Thukydides

Welcome, a cutter is a great choice for a first wooden model. Good luck.

The ship is looking so good Glenn. Though I think what I find most interesting about these builds is the creative ways you go about splitting them into sub assemblies to fit them into the bottle. Looking forward to seeing her in the bottle.

As Alan said it is wipe on poly, a thin polyurethane that you wipe on with a rag and then immediately wipe off. You can build it up in several layers to get a very nice finish. I only used two layers at this point since it will be applied over the whole hull again at some point, but I need to paint / plank before I start adding more. It makes the wood slightly darker for every layer you add and so I want the keel to be slightly darker than the planking (to help differentiate it), but not too much so. If you search you can find a number of guides to using WOP here on MSW. I didn't discuss this in detail in the post, but the reason the upper part of the stem looks much duller is I pretty much sanded away the layer of WOP I added to it initially. I want the ink I am going to use to paint it to sink into the wood and so I don't want the WOP barrier in the way.

Log #23: The First Bulkheads The final step before starting work on the bulkheads was I needed to mark the waterline. As previously mentioned I realized that the waterline on the Perseus is not actually parallel with the keel and so I wanted to mark the two ends of it while I could still lay the center bulkhead flat on a template. Asthetically I am not planning on coppering Perseus, but I want to give a nod to the fact that she was coppered so I am planning on adding a batton along the waterline to mark it as if the coppering was there. This batton is prevalent on a number of coppered models, most notably the bellona model. However there is limited documentation on how big to make this so I went with a combination of what seemed reasonable, how big the batton in the bellona model looked and what looked nice on the model. In the end I used a 3/64 x 1/64 batton equating to a 1 inch by 3 inch strip at scale. I also added a second coat of WOP below the waterline as this area won’t be painted and some extra protection couldn’t hurt. Once the WOP was dried and sanded I covered up the keel and head with masking tape to protect it and secured the whole assembly to the build board with the brackets and screws. Then I started adding the first of the bulkheads. I started by adding in the first two using lego to hold everything square. The lego was clamped to the center bulkhead and then the individual bulkheads clamped on both sides to the lego blocks. Lego is a convenient tool for this as it is readily available in my house and can be adjusted to a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Then I worked backwards until I hit the last of the shorter bulkhead pieces. From this point on I worked forwards as I want to add the taller more fragile bulkhead pieces last to minimize the risk of.me accidentally breaking them. As I approach the cut outs for the ladders from the lower deck down to the hold I needed to modify the lego shapes to make sure there was enough surface contact with the center bulkhead, but also to leave gaps to go around the nuts that screws securing the model to the base go into. The process is not quick as I need to glue and clamp the bulkhead in place and then shape the spacer pieces such that they can slide into the gap smoothly. I then need to leave the whole thing clamped until it is dry (3-4 hours to be on the safe side). I am also being very careful as I want to make sure everything is square and good. Mistakes at this point could be a big problem later on if I don’t line everything up right. This is a very encouraging part of the build as after a lot of prep work the shape of the ship is starting to take shape.

Welcome to MSW, what kit are you going to be building?

That is some very precise work. Well done.

The double thimble vs just a single one, is not something I have seen anyone give a plausible explanation for, maybe because they are stronger? The thing is even if I think 3 is most likely, it is very plausible that the orientation could be reversed (thimble below the pomillion), or alternatively the breaching was wrapped around the pomillion and then passed through the thimbles. I have done a lot of looking through the background of maritime paintings and the problem is there are very few depictions of detailed deck scenes prior to the Napoleonic era so almost all the examples I have found are of Bloomfields with the ring as part of the cannon. The only two good examples from earlier periods that I have found appear to show a c**t splice as the means of securing the gun, though they also seem to have the tackles wrapped around the pomillion too. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-200784 https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-200785

The only issue with that interpretation is the thimble is strapped to the pommillion. My guess is one of the options below (I feel the third is the most likely, but I have no evidence for this). Not obviously not to scale, just to give you the idea. Red is the thimble, green the breaching and blue the strap. I have included an alternate view of 3 below it looking straight on to clarify it. 1) Figure 8 shape lying flat against the breach strapped to the pomillion. The breaching is reaved through both loops. 2) Figure 8 shape with the bottom loop strapped to the pomillion and the breaching reaved through the upper loop. 3) A bent over figure 8 such that the thimbles are next to each other. A strap is run through both to strap it them to the pomillion. The breaching is reaved through them both. The reason this seems the most likely to me is that it sort of resembles the later loops that were cast on to the guns which makes that progression seem natural.

Welcome to MSW

That is an interesting interpretation that I had never considered. The issue is (maybe I am misunderstanding you) is that many of the references refer to the double thimble as relating to the neck of the button. Page 383 in Caruana's Volume II of The History of British Sea Ordnance goes into a lot of detail. A short synopsis --- Wrought iron double thimbles were attached to the neck of the button. This is documented in the first edition of Falconer's Marine Dictionary (T. Cadell, London, 1769) where it is stated that the middle of the breeching is seized to the thimble of the pommillion. The so-called Burney edition of Falconer, published by Cadell in 1815 is more specific but obviously very out of date, stating that the breeching is fixed by reeving it through a thimble strapped upon the cascabel. Long before 1815, the ring was cast as part of the barrel. Caruana also refers to these thimbles as an alternative to the c**t splice. However, to this point I have not been able to determine what these thimbles even looked like, let alone how specifically they were attached. I have often wondered if they were like a figure 8 where one loop was seized to the button and the other loop allowed the breeching to just pass through (a bit like a removable one of the loops that were introduced later with the Bloomfields). My issue with this interpretation is that I question if it could withstand the forces on it as the cannon recoiled.

Log #22: Shaping the Head Thanks for all your encouragement. I am much more motivated to get stuff done at the moment as progress is now starting to be visible on the model. As alluded to in the previous post the next step was to get the standard in place. According to the contract this should be 7.5 inches wide and so I cut the tow pieces out using my scroll saw and used the disk sander for the outside curves as I was worried that the saw might break them (even so I had to remake one piece due to the saw tearing the end off of it). Then it was time for small adjustments with files and chisels to get them to fit against each other and on the knee perfectly. Once happy with the dry fit, I glued the two pieces together. I used the white paint/glue mix for this joint as it will be painted black. Then I clamped and glued the standard in place. I didn't use paint in my glue for this as these joints will be clear from the thickness differential between the standard and the knee. Next came the process of deciding how to proceed with the thinning of the knee. As I discussed in a previous post, the main question in my mind was how thin to make the leading edge. My starting point for this was the Winchelsea instruction in which the knee of the head is 1/4 in thick and you are directed to thin the leading edge to 1/8 in (half the thickness). I then started to look at a number of contemporary models trying to see if I could see how much they were thinned. Most of what I found was very much in the ballpark of thinning to about half the width, though it is hard to be sure given the pictures are not taken head on. I won't bore you with every example I found (there were many), but I did find a very interesting model which supports my decision to use the scarfs. The model in question is 74 gun third rate made around 1790, but it is notable in that it appears to have been used as a demonstration model and all the joints are done accurately (as opposed to the simplified versions on many model). The model does show thinning to about half the width of the knee (though not as much as is visible on other models), but you can also see scarfed joints for the various pieces of the head. Interestingly they have also depicted the lead sheathing on the leading edge of the bow. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66519 So with those examples in hand I started working on thinning things. I still need to make some adjustments as I have decided to thin the stem down to the width of the knee of the head below the cheeks, but here is the current state of affairs. I am thinking I may round the upper part a little more and there is still some adjustments that need to be made to the upper stem, but overall I am pretty pleased with how it is turning out. There is still time to make adjustments so if it looks off to you please let me know. I also added the first coat of WOP which has really brough the joints on the keel to life.

There are also many references to a “double thimble” used instead of a C**** splice to secure the breeching to the gun, but I have not been able to find any pictures or descriptions of how exactly it was used. These double thimbles seemed to have been often used and were part of the standard allocation of supplies as early as 1765, but were still in use as late as 1794 as they show up in another list of standard proportions of ordnance then.

Log #21: Attaching the Keel I find there are often points in a build where you face big decisions around what order to do things and in todays post we come to one of those. As you can see below, I completed the knee of the head, but it is missing the standard and not yet thinned or sanded smooth. There is however a slight problem. Somehow there was some inaccuracy introduced into the joint between the stem and the keel and consequently the curve of the stem is a little too tight. This means that it doesn’t sit tight against the center bulkhead. There was still some flex in the assembly so with a bit of pressure I could get it to sit right, but this would be harder if I had the entire keel assembly in place and sanding couldn’t happen until I had the false keel and standard on. So I decided that I would wait on the sanding till it was on the model. You can see below how I used a dowel and rubber bands to apply the pressure while also using clamps to hold it straight on the bulkhead. This process was then repeated for the remaining sections of the keel. For the false keel I used 1/16 x 13/64 strips which I cut into roughly 3 equally sized pieces. I have received a disc sander recently for my birthday and I have found what it is particularly useful for is getting angles right on joints. Using it I sanded the ends of the false keel pieces at a 45 degree angle to allow them to slide over each other if the ship were to hit the ground. I am still undecided if I will show the staples that were traditionally used to fasten the false keel to the keel. I am mostly worried things will look a bit busy and also getting them to look right at scale and at consistent intervals may be a challenge. We are also to the point where I am very cautious about doing things as corrections at this point would essentially require me to start over. I have essentially been following chuck’s winchelsea instructions with minor adjustments up to this point and so in line with that I left the stern end of the keel a bit long and have held off on attaching the stern post until the planking is complete. The final thing I did was carefully drill holes through the keel in line with the holes in the center bulkhead. I started very small, slowing increasing the drill bit size and then used a round file to get the final bit of the way. this was important as the screws are only slightly smaller than the width of the keel and there were risks that I would damage it. You can see in the below picture I have the model temporarily secured to the build board with the screws. Next step is to attach the standard and make some final decisions regarding shaping of the knee of the head. She is finally starting to take shape.

Good luck Are you edge bending the planks? The planks not lying flat at the bow suggest to me that you aren’t (though it could just be the camera angle that is fooling me). I would recommend taking a look at chuck’s planking tutorial if you haven’t already:

It looks like a fun little kit.