Mike_H

Fair bit of progress in the last few weeks. Bulwarks fitted and first planking done. I soaked the bulwarks for a couple of hours and then formed the round a conveniently shaped bowl. Clamped and glued them without too much difficulty. Was obsessively concerned with making sure the ply of the bulwarks extended down to the deck ply so that it could bond to it, since at this stage it's hard to believe that once the bulkhead extensions are snapped off that there would be much attaching the bulwarks. For this reason I didn't pin them since the tumble-home curvature would have pulled them away from the deck (I worried). Actually once it's glued on it feels very solid, and once the first planking is done, it's hard to see why I was worried. If I did it again, I'd pin to allow easier positioning.

Hi Jim. Just had a look at your log, and your Snake looks a beaut. And there is a nice symmetry to me starting and you slowing - our youngest has left home and now I have her room as my work area. And since you offer, I have a question. Your Snake is mounted on a display board by brass columns. These all look remarkably similar to the Amati products that I have just bought from CMB - I plan to install a pair of captive nuts under the keel (which might have been your idea, I certainly saw in somewhere on this site). An issue with the Amati columns is that those of differing heights are also of differing diameters. Did you use Amati's and did you use the differing sizes? Do they look OK. Or did you find another source?

Your rigging is a sight to behold, Jason. Well the whole build is, really. Keep posting so we can watch an learn

I gave quite some thought to planking before fitting (it was suggested in one of the downloadable manuals from Jokita - not for Snake though). Decided not to, mainly because the deck has quite a camber which varies fore and aft. Planking while the deck was flat would make it very stiff and I don't think it would bend enough for installation. It might be possible to set the deck up in a jig, but given how tight a fit it is, I wasn’t willing to risk it. As Jason says, there is pretty good access once installed.

Thanks Jason - started the planking today - need to take it slow, but it’s going well.

While waiting for glue to dry, I was looking through the NMM collection of photographs of models, specifically to take a view on layout aft of the mizzen. I found no Snake, or three masted sloops of the Snake vintage. There are quite a number of models of ship sloops from later in the 19th century, but they are typically quarter-deck sloops. However searching through brigs I came across this: https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/66309.html which looks very, very familiar. The accompanying text says that "the design and layout suggest ... one of the... 'Cruiser' class", of which the Snake is, of course, a member. Is very useful for my purposes, and interesting to see the size of the platforms. To my eye the aft platform on the model looks smaller than as provided with the Snake kit - and I will look to adjust. Also to see the two boats on davits - which look relatively easy to retrofit - so I might. Being brig-rigged there is no direct information on the layout around the mizzen, but I'm surprised to see no obvious binnacle. Edit: just been browsing and @Beef Wellington was there 7 years before me with the model from the NMM. I must have seen it when I first looked through his log.

And so here comes the calamity and the consequence of the slight kink in the level of the false keel, or rather, the other way round. When doing the first rough sanding of the bulkheads I did the inevitable present-a-strip of planking, and something towards the stern was not quite right. At first, as many who have come before me have said, I thought frame 9 was toolow. But after prodding it for some time I came to the view that in fact frame 12 was too low - which I now attribute to the false keel being slightly too high at that point. Anyway this shows clearly enough that on a smooth curve, the strip sits away from the frame. But there's a simply remedy to that. Attach a couple of strips of wood either side, sand down to the correct thickness. Easy. But not quite. The tightness of the curve meant that the strips needed to be pinned in place, and, for whatever reasons the pins did not want to go in (I have a theory that 0.5 mm diameter in wet wood was not large enough, or that I was cocky after the success of drilling and pinning the deck), one of the pins bent, the PIN PUSHER SLIPPED OFF THE PIN, DOWN THE SIDE OF THE BULKHEAD AND SMASHED A HOLE THROUGH THE DECK. I may have called out as the Admiral came running upstairs to enquire after my health, and when I explained, she asked what the second noise was - err, throwing the tool across the room. I was so distressed I couldn't bring myself to photograph it until I was half-way through repairing it. The result was a jagged hole about 20 x15 mm with the layers of ply torn apart. I pulled most of the plies out, coated each with PVA, re-inserted them and then clamped the whole mess between two piece of scrap, each wrapped in sticky tape. The result, amazingly, is this: Lucky boy - larger drill bit next time, and a gentle touch with the pin pusher. So to complete this post, the extra thickness on frame 12 has done the job,

And what is this calamity? I'm coming to that, but before I do there is the vexed issue of deck planking layout. As @BenD explains, the original ship did not have evenly spaced deck beams, and if you look at his, or just about anyone else's logs, having the joins in the deck planks line up gives a very pleasing effect, but they are meant to line up where the beams are. So, choose an arbitrary beam spacing - and then struggle that the implied positions seem to go straight through the hatch openings - or try to recreate the original? I printed out the plan from the NMM (or RMG as they want now to be known - bah!). Measured the distances of the beams from the bow then scaled that to the length of the deck of the model. For the fore-part of the ship that worked just about perfectly and the lines drawn on the deck below are pretty-much what I calculated and give excellent registration with the hatches and masts. The beam at the main mast was a little off and things got further off from there on. However a little bit of adjustment gave a reasonably uniform pattern as shown. With 22 spans and a deck length of 32 m, that gives a span of 1.45 m, and using the 1-3-5-2-4 pattern shown, that's an average plank length of 7.27 m or 23.9 ft, which the historians on this site seem to think reasonable So, deck marked up, I'm good to install Fits tightly, but well. Doesn't lie snug against the bulkheads without downward pressure, so at least 3 pins per are needed. Which is a lot of 0.5 mm holes to drill, and I only have one drill bit. Fortunately there's a tool for that: It's an attachment for a Dremel - or should I say the Dremel is an attachment for it - making what I would call a drill press, or the English, a pillar drill. 33 perfectly vertical hoes drilled, no bits broken. Compare with my last project where I went at about one broken bit per hole, this is progress. And there they are. Note, I put in a few extras without drill, and each went in crooked emerging from the side of the ply bulkheads

Some progress and one calamity to report. Cut out the keel and bulkheads - all very nicely machined, perfectly flat and reliably symmetrical. The slots were all slightly too tight even to dry fit, let alone assemble with glue. An hour with a file sorted that almost without problems. You can just see in the images of the (false) keel that it has a slightly surprising change of slope along the top edge around the aft vertical bulkhead (12). Wish I had noticed that before, as will become apparent. I say almost without problems because with a file 15 cm long crating exactly flat and square surfaces is beyond my craft skills so a couple of the bulkheads didn't fit exactly square. Loosening them up a little more to give some play, clamping them with lego blogs (duplo in fact), and and checking that every angle was right, very often, in all all directions, (a geo-liner is the tool for that), and then when gluing them planning to do it in such an order that you can get in and check those angles are 90º did the trick. As I found on my first build, get this wrong then, at best, you have a load of fiddling ahead of you. Attached the fore and main mast alignment blocks (both of which has to be trimmed to fit between the bulkheads-, then glued the bulkheads to the keel (with all the care I can manage) and installed the plank termination patterns and the stern counter frames. Cranked up the Dremel and sanded... a lot!

Excellent, thanks - more work for the Dremel.

Hi, wonder how your Snake build is coming on? Your build log is my goto for foreseeing challenges. And I will post later today about my internal debates on how to lay-out the virtual deck beams which you will find very familiar. And I think I'm about to carve a rabbet on the bearding line, so thought I would get your opinion on something. It looks to me that you 2nd-planked right down to the keel, stern post and prow, but I can see your rabbet at the stern sits at the bearding line. My concern is that the copper plating clearly has to sit directly on the stern post to give a good match to the rudder, and I think it makes sense that the plates should fit direct on the keel and the prow. So, I think your approach was to carve a rabbet deep enough for the first, lime-wood planks, and at the stern that followed the bearding line. How did you then finish the second, walnut, planks to leave them flush with the stern post etc? Thanks in advance!

Just dropped in as part of preparing to build Snake (following your visit to my log). Great to see you resolving your issues leading up to planking. I'll focus on those for a bit. Mike

So first point of discovery for this novice: what's in the box? The white paper in the plastic bag is a set of A0 (approx) detailed plans. There are three small pieces of ply missing - but they arrived in the post today. Biggest surprise is the beautifully machine brass carronades - no nasty castings for me! (and is it just me, or is picture sizing impossible to control)

And so it begins. This is my second build, having caught the bug earlier this year. That makes me a novice, and I plan to show other novices the process of climbing the learning curve. Many have been here before me, and you can find build logs of their work. Those I have found are by @Beef Wellington, @Stone, @Vane, @mispeltyoof, @Davemc, @jim_smits, @peteri and @BenD. Should I be worried that none of them is finished?

All true @Louie da fly

Hi Louie - next kit (Caldercraft Snake) arrived yesterday - will start the log in a day or two. I'm an Adelaide boy through and through (to the extent that when my application for memberships of the SACA got to the top of the list, I accepted it) though I left SA 30 years ago - 10 years in Cambridge and the last 20 in Sheffield. My grandparents lived in Melbourne so I spent most of my summer holidays there and have been through Ballarat more times than I can remember - always stopped for pies and pasties from the bakery. And, I'm the right age to know where the image of Louie da fly comes from - straight from rubbish tip to you!

I called them a couple of weeks ago - apparently Covid has got in the way - both because they had to shut down during lockdown and now because they are overwhelmed with orders. So ordered a Snake to learn some more, before doing a full-scale frigate

I have to say I found that really quite moving. I'm on my third time through reading the books in order, and the detail of the great cabin was a splendid link to the written world. If you could still buy them, I think this would have been my next kit ( though disguising it's size might have been a challenge). Anyway - great work - beautiful ship.

Thanks for the welcome. Recurrent theme is that model ship building is very rewarding. That's just one of the many things I have learnt in the last few months.

Some thoughts on the model kit Instructions. Are of distinctly limited value - which for an obvious beginners project is very disappointing. That said the main problem is with how terse they are, and I seemed to work it out. I'm sure all beginners would welcome more "how to" information, particularly on planking. What they actually say, is so useless it's worth quoting "We advise dampening the battens in water at one of the ends, then applying heat with a plank...' Materials. I've no complaint about the provided materials, though there being exactly the correct number of blocks, eyelets and rings seems a little mean - and meant I had to be more careful than perhaps is natural (for me, anyway) Historical accuracy As Rick pointed out, they provide the wrong flag - it's easy enough to source the correct one, as shown in the pictures above, from becc.co.uk The gunwales being absolutely horizontal seems implausible, all the images I can find of ships boats isn the 18th and 19th century show at least some 'dishing' Thole pins. Rick pointed out that thole pins were usually simple wooden pegs and usually found in pairs. I was on the cusp of adopting that view when Google revealed many examples of single pins and the oar lashed to that pin. So I left them as in the kit. I took the view that if they were metal they should be black. But reading recently about the virtues of tree nails (not being iron they did not rust, and so did not split and rot the timber) I suspect they should be timber and probably not belaying-pin shaped. But I like the look of them. Scale. The instructions claim this is a 1:50 scale model. From stem to stern the model is 26 cm, so at this scale the real boat would have been 13 m in length, have a beam of 4.5 m and a height from keel to masthead of 13.5. . That wold be a large boat for a ship of the line, never mind a 30 m long barque. I've just read Peter Moore's Endeavour, which has a reproduction of the Admiralty's plans, and scaling from that, the distance between the quarterdeck and the forecastle is 10.3 m. So a 13 m boat could not possibly have been stowed on the ship. A scale of 1:25 strikes me as much more realistic - giving a boat of 6.5 m in length; beam and height half of the above. Rigging. Given the scale issues, running rigging of 0.15 mm in the model is actually 3.75 mm full scale - clearly that would not be happy choice. The standing rigging at 0.5 mm being 12.5 mm full scale with a mast of 6.5 mm doesn't seem very comfortable either. But really, I'm being picky. A bigger deal for me is that the gaf halliards are arranged so that the resultant force on the gaf pushes the mast end of the gaf down the mast. So for that reasons the gafs (and the booms) need to be glued to the masts, which is a little sad. But these are the things that are wrong. Much is right. It's simple, but I had to learn a lot. It looks very nice on the shelf next to me. And now I'm hooked.

Thanks @Ryland Craze. Due to be shipped any day is a Caldecraft HMS Snake. Should get to indulge my emerging enthusiasm for rigging and spars.

Did I say I love that rudder? (click, and it moves!) IMG_0058.m4v

Seem to have lost interest in photographing because the next shot is the finished boat. I really, really enjoyed this part. The instructions were poor, and there was quite a bit of iterating, including relocating the mast-head lugs twice, replacing the foresail-gaf (the instructions gave the wrong length). The stand is included in the kit - a rather nasty piece of veneered MDF plus a little stain and varnish is quite convincing I think. Others have chosen not to rig the sails, and that would be my choice on a square-rigged ship, but to be honest with gafs lowered and sails un-rigged, there's not a lot to see - in my opinion, I should stress. Things I learned (and can remember!) taper your spars using a file to start with (file square and then octagonal sections) then sand every single knot needs to be sealed with glue or perhaps varnish, because they unravel buy extra thread - the amount supplied was either completely inadequate or required minuscule tails when tying knots don't sew the rings on in the plane of the sail (doh!)

And now I have a rowing boat! Pride and joy is the rudder. Gudgeons and pintles constructed allowing full pivoting. The rivets presented some entertainment. All required cutting to size , but after breaking 4 drill bits, some of the rivets are just rivet heads cyano-glued in place. You can see now that I didn't sand the char off the bulkheads. I'm ok with the look but where they have taken some damage, it's quite apparent. Though touching them up with brown paint gave a satisfactory result.