BANYAN

Good to hear you are on the recovery path Mark, I hope all continues to go well for you.  Look forward to seeing the up[dates... and, I know whay you mean by the scales for older ewyes.  1:72 is straqting to do my head in also  
cheers
 
Pat
 

Hi Richard, I actually do all my spars on my Sherline (long bed) lathe. I first cut the required square and hex shapes slightly oversize, the (very roughly) shape them to a hex taper using a plane and then set it up in the lathe and use small machinist jacks and a follower rest to shape the final profiles.  I use a combo of rasps, files and sandpaper for that process constantly checking the profile with calipers etc.  For shorter sections I sometimes use the duplicator, especially about the hounds and masthead doubling.  I then refine the squared and flat surface manually using a file rest and fine needle files to get them to the final dimensions. You can see some of my earlier dings (collision scars) between the Y cross-slide and the chucks before I made a stop for it  Well, one has to learn some lessons the hard way; I put it down to the experience of learning.
 
PS: Sorry, I should mention that I mainly work at 1:72 so, at your scale you might have some difficulty setting up spars etc.
 
cheers
 
Pat

A great diorama Greg, looks good and nicely detailed.  I wonder though how they drink those beers on the Quarterdeck table with all that protective gear on  
 
I have enjoyed following this build.
 
cheers
 
Pat

A great diorama Greg, looks good and nicely detailed.  I wonder though how they drink those beers on the Quarterdeck table with all that protective gear on  
 
I have enjoyed following this build.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Interesting updates, Wefalck. 
 
Hmm, a little adjustment time would be useful.
 
Me too.
 
Gary

Thanks for the 'thumbs up' !
 
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Installing the wales
 
It was fortunate that the upper edge of the wale was marked in the original drawings. I had transferred this to the bulkheads and cut appropriate notches. Somehow, however, these notches turned out to be not very useful as I would have to score the whole core of the hull accordingly, which would have been messy. In the end, I ignored them, though used their upper edge as guidance for placing the wales. I have no information on their dimension, but thought that a width of 240 mm = 1.5 mm looked about right on the hull. They would have been probably composed of two thick planks. For the thickness I choose 0.75 mm, as the hull-planking will be 0.5 mm thick. Contemporary pictures and naval construction books show both options, smooth hulls, where the thicker wales are not visible and step-changes in thickness. I think smooth hulls became fashionable around the middle of the 19th century, but in the Baltic they were always lagging a bit behind, so I went for the stepped design.
 
Perhaps this is a problem of building up the planking around a solid core, but the way how the wales run against the gilling at the stern caused me some head-scratching. The point where the upper edge of the wale touches the gilling is marked in the original drawings, but it is not clear, where the lower edge touches it. While the wales have an easy run all along the ship, at this point some twisting is needed.
 
I had not done any planking with styrene before. It turned out to be quite simple: unlike wood, it does not have grain of course and strips can be easily bent and twisted even across the long sides. Pulling the strips around a round piece of e.g. steel causes the strips to curl and one can thus achieve a nice pre-bending without the need of much clamping force, when cementing them on.
 
Nevertheless, the wales were attached with the recently discovered artificial nail cement, that is a mixture of light-curing acrylic cement and cyanoacrylate. It sets fast, but not so fast that no adjustment would be possible. I let it seep under the wales attached to the hull with Sellotape. Hereby I worked from the more complicated stern forward in more or less long sections, depending on the curvature.

Final clean-up will be done, once the rest of the planking has gone onto the full, with the view to blend everything nicely together.
 
To be continued ...

Guns!
 
So this has proven to be a real challenge. I turned one barrel on the lathe with reasonable success but I know I wont be able to consistently repeat this with perfect results another 29 times so I decided to go down the road of casting with some very mixed results. Here is the update so far.
 
I wanted to make my moulds with oyumaru or blue stuff but I cannot find either in South Africa. So i went for 2 other options....the first was a 2 part liquid silicon that would be poured around the cannon and then cut away to release the blank and then secured with elastic bands to re pour the liquid resin into it. This did not work at all...
Without the benefit of a vacuum pump to extract all the bubbles it created a mould full of imperfections. The elastic bank required to keep the soft silicon together distorted the mould and therefore produced a frankly rubbish result. The resin also left flakes inside the mould that would be very difficult to clean and finally the resin itself was very brittle and weak(this is clearly just the resin I used and I am not judging all resins). Here you can see the results of lots of struggling....
 

Next up was making moulds from thermal plastic. This process involved heating the product in boiling water. Pressing the cannon blank into the product until it was half in the material, then cooling the product in the freezer and then pressing a second lump of product on top of the cannon to make the second half of the mould...here you can see what this looked like,
 

 
 

 
 
I then pressed milliput into the 2 halves and joined them back together while it set(note the indexing holes and protrusions in the 2 halves of the mould.
 
This produced a reasonable result as shown below. the issue was that the mould struggles to release the material and it seems like the quality deteriorates after each attempt as the mould degrades. I do have a few ideas to improve this and I will report back.
 
 

I then made a little jig to file in the notch for the trunnions. As per the suggestion of Marcus, trunnions add an additional layer of complication to casting which I am not able to overcome.
 

 
I then added the trunnions and primed the 2 sample cannon with a grey primer...
 
44
 

 
I then finished them off with some black paint and this is where I find myself...
 

 
I did get the feeling that these carriages(built to the specifications mentioned in a previous post) were a bit on the small size. The carriages on the hull model also appear to be proportionally larger but I have also found examples in other research where the ratio between cannon and carriage seems equally disproportionate. Like this example of the constitutions 32 pounders from 1858..
 


 
My plan is to keep experimenting and seeing what works.
 
This means:
trying to produce a thinner more flexible thermal plastic mould with what i have already.
 
Trying to create a better silicon mould by changing the ratios of parts A nd B of the mix
 
Trying to buy oyumaru and having it imported into South africa
 
Trying a mould made from other materials like silicone and corn starch....
 
I weill report back soon.
 
Cheers
 
TBE
 

 

That is quite the diorama Greg; very well presented.  
 
cheers
 
pat

You are being too kind to the crew Keith - a good flogging to drive them up steeper ladders/stairs should be the order of the day  
 
Seriously though, Lula is coming along nicely, great work.
 
cheers
 
Pat

You are being too kind to the crew Keith - a good flogging to drive them up steeper ladders/stairs should be the order of the day  
 
Seriously though, Lula is coming along nicely, great work.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Well here's raising a cup of very strong tea (only slightly laced with ...) to your success with the gingerbread Keith; that is some very nice work.  We are becoming accustomed to your very fine work but you continue to impress us.

cheers
 
Pat

OK, I'll continue the thread - fourth!
Seriously, nice work Glen, looks really good, especially the proportions.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Hi Richard.  This is one (home-made) that I use with my Sherline.  The idea is to cut a profile (template) in metal that is used as the master profile for as many duplicates as you need - works best with more complicated shapes but will work with a simple flat/tapered profile also.  However, I usually use a compound slide to cut tapers on the Sherline, but that only works well over shorter distances.  Hopefully the photos are self explanatory, but essentially, the cutter (top) will only cut as deep as the profile follower (bottom bar) and the template will allow.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Hi Richard.  This is one (home-made) that I use with my Sherline.  The idea is to cut a profile (template) in metal that is used as the master profile for as many duplicates as you need - works best with more complicated shapes but will work with a simple flat/tapered profile also.  However, I usually use a compound slide to cut tapers on the Sherline, but that only works well over shorter distances.  Hopefully the photos are self explanatory, but essentially, the cutter (top) will only cut as deep as the profile follower (bottom bar) and the template will allow.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Hi Richard.  This is one (home-made) that I use with my Sherline.  The idea is to cut a profile (template) in metal that is used as the master profile for as many duplicates as you need - works best with more complicated shapes but will work with a simple flat/tapered profile also.  However, I usually use a compound slide to cut tapers on the Sherline, but that only works well over shorter distances.  Hopefully the photos are self explanatory, but essentially, the cutter (top) will only cut as deep as the profile follower (bottom bar) and the template will allow.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Thank you very much for the kind comments and the 'likes' !
 
*************************************************************
 

Digression 3
 
As the start of the planking is imminent, I had to think about a way to shape thin, narrow and long strips of styrene. A clamp is needed that can hold strips down to 1 mm width, 0.25 mm thickness and 150 mm length securely. In addition, the strips have to be held in a way that allows to slightly bevel the edges, if needed. The idea was to clamp the material between to flat metal bars of sufficient stiffness.
 I happened to have to matching aluminium bars of 20 mm width and 3 mm thickness that once formed part of a jig and could be repurposed. 
The two bars were tightly clamped together and milled flat on the top so that they abut with sharp edges. Then, one edge was bevelled to 45° to give clearance for bevelling the styrene (or wood for that matter) strips. Unfortunately, the table travel of my mill is not long enough to do the milling in one set-up and I could not clamp the whole length of the bars in the vice, which resulted in some chatter marks. Not beautiful, but still functional.
 The clamping action is exerted by three thumb-screws for which holes were drilled and tapped.
I stuck a strip of Tamiya masking-tape at about 0.5 mm distance from the top edge in order provide a stop for very thin and narrow material.
 Now the clamp has to be tested in anger, to see, whether it really proves useful – not all of my home-made tools that felt like a good idea, really turned out to be that practical 🫢
 
Building log to be resumed soon …

We have seagulls 

You are being too kind to the crew Keith - a good flogging to drive them up steeper ladders/stairs should be the order of the day  
 
Seriously though, Lula is coming along nicely, great work.
 
cheers
 
Pat

You are being too kind to the crew Keith - a good flogging to drive them up steeper ladders/stairs should be the order of the day  
 
Seriously though, Lula is coming along nicely, great work.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Well here's raising a cup of very strong tea (only slightly laced with ...) to your success with the gingerbread Keith; that is some very nice work.  We are becoming accustomed to your very fine work but you continue to impress us.

cheers
 
Pat

You are being too kind to the crew Keith - a good flogging to drive them up steeper ladders/stairs should be the order of the day  
 
Seriously though, Lula is coming along nicely, great work.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Well here's raising a cup of very strong tea (only slightly laced with ...) to your success with the gingerbread Keith; that is some very nice work.  We are becoming accustomed to your very fine work but you continue to impress us.

cheers
 
Pat

Interesting but very effective approach to cutting the tapers Richard.  Appears this approach may be easier than setting up a shape follower (duplicator) arrangement.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Hi Bob, sorry I am late to this log; somehow missed it.  Great job you are doing here in completing the model - she is looking very 'shmick' - Jim seems to approve.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Hi Bob, sorry I am late to this log; somehow missed it.  Great job you are doing here in completing the model - she is looking very 'shmick' - Jim seems to approve.
 
cheers
 
Pat