Thukydides

The scuppers look great.

Log #69: Ratlines Complete The ratlines are finally complete. I can say without a doubt that this has been the most tedious part of the whole build. How people have the patience for the ratlines on Victory I really don’t know. Thank you for all the encouraging feedback on the commander. I have put him to the side now as I still need to varnish him to take some of the sheen off certain colours of the paint (particularly the light blue). I will likely not attach him to the ship until the very end as even though I will be pinning him, the risk that he is either in the way of a line I want to run or that I catch him as I am rigging is too great. The second time round on the shrouds I tried to be more methodical and also played with using the hair dryer as I went along. The ultimate result of this was funnily enough a worse job than the previous time. Try as I might I couldn’t get the ratlines to stop pulling in the shrouds and so this side has more of a pronounced curve to the shrouds. This was incredibly frustrating, but in the end I just couldn’t face pulling them all off and starting again. I will just use this side as the back of the model :). I did learn a lot of lessons about what not to do so maybe next time I will be able to do a better job. I might also experiment with different materials as though the definition on the rope I used is really nice, getting the correct tension was really hard due to how inflexible it was. I also need to pay more attention to the tension of the lower ratlines as opposed to the upper ones. Lots of lessons learned.

Looks grate!! She is really coming together now.

Looks great. As a fellow miniature painter I approve of the use of edge highlights.

Thank you. The key with the eyes is to build in the shadows and then use a brush with a very good point to put in the eyeballs and the pupils. The process described in the video takes a while so is not really practical if you are doing a whole bunch of figures, but if you have one you need to look good I find it works every time.

Log #68: Master & Commander Thank you to everyone who has stopped by for the comments and encouragement. I continue to slowly work on the rat lines, but decided to take a bit of a break to do something a bit more fun. As I have previously shown I ordered a figure from vanguard models which I plan to include on Alert to demonstrate scale. To start things I cut it off of the base and primed it in black before doing a zenithal highlight with white ink. The zenithal highlight does two things. First it helps me to get a feel for the model and second it highlights the areas that will be brighter giving me less work later. The next step was to base coat the colours and start work on the face. As a general rule I like to paint inside out. Starting with the hardest to reach areas and then moving on to the easier ones. My go to for painting white skin is the following tutorial. You can see below the state of affairs after the base costs and the skin done. Note at this point I mistakenly thought he was wearing boots, this was corrected later. Next up was the pants and socks. After difficult to reach, my next priority is to paint the hard colours, the ones that don't cover very well. The paints I used for the pants can be seen below. Then I painted the coat and here are the paints used for it. You may be wondering why I have red on a blue coat. The reason is that I find for making shadows I like to mix in a colour from the other side of the colour wheel. In this case I went with red as I wanted a warm purple for the shadows. And then finally the gold details. I did this in a non-metalic metal style using the following paints. And here was the final result. Not the smoothest gradients I have ever done, but good enough. Particularly when you are looking at it from normal viewing distances it holds up well enough.

Well done on getting the rat lines done, you made quicker work of them than me. I think you plan make sense. One thing you can do is just temporarily put them in place and then see how everything else plays out before securing them.

It is looking really good. One question I have is regarding the type of carronade used. Most primary sources I have been able to find seem to use the older style carronade mount for the 1780s and 90s. For example see this image from the RMG. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-86779 These were originally adempted to be mounted inboard, but that didn't work as you noted due to he problem of setting the shrouds on fire. So they started to mount them outboard. Even as late as 1802 similar styles appear still to be in use, for example see this one from the Museum of Wales. You can see how the shape is starting to resemble the later shape now, but they still don't have the pin mechanism of elevation on the go yet. They are also still using the old style of carriage with the carronade attached There is also this one from 1796, which was made for a river barge that has a completely different configuration, but importantly note that there is no pin yet. https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-85086 What is the RA Library, I would be interested in seeing more info on the drawing as most examples I have seen of early carronades seem to not have the pin.

That is the problem, there are so many different compelling ways to theme the model. They all involve tradeoffs in terms of what they show and so I am very sympathetic as I am constantly torn as to what I like the best. This is particularly true when these things take potentially years to build so whatever you decide you are stuck in that theme for a while.

Fantastic work as always. One question I have which I have never been able to reconcile in my head is are the margin plank and the waterway meant to be the same piece of wood (ie we just use the thin strip as a cheat that looks close enough)? Most of the cross-sections I see seem to have the waterway extend under the bulwark planking, or is that the margin plank?

Looks great, I like the use of the light wash to bring out the detail on the dark parts. It almost looks like an edge highlight, just with much less effort.

Congrats, you really accomplished a lot in such a short period of time. She is really impressive.

The pictures resize to fit the screen of the person viewing. I have never had an issue, I just upload them here and insert them. On the issues with tapering I can't help much as I do it using a drill so there is all sorts of wobbling going on. That being said I have seen people using guides that you allow your spar to go through which might help. Have you tried searching the problem her on the forums, I often find if I am having an issue, I am not the first to have done so and searching often turns up the answer.

In miniature painting we use a variety of metallic paints and then washes and edge highlighting to get a good metallic look. There are a myriad of ways you can go about doing it. I would recommend going on youtube and searching “miniature painting bronze”. One painter I have personally found very helpful has a tutorial on painting bronze, though it is a bit involved. There is also the option of non-metallic metal as @GrandpaPhil suggested. However, I would not recommend that unless you really want to go down a painting rabbit hole as it takes a lot of practice to get it to look right. The thing to be careful with regard to metallics is many artist grade metallics have metal flakes that are too big for miniature scale. I would generally stick with metallic paint made for miniatures or scale models.

Log #67: Ratlines, Ratlines & More Ratlines I have spent almost the entirety of last month working on and off on the ratlines. Granted Christmas and all the business that comes with it happened in the middle, but it has been a slow laborious process. I think I can safely say that ratlines are my least favourite part of the build so far. To begin with I marked the lines on a piece of card which I used small clips to hold it to the shrouds. I made sure Alert was in the correct position in her cradle and then used a book to line up the bottom line. For the ratlines Steel calls for 1.5 in circumference rope, which equates to 0.19mm diameter at our scale. I used 0.2mm rope that @BenD custom made for me. The upside of using polyester rope is that there is no fuzz and it has really nice definition, looking like it is at the right scale. The downside is that it is a pain to work with for this sort of detail. It is stiff and wants to hold its shape and so slips out of knots, holds itself at weird angles etc… I would say that on average I did each ratline 2-3 times to get it right. To try and make sure I had the spacing correct and to avoid over tightening and thus pulling the shrouds out of alignment, I did a few widely spaced out. Then I filled in the gaps. I then pulled both ends of each ratline once more to make sure it was secure and gave them all an extended shot with a hairdryer to try and relax them in position. I was a bit concerned the knots would give out and so I ran some test on a piece of knotted rope to see how various glue options appeared / held up. In the end the winner was diluted fabric glue and I coated all the knots with it. Once it had dried and I cut off the ends, I gave the entire set of shrouds a coat of diluted matt varnish. And that is the larboard shrouds done. I did realize in the end that I allowed the middle ratlines to get a little too tight. As this was a very gradual transition I didn’t notice till the end when I held up a ruler to the side. The foremost shroud has a slight bend to it (about 1-2mm at the midpoint). However, it is barely noticeable and I couldn’t face the idea of ripping off all my work on the ratlines and starting again. Next on to the starboard side, hopefully the experience I now have means it doesn’t take another month.

Welcome to MSW

Log #66: Year End Review With the end of the year approaching I thought I would give a quick update on the status of Alert to round out the year and look back on the progress that has been made. In January of 2023 Alert looked like this: And today she looks like this: I am pretty pleased with the progress to date and am hoping to finish her sometime in 2024. The ratlines have been particularly tedious and I would say at this point I have done most of them between two and three times. That being said the end is in sight for the larboard shrouds and I am hopeful that the starboard ones will go a bit quicker given all the practice I have had.

She is really coming together now. Great job, it is always a pleasure to follow along with your builds and listen to your thought process.

Congrats on the beautiful model.

Looking great. If you thought planking was unvaried, just wait till you get to the ratlines 😄.

Looking good, I like the anchor stock planking you have going there

That ships wheel looks really good.

Great job, she looks really nice.

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