Thukydides

Looking really good. I am also fighting a Covid infection at the moment. Not a lot of fun :).

Log #25: The Cap Rail, Timberheads and Catheads

The cap rail proved relatively simple to install. I started by painting the pieces black as this would mean I would not have to try and get a brush into the hard to reach underside and potentially spill paint on the deck.

After painting I glued them on and then used fine grit sandpaper to smooth them down. I plan to touch up the paint once all the assembly of the rails etc are done. At this time I also painted and then installed the brackets at the upper counter. I used some spacers to ensure that they were level.

The timber heads were done in a style that did not appear to match the Marshall painting or what Goodwin indicated was used in this period. I figured this was an area I could add a little more detail so I simply trimmed them down to roughly match the depiction in the Marshall painting.

Some minor adjustments were necessary to make sure the rail joined the upper counter properly, but for the most part things went together without issue.

For the catheads I decided I would try adding sheaves to them in line with what @Blue Ensign did. Lacking a drill press this was pretty finicky work, but going slowly and carefully with lots of measuring and adjusting I was able to use a pin vice to drill out the holes for the sheaves. Crafty Sailor sells these thimbles which I should be able to use as sheaves once they have them back in stock.

I may have to make some small adjustments to the holes once I get the thimbles, but we will cross that road when I get there. For now I think adding the holes makes the catheads look better.

Welcome to MSW. Building a ship can be daunting with all the new skills you need to learn, but this forum is a wonderful resource. Make sure you start a build log when you get going 😄.

Fantastic work congrats on completing another fine model.

Progress continues slowly but surely. Thanks to everyone who chimed in with advice on finishes for the deck. Before I made the decision on what to do I decided to attach the railing that runs along the base of the blue painted part (not sure what the technical name for it is).

After carefully planing and sanding the 1x1 mm strips, I painted them black on three sides. Then using the edge of a folded over piece of sandpaper, I carefully sanded the area the railing was to be glued to. I attached them with wood glue as this gave me more time to adjust things and also ran less of a risk of accidentally staining the rest of the hull.

I found that this procedure made a really good bond and so encouraged by this I decided to apply WOP to the deck (as it is easier to do so now before all the fittings are in place) with the plan to use the same technique of carefully sanding the contact points when I need to glue stuff.

I also assembled my syren serving machine in preparation for the future rigging endeavors.

1 hour ago, Dave_E said:

Will Jim have a build log? 

He already does.

Fantastic work!

I finished planking the deck (finally). Now on to a whole bunch of scraping to get it smooth.

In terms of finishes I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions. I assume I can just use the WOP like I did with the hull. Should I also use the WOP on the painted parts or do people typically leave them as they are?

Log #25: Planking the deck

Though I have not posted in a while, I have been hard at work planking the deck.

I discovered that it is much easier to cut out the appropriate holes before gluing the planks down, but by the time I figured that out, I had most of the middle completed.

Learning my lesson from the planking of the hull I sorted the planks into groups based on their thickness and used the thicker planks on the middle of the deck and worked my way out. I also took care to pair planks with similar widths on either side of the centre line to ensure that both sides of the deck were even.

I have also recently acquired a few new tools, a set of veritas miniature chisels and a miniature block plane. In retrospect I really wish I had the latter when I was doing my tapering of planks for the hull, it would have made my life much easier.

And this brings us to where I have got to so far (note a bunch of the planks are not yet glued down as it is easier to make the cuts into the margin plank if I have room to work).

Unfortunately I have run into the only issue I can say I have really had to this point with the kit. I have run out of planks. I was very careful to make sure I was using smaller cut off pieces whenever I could, but despite this I am short what looks like 2-3 strips. I am wondering if part of the reason for this was the length I chose to cut the deck planks to was resulting in more wastage. I suppose that is a lesson to remember for next time. Will my chosen plank length result in too many off cuts?

Technically I do have one boxwood strip remaining, but I am not using it as its colour is significantly more brown than the rest of the strips. In any case I would still have been short 1-2 planks even if I had used it. I had plenty left over of both the pear and the limewood when planking the hull so this was not an issue I was expecting to have.

So I am off to try and cut the strips from some wider thicker stock I have and then plane them down to the correct thickness.

Almost done the deck and then it is on to lots of scraping.

Another minor update since it has been a while since I posted. The planking of the deck continues slowly. Like many of these tasks I am getting better as I go along. 

I am hoping now I have gotten past all the cutouts it will proceed a little more swiftly.

3 hours ago, nehemiah said:

Do you sell replacement display stands for the Alert? I had a cat-related trip/ fall and crushed the one provided with the kit.

 

Apologies if this is the wrong place to ask or if the answer is immediately apparent on your site and I missed it.

I would try messaging him through the site. Chris sold me a replacement stand for Alert a few weeks back.

1 hour ago, Theodosius said:

@BobG, @SpyGlass, @CiscoH: thank you for the thumbs up! 🙂

 

My very first upgrade:

 

I added some wood to the pump handle to prevent some calluses during working the pumps.

 

One side with the bare wood, the other side already sandet:

 

 

And in place (all the bits are a little bit wonky, because they're all not glued):

 

 

 

 

I think the edge-highlighting on the pumps is a little bit to prominent and not clean enough, I will overdue this.
 

Looks good. If you are edge highlighting with a metallic paint (which it appears you are doing), try just to catch the very edges. Make sure you don't overload the brush and use the side of the brush to run along the edge. You could also try mixing some black with a metalic for the base coat to give it a bit of a sheen and then use a black wash to dull down the recesses to give more contrast.

Alternatively you could do the base coat with black, dry brush with silver than use a wash to darken technique. See the following video: 

I know this is a probe droid, but the idea of giving something a dark metallic look is the same. If you want it more black just use more layers of wash once the first one dries.

The faring process is one that cannot be rushed. Many of the issues I had with my first planking directly relate to not faring properly.

4 minutes ago, JGoff said:

Thanks Allan! 

 

I took @Oldsalt1950 up on his recommendation for the 1x2x3 blocks. Those should come in today. The lego jig is an interesting idea...might have to make a purchase and try those out at some point.

 

I have finally have gotten all the bulkheads removed that needed removing, lightly sanded off some of the glue. Hopefully, I'll receive those blocks today, as well as some other necessary tool/paint purchases made a few days ago.  I am leaning in the direction of adding some balsa wood blocks in between the bow and stern bulkheads. I'm sure there are some lengthy discussions about this, but I'm thinking a hand saw and sandpaper - perhaps an Xacto blade - will be all that is really required to get those fit and carved. Chisels might make the work easier? Any thoughts about the most efficient way of going about this?

I wouldn't worry about the lego unless you had some lying around. It will likely be no better or worse than the 1x2x3 blocks provided they are cut accurately. I just suggested lego as most people have at least some of it lying around and why spend money when the thing you already have will do :).

Lego is great if you have some lying around, very accurate and you can build them up to any size you want.

4 hours ago, glbarlow said:

I've seen a lot of entry level modelers think there in a race to get past these first steps, but just like the concrete in a house the foundation is critical to future success, rush it and everything after is a mind-numbing challenge to correct. Planking is a skill, its fun when you do it right, it's misery when you try and force the planks to fit.

Can't agree more. Treat every plank like it is its own project and trust me you won't regret it. There are lots of lady nelson logs, read as much as you can.

1 hour ago, Gregory said:

Is that boxwood?  Looks very nice...

Yes, that is what came with the kit and thanks :).

I am continuing to make progress on the planking. Not much to really say about this. I simply edge bend the planks to get the right curve then mark the side of the plank with pencil and glue it in place using super glue.

I did use the thinnest planks for this section so they don't look off on the main deck and to make sure they didn't rise above the beam at the base of the transom. For the plank directly beside the transom I made the bend match the curve of the transom and then used a piece of masking tape to make template to determine the cure I had to file on the concave side to make it fit.

I damaged a bit of the paint job on the top of the transom, I will have to touch that up later...

41 minutes ago, glbarlow said:

That’s a nice job on some tricky planks. Doing them will make a big difference on the final deck. When I made these for Cheerful I made sure the joints were between ports so a cannon didn’t cover them up. 

That is a really good idea. Too bad I never thought of that :). At least one pair by random luck will show. Another great example of the sort of thing you never think of till you have done it.

Log #24: The Margin Planks

After trying and failing to cut the margin planks out of a larger sheet of boxwood (I kept having issues getting the curve exactly right and breaking it). I decided instead to just edge bend strips from the kit.

Since none of the strips were long enough I made the somewhat dubious decision to do them in three pieces and cut scaraf joints for where they met. After a bunch of trial and error I came up with a reasonable method for doing so.

1. Mark the total length of the joint (A) and cut off the extra (this will be the end of the joint.

2. Draw a line from each of points (B) to the opposite corner (you will end up with two parallel lines “C”).

3. Mark the midpoint of the joint (dashed line) and draw a line connecting the two lines you just drew perpendicular to both of them with the midpoint of this line crossing the midpoint of the joint (D).

4. Then cut away the shaded section.

And this was the result:

For the connecting plank, I then made small adjustments with a file to make sure it fit. This worked out better in some cases than others.

I started at the bow and then left the planks that but up against the stern a bit too long to adjust when I did the final gluing. This was because it was hard to tell exactly how long they should be once everything was glued in place and to give myself margin for error I left the least complicated end of the margin planks to be adjusted at the ends.

And this was the result. Just like with the hull I forgot to check the thickness of the strips before I started using them and so had to correct some issues at one of the joints where one stip was much thicker than the other, but all in all I think it turned out ok.

Another minor update. I am done with the painting and so next up is planking the deck. The process for the black is much the same as the red. Using lighter colours on upturned surfaces and edge highlighting with a grey.

Log #23: Painting the Inner Bulwarks and Edge Highlighting

As I was working on painting the inter bulwarks this showed up in my mailbox:

When Chris mentioned in his update thread he had changed the alert stand to bring it in line with his newer kits I reached out to see if he would be willing to sell me the updated version. He graciously agreed and I also purchased some additional items we will need a bit later.

Using a similar method to that described in the last post I painted the inner bulwarks by first laying down a base coat of flat red and then mixing in some citadel incubi darkness (a dark greenish blue colour which when mixed with red gives a nice crimson).

Then as before I added my colours to my wet pallet. However, this time instead of wet blending I simply blocked in the colours and then glazed the transitions in.

The reason for not wet blending was the larger surfaces meant that I would have to work quicker and ultimately all these techniques are just trying to achieve the same thing. An even transition from my highlight tone to my shadow tone.

The same treatment was given to the inside of the transom. The only thing different to note with the transom is the addition of dark lines at the base of each panel to help define the beginning of the beam that runs across the bottom of the transom. This beam I transitioned from lightest in the foreground to darkest where it meets the panels.

Then using wild rider red (an almost orange colour) I proceeded to edge highlight the transom beams and the gun ports. This is done for two reasons. The first is that this is simulating the way light collects on sharp edges making them seem much brighter than the rest of the object. The second and probably more important reason is that it looks aesthetically pleasing. It helps define the shapes and visually accentuate the detail we spent so much effort working on. Just compare how much more defined the beams are in the following photo compared to the previous (note the colours are off as I was having issues replicating the same light conditions used in the first photo).

I also added the edge highlights to the sides of the outer bulwarks using a light blue. The effect is very subtle, but it does help accentuate things.

And this is what things looked like in the end.

So I don’t know how much help this is. But it shouldn’t be too hard to touch up. Use a small round brush and after loading it off dab off some of the paint with a paper towel. You can test the tip on the back of your hand to make sure that a controlled amount of paint comes off. Then place the brush perpendicular to the thing you are painting and run the brush along it on the side of the tip. Since the edges are raised that should allow you to easily do the touch up with minimal mess.

Just make sure you thin the paint down a bit (so you have more control) and where you are doing yellow over blue it may take a few coats to cover. Several thin coats are better than one thick. Just wait till it dries and add another layer until you are satisfied. If you try to do it in one coat you may end up putting on too much paint and it spilling into the recess.

I would say it should be somewhere around here or possibly a little more forward.

However the garboard is one of the hardest things to get right. But given how little room you have, there are only two possibilities. Either the garboard is too far up or you didn't start tapering soon enough below the wales.

Edit: I should also mention it is not the outer curve of the keel that determines where the garboard ends, it is the inner curve. On your model the inner side of the keel begins to curve long before the outer side of it does.

 @Blue Ensign You are correct, one could easily go overboard with this since we are aiming for a realist depiction. Ideally this is the sort of thing that the hopefully the average person will not be able to tell without being told where to look except that it will look "better" in an undefinable way. For plastic models you can up the contrast even further to give them a sort of comic book or stylized look, but that would obviously not work here where we are going for a more "realistic" look. Contrast is also relative so I may need to further adjust the blue as other colours are added. The most important thing is that the entire model is coherent (eg the light volumes need to be consistent). If the light treatment is not coherent then it will just look "wrong" as our eyes intuitively know what to expect even if we can't articulate it.

@Grey Thanks for the encouragement. The item in question is a wet pallet (google it, there are lots of guides online for how to make one). Basically it is a pallet that rehydrates the paint so it doesn't dry out as quickly. A bit overkill for this project, but I use it all the time in miniature painting. Since it is my primary pallet I figured I might as well use it and I can close it to keep the paint mixes for another day if I wish.

In general I would not recommend someone who knows nothing of painting try what I am doing on a model ship. Some of these techniques require a lot of time and practice to get right and a ship model you have just spent the last 3-6 months making is not really the place to start :). However if you are interested miniature or diorama painting in general just go to youtube and look up beginner miniature painting videos. There are lots of great content creators who make painting tutorials directed at beginners.