allanyed

There are examples on the RMG Collections site. Several contemporary model examples   https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66300 and https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66359,  https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66325, https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-66357  
From Lee's Masting and Rigging of English Ships of War, page 184, the length of the ensign staff was 1/3 the length of the main mast above the taffrail and the diameter was 1/2 inch per 3 feet of length.  The ensign staff tabernacle looks to be a bit thin in your photos in post #1 above.  Looking at photos of contemporary models the tabernacles look to be closer to 10 or 12 inches deep.  Not a big thing, just curious if anyone knows if there was some kind of standard for this.
 
Are you going to rig the staff and hang an ensign?  
 
Allan
 

FWIW, The models of America at the NYYC has her with a copper bottom as does the model at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical  Park.
Allan

Alistair,
Thanks for posting this in this forum as well.  I think a lot more folks will see it and benefit.  Please take this as a compliment when I say for me this is by far the most interesting/unusual/bizarre/extraordinary subject I have seen here in a long time and happy that you posted it.   
Allan

I  scaled the drawing to 1:64 and get 17mm.    IF the contemporary drawing is correct, it could be the kit got it wrong.  I was curious to know what the AOTS book showed dimensionally so downloaded their drawing and compared.  (Forgot I had that book 😕) There is a 10" difference between the AOTS and the drawing from 1774.  Note that the widest part of the quarter gallery is the same on the original drawing and the AOTS drawing.   
Allan

 

I got curious and inserted your photo into the drawing as well.  The gun ports per the drawing should be 35.5" fore and aft.   I sized your photo to match the gun port width of the drawing.  Given that port dimension on your model is correct, the dimension I gave above of 128.5" looks to be closer to 144" on your model.   The openings for the lights are 22" and the space between 17" compared to the 26" and 7" on the drawing.  I am probably not making any sense, but maybe the below will help.  I realize this is not accounting for the slight curve in the z axis, but should be pretty close IF the dimensions I am guessing at on the model photo are close.  Sorry for the full size dimensions, but it is easier on the CAD drawing for me.
Allan

A huge thank you for your service and a warm welcome to MSW.   Your comments on planking and attention to details is fantastic.  Study the tutorial here in the articles section  by David Antscherl (https://thenrg.org/resources/Documents/articles/APrimerOnPlanking.pdf) and watch the four part You Tube video by Chuck Passaro and choose which suits your needs.  Both work well and yield beautifully and accurately done planking.  As you likely have strips of wood for planking in the kit, Chuck's method is probably going to be more useful for you.    Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCWooJ1o3cM
 
Do start a build log and never be afraid to ask questions when they arise.
 
Allan

A huge thank you for your service and a warm welcome to MSW.   Your comments on planking and attention to details is fantastic.  Study the tutorial here in the articles section  by David Antscherl (https://thenrg.org/resources/Documents/articles/APrimerOnPlanking.pdf) and watch the four part You Tube video by Chuck Passaro and choose which suits your needs.  Both work well and yield beautifully and accurately done planking.  As you likely have strips of wood for planking in the kit, Chuck's method is probably going to be more useful for you.    Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCWooJ1o3cM
 
Do start a build log and never be afraid to ask questions when they arise.
 
Allan

Are they internally stropped?  I don't see any on their website.  Those that I see on the website are not at all appropriate for a late 19th century fishing schooner that you mentioned was the subject vessel.
Thanks,
Allan

I have now finished painting Neptune for the most part. I may go back and make some minor adjustments smoothing some of the transitions more, but it is good enough I think for me to move on to Salacia on the other half of the counter. The toga flowing over his shoulder is the part that I am least pleased with and depending on how I feel about it in a few days I may try to redo that part.

I also figured I would show a picture from further away as the zoomed in photos in some ways make it look much more rough than it appears in person.

 

Time to start phase one of the dreaded ratline tying stage. I decided to give myself a leg up and have a bit of a practice before leaping onto the model. I knocked up a quick frame out of some scrap wood and then approximated the run of the shrouds. I had read in Steel that the ratlines should be 0.19mm in diameter. I did not have that size in my stock of dark brown thread but noticed that Dunnock had used 0.25mm diameter in his Diana build to good effect. I experimented with some 0.25mm diameter Gutterman polyester thread, some slightly thicker Gutterman thread and the 0.25mm dark brown from Ropes of Scale. Unfortunately for my bank balance the 0.25mm RoS was the most pleasing to my eye. I initially thought that I could use a seized eye at either end but I was unable to get seizing small enough so I resorted to the tried and tested cow hitch at either end and clove hitches in the middle. I could not help doing a triumphant moo every time I completed a well tied cow hitch though this soon turned into a mournful lowing as I realised that they are very fragile and tend to unravel once the excess thread is trimmed close to the knot. Once this happens it is not recoverable as there is not enough material left to retie the knot which means the whole row must be replaced. I only discovered this after I finished installing all the lower fore mast ratlines so I will have to look for an alternative knot for the remaining masts.
 






Lees gives a distance between ratlines of 13-15 inches so I split the difference and settled on 14 which comes out at about 5.5mm at 1:64 scale. I drew up a series of suitably spaced lines on the CAD and printed this out to act as a template. Conventional wisdom suggests that one should first tie every 5th row to prevent the awkward hourglass shape to the shrouds so this is how I progressed but it was not enough to prevent distortion.
 



I was in two minds whether to continue the ratlines above the futtock stave as the shrouds are very close together in this area but looking at the condition on HMS Victory and HMS Trincomalee it would appear that they did carry on up past the futtock stave. Drat. After what seemed like months of work, I completed the lower foremast ratlines. The result is not great and there are some real wonky ones but the dark colour and thinness of the rope means they tend to fade into the background a bit when you are not focusing on them so they will have to do.






The whole ratline tying exercise is a real mixture of tedium and frustration. It is very challenging to get the rope to sit in the right place, to hang in a pleasing manner and to stop it distorting the run of the shrouds. It will probably take me to the last shroud on the mizzen top mast before I have any semblance of technique. Unfortunately, while the RoS rope looks the best it also has the annoying propensity of not wanting to stay knotted so I gave each knot a splosh of diluted white glue to help encourage the correct behaviour but sadly this did not help with the cow hitch conundrum.
 
I added the catharpins. There seems to be many methods of constructing these as well as the methods of attachment to the shrouds. While I liked the look of the served variety, I decided to go with a plain 0.8mm diameter rope seized directly to the shroud. There is a lot going on in this area so I decided a less is more approach would be appropriate to reduce the clutter. I initially fixed these above the futtock stave but then cut them out and installed them below to prevent them creeping up once they were tensioned. I tied them fairly loose thinking that they would tighten up once the futtock shrouds were tensioned. They did but are still a touch loose. I am hoping that the top mast shroud installation will provide the final bit of tensioning.

I installed the futtock shrouds. These were 0.8mm diameter rope. They had a PE hook seized into the one end and were then wrapped once around the futtock stave and then lashed to the adjacent shroud with three seizings as detailed in Lees. These were then finished off with a few ratlines. Once in place I felt that the proportions were a touch off and I could have done with moving the futtock stave slightly further down the shrouds however I am not going to dismantle everything to see if this is a worthwhile improvement. They will ultimately be partially obscured by the yards and other rigging so any minor adjustments would be a waste of time.
 







 

The ever curious modeler's eye certainly did not miss it in the last picture: Next step were then the crews at the capstan.

In my stock of pre-Frankensteiners I still had a pack of cheap copies of Preiser figures that I had once received as a gift.



For single figures too sloppy reproduced, in the bunch I thought still quite useful. So once again I broke bones and mixed everything up. Since I quickly noticed that I would have been lost with single figures, I had built a sample capstan bar for the assembly. And it came what had to come: Bones were broken, joints were twisted, heads were chopped off and put on again.







Especially that with correct posture the arms were stretched under the bar and that the pressure was transferred with the chest, was a little tricky in the assembly. This posture prevented kinetic energy from building up when the bars struck backwards, the bars could not hit the guys in the chest area with force. So they were simply pushed backwards with less risk of injury.

Since the space on the capstan bars is quite tight, the guys were glued together right away in six-packs, because I wouldn't have been able to fit them together inside of the ship.

Then the sixpacks were sent to dress. Thereby I remembered again a small detail, which is shown on a contemporary document. The inner 5 men are red dressed Marins, the outer man at the bar is a blue dressed sailor. There is also a bluecoat at the swifter, the circulating rope that stabilizes the bars. This had the advantage as the marines could not do anything else except shoot, turn and pull were stuck in the middle, while the highly qualified sailors could quickly get out and away for maneuvers if necessary.

So the inner five guys conjured up short coattails, painted and also provided for the white belts. A few had allowed themselves suit relief, the jackets and belts hang afterwards over the guns shoved to the side.



Fit trials outside then looked like this.







First test fittings looks still quite fluffy. But you can already see one thing, the expected fiddler sitting on the capstan drum does not fit there because of the next deck.















One coan see, it works with the guns, tight fit, but it works.

But it gets more claustrophobic once the deck beams are added.







But it still gets much tighter, the knees are still missing. http://www.shipmodels.info/mws_forum/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif





Once the knees were added, it was a squeeze fit, no more air to press out, but it fits.













No more surplus air in there ...

XXXDAn

It is the ensign staff. Certainly it should be tapered and have a small cap on top with a sheave cut through for the ensign halliard. Look at contemporary models and paintings to see examples of these.

All decor is made and boxwood. I made the body out of pear. I modeled the decor in 3Dmax, then cut it on a cnc machine. With my hands, I modified a little after the cnc machine.
When the decor was ready, I covered it with tung oil. The oil hides small problems in the decor. After 2 weeks, I covered it with bituminous varnish. I diluted the bituminous varnish very strongly with a solvent, then applied it to the decor with a brush. Almost immediately rubbed the decor on top with another brush. The decor turned out to be dark in the recesses, and light on the protruding parts.

Beautiful work!!!   Can you describe a little bit about your carving techniques and what type of tools and wood your are using?   Where duplicates exist such as on the beakhead bulkhead and the wreaths around the ports, each piece looks identical to the other which is remarkable.  
Спасибо Карин
Allan

TOWTT   -   Your screen name made me think of the below photo on a cruise ship circa 1900.
Super warm welcome to MSW.    
Allan

You can see the linings very clearly on a number of contemporary models.  Note that the linings fayed to the frames rest on top the lining on the bottom sill.  There are usually no linings on the top sill.  Based on contemporary model, there are sometimes no linings in the ports which carried no lids such as those on the upper deck at the waste as in the third pic.  Pics are from Preble Hall, Annapolis.
Allan
 



 
 

TOWTT   -   Your screen name made me think of the below photo on a cruise ship circa 1900.
Super warm welcome to MSW.    
Allan

Beautiful work!!!   Can you describe a little bit about your carving techniques and what type of tools and wood your are using?   Where duplicates exist such as on the beakhead bulkhead and the wreaths around the ports, each piece looks identical to the other which is remarkable.  
Спасибо Карин
Allan

TOWTT   -   Your screen name made me think of the below photo on a cruise ship circa 1900.
Super warm welcome to MSW.    
Allan

TOWTT   -   Your screen name made me think of the below photo on a cruise ship circa 1900.
Super warm welcome to MSW.    
Allan

Actually this is my third big ship. Before that I built   BON HOMME RICHARD and HMS BELLONA.

Thank you Karen,   I wonder if the style on the museum model is atypical rather than a  more common design.   I can understand how the drawings were done by McArdle if he based them on the contemporary model.
 
Again, your workmanship is outstanding.
Allan
 
 

This is one of the finiest builds here at MSW, thank you very much for sharing with us.  I have a question regarding the lights on the stern and the quarter galleries, there seem to be an inordinate amount of panes, 30 on each stern light, 25 on the quarter gallery lights.  Was this actually done in this time period and if so, was it common?   I cannot find any contemporary models or plans for the late 17th century showing more than three panes across or up and down.  Photo of the contemporary model of Boyne (80) 1692 is below
Thanks
Allan

Sorry Dave but do you mean the 84" (I know it is hard to see on the small drawing attachment)  which in THIS case is from the aft edge of the aft most gun port to the aft perpendicular which I believe is the aft side of the rudder post at the load water line.  
Cheers
Allan

What kind of wood came with the kit?   For the hull above the coppering Alaskan cedar and castello boxwood are popular and are very tight grained so look terrific when left natural.  The wales and the strake above the main wales of course can be any wood as they would be painted/stained black.   For items such as bitts and such, Swiss pear is a reddish color that may alleviate the  need of red paint.  Same goes for the stops in the ports, spirketting and quickwork on the bulwarks, although the red may be too subtle for you compared to what is usually seen on contemporary models. Rosewood, especially Brazilian rosewood, is a great red color wood, but needs to be wiped down with IPA or Xylene to remove the surface oil to eliminate the gluing issues.  For decks, holly is grand and the whitish color gives a contrast to the other woods in the build.  
Allan