RossR

Here is my attempt at making an improved grate for the upper deck of my ship. I used leftover material that came with the kit. The openings of the grate would work out to 6 - 7 inches which is about double the size they should be. I do not think I have the skill or equipment to make my own grating material. I considered purchasing proper scaled materials, but I have already blown the budget on this ship a little bit by buying miniature rope from Syren for most of the rigging. At work I often tell people not to let perfect stand in the way of better, and that is the way I am looking at this build. The grates are far from perfect but better than the first ones I built. The arched top isn't perfectly symmetrical, but that is the best I could do with the limited left over material. I had a third one that I took way to much material off of when forming the arched top. I think I have the battens running the wrong way also, but had to make some comprises due to the limited material I had left. These pictures were before I finished the Sapelli with shellac. Here is a comparison to the ones built following the instructions. Thanks to Allen for helping with how to fabricate the head ledge and coamings and the information on the proper scale.

I spent some time this weekend expirementing with using card stock. I think I need some that was a little thinker to get a better result, but I think I could get there. I did notice a potential problem with not using the kit supplied parts. before I started with the soldering, I had drilled the holes for pins in the rudder. If I use a 1.2mm card stock strip to make the pintle and place it at the top of the notch in the rudder, it won't cover the pin holes that I have already drilled. If I place them to cover the pin holes, the pintle will be placed in the middle of the notch in the rudder instead of at the top. I really appreciate all the information and great suggestions, but this may be an improvement that gets added to my next model. I think I will be using the kit supplied materials on this model.

Your model is incredible. As big and detailed as it is, 2 years is not very long. Someday I hope this kit will be my retirement gift to myself.

Do you pin the rudder to the ship? The pintels and gudgeons the only means of holding the rudder in place if I build the model as the manufacturer intended?

Allen Thanks for the information. No big surprise but the kit supplied material is over scale. They are about 3.1 mm wide vs 1.2mm. I do not own a drill press, so I am not very confident that I could drill the small holes in 1.2mm material with a hand held drill. I may see if I can get some 2mm brass strips and try with that. It would still be over scale, but at least closer. Hopefully someday I will keep adding to my tool arsenal and will own a drill press and can tackle items like this.

Thanks. I appreciate the info.

One of my goals with this model is to learn new skills and improve on the ones I developed on my first ship. One of the skills I wanted to learn was soldering. after a few youtube videos and a little bit of practice I made my first attempt to solder parts for the model. I soldered the brass pin into the bracket for the rudder. I know there is a nautical term for the "bracket" but I cannot think of it right now. They turned out pretty good. There were four total, and I needed to do a little file work to remove some excess solder on a couple. These will be blackened before they are installed. The next item that will need to be soldered is the lantern for the stern. The is a brass piece that is bent to create a six sided frame for the lantern that needs to be soldered to itself were the two ends meet. My question for the forum is, can the brass part of the lantern be soldered to the cast metal base and top of the the lantern? Not sure if the Britannia Metal has too low of a melting point. Any feedback or advice on this would be appreciated.

Progress has been slow, lots going on this summer outside the shipyard including a few rounds of golf. yesterday I had my best score in over a decade which was a little unexpected. I usually run out of gas after about 14 holes, but on Saturday I managed to keep it together for 18. I have managed to finish the lower gun deck. I do need to address the grates that are installed. I started this this project about the same time I discovered the Model Ship World Forum. I sometimes like to finish a few small items before I start the hull and planking, and that took the form of the grates on this model. I built them according to the instructions from Occre with the mitered joints. I soon learned on the forum that mitered joints is not the authentic way to build these. I have enough material left to attempt to build the grates on the upper deck the correct way, and that is my intention, but I decided to leave the lower deck grates as is. These will be difficult to see on the final model as the ships boats will be mounted above the opening in the upper deck. That argument probably works against my decision to rig the cannons, but that was more about the experience of doing it that the visual that will be difficult to see.

I did on my first attempt at rigging cannons recently, but I haven't on the masts.

I have had similar experience. Even if you break or ruin an item by accident they will send a new one.

I still need to do the touch up work on the head, but I decided to take a break from the head and start work on the 12 pound guns for the lower gun deck. The kit has ten 12 pounders that are complete with a gun carriage, and I think 14 false barrels for the rest of the gun ports on the lower gun deck. First step was to assemble the carriages from the laser cut sheet. I assembled the 12 and 6 pounders that go on the upper gun deck. I filled in the gaps with some filler and then painted the carriages a dark red. Next up was building the axles. There were two sizes of wheels. I assumed that the smaller wheels were all for the 6 pound carriages and the bigger wheels for the twelve pounders. I assembled all of the smaller wheels on axles that fit on the 6 pound guns only to realize that the smaller wheels were also needed for the rear wheels on the 12 pound carriages. I had to cut the axles apart to get them to fit on the bigger 12 pound carriages. I decided that I wanted to rig the guns. I think a lot of people on the this forum might suggest not doing that on a 1:85 scale model, and they might be right, but with this model I wanted to do things that I didn't do on my first model, so I am going to add the rigging to the guns. You will also notice something odd with one of the wheels on the picture below. I lost one of the wheels and didn't want to wait for a replacement, so I repurposed a leftover deadeye from my HMS Beagle. Attaching the blocks to the ship was a real challenge given the deck that overhung the gun deck. I am hoping to rig my ship as it might have looked in action, so I decided to show the lines for the gun tackle laying on the deck as opposed to neatly coiled up. I did have to abandon the hook that attached to block at the rear of the gun to the ring on the deck because the two blocks were too close together with the hook.

I have made progress on the head, but not without a few problems. Earlier when I glued the upper head rails on, positioned the front tips a little too high. I needed to shim the braces that sit on the stem with a thin piece of .06 mm wood. When I added the pieces below that are painted black to the top of the upper head they seamed to pull the head rails even higher leaving a gap between the stem and the braces for the grating. See the red arrows below. At first I wasn't too worried about this, but I realized that by raising the grating higher it was going to interfere with the bowsprite. To deal with this I needed to cut a channel in the grating to make room for the bowsprite. I also struggled to properly bend the lower head rail. This peice needed to be bent to follow the curve of the bow and then bend sharply towards the tip of the stem. A twist in this part of the head rail was required so that the head rail could be glued to the bottom of the braces on the stem. The bend along the bow was not hard to achieve, but the piece broke where the sharp bend towards stem and the twist was needed. I ended up fabricating this out of two pieces, (see blue arrow above) and I am not thrilled with the point were the two pieces meet and might try to figure out a way to make that look better. I also have the posts attached to the cap rail. These were carved from a 4mm x 4mm piece of limewood using a file and a carving tool with a dremel I added a pin to help hold them secure to the cap rail.

I think that contact cement is not given a fair shake on this forum. Does anyone have an example of planks coming off a model after ten years where contact cement was properly used? Contact cement is primarily used in the countertop industry for attaching laminate counter tops to wood subsurfaces. I am currently sitting in a 40 year old house with original laminate counter tops in the laundry room with no sign of the glue letting go. It is applied differently to other glues, you have to let it dry to the point of being barely tacky before the pieces are attached. If the pieces are attached too soon when the glue is still sticky, it doesn't set up properly. This could be the issue people have had. I have not been involved in modeling for 10 years, so I cannot say with certainty that my my second layer of planking will not start to let go, but I am not very worried about based on the available information about the adhesive and the fact that I believe I used it properly.

I wouldn’t describe your pace as “Little by little”. You are making incredible progress. I wish my build was moving as quick as yours. Thanks for sharing your build log.

I love GrandpaPhil’s goal and quote in his signature.

I have made some progress on the head. The head is made up of an upper and lower head rail and four supports that are mounted on the stem and support the grating. The upper head rail needs a slight bend right at the point it is secured to the bow. The supports were oversized allowing the building to trim them so they fit tightly between the two upper head rails. The get the supports cut to the right size I temporarily pinned the upper rails in place. After getting the supports cut to size, I painted all of the parts and used CA to glue the head rails to the bow and the tips of the head rails to each other along with attaching them to each of the four supports. I will need to touch up a few spots of paint Next steps will be adding braces across the supports and adding the lower head rail. The lower head rail will be challenging. The part needs to be bent to fit the curve of the bow for the first 1/3 of the part then it needs to twist 45 degrees so it can be secured to the underside of the four supports.

I agree that adding some sort of peg is critical for small parts, especially if there will be shear forces. As the surface area being glued increases the more comfortable I feel with glue only. Especially when using PVA.

My rule of thumb for most tasks is use PVA (wood glue) if I can clamp it. If it is difficult or impossible clamp I use CA (superglue). Lots of other things can be used for various specific applications, but you can get by with those two glues pretty easily if you have to.

Welcome. Nice to have another Minnesotan on the forum.

Today I made some progress on the ship. The new shipyard is working great. my work light set up still. A couple of posts ago I had cut out new cap rails (I think that is the correct term) for the bow section out of basswood after not caring for the way the plywood pieces looked on the edges. I struggled to get the color of the basswood close the sapelli that was used for the rest of the cap rail. Then I was driving past a hobby shop and stopped in and found a piece of 3/32 mahogany. I re-cut the cap rail out of the mahogany and was much happier with the result. After getting the cap rails installed I added some of the other features that need to be installed before the head can be fabricated. I had to carve the posts next to the cathead and added some items to the stem.

Your progress is incredible. Looks great so far.

I had today free to work on my ship. Plans changed when my wife was shopping and stopped at a business that was having a moving sale. She found two 6 ft x 2 ft butcher block tables and picked them up for an upgrade to the shipyard. I had been doing my work at a small desk in the back of our family room. She also generously gave up her home office for me to set up my new shipyard. It will take me a little time to get everything organized the way I want, but this is way more room than what I had before. Looking forward to the new space.

Nice work on the mast. Your planking looks good so far.

Not wasting any time. Looking forward to following your build.

Thanks for sharing your technique. I think I will try this on my current build.