Mike_H

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.

A bit of light relief painting some buckets and a barrel. More praise for admiralty paints

Deck planks installed. Required 1mm spacing, and having recenlty re-hinged and hung most of our doors I had plenty of plastic packing spacersand used strips cut from them. Worked a treat.

Keel, stern post and prow attached. Second planking done. Much better job than the first - and while it's easier there was much learning from the first. Rick was right about the keel needing to be packed away from the false keel - it was quite difficult to clamp the boat from now on because the keel only just sits proud. No real impact on appearance, but annoying. While I didn't follow tht bit of advice I paid close attention to the suggestion that the gunwale cover go on after the work within the hull is completed. Learning Cyano glue is astonishing. The instructions suggest the use of contact adhesive. Suspect if I had, the hull would be orange and I'd still be stuck to it. The cyano takes a couple of minutes to go off - time to adjust things, but not long to wait. For anything fiddly, or remotely difficult to clamp it's a wonder.The stuff I used was much more friendly than conventional superglue. Do buy some cleaning solvent for your fingers and tweezer Make sure the full length and width of the strip has a thin coating of glue. Un-coated parts are likely to sit a little proud and you can't sand them back Admiralty brand acrylic varnish goes on beautifully and looks lovely.

First planking started and finished. And oh-boy did I learn a lot. Soak or heat the strips. I used an Amati nipper, and frankly, don't. The pins are only temporary, so you need to pull them out. For that reason don't use cyano glue (only did it a couple of times, no idea why) Don't taper the strips to anything like a point. I've since read some very old advice on what to do - let's see how it works on the next project - if it does, I'll share. Do fill the gaps and then sand, sand and sand

Here's a close-up of the transom with one degree of remedy. It's rotated a small amount about both a vertical and a horizontal axis. The vertical-axis rotation is remedied by a thin layer of filler. The horizontal means the that the top of the transom is not quite horizontal when the boat is on an even keel. That just needs a bit of 60/120/180 grit sanding.

Strengtheners on. And the misalignment of the transom discovered

Does that transom look square to you? It's sat absolutely snug in its slot, but it's not 😒

Bulkheads are a nice tight fit. Assembled them dry. Disassembled and then assembled with PVA glue. Plenty of use for a T-square. Bought a pack of two glues - Speedbond PVA and Roket Max Cyanoacrylate. The PVA bonded quickly (10 min) and was easy to work with. The Cyano was an eye-opener as will become apparent.

And so it begins. Nice simple (false) keel, laser cut from ply. Never occurred to me to sand off the char. Correctly, at this point, I think. The keel is clamped to a Hobbyzone Small Building Slip, which worked pretty well.

Technically this is not a build log - since I've built her! But not having discovered this forum until about halfway through, I feel I've missed out, so I thought I'd post a few pics, point out what I got wrong, and just chat about how much fun I had. Chat back if you like! There is one complete build log on the forum for this boat - by @Rick01, and a few partial logs. If you want to see the full evolution of the build have a look at Rick's log.

Hello! Or G'day, or perhaps ey up! Probably not ahoy! Anyway, my lifelong interest in 18th and 19th C. naval history means my lovely daughters have been dragged through endless museums and across endless ships - the Victory three times, I think. So perhaps a birthday present of an Artesania Latina kit should not have been a surprise - but it certainly was a delight. A few months later and I am completely hooked - in fact it's finished, as I will explain, and I have dreadful withdrawal symptoms waiting for its successor to be delivered. The AL kit in question was for Endeavour's Longboat, but I started it before I found this forum so didn't create a build log - I'll do something like that retrospectively, to point our how much I got wrong, how much I learned, and how delighted I am. I'll do that in the build logs section for ease of finding. I've just read a post in the New member Introductions saying essentially don't run before you can crawl. And in that respect the Longboat is a great starting project. It remains to be seen if crawling through that was enough to prepare me for jogging through Caldercraft's HMS Snake. Time will tell - but you will see it on this forum.