allanyed

If and when you can provide more details on this material I for one would love to see how it goes and do some experimenting as well. There are plenty of sources for rice paper that I found but not with heat activated acrylic coatings nor can I find any information on a coating to apply myself. Perhaps matte medium such as used with silk span would work in place of the heat activated glue. Hope you can provide more info!! Thanks Eberhard Allan

Bitao Not only are you doing better, your work is better than most and I believe a lot of it is due to the fact that you take advice very well and do not accept mediocrity. Allan

Paul, LOVE your workmanship! One of the things that jumped out for me is the deck planking. So many kits have the butts alternating every other strake which never happened in reality. Yours is done correctly and VERY nicely. Cheers Allan

Derek, Totally makes sense to me👍 😀 Allan

She looks like a nice project but had me confused at first. I looked for a ship named the Duchess of Kingston and soon found there was no ship with that name. But, then I saw on a photo of the kit box it shows this was a yacht built FOR the Duchess and it is a match to the contemporary drawing at RMG. Interestingly the contemporary drawing shows a LOT of detail including something I do not recall seeing very often. It has the body plan and profile as usual but it also has a section plan at the fore part of the QD with the frames. This pic shows the chocks at the floor and futtock heads as well as internal and external planking. Nice touch for a scratch builder wanting to do a POF model. Allan

I find surgical blades to hold an edge a bit better than Xacto blades but I don't try to use them for everything because they are more prone to breakage than the Xacto blades as Greg mentions. Blades, be it Xacto, Swann Morton or similar, a razor saw, and high quaility chisels and/or knives of various sizes and shapes can be combined to handle most anything needed in our hobby. I would throw in a few Xacto or other after market saw blades such as a key hole saw blade for the tight little areas. Allan

Gregory, Thanks for the chuckle, you are man after my own heart!!! Allan

Gregory, you mentioned you found cloth with a high thread count. Can you share the source and what the actual thread count is? I have searched for appropriate scale cloth for ages with no luck. The highest thread count for fine shirts I have been able to find over the past years is 750 and this is silk and the material is not cheap. With a 750 TC, the thread is three times too large to be close to scale. Canvas has a thread count of about 50 to 100 per inch. Duck is typically about 45X35 TPI. At a scale of 1:64 the TC on the model sail would have to be 2880 per inch to match duck canvas. For 1:48 it would have to be 2,160. I have found 800 to 1200 count bedding which looks better but there is no way to sew edge or panel seams so they would be remotely close to scale. Allan

Welcome home!!!! Looking forward to your Rattlesnake build log. Allan

William Please take down your email address from the post. You are asking to be spammed!!!! If Pandora is still in need he can PM you via this site. You can add your Email address to your profile as well which members can access. Allan

Sorry to disagree but I don't think that using cloth for sails is ever a good idea. There is no cloth or sewing method that is remotely close to any scale smaller than about 1:12. I used to use a very high TC cloth (600 and 800) to keep it as closes to scale as possible, but it was very expensive material and still did not look as good as non-woven material. If there was a cloth with a thread count of over 2000 I might try it again, but typical stiches on seams will never be to scale even if the cloth is closer to scale. Lots of great models are ruined with cloth sails. If you choose to replace the plastic sails, you may want to consider a non-woven material such as silk span. You can print right on the silk span before cutting the sail to size with your printer or you can print a separate sheet and then adhere the painted piece to the sail with matte medium. Seams and reinforcing pieces are easy to do as well. There are some great instructions on using this material for sails on line, here at MSW if you do a search, and in the booklet from Seawatch books by David Antscherl. Allan

You have been given a lot of great advice. Regarding the proper amount of tapering, be as accurate as you can in marking off the run of the planks on the first layer before starting the second. This will show you exactly how much taper anywhere along each strake of planking. Allan

Robert, Your boats are some of the better ones that have been posted, congratulations!!! Will you be adding the anchor lift davit bar in the launch and the ears on the bows of the appropriate boats? I am on holiday with no access to my books so ask if the strips on the launch hull (I don't recall the name) are appropriate for the late 18th or early 19th century. I have seen these on 20 century boats but would like to know more about these on 18th and 19th century boats. Thanks Allan

Bruce, Thank you for posting the drawing. Can you or anyone tell me what all of the sets of squares are? Thank you! Allan

Hi Harlequin, Just curious, is there a reason this log is in the 1501-1750 forum when the date on the kit for this ship is 1790 and do you know if this kit is based on a real ship as there was no HMS Unicorn launched in 1790. There were a lot of Unicorns launched, including 1776, 1782, and 1794 plus some earlier and some later. Cheers Allan

Jon, after you get the book and take a look, if you like, please give me a ring and we can discuss variations/combinations of the methods on the video and the booklet that I tried that worked and those that did not work for me. Allan

First of all your model is gorgeous and I love the old Singer machine!!! I am curious to know the thread count on the sail cloth and the center to center on the stitching? Please take the following as an alternative idea, not a criticism as no one can fault your workmanship. Cloth sails cannot be made to scale if the scale is much smaller than about 1:24 including 1:45. Your cloth APPEARS to have a low thread count and the stiches look to be about 0.07" long. Full size canvas usually has a TC between 50 and 100 and duck is around 40X30. At your scale this would be between 2000 and 4000 TC, which I do not believe exists. There are cloths with a TC in the neighborhood of 1200 which would be closer to scale if you must use cloth. If the stiches on a full size sail have an overly large center to center such as 0.2" the stiches you make on the model sail would have to be about 0.004" which I don't think can be done on any sewing machine. At that C to C of 0.004" the stitching should appear as a solid line. If it is not too late, maybe look at sails made of something other than cloth and forgo sewing altogether. Alternatives that are closer to scale and look better than cloth sails has been discussed at length lately here at MSW. Plus there are You Tube videos and booklets on the "how to" make fantastic looking sails with non-woven materials. Allan

Welcome to MSW Sunbeam, I like your idea of using wooden blocks and deadeyes very much! What is the scale? You say you do not know what sizes or types of blocks and deadeyes you need. The easy route would be to measure the plastic ones and go from there. If that does not work, keep in mind that there are dozens of rope, block, and deadeye sizes on the Soleil Royale so accurate rigging plans or other information for 17th century French ships is needed. I took a quick look on line and there are a lot of rigging plans for the SR. Found this site in a minute of searching that might be of interest to you as well. https://www.hismodel.com/articles-detail-1382 If this source (I know nothing about them) is not helpful and you want to select and order blocks on your own, the number of sizes you need will be pretty much dependent on how accurate you want to be. A general rule of thumb you can use is the length of the blocks is about 4 times the circumference of the rope for running rigging. Syren Ship Model company sells very nice blocks , but you will need to know how many of each size and type that you need. Not sure if they offer triangular deadeyes which may be appropriate for your SR. As you are looking for an extra nice touch, rope will be as important as the blocks so if the material you have is string from the kit, you may want to consider making or buying miniature rope to replace it. There are a number of SR build logs here at MSW that may help you as will their builders. Allan

Thukydides, Welcome to MSW!!! Is there a story behind your screen name in that you have taken the name of a famous general and historian rather than an admiral of old such Themisocles 😄 Hope to see some of your build in the near future!! Allan

Kev, If I am understanding you correctly, when closely examining and measuring the distance from step to step, that is exactly what the contemporary drawings show. While one ladder is different than the next, the spacing is consistent for the steps on any given ladder, be it 9 inches or 10.5 inches or something between. Allan

Jaager, yes there is a strict code today. But, based on the research done on the Georgian staircase article, it was not the case back in those days. And based on the inboard profile drawings I've had a chance to study, it was no different aboard ship. Me thinks that building codes, both marine and land are a good thing!!! 😀

Thanks again Bruce, very much appreciated! Allan

Jon, The best ones I found are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_m_VWzk4w8 and the best book is a small inexpensive booklet by David Antscherl from Seawatch. . I used a combination of methods from both the booklet and the videos that happened to work best for me. Allan

Bruce, Thank you very much!! I did the same thing with six very high res contemporary drawings from the Wiki Commons site which has hundreds of high resolution contemporary drawings and they are all the same, that is, none of them are the same. They vary nearly two inches from one ladder to the next on any given ship that I checked. The drawing you posted is not as clear as those that I checked on the Wiki site but I was able to bring the Assurance drawing up to full scale on my CAD program and from what I was able to discern it has the same variation in spacing from tread to tread, from under 9" to over 10", thus no consistency from ladder to ladder. Thanks Mark. I agree the average is somewhere around 9.5 to 10.5 inches based on the half dozen internal profiles I checked. I suppose the spacing may have been to create a number of steps in a given vertical spot such that the spacing was the same on that specific ladder. The problem though is that if anyone ever tries a set of steps with one spacing and then another ladder with a different spacing, it can lead to stumbling. Even one uneven step is an uncomfortable situation. I agree that relying on the drawings is a good way to go and has been what I have done in the past. It was just one of those things that was an oddity for me and for which I could not find a specific number. Allan

I believe typical modern stairs have a vertical spacing of 8 inches. I have been looking for information on the distance from tread to tread on ship's ladders. Looking at high res contemporary drawings of Africa and Ardent in the 18th century that I enlarged to full size on my drawing program, the height from tread to tread varies from about 9.5 inches to 11 inches for the various ladders. I found a paper on Georgian stairs (https://georgiangroup.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Georgian_Stairs_by_N.Burton-s.pdf) that is interesting but it only states that the distance is to be no less than 5 inches and this is regarding buildings, not ships. If anyone can share any contemporary dimensions or "rules" regarding the height between treads and other dimensional information for British ships in the 17th and/or 18th centuries I would be grateful. TIA Allan