Thukydides

Fantastic work. I have enjoyed following along as you built this. Congratulations.

That looks fantastic BE. Your hard work has really paid off.

It is looking really good. Great job.

Congrats on completing your build. It looks great!!!

I am glad you are enjoying it. You should also start a build log :).

If you have an airbrush you could also paint them first black and then spray from above with a dark grey. This will simulate the light falling on them and will make the recesses stand out more. You can replicate this effect using a brush by painting black first and then dry brushing with the dark grey.

Or doing them all over again 😃...

I really like this one. It looks like it will be a great introductory kit.

Why are you applying wop/paint to the stand? Is it to make it more durable?

Log #16: Building the Transom Part III In this final log on the construction of the transom I worked on the side counter timbers and the tafferal. The tafferal was one of those things that in theory seemed simple, but in practice gave me tonnes of trouble. After carefully filing the vertical transom beams to the correct height and angle, I glued part 53 on top of them. However, I could not get this to stay in place properly and I spent a whole evening trying to attach it properly. In the end I managed to use clips and wood glue to get it in place. It remained pretty fragile at first, but once I got the side counter timbers in place it became much more stable. For the side counter timbers I used the ones (part 75) provided by the kit as a template. I needed to make them thicker to ensure that they covered the sides of my now thicker transom. To do this I started by placing them on a thicker piece of pearwood planking I had (same stuff I used for the wales) and marked out the shape. I then roughly cut out the shape and clamped and glued the pieces together. After they had dried I carefully trimmed them down using a combination of craft knife, file and sandpaper until all the excess from the added piece was removed. This left me with what will look like one solid piece once I paint them. You may notice that I left the added bits a little longer than the original piece. The reason for this will become clearer in later pictures, but it was to ensure that I had enough material to properly cover up the entire side of the transom. They were then glued to the sides of the transom and further minor adjustments using files and sandpaper were done to ensure the fit. I then used part 76 to form the remainder of the side counter timbers. This was a finicky time consuming task involving significant heat and moisture to get the correct bend. I also had to constantly check and remove more material from the end of the wales to ensure everything lined up. I ended up with some significant charring (due to the iron) on these pieces, but since they will be painted black I am not too worried. I also didn’t have quite enough length on the pieces running along the side of the transom so I used a tiny bit of sawdust and wood glue to fill the small indent right by the counter. You can see where I did this in the picture below. It looks like there is a gap, but really it is filled in with my homemade filler. And with that the transom is pretty much complete and is much stronger than it was after part one. I may take a bit of a break from the ship for a little as I have some other hobby projects that I want to get back to. When I do return to the project I will begin work on the inner bulworks and the deck.

Personally I like it as is and so my suggestion would be to not paint white. But I am sure it will look really nice either way.

I found the same for planking the alert. What I ended up doing in the end was for each strake I first planked the bow, then the stern, then finally did the one in the middle as it made my life much easier.

It looks pretty good for a build you "messed up" 😃. I know it is frustrating to not achieve the standards you wanted, but I think it turned out pretty good in the end.

Are you still planning on doing a larger brig before you do the big one?

@jpalmer1970 yes the transom is a tricky part and unfortunately there are not a lot of pictures of that area in the manual (mostly diagrams). And if you bring it up too high you leave to much of a gap between it and the counter which is hard to cover up with the counter rail. I assume that my problem originated from earlier in the build when I was less aware of the potential implications of my mistakes. Despite my rebuild I still made the gun ports too low and had to add thin pieces on the bottom of them to raise them. If you look closely at the first picture on the previous post you can see it. Though the fact you didn't notice gives me some comfort...

Log #15: Building the Transom Part II Thanks @ccoyle and @CiscoH for the encouragement and everyone else for the likes. I am continuing my departure from the instructions to finish up the transom. Though it is not in some senses ideal to be doing this now, the structure of it could have implications for the planking of the inside of the bulwarks and so I decided that I needed to make some decisions about what it will look like. As a minor note, I used titebond and clamps for all my work on this post with the exception of the last plank on the counter. Much of my recent work I had been using CA, but I wanted to allow myself time to adjust the position of the various pieces and the speed of CA was not necessary. The process began with finishing the planking of the counter. Then I added the counter rail. I used part 51 just as it was intended for this purpose. I also at this point added the tuck rails. This is the point where I ran into some issues. The Goodwin book appears (at least to my eye) to be inconsistent with regards to the transom. The thickness of it and the dimensions do not seem to line up depending on the angle I am looking at. After many attempts to try and reconcile the various angles I gave up and decided to go with a combination of my best guess and what the kit displayed the inner bulwarks as. From the various angles it appeared that there was a beam running along the transom framing the gun ports so I constructed this out of some pearwood stock using the lower transom rail as a template. The look I am going for is that the transom frame is planked on the outside, but is exposed on the inside. This is somewhat similar to the kit arrangement, I am just adding some horizontal beams as well. Then I used pieces 54 and 55 to make the vertical beams. These just needed to be shortened a bit to ensure they lined up right. In addition, I made two more beams for the outer edges of the counter frame out of the gap between the two copies of part 56. This was just the right size, but had one issue. The grain ran perpendicular to the pieces which made them significantly weaker. Since the side counter timbers would run along side these and provide structural support, I did not judge this to be a significant problem. However as you will see later, I did end up snapping one of them off when I attached the railing. For the transom beam, I just used part 52 cut into sections to fit between the vertical beams. This is what it looked like when I was finished. I considered stopping at this point to make the painting easier, but I was concerned that the whole transom area was not strong enough. In addition, constructing the side counter without having the transom finished might prove difficult. So in the end I decided that given that I have a lot more confidence in my painting skills than my woodworking ones, I would err on the side of making the construction easier. To add a railing on top of the transom I took a leftover piece of 3mm pear strip and edge bent it to give the required shape. Then holding it against the beams I carefully marked where the holes needed to go. Then I used a pin vice to drill holes and my craft knife to carefully shape these to the correct size. Since the vertical beams are at an angle, I needed to bend the rail into a “U” shape to get it onto the transom. This is the point where I broke one of the outside beams. I then glued and clamped the rail in place and re-attached the beam. In the interests of keeping this post relatively short, I will defer the work on the side counter timbers and the tafferal to part III.

Speaking personally though the boxes do look nice, I would much rather the kits were cheaper than they had a fancy box. At the end of the day when the kit is build, the box will just end up in the garbage. That being said I can understand your dilemma wanting every part of the product you make to look like it is made with care.

Looks awesome Glenn. Your work really inspires me to push mine to the next level. I hope some day I will be able to produce somthing of this quality.

Looks awesome, you are making me want to try the wop method. If you were painting the hull white below the water line would you do the wop first over the whole thing or would you do the paint then wop over the paint?

Did you prime before painting? I ask because in the plastic model world you always need to prime first or the paint will come off over time. Not sure if this is true on wood. If you are looking for the absolute best acrylic metallics then that would be Vallejo metal colour. They are just lovely. If you are willing to use alcohol based paint then you could also look into Vallejo liquid gold. It is a bit more of a pain to use, but looks really nice, and there are a whole bunch of shades of gold to pick from.

Log #14: Building the Transom Since I broke the stern transom, I decided to go ahead and rebuild it from scratch. Doing this allows me to (1) align things a bit more with Goodwin and (2) try and fix whatever errors I previously made at the stern. The attaching of the transom is one area of the manual I wish there had been more pictures (the manual only has diagrams of this). The reason I snapped the transom was in my efforts to see how it was meant to fit. The instructions seemed to indicate I should have the lip, but then I have trouble seeing how I could avoid an ugly edge showing. In addition, things were not lining up completely (likely due to previous errors on my part). So I decided to remove the lip and attach a new transom right on the back. This would also allow me to plank the stern counter and cover up any edges with the counter rail. To construct the transome I first bent two wider (and thicker) planks that I had to replicate the curve on the bottom of the original transom. The reason for bending them together was to ensure that they fitted together properly. I then used the old transom to trace the pattern onto the planks making sure to leave some extra room at the bottom where originally the transom would have rested on the lip. Then I carefully cut it out using a razor saw and my craft knife. I glue it in place with some difficulty (I almost glued my thumb to the counter) and filed the edges to get everything to line up properly. And this is how it looked in the end. I still need to adjust the curve on the top of it a bit, but that I can do by carefully filing it down. Next I need to finish the last plank of the counter to cover up the bottom edge of the transom. Then I can work on planking the inner bulworks and adding the side pieces to the transom.

Looks really good, I am really interested to see how you do your sails and your dioramas. I will be following along.

Log #13: Planking Retrospective With the second planking complete, I figured I would dedicate a log to some of the things I learned through this process. One of my goals with this log is to document the challenges of doing a first wooden ship build so those who come after me can hopefully learn from my mistakes. I have most of the sanding done except for a few minor issues I need to clean up / fill below the water line. Now that it is sanded I am somewhat pleased with the results, but I am also aware that it could have turned out so much better if I had just taken a little more time (particularly in the early stages). So here is a list of things that I wish I had known or did know, but never took to heart: Early mistakes cause later troubles - Take your time, no really take your time. Early errors, especially on planking, will cause issues later. More time will be spent correcting errors at the front end will end up saving time overall and produce much better results. Treat every plank as an individual project - Now this piece of advice is not for everyone, but if you want to have a really good result, the best way is to treat each plank as its own project to carefully fit into place. Take the time to get the bends right and bend it in as many directions as you can. It should sit flush without any effort. If you have to force it into place, the result will never be as good. I saw many other people on MSW say this, but I didn’t realize how true it is until I started to slow down. Better to start over on a plank than to have to deal with the consequences of one that didn’t fit properly. Check the width / thickness of the planks - When I started the second planking, I sorted the planks by colour, but I didn’t check the dimensions. Even with the excellent standards that Chris has put in place on the Alert kit, there is still variation in plank dimensions. I found that the width varied between 3.8 and 4.1mm while the thickness could range from 0.8 to 1.1mm. Now these differences may not seem like a lot, but they can have a significant impact on the planking. I would have had much better results if I had sorted my planks by dimension first. In the end you have to learn by trying - In the end no matter how much you read, there are still minor adjustments that you need to learn by actually doing the work. I am very thankful that the members of MSW convinced me to start small as it is much better to learn these lessons on a smaller build than on the ship you have always dreamed of making. Speaking of mistakes, as I was trying to fit the stern transom pattern I accidentally snapped it in two. I had been thinking about rebuilding this part of the model more in line with the drawings in the Goodwin book so I guess the decision has been made for me. More on this in my next log...

Welcome to MSW. I won't belabour the points that others have said, but as from one first time builder to another who came into this with only plastic model experience, I want to really emphasize that starting small is important. The only thing that really helped me from my modeling/miniature painting was knowing how to take my time and read lots before I did anything. You will make mistakes, but the nice thing about wood is that most mistakes can be corrected. Just take your time and read lots of build logs to get an idea of what mistakes others have made. As for model recommdations, I am really enjoying vanguard models alert as a first build. The instructions are fantastic and there are lots of good build logs on it here on MSW which you can lean on.

It looks really good. I am also all in on the plank bending train. I have learned the hard way that if you have to force the plank into place it will never look as good as if you had just got the bend done right so it just naturally sits there.