chris watton

That looks really good! Those 3d printed wheels on the carronade carriages look a lot better than the old PE versions.

I should mention the sails, or lack of them in my kits.

I was given the details of the same sail maker that the Spanish companies use, and I had samples arrive which were passable - not a patch on the high-quality Russian sets, but much cheaper. I then forked out a large amount of money for 100 sets each for my existing smaller kits. The quality was too much of a contrast with the overall kit contents, so I then decided to give them away, and once they're gone, I am more than happy to not supply sail sets that are of such low quality that they could compromise the integrity of the overall kit. They may be fine for others to use, but I have decided to pass.

For snipping the rigging, especially ratlines, I have always use these Tamiya side cutters:

Tamiya 74035 Model Accessories - Cutting Pliers : Amazon.co.uk: Toys & Games

Here you can see the ply pattern clamped and glued in place. No pins were used at all in fixing these. They were first clamped in place and then brush glued. Note there are no kinks in the lower edges at all, all fits nicely. The second pic shows were I am up to, checking the very first iteration of the outer bulwark skin and main wale, just clamped loosly in place to check general fit. The final ones will have engraved detail. Next job is to first plank the hull, which I shall start next week.

Yes, most will not be seen, as I have to take into account the depth of the carronade carriages and the various openings down the centre of the deck. When I started this, my main thought was that I want to include a ships stove, and it kind of progressed from there.

However, as some build logs of Sphinx and Indy has shown, the modeller can choose how much of the upper deck is planked, and this one will be easier due to the sub deck being much less prominent, and the beams being flush with the upper surface of the ply deck.

I always think back to the excellent Tamiya kits I have, where they have details that are almost, sometimes completely covered up once fully built. 

Harpy also has 17 bulkheads with lots of bracing, so very structurally sound..

Yesterday I clamped and then glued the final iteration of the gun port patterns - as usual for this sort of kit, no gunports or oar ports need to be marked and cut out, these will be already done.
 

55 minutes ago, Pitan said:

Don't think I've seen a small boat with a windlass before, what was the purpose?

 

The windlass and stern davit was used for various tasks, one of thich was to help work the anchors with their parent ship, helping lifting the crown so that the anchor could free itself, and the the ships capstan did the work of raising it. The windlass was used to coil the buoy rope.

Perhaps a possible gangway, if they were thinking of finishing the poop 2 beams in!

Could they be partitions for a temporary cabin?

I have the second in my new line up of alternative printed resin boats almost ready. This is a 24 and 26 foot launch, complete with windlass and davit.

That is truly stunning!

Many innocent sheets of material died to bring you these pictures...

This is the fifth hull I have made up, with incremental changes with each new version. I usually just remove and replace the parts I change, but there are many interlocking parts with this one, that I felt more comfortable restarting the whole hull assembly with all updated designs, so that I know all fits as they should. This will not be the final form, however, but am comfortable continuing using the hull form (which is final) to get more information for parts that fit onto it.

Hull has been sanded, ready to take gunport bulwark template (which are next to design)

(This will be thrown away once all info has been garnered from it...)
 

2 hours ago, navarcus said:

A while back you mentioned 17th century.

I know you designed the HMS Prince, but I hope it will lean towards a smaller nicely ornamented 6th rate.

There are some simple plans from the Maritime Museum of these I've liked for many years.

 

At some point I shall

23 minutes ago, Gregory said:

There’s a new meme going around; “If Chris thinks the instructions are good, they must be good.”..😁

We are talking 33 years ago! Le Superb was my 3rd ever wood ship kit (Billings Will Everard being the first, followed by Billings Bounty and then Le Superb). I remember building it just fine using the manual, in an age before the internet. I learned from building the Bounty that using other sources for rigging was a given, and I did that with every kit I built (wasn't many, though, after Le Superb it was Sovereign of the Seas and after that, started in the industry)

I stand 100% at what I commented on, for the time, the manual was very good. I was really talking about the construction aspect, and the well laid out construction stages. Note I commented on the  'Manual' and NOT 'plans'. At that time, the general quality of both the kit and manual were much better than most.

For any modeller worth their salt, rigging plans from this era of kits should be treated with utmost caution. At this time (very early 1990's), it was a given (at least to me) to do your own research for the details, and masts and rig especially - this was half the fun of modelling.

6 hours ago, uss frolick said:

Were Harpy's carronades 32-pounders or 24-pounders? Wiki says 32's, but that's a lot of metal for a brig of a fifth less tonnage than a Cruiser to carry.

16 x 32-Pounder carronades and 2 x 6-Pounder long guns - typical armament for all the 18-gun brigs of this period (1796-1815). Harpy was built for such – and don’t forget, carronades are much lighter than long guns.

ETA - Although the larger Dasher and Bermuda Class of flush decked ship sloops, which had a main deck length of 107 foot, 12 foot longer than Harpy, only had (officially) 16 x 24-Pounder carronades..

Cruiser Class was only 5 feet longer along the main deck, and 2 foot broader - both classes carried the exact same armament, but Harpy definitely had the more elegant lines. In 64th scale, hardly noticeable, size wise, but I am sure the nicer rake of Harpy will be.

The old kits I did were really just keel, bulkheads, main deck, and lots of planking. The new kits have many times more pre cut parts, with planking usually relegated to the lower edges of the main wale down (for the small to medium size kits at least)
 

Always breaking fine drill bitts, they always break at the most inopportune time, too.

5 minutes ago, BrochBoating said:

Looks very nice. Much 'sleeker' hull than before. What length hull is this roughly? Around 700mm? Thanks

700mm! Cripes, Sphinx hull is only just over 600mm long! Harpy was 95 foot along the main deck, so overall hull length is around 526mm (With Speedy being around 440mm) - but with the bowsprit and main boom, I would think well over 800mm

I think I have another 2-3 months on designs and building hull to check everything, maybe longer. Those pics are literally the very first cut of the very first designs, and much needs amending. The end result will be a kit of an 18-gun brig with great history in real life, and with partial lower deck detail, including stove, scale spaced deck beams (all pre-cut in pear, and with the correct curves/camber, as usual) - and always trying to make it as painless to assemble as I can, but keeping the detail.

I remember doing Snake/Cruiser 25 years ago, that was the last time I did an 18-gun brig. To me, the Diligence Class has more pleasing aesthetics, with a sleeker hull and rake - like a much larger Speedy, but with a much bigger bite* - you can see the natural progression from the Childers and Speedy Class to the Dilligence Class almost 2 decades later, followed by the 'less curvy' Cruiser Class.

*Childers/Flirt/Speedy had a single broadside weight of 28 pounds, whereas the later 18 gun brigs like Harpy had a single broadside weight of 262 pounds

27 minutes ago, Theodosius said:

When it is grown up, what will it be? 🙂 But it looks very interesting and promising 🙂 Like! 

HMS Harpy (1796) - Wikipedia

First checking of brand new designs, and much fettling/fine tuning still to do...

But overall, quite happy...

For the ply bulwarks patterns, what I do now is to clamp into position, make any minor adjustents that are needed, and once I am happy with the fit, I brush on watered down PVA all along the contact areas. This method seems to work very well, and will recommend it in my next kit.

A little update.

I am now out of machined pear block sets for the kits. I cannot buy any more because I sourced these from Russia, which, as mentioned before, a sanctioned country.

However, I have been in contact with HiSModel, and have ordered 20 Indy kits worth of machined walnut blocks - although these are costing me a little more than the pear machined blocks I had before, but I figured better to have the option than none at all.

I will order sets for the rest of my kits that had this option in due course. (Next will be Sphinx and Duchess)

The good thing about the base (and I was given a choice of intergrated base or no when these were done for me), is that 99% of all supports for the 3-d printing process are limited to the underside of the base, meaning the actual figures have little to no unsightly support 'poc marks'