Thukydides

Log #75: Odds and Ends Thanks to everyone that stopped by and for the suggestions. I still have not decided what to do with the spare spars, but based on @druxey’s advice I am not going to stick them on the deck. Likely some combination of lashed to the shrouds or potentially putting the storm topgallant on the railing sticking out the back. In the meantime I have been finishing up some odds and ends in preparation for work on the upper mainmast moving towards the topgallant. First up, the yards themselves are finished now and ready to start having the rigging attached to them. I had some issues attaching the cleats? or whatever they are called at the ends of the yards as they are so small. I think in the future despite the fact that it makes painting more difficult I would make sure all the shaping is fully done before I start painting. I also prepared the top of the mainmast to add the pendant for the topsail yard. As this will be quite visible at the top of the model I gave them a bit more care and decided to add in a simulated bolt. Finally I finished securing and adding rope coils for the remaining lines I had not yet done. The inner tie was secured to the bits and I laid a coil against them. The inspiration for this came from a painting of a cutter that I saw in someone’s build log, but can’t remember which one anymore. You can see I have put the cable for the anchor in place, but I have not fixed it down as I want to be able to move it if necessary as I do the rigging. The sheet for the mainsail was coiled around the cleat on the boom. And finally I started experimenting with rope hanks. This is for the outer tie or peak halliard which is secured with two single blocks attached with a hook to an eyebolt on the larboard channels. The excess rope was coiled in a hank on the nearest shroud cleat. Still not entirely pleased with it, but I learned a lot. Once I get my method figured out I will probably post about it in more detail.

You are making quick progress. At this rate you will pass me soon.

A bit of damage is inevitable. I also had trouble on alert. I just used pliers gently to pry it apart and then touched up the damaged parts with black paint afterwards. I believe some people blacken with the deadeyes on, but you probably want to test this before committing.

Fantastic

Great job, I always appreciate seeing people have the courage to try and paint directly on the model. If I may make a small suggestion, a bit of colour variation on the blue would really add to it. You have this nice contrast on the yellow, but the blue stands out where it is just one flat colour.

I think it looks good. You could also use a brown wash built up in multiple thin layers to tone down the copper colour some more and boost the contrast.

The varnish layer is usually used to do one of two things: A gloss layer to allow the washes to better flow (for example when you want to do panel lining). (I personally have never bothered with this as I found that if you let the paint dry fully then as long as you are careful with the oil wash, it is never a problem cleaning up spills). To protect the layer beneath if you need to clean off overspill or are going to be rubbing it off in the case of say an oil wash. For the everyday run of the mill base coat - wash - drybrush you don't need to seal the layers. There are also cases when you are doing a competition piece where you might want to have a save point you can revert to, but that is for models that you are putting hundreds of hours into painting. I have painted hundreds of model figures, some to a fairly high standard and I have never sealed them except as a very last step to protect the paint job from handling and adjust the sheen. The only exception to this is I seal the area before applying decals.

Really nice clean work. Usually when you zoom in the flaws start to appear, but I don’t see any on your work.

Thanks druxey, is it possible that maybe some of them could have been lashed to the boom as well? I am mostly concerned with the storm topgallant mast as it is much thicker and presumably heavier than the mizen mast and spars and it looks a bit much for the shrouds. I could also try lashing the storm topgallant to the stern railing and let it hang out over the back on the boom crutch, I don’t know if you have any info which would suggest if it was ever practice to let the end stick out the stern like that.

Log #74: Painting the Yards I have been slowly picking away at finishing up the painting and shaping of the yards and masts. I had acquired some brass sheeves for putting in the masts. Ideally I would have thought of this earlier, but trying to adjust the holes on the spars already on the model struck me as a bad idea. I blackened them all in one go and it went will with no issues with flaking that I usually have blackening things. The next step was to paint all the proper parts black using some primer. As usual this required several coats with sanding inbetween each to get a smooth surface. Then using a similar method to that discussed previously with the boom and gaff I highlighted them all. You can see here the spars to be rigged: And the spars that will go on the deck: The highlighting is fairly gradual as I want them to still read as black even though the upper highlights are actually a medium grey. The main benefit is probably on the spars with the octagonal section in the middle as this makes that much more visible. And here are the spare spars tested on the model. I am still not sure exactly how to secure them and where exactly to put them. Where they are they are obscuring the eye bolts for the rear gun tackle. If anyone has any suggestions for the proper placing of them I would appreciate any advice you can offer.

Looking good, nice careful work.

I really like the new figurehead

Great job, she looks awesome.

Welcome to MSW. Good luck on your journey here. I also came from the sci-fi plastic modelling world and while some of it translates, working with wood is a different beast and you will make a lot of mistakes along the way. A few suggestions to help you get the most out of MSW and help you on your way: Read all the other logs on your ship you can. Many will talk about the challenges they encountered helping you to avoid them. If you run into issues contact the authors of those logs, most are usually happy to help. Don’t only post in your log. Look around, see what others are doing and encourage them as well. Treat every step as its own project. You will never regret going too slow, but you might regret rushing through something. This is a marathon not a sprint. I have been working on my first build for almost three years and my only regrets relate to the times I decided it was good enough instead of going back to fix something. Good luck

You will likely find that the rigging will be easier if you pin and glue them to the mast. You don't technically have to, but you will make your life easier if you do. Just make sure you measure many times before you start drilling holes. Also on a related note do as much work off the model as you can, so attach as many blocks to the yards etc off the model as possible.

Not sure on this one, I would guess because the stays get in the way of the topsail so you need to make it with a curved bottom as opposed to a straight one. Then there is a gap which more sail could be put in so you raise the square sail higher. You can see the arrangement in this contemporary model of hawke from RMG:

Fantastic, presentation is great, weathering is well done. For someone who doesn't have a lot of experience painting figures you have done a good job.

Great job, she looks great.

Great job, as always I have greatly enjoyed following along and listening to your thought process.

I am trying to figure out the best way to rig Alert's sheet and tack lines to the square sail without having sails in place. In the above diagram from Goodwin you can see the sheet block (#37) and the sheet sanding and running parts (#s 38 and 39). He does not show it here, but there is also a tack line going from the clew of the square sail forward. I am not putting sails on my model, but I wanted to show as much of the running rigging as possible. I know convention is to attach the sheet to the clew line and I plan to do this for the topsail, but for the square sail there are no clew lines. I am wondering if anyone knows: Why there are no clew lines for the square sail What would be the best way to depict the sheet and the tack for the square sail where I am not planning on using sails. I had considered attaching them to the reef tackle (see below for a potential arrangement, red line being the reef and blue being the tack), but am interested in any ideas you might have.

Yes rigging them off the ship using a jig is way easier. If you take a look at my log I show how I did this for the gun tackle. On the breaching ropes I would recommend not attaching the ring bolts to the cannons (I had a harder time because I didn't think of this at the time), that way you can do the entire rigging of the breaching rope off model on a jig and then glue them in as you attach everything to the model. I saw a log which did this recently, but I can't remember where. If I find it I will post a link for you.

Looking good, I would recommend at least doing the breach rope for the guns. Personally I feel that rigging them is worth the effort as I like my ships to look a bit cluttered, but those tiny blocks are a bit of a pain to rig.

Log #73: The Yards I have spent the last couple weeks working on the yards and masts. As before I have been using my drill and lots of masking tape to prevent the chuck from damaging the yards while being turned. I decided to put some extra effort and make the octagonal centre portions for the spreadsail, squaresail and topsail yards (the topgallant at this time appears to have been rounded in the middle). I did briefly consider adding battens, but my research suggested that this did not start being common practice till later. If you are interested in the reasoning behind this I would recommend taking a look at this post in @Blue Ensign’s log as he comes to the same conclusions I did and I don’t feel like it is worth repeating his excellent explanation. To make the squaresail and spreadsail I bought some square poplar dowel from a local store and used a mini plane to get the octagonal shape before turning them on the drill. Since these will all be painted black the wood colour difference doesn’t really matter. I realized that I had made an error on my topgallant mast as I had made the upper sheeve on the same side as the lower one when they are meant to be perpendicular to each other. The reason for my mistake is mostly due to this being erroneously shown in one of the Goodwin drawings. So I had to use some filler to move the lower one as it will be painted and so the filler not visible. If you look closely you can see I also made the same mistake on the storm topgallant mast. Further to my previous post I also made some extra yards and masts to show on deck. In order from top to bottom they are: Storm topgallant mast Topgallant mast Mizzen mast Mizzen yard Outrigger I decided not to do either the storm gaff or the driver boom mostly because I didn’t feel like making them and I figured the above 4 will be enough to illustrate the idea. And that is as far as I have gotten, not a lot of progress to show, but getting all the masts and yards made is a big step and next up I can move on to painting them and attaching everything to them.

Sorry I should have been more clear. You probably searched the website not the collections. See below for a link to my sphinx search: https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/search/sphinx The plan I was refering to was this one: https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-83709 @ccoyle is correct, I was referring to Brian Lavery and his book called the arming and fitting of english ships of war which is one of the better reference books out there for the fittings on english warships of the period. The NMM MID/9/2 is in reference to the primary source he quotes, the record number at the National Maritime Museum Archives. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/archive/rmgc-object-511162

Your nail pattern is looking really good. I would be interested in more detail on the tools etc.