DocRob

Looking very good David. I had to fit in a 1 mm thick plank residue under the bowsprit, to correct the angle. Otherwise, the galion would not have fitted. For some reason, your mizzen mast seems to be parallel to the main mast, with only minimal rake, are you sure, the mizzen mast is pushed into the hole in the lower deck? Cheers Rob

A very enjoyable log to read, both, because you so well documented your build and the shown craftsmanship is impressive. Congratulations to your beautiful machine and thanks for the detour. Cheers Rob

Great work on that tiny bugger B.E. . Like you, I used CA and glued the prepared plank to the bow with it. After drying, I bent the plank around the spars, applying small amounts of PVA onto the spars and more important, as the spars will be removed, between the planks and hold them in place until my finger clamps were hurting. for the last two stern spars, I used CA again for a faster bond. I like the idea with the pegs as clamps, I will store that on my brain HD. Cheers Rob

Thank you for showing this interesting project with all the added explanations. It's great fun to follow and to me a bit like a fountain of youth. When I got my education as an engineer in my very late teens, I had to build a steam engine from scratch, only using existing plans. At the end the machines of all the apprentices where compared in quality for a verdict and for the lowest possible pressure the machine keep running with. I may will build steam engines again in the future with teasing threads like yours. Cheers Rob

Hello Alan, thank you for your kind words. One subcategory in plastic modelling is driving me mostly, it's replicating materials in different states of use and tear or in other words, how to let plastic look like metal, wood, cloth or whatever. Airbrushing is not that hard to learn, especially not for gifted craftsmen, building wooden ships with great patience. It's a learning curve, but be prepared, it's about 80% masking, cleaning, preparing, mixing, testing, ... and only twenty percent of actual spraying maximum. It has a lot of advantages, even with wooden ships as I found out lately with my first build and spares you of garish rattle cans, which are smelling bad and mostly flooding the object way too much. If an airbrush is not an option for you, the metal waxes might be one. You can apply them with cotton swabs and cloth without leaving brush marks. You find some videos on YouTube were they are presented with their pros and cons. The waxes are called True Metal Wax and are produced by AK. Cheers Rob

I just stumbled over this very interesting project of yours, the print looks great Alan If you are looking for extremely good metallic colors, my weapon of choice since years is always AK's Extreme Metal range, at least if you consider airbrushing. They have all the important non ferrous metals in their range, like copper, brass and bronze. They have an extremely fine grain and airbrush un thinned perfectly. They are not suitable for brush painting though. AK has also a range of metallic waxes, (True Metal) which can be brushed, applied with cotton swabs or cloth and they do look good and 'metallic' too Here are some non ferrous examples of my Nautilus build with Extreme colors applied (bronze, brass and copper mainly, but also stainless steel and gun metal). It's hard to show the shininess and metal likehood in the pics, but at least, I tried . I hope that helps a bit Later in the build, I patinaed the whole sub with pastels and pigments, which came out satisfactory to my eye. Cheers Rob

Thank you B.E., I will look into your approach on the boats, to hopefully gain new ideas to lighten the burden for me with HMS Sphinx. Cheers Rob

You seem to start on the boats pretty relaxed B.E. I built my first one from Chris some weeks ago as an add on for my Duchess of Kingston. It's a great little kit, but as a beginner, I have to say its quite fiddly. Having the HMS Sphinx in my shelf and seeing that she sports three of them gives me the creeps and I will not add an extra one. The most time consuming and unnerving part on the boats build was to get rid of the wood glue on the inside of the hull, after removing the temporary spars. I will try to use less glue on future boat builds and wish you luck with yours. Cheers Rob

I do a lot to distract myself from starting with rigging on the Duchess lately, but I'm not sure, if painting 64 scale figures is a good substitute. For now, I will leave the Gentleman Hornblower and Pellew (the names just in case, I rendered them unrecognizable) as they are and when I'm in the mood, I will do some more touchups and detailing. All blame on the figures are on me, Chris from Vanguard did a marvelous job, designing them. I used acrylic colors from the Fantasy range of Scale75, which are reasonably good to work with on a wet palette. When ready, I will cut away the standing plates and substitute them with clear acetate. My next 64 scale figure will be only if there is a decent rendition of the Duchess of Kingston herself. Cheers Rob

Fixing the transom the way you did, give Alert much more convincing lines, great idea to insert the wedges. I just jumped into your thread for the very first time and I really like what i see. It gives me a little push, to finish my 'Le Renard' build a cutter as well, which I started about twenty years ago. Cheers Rob

First planking looks very well done on that racehorse like hull. Still can't really believe, it's a fishing vessel. Cheers Rob

Impressive work and I can feel your pain, as such amounts of time has to be spent, because of suboptimal designed parts. I hope you pull through and finish this beauty which will be satisfactory all over. Cheers Rob

Wonderful work on a beautiful ship all over. I really like larger schale vessels, as there are better possibilities to show fine details, like you do in your build. Cheers Rob

I only just stumbled into your thread and I have to praise your fantastic work. In a quite minute, I will digest it completely as I really like the feeling for the sea in your pictures. Cheers Rob

38 degrees Celsius and the world is turning very sloooowwwww , but anyway, I glued on the lower mast platforms and varnished the whole mast parts with Wipe on Poly. Then I masked the mast platform areas and airbrushed them with Tamiya's lacquer paint flat black. Then I started with the wooldings, I guess, they are for the enforcement of the lower mast parts. Luckily the plans showed a way, how to tie them correctly. I used masking tape as an indicator for the right positions and made six turns for each, which I secured then with water thinned PVA and cut off the ends. Does this count as the beginning of rigging ? Cheers Rob

Here are my weapons of choice, at least, I have them tested a bit with rigging thread. They are sorted from left (worst) to right (best). Left: Small pair of scissors from Tamiya, relatively sharp in normal life, but not for rigging, Handling and close cuts are a nightmare. Left middle: DSPIAE cutters, quite expensive and too be honest a disappointment in every aspect of modelling. I expected a lot, when I used them with plastic models the last years, but the blades often stick into the plastic material and therefore higher the risk of breaking fragile parts on the sprues. Thea also disappoint with rigging threads as there are no clean and reliable cuts to be made. The principle of one flat and one sharp blade doesn't work for me at all and don't drop them, as they will break easily. Right middle: Tamiya side cutters are easily my most used tool in years of plastic modelling. It's a robust tool, which cuts plastic resin, wood and even brass. The quality of plastic cuts is no worse than with the expensive DSPIAE, mentioned above. After maybe twelve years of use, it has a tiny dent in one blade, which arose from a cut through a small steel rod (me stupid). Rigging material is cut well, but not perfect. It's very usable for rigging and especially good for diagonal cuts through CA enforced thread ends to get them pointed to fiddle in better. The Tamiya has two sharp blades and I will buy a new one, as the dent is the factor of difficulty with cutting threads. Right: I never used the Victorinox nail clipper for it's purpose, but read about using it on rigging material in this thread. Instantly, I dug it out of it's cave and tested it with rigging thread. To my surprise, it was the best tool for that, clean cuts and it's easy to cut threads in confined spaces. There are limitations with it's design and you don't want to snap it from your fingers while working in the cobweb of a three master. Don't get irritated with the corrosion, I mend my tools and keep them oiled regular. Where I live, humidity is very high often up to 90%, when we are in the clouds. I got a Proxxon mini vise a week ago and it's already covered with a slight corrosion, though it was oiled from the factory. Cheers Rob

You are absolutely right with the use of white color being more practical orientated. I chose black, because it' is easier to hide some hick ups with my first rigging better in this area and for esthetical reasons. I would think, white platforms look really dominant there and spoil the tonal balance of the build. I was not sure, how much I liked the white underwater paint of the hull, but found it tolerable, because normally there is a bit of shadow down there. The masts platforms though, are in full light and sight. Cheers Rob

Finally some progress, with the renovation of the hose and different other activities in the books. First a vanity shot with all the mast parts in place. These are not glued yet, as I plan to only add the lower segments first for easier rigging. But the next step will be painting the mast platforms and their surroundings black and to add the wooldings (ropes slung around the masts at different height levels). But the picture is not only for vanity reasons, it's meant to be self motivational as of now, my work on DoK is supervised. The Gentlemen Pellew and Hornblower have arrived my dock. They are made from Vanguard Models and are already primed. Their first job will be to fell victim to my desolate figure painting skills. I'm not decided, if I use oil- or acrylic colors or a mix of both. This will be challenging as the gents are in 64 scale, not exactly my go to scale for figure painting. As a reward, they brought a set of pear blocks for my HMS Sphinx kit with them. Cheers Rob

A very old thread, but I was interested into the subject, as I start my first rigging job and my first cuts with my not so bad tiny scissors were suboptimal. I tried my Tamiya and DSPIAE side cutters then and the Tamiya one worked ok, but not great. After reading this thread and looking for a decent pair of scissors online, I remembered, that I own a Victorinox nail clipper, like mentioned above and tried it. It worked perfectly with my test and is able to cut very close to a knot due to the way it's constructed. Thanks for the inspiration. Cheers Rob

I've used both Harry, EZ Line and 0,02 mm mono filament line for airplane builds and they both have pros and cons. EZ Line is very easy to work with, flexible and therefore easily pulled taut. I used CA to glue it on, as you have to glue it under slight tension and fast curing CA is helpful. If you have to fiddle it through tiny holes, the flexibility is not to your advantage though The Mono Filament, I used for rigging WWI planes and the benefit of the material is, it adds to the structural rigidity of these fragile birds. I used eybolts as anchor points and micro tubes as turnbuckles, where the line passes twice. This is almost self securing, but fiddly to get the second pass of the line through the tube. With fragile parts, this method is not recommendable and the flexibility of the EZ line is a big bonus here. Hope that helps a bit. Cheers Rob

Great execution and presentation of your rigging work. Your log will help me a lot with my build, as rigging is like a new language for me to learn. Cheers Rob

If you think, I'm dancing around rigging as long as I can, you're absolutely right . I decided to start with the bowsprit, there are no ratlines at least. The wooden parts and fittings are glued on, varnished and partly painted, but the bowsprit itself is not glued in place, as rigging is simpler separated from the hull. I found, I need to pad a piece of plank under the bowsprit, to get the angle right enough to accept the figurehead. I also added the anchor cable and fitted it around the winch and through the holes in the hull. Cheers Rob

Looks perfectly Hellcat to me. Outstanding work and thanks for the detour to following my first card plane build. Cheers Rob

Rigging looks absolutely fantastic Rusty, I will start mine this week, if time allows and for sure will peek into your log for assistance. Cheers Rob

Thank you Glenn, I'm pretty happy, that I somehow mastered this step and learned a lot of things, as it's my first mast job ever. On to the rigging . Cheers Rob