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Thukydides

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Everything posted by Thukydides

  1. Thukydides
    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.
  2. Thukydides
    Alert is a great kit. I am sure you will enjoy it.
  3. Thukydides
    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.
  4. Thukydides
    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
  5. Thukydides
    Nice to see you back at it. The guns do look nice.
  6. Thukydides
    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.
  7. Thukydides
    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 😬.
  8. Thukydides
    It really is amazing how much detail you get into such a tiny project. Great job.
  9. Thukydides
    It is looking great! I have never regretted taking too much time with something on alert, but I have certainly regretted taking too little.
  10. Thukydides
    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.
  11. Thukydides
    Great job, I like your design choices. The model is certainly something you can be proud of.
  12. Thukydides
    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
  13. Thukydides
    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.
  14. Thukydides
    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.
  15. Thukydides
    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.
  16. Thukydides
    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:
  17. Thukydides
    Thanks to everyone for all the likes and encouragement. One week later I am still picking away at the frieze. Below you can see my progress so far. To try and help with consistency I have been doing each section on both sides of the ship before moving onto the next one. The tiny scale is particularly problematic for these flowery flowing shapes as you can’t use some of the tricks I used with the transom and counter to fudge things as it is all thin lines. My thumb is included for scale. Because of this I ended up painting over in blue a number of attempts that weren’t good enough. I do feel that I could have done a better job if I had done this before attaching the railing and the moulding, but that is what this project is about, pushing myself to try and learn skills and gain experience of what not to do for next time :).
  18. Thukydides
    As always neat work.
  19. Thukydides
    Looks fantastic BE. Really you are flying through this build. I am looking forward to seeing how using the boxwood as the yellow stripe turns out once you have everything sanded and painted.
  20. Thukydides
    I continue to pick away at the frieze on the side of alert. The sections below were a bit more tangly to do as I had already installed the channels and the deadeyes. I had to break out the magnifying glasses as I only have about 3.5mm of width to work with.
  21. Thukydides
    Great progress. Just a minor comment. It appears to me that you are missing one of the hinges (the very top one) on the rudder. There should be one in that indent right where the rudder enters the counter. Also it is hard to tell from the photo but it looks like they might be upsidedown and not in far enough (though I may be mistaken on this as the resolution on the photo is too low to be sure). See below for a close up picture of my alerts rudder.
  22. Thukydides
    Chris has some great kits for beginners. I suspect alert would actually be easier than the lady nelson due to the higher quality materials in it. I believe he also has another cutter he is releasing soon which looks like a great starter kit. Then finally he has a whole bunch of fishing boats if you are looking for something smaller.
  23. Thukydides
    @allanyed I am not sure I understand what you mean by first vs second squadron. Can you elaborate? Also how do you print on silkspan, do you attach it to another piece of paper? By triple printing one side you mean you would only use a single layer of silkspan for the flag?
  24. Thukydides
    How do you get that nice wood texture on the card? Did you mention it in a previous post? In any case it is looking good.
  25. Thukydides
    Congrats, it looks great.

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