Thukydides

Time for another minor update as it might be a little while before I have enough progress to justify a full post. I have most of the breaching lines still to do and since I am planning on fully rigging the guns, a lot of hooks to attach to blocks. See below for a preview. I am using Chuck’s 3mm hooks. I also having done another blackening session managed to get enough eyebolts done to finish off the bulwarks. However for some reason none of the brass worked despite the copper eye bolts coming out perfect. The blackening just came right off, something I have never had happen before. I have had blotchiness and parts that didn’t get fully covered, but never every single piece not working out. I currently have them all soaking in acetone just in case there is some sort of coating stoping the blackening from adhering and then I will give them another dip in the pickering solution and try again.

If you want to go a bit cheaper, but stick with vanguard, alert is a great kit. Also the new cutter Chris just released (Trial) also looks very interesting.

Trying to do it right with the first layer of planking will also allow you to get the necessary experience to make the second planking much better. I learned a lot by following Chuck's method on the first planking that helped me when I came to the part that actually shows. Make sure you get the fairing right, it will make the subsequent planking much easier. I ran into a number of issues which were a direct result of my poor fairing job.

Log #41: Odds and Ends @jpalmer1970 I have noticed a number of nice looking tools that various people on the forums have used for rigging (fly tying vices, quad hands etc…). I have been tempted, but at this point I am managing to make do with what I have, likely just at a slower pace than I could achieve if I had a more comprehensive setup. I have considered that it shouldn’t be too hard to make something like the quad hands with some alligator clips and shrink tube I have on hand. I may investigate that. @Theodosius thanks and also thanks to everyone else for all the encouragement. I am really motivated to get these guns done as I am looking forward to seeing what she looks like when I have all the fittings in place. I continue to pick away at the guns and have completed a second. Now that I have my process down I have switched to mass producing each stage. So first up I am cutting all of the breaching ropes to size. You may have also noticed that the 2nd cannon is not attached in the first picture. That is because I ran out of blackened eye bolts and I don’t want to attach the ring bolts the breaching ropes are tied to until the eye bolts are installed. So this necessitates another batch of blackening and while I am at it I am also going to blacken a bunch of other items that need to be done in the near future. For the metal posts that the railing rope (not sure what this is called) is attached to I decided to file them a bit to try and make them look less flat. This involved filing the sides to make them less thick and then also rounding the corners. You can see how much of a difference even just this little bit of cleaning up does to them below.

It’s looking good. You are making brisk progress.

Log #40: Rigging the Guns Part II Part II of my adventure rigging the guns is largely concerned with scrapping what I did in part I and starting again. This seems to be a common occurrence with this whole project so I am used to it at this point. @Marcus.K. had a great suggestion which really should have occurred to me. In any case when I tested the length against the available room I found that at a number of the ports, the guns would hit the deck fittings when recoiling which is obviously not an ideal scenario. After a bit of experimenting I decided on a revised length of 95mm which is about as long as I can make them and still have some reasonable clearance. One upside to redoing things is I have a much better process having done it once already and so I figured I would document the steps for the benefit of those who have never attempted this sort of thing before. Step 1 was to use a small bit of super glue to fix the breaching rope to the bottom of the cascable. I did consider some alternative methods of attaching the rope (see here for a discussion on it), but in the end I decided to stick with the arrangement as shown in the Goodwin drawings for two main reasons: Attempting something like a cut splice seemed a bit beyond me until I have more experience with ropes at this scale. I might attempt such a thing on a future model, but it seemed wise to set my sites on manageable goals. Doing it this way is very easy. Asthetically I like the look and I suppose I can imagine in my head there is some sort of seizing holding it in place. I again used a small drop of super glue and let it sit for a few minutes with a small clamp pulling the ropes into place. For the seizing I decided to use a slightly lighter thread to help it stand out more. I held things in place with a pair of revers tweezers (the kind you squeeze to open) held in my vice. When doing the seizing, I started by running the thread through the rope using a needle to help hold it in place. Then I wrapped it around and ran the need through again to close it off. I then gave it all a coat of ultra matt varnish to hold it in place before cutting off th ends. To try and simulate the splicing of the end of the breach road into itself I clipped an angle off of the end to make it appear like it merged in when it was covered by the seizing and attached using varnish. I wanted to take a picture of this, but I was unable to get a good enough image to demonstrate what I did. And you can see below the finished cannon attached to the model to demonstrate how far it can go back. The breach rope no longer allows the cannon to hit the deck furniture and the lighter thread I think better highlights the way the cannon is attached to the bulwark. Once the glue for the ring bolts has dried I can fix the cannon in its proper place and try and arrange the breach rope properly. Now I just need to do this 11 more times :).

He doesn't really say much apart from describing the characteristics of the 6 pounders which were installed in 1778 replacing the old 4 pounders.

Yes they are six pounders. I had a post on this topic about a year ago and I think the answers were inconclusive. I was not ultimately able to determine why Goodwin shows double blocks in his AOTS Alert book. If I remember correctly from the discussion Lavery makes some mention of double blocks being used sometimes (but he doesn't elaborate, I will have to double check when I get home) and someone in the thread said Caruna mentions only the larger guns had double blocks. I still havn't really decided what I am going to do to be honest. I bought the double blocks based on Goodwin before the question arose, but I may go back and get some single blocks instead. Still on the fence on this one.

Thanks so much @allanyed for the response. Alert was launched in 1777 so I guess that would imply one of the latter two methods. However, I am not entirely sure I understand what you mean by them. I am having trouble picturing what you mean by thimbles attached to the neck of the button. By spliced eye are you referring to something like the example I cited from glbarlow?

I have been doing some looking around and I haven’t been able to find a clear answer as to how the breaching rope was attached to the cascable in cases where there was no ring to run it through. I am currently building the alert and the goodwin book depicts it as simply wrapped around with the crossing of the ropes occurring at the top. The problem with this I it doesn’t seem to me that this would hold unless it was tied in place by some sort of seizing, but goodwin doesn’t mention anything about this. Many here on MSW have slipped the cascable into the rope by “untwisting” the rope. For example see this done by @glbarlow for his flirt build. Another example I have found is this where two lines are spliced together to create the loop. Basically I am wondering if anyone can point me towards what the practice actually was at the time.

Alert is a great kit. I am sure you will enjoy it.

Log #39: Rigging the Guns Part I I have finally started on rigging the guns. The first thing I have been doing is getting the breaching ropes ready. The breaching line should be 0.54mm in diameter and 114mm long. I used 0.5mm line from ropes of scale. I had considered shortening the line as per blue ensign’s log, but I decided I would go for an arrangement where I used the full length and lay them similar to the illustration from Goodwin’s Alert book. Seizing the loop which attaches to the ring bolt was a very fiddle process and I was forced to come up with some creative ways to hold everything steady. I put a set of reverse tweezers (the kind you pinch to open) in my vice and used that to hold things steady while I used a needle and the thread from the kit to do the seizing. To hold everything in place I used ultra matt varnish as it doesn’t leave a shiny residue like super glue. Here was my first attempt. It leaves a bit to be desired, but the other side turned out much better and I figured I wouldn’t bother to redo. To attach the breaching rope to the back of the gun simply looped it around and used varnish to secure it while holding it in place with tweezers. Though I suspect that there should be seizing around the top of this, I thought it would be too tangly to do and you wouldn’t really be able to see it very much. And here is the final result. I will have to use varnish to make the rope lay a bit flatter when I attach it to the ship, but all in all I feel it looks good enough for a first try. I have some ideas about how to do it a bit better next time and ff after I finish all the rest of them I feel that this one does not hold up well enough I can go back and redo it at that point.

Thanks everyone for all the encouragement. I have started work on rigging the cannons. A little preview of the jig I wiped up to assist with this is below

Nice to see you back at it. The guns do look nice.

It is a thinner used for oil paints, not sure why they would list it as something you need. I think you will find the build logs more useful than those videos. Just make sure you are reading ahead to see what problems they encountered. Take your time and you will do fine. Good luck.

Ouch, I had a flooded basement last year (though that was due to a major failure of a water heater). Hope the damage is not too bad 😬.

It really is amazing how much detail you get into such a tiny project. Great job.

It is looking great! I have never regretted taking too much time with something on alert, but I have certainly regretted taking too little.

Awesome job. Two years and one month is pretty good time given the scale of the project. You have accomplished a lot in that time. She looks great.

Great job, I like your design choices. The model is certainly something you can be proud of.

I am also in favour of sable brushes. I use either W&N series 7 (very expensive) or rafael 8404 (about half the price pretty much just as good). Make sure if you invest in some brush soap. A tub like this will last you many years. If you are going to buy expensive brushes make sure you take care of them. There are lots of videos on youtube to help. I would actually recommend a size slightly larger than 000, what matters is the point and since you don’t have to worry about getting the brush into a tight space, a larger one will hold more paint and not dry out as quickly. That being said try a few sizes and see what works best for you. Acrylic paint is somewhat transparent so when painting a very transparent colour (such as yellow) over a dark colour such as blue you need to build up the layers. Try painting with a brown colour first and then building up to brighter yellows. Good luck

Log #38: Painting Complete I have finally finished with all the painting. The frieze was a challenge at only around 3.5mm of space, there was not much room to add in detail. As I have progressed I have gotten a better handle on the style, but I could definitely do a better job if I was to start over. Below you can see how what I accomplished compares to the alert painting. I think I largely captured the feel, though as I have discussed in previous logs I did make some changes based upon what I felt would better capture Neptune and Salacia. Though not strictly realistic (a ship this insignificant would likely not have had this much decoration), I do like the look. In a sense I am trying to capture the essence of the ship as envisaged by the designer even if the ship itself likely didn’t look like this. Overall I am glad I went down this road. I have learned a lot about painting and I feel the model is finally starting to come to life.

You could try filling the gap with milliput or greenstuff. You would need to paint the cannon after doing so, but looking at that gap it shouldn't be hard to fix with a bit of putty.

Time for another minor update. The frieze is almost done. Just one more section to paint (on each side) and the little bit by the catheads.

Thank you, it is the only part of this whole endeavor that I didn't have to learn all the skills from scratch . The hardest part of shading and highlighting is just understanding how the light falls on something. Some people have a natural eye and it comes easy to them. For others (like me) take lots of practice and looking at pictures. At the moment my biggest problem is I only have a few nights a week available for hobby time and I can't both paint mini as work on Alert... Thanks. Just to be clear (as I am not sure if you mean I was suggesting painting it off the model) I was just referring to the point before all the moldings started obstructing my access. Around this point: