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Thukydides

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Everything posted by Thukydides

  1. Thukydides
    Great job @hollowneck everything has come together on this. The water is some of the most impressive I have ever seen. You should be very proud of your work.
  2. Thukydides
    This is fantastic Ron, you make me want to try a diorama some time. I do a lot of model painting and that pink foam stuff is fantastic, I use it all the time. One question I have which isn't clear to me is how solid your water shape is. You seem to leave a lot of space under the foil material. Is the subsequent plaster layers enough to make this sturdy or do you reinforce it in some other way?
  3. Thukydides
    Its looking really good Ron.
  4. Thukydides
    Great job, congrats on completing such a large project and as everyone else has said thanks for bringing us along on the journey with you.
  5. Thukydides
    I agree, I think it looks better without them where you are going for navy board style.
  6. Thukydides
    It looks fantastic, I will definitely be trying your method when I get to the sails on the Alert.
  7. Thukydides
    Thanks for the detailed explanation @hollowneck. I was not aware you had done an article, I may take a look at it. Looking forward to seeing this all come together.
  8. Thukydides
    It's looking really good. Is there a reason why you use normal paper for the middle of your sail sandwich? Or is it just that it doesn't matter what you use for the middle layer and it is cheap and at hand?
  9. Thukydides
    Just getting caught up on your log, I had not realized you had started another build. Good work on the anchor. It is looking good so far.
  10. Thukydides
    It looks fantastic BE. Your work is an inspiration, I hope that some day I will be able to produce work like yours.
  11. Thukydides
    Log #27: Fixing the Transom It has been a while since I posted as a combination of having Covid, business at work and then being away on vacation seriously limited my modelling time. As I discussed in my last post I made the painful decision to rip off the railing near the transom to raise the height of the bulwarks in this area to better match drawing in Goodwin and the Marshall painting. The first step was to adjust the moulding to determine the sheer line the railing should follow. Next I glued two wedges made of the leftover lime planks to serve as the core of the bulkhead. I then planked both sides with the leftover pear and carefully sanded it flush and shaped it to match the desired sheer. I also had to add small pieces to extend the length of the moulding. With this done the brackets supporting the transom now go in a more natural position resting against the beam running over the top of the ports. I also had to extend the length of the cap rail as it would no longer reach the transom. As the pieces were very thin, this proved somewhat of a challenge as I couldn’t just glue pieces on to the end. To solve this problem I found some scrap of the appropriate thickness and then used my chisels to cut a small recess in them to accept bridging piece of wood to strengthen the joint. Once dry I sanded the joint flush. This gave me enough length to be able to fit the railing to the new bulkhead sheer. I then glued them in place. Then some touchups were necessary to fix places where the paint had been damaged. In the end though it took a lot of extra work, I am pleased I went back and made the adjustments. I am much more satisfied with the result than I was before.
  12. Thukydides
    Personally speaking I think it looks better without the boats. And as others have said if you are not putting the boats on, I would leave the cradles off.
  13. Thukydides
    It is the really low walls (the solid railing part, not sure what they are called) and the fact that this forces the brackets to be almost touching the deck that made me decide to redo this. I was looking at the Goodwin book and I came across this picture which seems to indicate Goodwin put the Wales at the stern just a little bit higher. Notice how the bottom of the wales is level with the top of the tuck while in the kit the Wales extend a bit lower. This makes the sheer a bit higher at the stern which would make the run of the top plank rise to the top of the transom. Basically my fix is just to raise the moulding that runs below the frieze at the stern so it rises a bit higher and meets the transom around the same place it does in the Goodwin picture. Then using a spacer I marked a constant height from the moulding and trimmed the wedge down to that height so it rises as a curve. I definitely could have left it as it is and I don't think it looked bad, just a bit off... Yes, that is what ultimately made me bite the bullet and do it over. Even though it is a relatively minor issue, it would allways bug me if I didn't go back and do it over.
  14. Thukydides
    Log #26: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back As I was preparing to attach the catheads I noticed a discrepancy between the stern of my model and the Marshall painting I had been referencing. If you look at the stern you can see how the gap between the railing and the wales increases right after the last gun ports to rise to the top of the transom. This is what my model looks like: I went back over the instructions and I had not missed any steps that I am aware of, but there is a discrepancy between where my bulkheads end and what the image and the instructions appear to think it should rise to. Doing some further digging, I noticed in @glennard2523‘s alert build log (though as far as I can tell he never comments on this) he added an additional wedge shaped strake at the stern rising from the last gun port to the transom. Though I can find no suggestion of this in the instructions, this would solve my problem and so with a somewhat heavy heart I removed all the railings at the stern and broke out the isopropyl to clean up the paint in that area… Next log will be all about me trying to correct more of my mistakes :).
  15. Thukydides
    Looking really good. I am also fighting a Covid infection at the moment. Not a lot of fun :).
  16. Thukydides
    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.
  17. Thukydides
    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 😄.
  18. Thukydides
    Fantastic work congrats on completing another fine model.
  19. Thukydides
    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.
  20. Thukydides
    He already does.
  21. Thukydides
    Fantastic work!
  22. Thukydides
    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?
  23. Thukydides
    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.
  24. Thukydides
    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.
  25. Thukydides
    I would try messaging him through the site. Chris sold me a replacement stand for Alert a few weeks back.

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