Avi

I’m about to start coppering. I spent quite some time yesterday evening rereading the posts and descriptions by @JSGerson and @ERS Rich, as well as both the MS and BJ directions and blueprints, and Marquardt. I’m fairly confident I understand it now (if not quite in my ability to execute, but that’s the story of building a model like this, learning anew at each step). So many thanks to both of you, as well as others who stepped in. One last minute decision is whether to put down a layer of thin CA on top of the area to be coppered, ie where I planked and then painted copper (primed two coats, copper paint two coats, light sand in between, 4000 grit lightly on the final coat). The guide recommends it, as did @MrBlueJacket. I like the idea, especially as it’s planked and could even the minor gaps (although maybe thick CA there would be better). I’m not sure how well thin CA and just copper plates (ie without a whole coat) would hold to the painted surface, vs how well I actually can apply an even coat of thin CA across the entire below-the-waterline section of the hull.

The camber of the gundeck was too extreme, but in some places the edges by the bulwarks were too low for the ports. It wasn’t just the angle of the guns, but the height of the gun itself. Then I remembered that I had both the scribed decking that came with the kit, and glued up decking that I ordered. I used a plane to flatten out the camber, leaving it much more subtle, and then sanded it to a reasonable smoothness. I didn’t need too high a grit, since it will be covered by the decking, just enough to make it smooth and even, started with 80, then 120, then 220, which was plenty. When I’m ready to do the deck, I’ll lay down the original scribed decking first, then the glued up on top, which should elevate it to the right height. I’ll measure and cut many times first, of course. But that’s much later. The guide has the gundeck and spardeck before the coppering, but since I need to invert the ship to copper, it’s *much* easier to do that first. So we shall. I will reread the excellent assistance recommendations above, and the get started over the coming weeks.

Did the black-green coat, I’m much more satisfied with it. Also touched up some areas on white where green bled out, and the spardeck gunports, where some primed areas had not been fully covered with black.

Left (2DG) is current, 2 coats of Vallejo dark green. Middle is an extra coat of dark green (3DG). Right (2DG+1BG) is same 2 coats of dark green plus a coat of Vallejo black green. Time to show to my artistically inclined daughter. 😃 UPDATE: Both my wife and my daughter think that the rightmost one - a coat of black green on top of the two coats of dark green - is the best pick. The pictures may not do it justice, but the current one (2DG) is just too bright.

Quite a beauty, Commodore.

That’s quite helpful. Looking closely at your pics and my ship, they look just a bit darker. I’ll take some strips of plank, paint to get like my current, then add a coat of black green to see.

I have my own pictures of it from Boston last May. Partly cloudy day. I will take the ship out tomorrow when the sun is out partly and look.

I kind of thought the green would be darker, more of a hunter green. I found the specific paints over a year ago, so I don’t remember how I picked Vallejo dark green, but that’s what my notes have. I also have their black green, maybe a single coat of that? Or a third coat of dark green?

Some pictures. Yeah, I do know that the green bled onto the surface of the gundeck and onto the top of the bulwarks. But I don’t care. I’ve got planked decking going on the gundecks, and the caprail on top of the bulwarks, so I didn’t need to be too careful there.

Finished the gundeck gunports black - people were correct; once they are done and painted, the slight differences in planking are well hidden unless you really look for them. This part was difficult though. You’re trying to get all four sides of something interior without getting paint on the outside. Needless to say, I didn’t succeed entirely, and had to put several coats of primer and white paint to cover up my errors. I probably could have sanded, but I suspect I would have taken off in other areas as well. I also got the interior of the gundeck white. Next is green for the waterways and spardeck interior bulwarks. Then on to protecting the exterior, trimming the gundeck surface some to reduce the camber, and coppering.

Haven’t posted in quite a while; some non ship related issues to deal with (oh yeah, work, too 😁). I primed and painted the exterior all the way up, painted the black by taping off the place where the white stripe would be, and then reverse for the white. The tape never works 100%, mainly because of the bolt heads sticking out, I think, but very close. I fixed any leakage with a steady hand and very fine brush. Next, I painted copper from the keel to the waterline. I didn’t bother taping there, as precision is less important; I’ll be coppering to a little above the waterline, ie above the black-copper boundary anyways. I primed the gunports - spardeck and gundeck - and then painted the interiors of the spardeck ones black. I put a line of tape on the interior, so that the black wouldn’t leak onto the interior that should be green. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, I can always reprime the leaks, but it is easier and nicer if I don’t have to. To my pleasant surprise, it worked quite well this time. I also fixed all the areas where primer spread a bit onto the black on the exterior. Two coats of primer and two coats of paint everywhere. I didn’t yet get to the gundeck gunports, as I ran out of time last session. Those will be next, then the interiors: spardeck green, gundeck white with a green waterway. Pictures will follow when I have a chance.

That’s a good perspective @ERS Rich; I follow that, but I seem to do so only after I make a mistake that isn’t worth cleaning up. Maybe a bit more of doing it a priori would help. Thanks!

@Snug Harbor Johnny quite detailed, but not sure what that has to do with coppering?

Oh good idea @KHauptfuehrer thank you. I’ve got the book of course and will look.

I understood that, but couldn’t figure out how that worked with the keel and stem plating. It looks like the stem plates overlap the horizontal ones (which fits with “from aft forward”), but those curve to the keel, which means either there’s a strange transition somewhere from “keel under next row above” to “stem over horizontal row”, or there’s no transition and the keel plates overlap the one above, which doesn’t fit with the directions. I think you’re saying that instead of tapering, as you go up, it will curve naturally, so at a certain point you stop going up and start a fresh horizontal strake which covers the curved one below? So what is the stealer? Is it a strake that is high on the band, and doesn’t make it all the way to bow or stern, just fills in the “gap” caused by the middle of the curve, so that the next strake - the lowest one of the next band, fully horizontal - will cover it?

Starting on the colours. Laying out the waterline in pencil - used the original template on cardboard (good thing I kept it) to mark the endpoints, then just connecting. As far as I can tell from the figure 30, the dressing belt straddles the WL, which means it goes above it. So I can paint black to the WL exactly and copper below and be fine. Some things I didn’t understand about the coppering. First, figure 30 shows the stem and keel plates overlapping the strakes. Is that correct? If so, does the keel also overlap the one above? If not, where do I stop the keel, and how do I transition from the keel (overlapped from above) to the stem (overlaps on it). Second, I don’t at all understand this paragraph. “Stealer so that the the next five plates lie naturally…. Since the girth amidships is much greater than girth at stem… copper sheets are not tapered, nine goring pieces are required…” I see three bands C1/2/3 and the dressing belt, but I do not understand how these all fit together.

Found a few planks that had come loose, good time to fix them up. Some of the bolt head nails also came out, so I put them back. Not too bad, fewer than ten. I redid those with medium CA. I think I might have done the spardeck topside heads with a slightly larger drill bit. That makes it easy to get them in, but loses the benefit of the wood pressure itself holding them in, and means that thin CA might not be enough. All in all, though, if I only had to redo ten, that’s pretty good. As discussed above, no wood sealer, just two coats of grey Vallejo primer thinned 50/50, sanded lightly with 2000 grit in between (no idea where my 1000 went). Letting it set overnight and then will start on actual colours.

The detail is really helpful @ERS Rich, thank you. I don't have a spray gun, not all that interested in getting one at this point. I will live fine with the hand painting with various brushes. I have mostly Vallejos, but have been thinning about 50/50, maybe a little more than that. So I will try the top coat with less thinner. I have plenty of planks on which to experiment.

@JSGerson so you pressed the entire plate of copper on some coarse grained sandpaper (80 grit? Higher?), and then just pressed the teeth of the mitre saw just inside of each of the four edges? Is that it? What does that look like? Actually not sure how much I need it. I’ve got the copper plates from bluejacket, which have the texture on them already; see pic.

But poor aim. Both the bolt heads and the airports have some that are off, quite noticeably. Hopefully black paint will hide a lot of it. 😁

You are right about the backends of the eye-bolts, so it should be on the spardeck as well. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it, but I think you are right. I took another look at my pictures from my visit in May, and they are there, although inverted. The gundeck are 3 on the plank below, 2 below that: On the spardeck, it's 2 below, and 3 below that: I might take your suggestion for drops of glue.

Finished the topsides bolt heads. I drilled each hole by hand, cleaned it a bit. For each bolt head, I dipped a needle (held by a cork, great idea from earlier, I think from @MrBlueJacket, and forgive me if I misplaced that credit) in thin CA. Dipped it in the hole, grabbed a shortened pin with angle head pliers, and pushed it in by hand. Some needed an extra tap with a light hammer (I used a tack hammer, but anything small enough will do). Some of them went in fairly easily, others simply refused over multiple tries until it went it. It is partially the size of the hole (I didn’t want them bigger, as the pins would be loose, even with CA), partially what the pin end was shaped into when I cut it short. Some are better than others. In the end, all went in. Picture of part of it is below. Word of advice for someone doing it: definitely get a pair of magnifying glasses with an LED light that head mounts, like Mighty Sight or similar. This would have been impossible without. I am not doing the inside yet. Going to spend next few months focused on painting exterior and coppering. Time to move on to priming.

found the bolt heads, they’re just pins. But they definitely are way too long. If I stick them in, they’ll half be popping out of the other side. I’ll go to the local crafts store to see if I can find any that are much shorter. Spoke with @MrBlueJacket; he suggested cutting them to desired length, drill a pilot hole, tiny dollop of fast drying CA, and push it in. I started, it takes a loooong time to cut those pins. I held each one with a pair of tweezers, then used the edge cutters to cut them. I used a small food container to hold the tiny pins after they were cut, and a large one to capture the discarded ends as they went flying off. It wasn’t perfect - lots of sweeping to do afterwards - but caught most of them. You can see what the original one looks like against the bulwark, compared with the cut one.

Airports are installed. I normally do all of my work on a work table, which is narrow and portable. However, one of the airports slipped out of my hand, and it took all of us a few minutes to find it on the floor. I moved my ship to the dining room table so any that fell would stay on the table. That paid off several times. I laid the side template on top of the hull, aligned it, and held it in place with clothespins. I then drilled holes through the blueprint markings into the planking. I used a very small bit by hand for the first pilot holes, then a larger one, then 3/64”, all by hand. Finally I did the 7/64” with my power drill on lowest setting. I then took the template to the other side and repeated. When done, I cleaned out each airport hole. I also needed to sand down again, and some planks came loose, so I glued them again. I used a toothpick to put some CA glue into each opening, then slid the airport cover onto another toothpick, slid it into the hole, pressed hard by hand, and then tapped it in with a tack hammer. I will admit they aren’t as aligned as I would like, but I’ll live with it. Besides, it all gets painted over soon. Next are scuppers. I’ve not the patience to go down the @JSGerson route and create them from brass rods. As he pointed out, they normally are closed, except when water pressure opens them. So I’m getting a sheet of copper, will cut it to shape of the covers, glue them into the right place and paint them. I do, however, think I’m going to paint the hull and the covers separately, then attach them, so they have a little more definition after painting. So airports done, scuppers coming after the hull painting (and I need to wait for the copper to arrive), so just the bolt heads to add before I can start painting. I ordered them from BlueJacket with my last order of planking, so they should be in my supply stock somewhere.

Thanks @JSGerson; I will look there. Very much appreciated! Wow. That’s quite the work. So you had the airports and drilled to countersink, but you manufactured scuppers? I like what you did, but I’m not sure I’ve got the wherewithal to replicate it.