Thukydides

Great work

I am going to second @ccoyle's recommendation and suggest you might want to consider an intermediate step. I am currently doing a cutter and even with the one mast, the number of repetitive task that risk sapping your enthusiasm is high. Some intermediate step kits you might want to consider that will give you a good stepping point towards somthing bigger like sphinx might be:

• Flirt or Speedy from Vanguard Models - Small 14 gun Brigs
• Alert from Vanguard Models - Large 12 gun cutter
• Trial from Vanguard Models - another cutter featuring more precut parts. I would recommend this one over alert if you are planning to follow the plans, if you like to kit bash I feel Alert has a little more scope.
• Syren from Model Shipways - larger 16 gun brig

1 hour ago, dunnock said:

Hi Thukyidides,

 

I have been following your Alert log and it is looking very nice. You have added a lot of detail and upgraded many of them.

Thanks for pasting the drawing from Goodwin that clearly shows the fid passing through the bitts and bowsprit. I may try to add this detail to Trial hoping that it won't cause the sort of problems you had to contend with. It was a very good recovery by the way. I also notice the banding around the winch supports that don't feature on Trial.

David

Ah yes, now I am looking back I see you already attached the deck fittings, for some reason I was thinking you hadn't done this yet.

You could go half way and just leave it as is, gluing the bowsprit into place to hold it. Then just stick the some metal bits in the sides of the bitts to simulate the look of the fid going through the bowsprit. At least then it would make logical sense as the wooden crosspiece keeps it form flipping up and the fake fid stops it from sliding back. That would be much less messy than doing what I did. Getting the holes drilled all the way through straight was a royal pain.

Fantastic, she looks really nice.

You can just look at my log if you want to see what it looks like. I have also taken a picture of the relevant section from Goodwin below if you want to see it.

2 hours ago, Louie da fly said:

It's all a bit monotone now - I'm thinking of perhaps doing a bit of weathering down the track to add a bit of interest.

Alternatively if you want to go for more of a simpler more artistic look you could consider using edge highlights to pick out the detail. Use a medium grey on the upper edges and a slightly darker one on the lower edges. You could also consider glazing in gradients, but that is a slightly more complicated process as getting the light placement right takes a bit of practice.

2 hours ago, dunnock said:

I've been thinking a bit more about your question of run-in and run-out Andrew.

It would be possible in theory to run the bowsprit in as far as the main mast bitts but now I'm also wondering how the bowsprit was fixed to prevent it being run-in by the tension in the rigging. As far as I can see from the kit plans and photos of various models of cutter, there is only friction against the hull and bowsprit bitts preventing it from shooting aftward. There is no fid as in a topmast providing a physical stop so was friction sufficient?

Perhaps others have more information.

 

David

It is a bit odd, there is also the question even if it is just friction, what if they wanted to shorten the bowsprit. Alert has holes to allow them to shorten it presumably to use less sail in worse conditions. The fact also that the end is round instead of square brings the problem of it potentially twisting.

If it were me I would probably consider squaring off the end and using some iron bars similar to the alert arrangement in Goodwin as I can't see how the arrangement from the contemporary model makes any sense. Maybe it was a simplification by the model maker? The plans show an iron ring holding the bowsprit against the stem which is not on the contemporary model either.

Log #65: Tying off the Stays and Shrouds

I have been very slowly tying off the stays for the last week or so. The Mainstay was fairly straight forward, there was a clear diagram in Goodwin so I decided to go with it as it made reasonable sense. I tied the sizings with 10/0 white fly tying thread. Ideally I would have preferred to use an off white, but there was limited colours available and at least it does make the detail stand out.

The preventer stay was sized in a similar manner.

The shrouds were a little more confusing as the diagram in Lees seems to show them just wrapped around the shroud and then sized to it. However, when I did this I found that it would loosen and slide up the shroud to the point at which it was sized. To remedy this after wrapping them around the shroud as pictured in Lees, I slipped the end of the laniard through the gap between the sizings of the shroud. This held everything in place and then I just ran it straight up and sized it to the shroud.

I first tried using the 0.25mm rope to size it (see the standing backstay on the right), but I thought that looked a little too big and so switched to the fly tying thread for the rest. I didn’t feel like going back and changing the standing backstay and since it is not really that noticeable unless you zoom right in I decided to leave it as it was.

And with that the shrouds and stays are in place. Next I am on the the ratlines as I think I want to do them before too many more lines are all over the place waiting to be caught on somthing.

Your work is so amazing it is borderline depressing as I look at it and see how poor my own looks in comparison :).

Great job, she looks very nice. You are motoring through all the Vanguard kits.

Looking great. How did you make the grating like pattern for the windows of the pantry?

It is hard to tell for sure from the pictures, but think you are still going to have problems with your second planking near the stern. Try holding test strips against it to test how they should run and then sand some more to get the correct shape. Compare your shape to the one you are trying to achieve, there is a nice clear picture of it on page 29 of the manual. You may find that you will have to sand it down so much that you will need to re-plank parts of the stern, but this shouldn't be too much of a problem just a bit time consuming and if you want the final result to good it may very well be necessary.

7 hours ago, Diver said:

Hello All.  I am about to paint some parts of my Sanson tug by AL.  I have purchased the AL paint kit and need advice on how to brush paint this model.  The paints are water based acrylic and I would like to know if they should be thinned, and what brushes are best.  What would be used as a thinner for these paints?  Thanks in advance.   Bob

The short answer is yes thin them, but not having used AL paints I can’t exactly tell you how much, but better to ere on too thin than too thick. Cheap brushes from walmart will work fine if you are just trying to base coat the model. I use cheap brushes for this sort of work all the time and only break out my good ones for the detail work.

The longer answer:

Acrylic paints are made up of three components: pigment, binder and solvent. The solvent in this case is water so you can thin your paints by adding more up to a point. If you thin them past that point, there won’t be enough binder in the solution to hold the pigment together. This is where acrylic medium comes in. You can buy this at any art store and you can use it if you want to thin the paint even more without losing its properties.

For just painting coats on a model you will not however need to thin the paint this much. My suggestion is to test it on your palm. If the paint fills in the cracks (ie you can’t see the lines on your palm anymore) then it is too thick. It will not completely cover on the first coat (especially for colour such as white or yellow). You want two to three thin smooth coats. Make sure they are completely dry and sand off any imperfections between coats. What I will say is that if your paint is too thin you only loose time. If it is too thick you will ruin the model. For model paints such as vellejo or citadel, my rule of thumb is one part paint to one part water, but this will vary depending on the thickness of the paint.

Make sure you have used a primer or a sanding sealer first and you have a smooth surface to work on. A good paint job can’t fix a poorly prepared surface.

If you are painting both dark and light colours (for example black and white) paint the lighter one first. It will be much easier to paint the black over white than the other way round. Also if you are having trouble with a lighter colour covering you can build up to it by say for example painting on a light grey and then painting white over top.

For brushes (I assume you are just painting the hull), I would recommend just pick up a pack of brushes from somewhere like walmart. That will give you a few sizes to work with and since you will inevitably ruin them anyways (I am assuming you are not familiar with painting since you asked the question), at least you haven't ruined expensive ones. In the future you can look into more expensive ones if you want to explore painting a bit more. 

37 minutes ago, TJM said:

@Thukydides, ahh that is interesting! I first thought that it would look weird at the bow until I realised that my lack of knowledge on ship construction and terminology may  make me misunderstand: is the bow not considered part of the keel? What I think you say is that the butts should always be vertical (perpendicular to the horizontal keel, as you say), but since the planks dont run horizontal except at midships, the angle is not generally square, especially at stern and bow where the plank deviates most from horizontal. Is that correctly understood?

Yes you have it. By keel I am referring to just the straight bit along the bottom. So if you took the ship of the cradle and laid it flat on the desk the angle for the butts should be square with your desk.

Looking good. A minor point, the butts of the planks should be perpendicular to the keel (they are attached to the frames on a real ship). So they will not always be at right angles. A relatively minor point that I also didn’t realize until part way through my second planking.

I unfortunately do not have anything to add to this discussion, but I wanted to pop in to mention how much I appreciate reading these sort of topics both as they happen and also when while researching some obscure topic I come across them.

Nice job. That is a detail I would have liked to add to alert, but I didn't feel confident enough at the time.

There is no easy answer to the question if it is already assembled. You can try smaller brushes, adjusting the angle you are painting at etc... In general my advice would be to paint off the model or paint earlier in the process before you make the area hard to access.

9 minutes ago, allanyed said:

Steel is a good source and another of course is James Lees Masting and Rigging which is more detailed and covers from 1625-1860 as there were many changes over the years.  Many consider it the most complete single book on masting and rigging for English ships.

Allan

I have him too and I refer to him regularly. The problem is he doesn't often explicitly address cutters and so I have to take the principles and apply them rather than wholesale copying.

Basically my order of preference is:

1. Steele
2. Lees (If he addresses it)
3. Goodwin (if not in conflict with common sense or the above)
4. My gut / what I think looks the nicest

1 hour ago, Glen McGuire said:

I've encountered this as well with all my epoxy pours.  For me, it's usually inside the bottle so it's not a problem because it's hard to distinguish raised edges from distortion looking thru the glass.  However, when I did my base for Archimedes' Claw, the epoxy noticeably leeched upward into the rocks at the base of my seawall wall.  I do not believe the center of the epoxy shrank during curing because I know what level I poured and the edges ended up higher than my original pour.  The edges seem to crawl upward during curing as they are in contact with another surface.  There's probably some chemistry or physics behind that, but it's well beyond my expertise.  Perhaps @Roger Pellett could weigh in on this phenomena.       

This will happen with any epoxy pour. The issue is the epoxy is adhesive (it sticks to other things more than itself). So it has a tendency to try and creep up the sides due to a combination of the adhesive nature and the surface tension (it creeps a bit and then the surface tension pulls more up so it creeps more etc...) This is counterbalanced by gravity, but if it has lots of things to "grab" then it can climb very high. This a particularly pronounced problem if you have a small crack. I have had it creep up a thin gap so it was way above the rest of the pour and had to hide it with paint etc...

You can try to solve this by:

1. Designing around this (making sure there are no thin cracks it can creep up, leaving space so you can cut off the edges etc...)
2. Putting your sides only to the height you want to pour to. This allows you to fill all the way to the top and the surface tension will hold it level.
3. Pouring in multiple thin layers (still doesn't perfectly solve the issue)
4. Sanding down and polishing the raised edges. Note: I have never tried this on something that I wanted to be perfectly clear like water, I have mostly used epoxy for ice and so I can just cover those bits with snow and make it looked scratched etc and it doesn't matter.

EDIT: I can illustrate this by showing you some pictures of a figure I did a ice pour for. The picture below shows the figure before the pour. You can see how I have a lip I want to come up to.

Then below you can see after the pour. I don't have a picture before I added ice, but you can see how the resin is level around the edge. However, under the rock, the reason there is so much snow there is because it crept up the bottom and I had to hide it with snow.

In the following picture you can sort of see where it has crept up most of the back of the hand.

33 minutes ago, allanyed said:

Thukydides

I realize this is being really picky for some and no reflection on your work, which is awesome, but why do the plans show cable laid rope for the stays on the  drawing in post #365, but then shroud laid in the drawing in post #367?   Cable laid was the more common for the stays while shroud laid rope was the more common,  but not always the case, for the shrouds.  Again, nothing to do with the quality of your build which is exceptional.   

Allan

That is a question you would have to ask Goodwin :).

In general I would say that there are a number of errors / inconsistencies I have found in the drawings for the Alert book (for an example of this see post 365 where I discuss the problem of the foresail halliard). As I note in post 367 there is also the problem that the preventer stay in that diagram is attached with an obviously thinner rope which makes no sense as there is a single failure point. 

My practice has been as much as possible to ignore the drawings for the purposes of determining the rope type and size and just go with the steele table for the ropes (Goodwin includes it in the book). In cases where the table is not clear (e.g. naming conventions are deafferent or a line is missing), I have tried to use common sense and refer to the drawings.

So in my case I used cable for the stays and the shrouds as that is what the Steele table called for. The running backstays I used shroud laid as my best guess as to which was the correct rope in the table was shroud laid.

47 minutes ago, glbarlow said:

Well done, quite the paint collection you have there. 

I have accumulated a few over the years. Some get used more than others. I just buy them as I have a use for them and over the years you accumulate a lot as apart from a few colours I rarely run out as I use them in such small amounts.

Also the top shelf is made up of every additive under the sun which tend to come in large bottles and I use them by the drop:).

welcome aboard

I like the modification you added to the mast cap.

2 hours ago, jpalmer1970 said:

Well done. That is great work with the PE. The model gets much bigger now the bowsprit is attached so be careful turning it around in a small workspace !🙂

Yes it is surprisingly big now. Part of the reason I originally was trying to delay attaching the bowsprit was for that very reason. But given all the trouble I had with the bowsprit it is probably the way to go. I am to the point in the build where no matter what I do I am going to have restricted access.

I try to keep it towards the back of the desk but yes I am a bit worried I will catch it at some point.