits Also, I re-did the doors using the oak stain and also a little bit neater than the old ones And this is the transom after some more tidying up

Then I just did some of the smaller things that help to make the hull look more finished including the gunwales, catheads, pin rack and mast steps. I also wanted to make my own wooden false quarter galleys to replace the metal ones. First, because I didn’t think my painting would be as crisp on the metal ones and second, because it would make it easier to fit in with the thicker wales. I made them out of some 3 by 1 mm strips. The white bits are 2 mm thick (two strips on top of each other) and the black bits are 3 mm thick. The white has been inspired by the replica. The sketch in the anatomy of the ship shows blue windows. I am not sure if this is to suggest they would have been painted blue or that they would have been actual windows. The former seems unlikely as that doesn’t really fit and the latter is definitely not true. These were ‘false’ quarter galleys meaning that they were not actual windows and were purely decorative. Therefore, I think the replica in Chile has got it right and that’s what I went with. (thanks Eric, for the photos) The bottom wavy bit is just a 1 mm strip cut using the metal quarter galley as a template and stuck on top of the wale

Okay, so, painting, argh, so many things I would do differently. First of all, the water line was a real challenge for me. I eventually got it, but the pencil really struggled to mark the varnished hull. I used a white undercoat as a primer. It was very runny and I should have used it more lightly, but oh well. It turned out all right after some scraping with a blade. Okay and then the actual paint. So, I didn’t realise that the paint I was using was actually glossy, so that was a bit annoying. I decided to varnish it with the matt varnish to protect the paint and also bring back the dullness. This is a bit later, so no photos of that in this post, but it did kind of work. The black turned out well, but the white went a bit yellow. I eventually re-painted the white parts with a flat wall paint sample pot, but that’s also a bit later. Definitely don't paint white on black like the instructions suggest. You will have to do a lot of white coats to cover the black. Also, getting the lines where white meets black to be clean and tidy was a real struggle. It is very difficult to get tidy lines with masking tape, it’s a good starting point, but is still a little messy. I used a very small brush to very gently paint around the lines and a blade to scrape off spill over while the paint was still wet. This was an ongoing process and I continued to do this through later stages as well. Unfortunately, due to an accident later on, I had to re-do most of my painting, but we’ll get to that.

Also, would the plates even be shiny by the time they were installed? There are some photos of a very shiny cutty sark today, but would this have been the case when transportation and storage of plates was a little bit slower and less air tight?

Oh cool, that's probably the most historically accurate way to do it. I have tried the baking soda (bicarb) method, I found that it is very slow and very uneven at what it does. You may have more success than me, but I found that it does pretty much nothing. I have also tried ammonia fumes, which also wasn't great and not really what I was looking for. Eventually I used liver of sulfur, which is what professional jewellers use to patina silver and copper, there are some great tutorials online. The gel form is best as the solid form will go off very quickly. You can get it from jeweller supply stores or order it online. https://koodak.com.au/products/liver-of-sulphur-for-silver-copper-brass?variant=30180608397 I added about 3 mL of the gel to a cup of boiling water from a kettle (not rolling or bubbling just steaming). It's good to let the water cool a bit before adding the gel. If you boil the liver of sulfur, you get toxic sulfur dioxide, so be careful. The hotter the water is, the quicker and deeper your patina will develop. I tried colder water, but it ended up more purple than brown. You have to be quick to get the copper done quickly as the water will cool and the strips dipped later will be a different colour to the ones dipped earlier. Don't try to heat it up again, that could go badly. Then you stick the copper in for a couple of seconds, as soon as you see a colour change (again, you need to be quick, a second too long will make it too dark), take it out and stick it in a bicarbonate bath. The bicarb bath is meant to halt the reaction, but it might change colour when you take it out and let it dry. I went through a few trials at different temperatures and leaving the copper in for different times to get the colour I wanted. It's also good to set up a bit of an assembly line, have your copper strips and then a rectangular container with the liver of sulfur solution. Then just stick in maybe 3 or 4 strips, by the time the last one is in, the first one is ready to take out. Then have your bicarb solution and just put them in there. It doesn't matter how long they stay in the bicarb bath, they will still change colour when they are taken out. Maybe wipe them down a bit when you do take them out to prevent the bicarb from crystallising on the copper After the plates are on the ship, I lightly buffed it with some fine steel wool to make it a bit more orange again (careful to not turn up the corners of the plates). You don't have to do this if you are happy with the colour. On my ship, one side was a little too dark and the steel wool made it similar to the other side. Then, seal the copper with a clear copper and brass protector (available from hardware stores). This will make it really glossy. The other thing is that the liver of sulfur patina is still shiny, so it needs to be dulled. If you can find a matt copper protector then that could work, but I'm not sure if they exist. I used a matt wood varnish on top of the sealed copper, but with a very light coat, I just wiped it on with a paper towel. If you put too much of the matt varnish on, it can get streaky and start to drip. You have to be careful with sanding, as you could easily catch the corners of your plates and sand off the patina, which makes it a bit challenging to get a flat even coat. The matt varnish will make it look darker and hide the purple sheen that might develop in the patina. Hope that helps

Hey Krupi, this is looking great so far. I'm also building the Beagle and also realised that the wooden lumpy things were meant to be hammocks. I think you've made the right call, it'll look more authentic without them. I also see you're coppering the hull as well. I've recently finished coppering and might have some tips if you're interested. I went for a more brown patina, so it might not be relevant if you're going for a bluer colour.

Thanks Pete and Tom for your comments. I glued on the keel using some slow drying wood glue with a bit of CA glue to hold it in place. This went fine, I used a bit of filling putty in some places to close the gaps between the hull and the keel pieces. This was coppered so it actually doesn’t matter that much, but at the time I still wanted it to look good. Then I made up some steps using some 1 mm material. I had to buy extra wood strips for the extra small boats that I will be building so I used that, but I think there would be enough 1 mm material provided in the kit to make up some steps, they’re not included in the instructions but are in most replicas/sketches/plans whatever. The plans would suggest that they had three layers, I tried this with some thinner material, but it just looked too crowded and messy. 2 layers of the 1 mm stuff looks good, I think. I can’t get the spacing quite right as the rubbing strakes are probably too thick, but I’ve seen that on some other ships, spacing of the steps has been adjusted in a similar way to accommodate rubbing strakes, so there is some precedent even if they would have been evenly spaced on the beagle. I think the steps come out 3 mm on the hull and the one on the wale comes out 2 mm from memory. And then after some cleaning and dusting, I could varnish the boat. The matte varnish really brings it to life, I was really happy with it at this stage and took a lot of photos. And here's one of the boat outside

I decided to stain the internal hammock rail decorations with a fairly strong oak stain, which as I’ve mentioned before is just because I like the look, not because it is more accurate. This was also a really fun part of the build. The little bits look really good and are pretty enjoyable if a bit time consuming. I also put the top rail on. The instructions suggest you do this after painting, but as I will not be using the provided wooden hammocks, I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t do them now. The soft limewood was easy to bend into shape and hold with CA glue but the sapele was much more difficult. It’s a much harder and springier wood. It looks quite messy here because I used some filling putty to close the gap between the top rail and the strips of the hammock rail. This was maybe unnecessary as the paint would have sealed the gap pretty well anyway. Here are the diamonds, which took some time to line up just right. As a way of committing myself to folding the hammocks from fabric, I used the provided wooden hammocks as a spacer piece to bend the sapele. No going back now, they were completely destroyed when I tried to take them out. I’m going to have to fold 120 tiny fabric hammocks and I still haven’t done it yet so I can’t promise that it turns out all right. I do think I would have been unhappy with the wooden ones though. And here is a very dusty final photo for this stage

Ah man, I guess if you did want to do it you could glue another 5 mm plank just below it, that would give you the same thickness but the spacing might not be right. It does cause some potential difficulties with the false quarter galleys (little metal window things at the back) so just be aware of that if you are going to do it. I ended up making the quarter galleys out of wood with some extra material so I could get them to be the right shape.

The rubbing strakes went on with no dramas, but there is a small issue with the kit here. There shouldn’t be a third rubbing strake at the water line. According to the anatomy of the ship and most other sources I can find, there should be a thicker wale around here. I had some trouble getting the scale right, but a 7mm plank looks about right. At first, I tried to do 2 5mm planks to do the wales, but this was way too thick and looked wrong and one of them had to be removed. I used CA glue, which I regret now, and it was a bit messy. Some of the planking came up but could be glued back down. I remember being very frustrated at the time but it would all be painted and the actual damage was very minor. The hammock rail reinforcements were fun though, just a bit of work to get them to line up and be spaced properly. After looking at this for a while, I came to the realisation that the wales were too thin and the spacing between the bottom of the gunports and the wales was too wide. I then added a 2 mm strip just above it and that looked pretty much bang on Also, I did the anchor wales, which was tricky to get the same on each side. What I ended up doing is shaping the pieces off the boat and then lining them up to get them to look right. Then I just used one side as a template for the other to get them to look exactly the same.

The planking in this kit is a little out of scale. This is also a problem with the deck, but I can live with this. As the entire hull of the ship will be either painted or coppered, there was a little less stress with the planking this time around. I’m really happy with how it turned out, but it is a shame that none of it will be visible in the final boat. I used contact glue and just took it slow with a healthy amount of sanding. It's also really good to have a screwdriver with a plastic handle or something similar to run over the planks. That will really get them to lie flat and fit snugly. The raised hammock rails were a little delicate being made up of only a thin strip of wood, so I had to be careful with that. I have a lot of photos from the planking, so I think I’ll just post those and let them tell the story now. Also, just an important note; if you are going to do coppering, the hull has to be extremely smooth, any bumps or raised planks will show through on the copper.

Hi Eric, I've actually come across your photos of the beagle replica before. Thank you, they have been a huge help, it gives a pretty good idea of the colours and shape of the boat, even if there are a few potential inaccuracies. You'd be surprised, it doesn't take much to do the coppering. I did mine with thin copper tape from an electronics store (Jaycar in Australia) and a sharp knife. Ageing it was a little more tricky, but still doesn't require much. It is a lot more work though and I was really conflicted on it. I do like the natural wood, so I completely get that.

Hey Maliba, there's a lot more to building a real ship. I'm really enjoying being able to go into the history of this little boat. The beagle is definitely a very relaxing and satisfying build!

On the Albatros I was determined to do proper tapering of planks and use whole planks to cover the full length of the hull for the first planking. This was contrary to the OcCre instructions, which suggest a different method. The OcCre method involves cutting all the planks square and using them to cover as much space as you can. Then small triangles are cut to fill the gaps. On the Beagle, I used the OcCre method. Let me tell you, the OcCre method is definitely the right way to go about it. Tapering the planks and steam bending them took several days of on and off work on the Albatros. On the Beagle, I was able to get the whole thing done in a day (I was on break so had some time to spend on the boat). For a first planking it really does not matter how pretty the individual planks are on the hull, the shape just has to be there, and it needs to be sanded smooth. To get this right, I had to spend a lot of time on the fairing (but also not too much). This is the ship after the first planking was finished, it’s rough but that is okay. After extensive sanding and filing Then filling, followed by more sanding

Hey Dean, your build looks great! I think the Beagle would be a difficult first kit but you’ve done an excellent job

Hey Tom, thanks for your reply. I have some tips for the coppering now, there's a lot of trial and error that I can hopefully help people to avoid. I'm happy with it now, but it was a bit of a bumpy ride.

The bulwarks were the first key deviation from the kit instructions. From the anatomy of the ship, it seems like the bulwarks would have been higher from the forecastle to the poop deck than the kit allows. Also, raising the hammock rails will allow for a larger space to insert folded hammock, which is also good. The YouTube videos recommend starting from the middle of the ship and working towards the ends when nailing the bulwarks. I highly recommend doing this. On one side I didn’t follow the instructions and it was much more difficult than the other side. My gluing is a bit messy, but no one will see that when it’s finished, I’m using a high strength wood glue that takes a while to dry. I found that it was a bit of a challenge to get the bulwarks even at the forecastle, I’m not sure why, it may have been because I didn’t start nailing one of the bulwarks from the middle out, but it took a bit of sanding and re-nailing to get it right. Then, when lining the bulwarks internally, I didn’t trim down the top strip. This gave a height that I was pretty happy with and looks similar to the plans. The next challenge was the gunports. I initially started out by filing and trimming with a blade, but I now wish I hadn’t. I think I did make the gunports a little too big. What I would recommend doing is making up a little sanding stick of the appropriate side and using this to very lightly sand the lining back (after some trimming). This will give a nice straight line that will make tidy gunports. And yeah, so that was it. Then it was exam season and the boat took a back seat for a while. Planking was a big job and I wanted to do that in one big chunk so I waited until uni finished for the semester before getting to that.

The kit instructions show most of the brass pieces being added without further alteration. I have some problems with this. First of all, this is implying that these pieces would have been made of raw brass instead of iron as they more likely would have been made of. Second, this is also implying that the ship makers would not have done anything to the brass to protect it from corrosion. So instead, I will be either painting or blackening all the brass pieces to add to the ship (I also think it looks better) The worst offender are the brass doors, which I feel look very wrong. I made my own wooden doors using some sapele strips stained with light oak and some sycamore strips. I don’t remember the exact measurements, but they were pretty similar to the brass doors, so if you wanted to make your own you could copy the measurements from the kit. I did end up replacing these doors to better match the developing colour scheme later on (and also to re-build them a bit better). The next step was the windows, which were painted black. After some thinking, I decided to cut out a hole in the wall behind them to make it look a little more realistic. Then to give the illusion of their being an open space behind the windows, I glued some mirror shards behind them This gave a really nice effect that is a bit tricky to capture in a photo. I’m really happy with it and will be doing a similar thing with the cabins and sky lights. If I had just left a hole, it would have been quite difficult to tell that anything had been done behind the windows. With the mirrors it reflects the light and adds a bit of life to the cabins. The poop and forecastle decks also went on with no dramas.

Okay, so it was a week into the build, and I hit the first major challenge, the deck. On my Albatros I did not attempt to simulate caulking and somewhat regretted that, so I decided to give it a go on this ship. I cut individual planks because I like it that way, even if it takes more time. I will be using a matte varnish on this build as I think it looks better and more realistic. Caulking was achieved by shading the edge of the planks with a 6B pencil and I was able to lay the planks mostly without drama. Although, a few notes, I laid the planks building from the aft to the fore, which meant that it became increasingly difficult to fit the planks in as I reached the end. Maybe next time I would lay a line of planks down the middle and build outwards. The Beagle had a three butt planking pattern according to the anatomy of the ship. Also, I did initially go with the pencilled in nails as recommended by the OcCre instructions. I have since significantly changed my stance, I think the pencil nails are out of scale and don’t look realistic. If I were to do it, I would also simulate the nails on the mid planks. I have since stripped the deck and removed the pencil nails, but we’ll get to that. In this photo, the deck doesn’t look so bad, it is probably a little too dirty though. Unfortunately, as I continued to sand the deck and redo some of the caulking, the pencil marks made the deck dirtier and dirtier I varnished the deck, while still hoping it wouldn’t look too bad and also not realising how dirty the deck had become After some back and forth, I decided I was not happy with deck and decided to strip the varnish and clean it The varnish could then be easily scraped off, giving a clean deck after a few planks were glued back down. Cleaning was done by scraping a sharp piece of glass over the deck several times. This is the best was I could find and works really well, giving a very tidy deck without destroying the grain. The nails were re-drawn (grr) and the deck was varnished again (still wet here)

Whoops, miscalculated in the last post, have been building for four months. Deck write up coming soon, watch this space.

Hey everyone, so it seems like there are several HMS Beagle build logs all of a sudden. I had planned on writing up my own once the hull was completed and we are pretty close now (been building for 5 months, just need to finish up the deadeyes), so I thought I'd start to write up some of the earlier stages as well as outline what I'm going for with this build. So, I am currently a third year uni student studying Biochemistry and Biology and as a result, Charles Darwin and the HMS Beagle are very close to my heart and is partly what got me into this hobby. I've done a build log on my first ship, HMS Bounty's Launch, which I started with my Dad in around 2011 before leaving it on a shelf for 9 years. I've also built the USS Albatros to try and familiarise myself with OcCre kits and develop my skills for the big one (the Beagle). I'm going to try to build the ship as accurately as I can with a few exceptions. I have managed to obtain a copy of the Anatomy of the Ship book for the Beagle and will be making some modifications to the model accordingly. Some parts are out of scale (deck planks and a few others), but I'll just have to live with that. The biggest modifications I will be making include coppering the hull, folding actual fabric hammocks and scratch building 3 additional small boats (A yawl and two 28 ft whaleboats) to better reflect the real ship. Also I'll try to make my own sails when I get there, but I have a feeling that is still a little way off. For the colour scheme, I have been inspired by this particular build on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYRfDE8_1vM&t=526s I really like the darker colours on the wooden parts even if it may not be accurate. There is also the replica in Chile and a virtual tour on youtube as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTo1X9EzFDQ. It seems like the internal bulwarks would have been painted white. I will not be doing this purely for aesthetic reasons. So far I've been enjoying the build even if it has been quite challenging. The hardest part by far was the coppering, I'll go into more detail later, but I've given it a patina and it took some trial and error to get that right. It was also a bit tricky to lay all the tiles without disturbing the patina too much. There have been a few major instances where I've had to redo things, but I feel that it has always been for the better. So anyway, here goes, these are the first couple of pictures I have. I've been taking lots of photos (597 is the current count) and should be able to outline the process pretty well, even if it was a while ago now.

After a few lessons from my Mum about how to use the sewing machine, I was ready to give sail-making a go. My stitching was not very neat but good enough for the level of quality I was going for. I stitched the sails to the spars and spent an evening rigging the ship and it was finally complete. My philosophy while building this boat was to throw myself into a new skill without trying too hard to achieve something perfect. I think I do have a stubborn perfectionist streak, but I figured that for my first boat, I would have to let a few things go in favour of learning a new skill and hopefully make something better next time. With that said, I am still quite pleased with how this boat turned out and I have really enjoyed the entire process. Hopefully some other newbies might come across this log and find something useful here. A lot of the other logs I've seen for this kit have been from quite experienced modellers (the main ones I looked at were from 'Captain Steve' and 'usedtosail'), but I think this is probably a great kit for a beginner.

Okay, I managed to finish the masts, sails and rigging over the past week and I think I am ready to declare this ship finished. I do have to say, of all the tasks involved in this project, the sails and rigging collectively were some of the most difficult. I think I did get the hang of it eventually, but I do prefer the wood work. The masts were fairly simple just some tapering and sanding, adding the cleats was a bit fiddly but not too difficult. The stain I used was an oak, followed by a baltic with a very light walnut stain on top. The dowels were not very receptive to the stain and the spars came out a little uneven, but were okay. Then it was time for some of the initial rigging including the shrouds and the blocks. The knots for the shrouds were a bit tricky at first and I kept getting too much slack. I think I even re-did them after taking this photo to get them right. These blocks were also re-done as they were too tight. To form the rope for the blocks I held the line in a loop and melted the two pieces together with a lighter. There is probably a prettier way to achieve this, but it worked fine. I then used some sewing thread for the seizing with a bit of fray-lock to hold it in place. I also spent some time fiddling with barrels. The plans outline a much more detailed barrel than what is provided in the kit and I did attempt to replicate this. After cutting the plank grooves the raw wood was revealed and didn't look all that great, so I stained the barrel with some walnut stain. I was not happy with this stain so I sanded it back. I tried again with various mixtures of baltic, oak and walnut stains but couldn't really find something I was happy with. By the time I reached an acceptable colour, I had sanded the barrel so much that the barrel hoops were gone. I didn't really like this look either so I sacrificed this barrel and left all the others mostly untouched, my boat only has 5 small barrels now, oh well...

Hi Craig, glad you found the blackening solution helpful. Gee you can really see how small the boat was when it's full scale. Crazy to think they managed to fit 19 people in there

This part was tricky and required material not supplied in the kit. I had to buy some tiny brass tubes (3 mm diameter and 2 mm diameter) to form the hinges of the pintles and gudgeons. After shaping these pieces from the brass provided in the kit, I used some flux on the joints and held the tubes in place with some pliers. I dropped a bit of solder on the joints and heated the thing with a soldering torch. The solder moved pretty neatly into the joints and formed a pretty strong bond. After sanding and soaking in vinegar, the pieces were ready to be blackened. I could have done this part a little better, the hinges don't quite align, so there is a bit of resistance when the rudder is turned. It shouldn't really be fiddled with too much so I didn't try to fix it. I pushed the pins through the rudder/keel and nipped the nail off at the other end. I then bent the ends of the nails to hold them in place. And that's the hull done now, hopefully some more updates coming...