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Hey Kurt, thanks for getting back to me. Interesting that yours fit well. I tried both the metal cast trailboards and the molded ones I made and both had extra wood around the billethead. Anyway, I just trimmed down the extra once everything was in place. Thanks to you, I did thin down the knee before attaching everything. Speaking of getting things to fit, I was double checking the fit of the grating before i got started on the rails. Like you, the aft edge does not fit well against the hull. I know you mentioned that you trimmed yours to fit, but I was wondering about the stem. From what I understand, the Bowsprit is supposed to rest on the stem, but the grating is solid all the way to hull. Did you cut a slot to fit around the stem or does the Bowsprit actually rest on the grating, which is on top of the stem? Also, sis you bend the grating to give it a little upward curve or keep it perfectly straight? Anyone else who has built this kit can chime in as well.

Thanks Jon, a big help as always. This nomenclature is basically the same as what is in AOS, except there is no middle or lower head rail, so it is simply called the second head rail. Also, the diagram above does not show or mention a false rail, but I guess the AOS is correct in referring to the covering between the main rail and the top. Anyway, thanks for the diagram, alot of other good terms to know as well.

Hi Guys, Sorry to keep flip flopping, but I have been pondering this thing all day and believe I need to make one more correction to my assignment of these rails. The "inside" rail with the slight "S" curve is definitely the False rail, although I may be mistaken in naming it. In the instruction from BJ, they refer to this rail as the second rail. To confuse things even more, in AOS, this rail is referred to as the Main rail and indicates the False rail as the planking or canvas that covers the space between the Main rail and the top. For now, I'm just going to keep calling this one the false rail. From the side, it is the one that is shaped like a stretched out "U" and terminates just in front of the catheads. The "outside" rail in the plan above I believe is the Top rail. In this plan it appears to have a bit of a curve on the aft end and seems to trail off with the hull. Everything I've seen everywhere shows this rail as being perfectly straight and it goes from the back side of the billethead to where the False rail meets the hull. Lastly is the rail that turns into a support for the catheads, or in the case of the Hull model and presumably how she looked in 1812, this rail just fairs into the hull. AOS calls this the Second rail and the BJ instructions refer to it as the Lower rail. Either way, it is not visible in the plan above. That's my assessment of the whole thing. Would love to hear what you guys have to say.

Actually, now that I look at this again, I believe the one I have marked as the Toprail is actually the Falserail and the other is the Secondrail (the one that becomes the support knee for the cathead). This plan has the toprail omitted. The Toprail is perfectly straight, whereas the falserail has that gentle "S" curve that Jon mentioned and is shown here

Hi Gregg, I've annotated the plans for you here and indicated which rails are which. Jon, please correct me if I'm wrong

Good morning fellas! Jon, I am truly shocked. I thought you had plans for EVERYTHING You seemed to have worked through it just fine. Gregg, welcome, glad you joined in. Thank you very much for the compliment and thanks for the link to the plans. I'm well aware of the museum website, but missed this. I guess the title of "Deck Framing" threw me off. Anyway, it's just what I was looking for and confirms that the rails are much thinner than what is provided by the BJ kit. I had guessed that they would be something closer to 5-6 inches. The question now is whether to try to thin out the metal strips provided, or make something from wood. At 1/16th", I may be able to bend the wood to make the false rail, but the aft curve is pretty substantial. Also, the metal strips do not have any moulding detail, so I would need to carve that in or add strips of some sort.

I got the trailboards attached and although they still need a little refining, they look good. Meanwhile I was looking ahead to the head rails. The BJ kit supplies Brittania metal strips for this. The metal strips are nice in that they can easily be bent to shape, however, they are 3/32" square. At this scale, that would make them 9 inches thick which to me seems way too large. Jon do you (or anyone else out there) know what the true dimensions of the head rails are?

Thanks Jon Very helpful. Clearly, the billet head is smooth across the top and nothing should be sticking out. It is interesting that on this model, the billet head is much narrower - about half the width of the trail board. Not much I'm going to be able to do about that, I'll just have to go with what I have. Also, the top rail is basically flush with the top of the billet head, unlike the current configuration where it is clearly lower than the top of the billet head. Since the knee is already cut and has a rest for the top rail, I'll probably just stick with that as well. I'll certainly trim up the knee so that the billet head is smooth and even all the way around

So, the catheads are all nice and painted and got their faces. Once in place, I checked the distance from the tip of the bowhead knee to the outside edge of each and they were within 1mm of each other. Good enough for me. I was ready to move on to the bow heads and immediately ran into a problem. I started to attach the trailboards, but when I first positioned them I realized that the tip of the knee was much larger than the billethead. Not trusting myself, I went back and checked other buillds, photos and the plans and the "core" of the billethead definitely should not be sticking out I thought perhaps I had just made a mistake cutting the knee out in the first place, but when I went back and checked the template, it was perfect. and when I laid the trailboard on the template, it also seemed oversized.: Finally, I thought that perhaps it was the size of the trailboard, since this was a copy made from the Revell model, but when I compared it to the cast metal one from the BJ kit, they were essentially identical. It is interesting that the template in the BJ instructions has an internal outline (dotted line) that basically fits the profile of the billethead. They make no mention of this or trimming to fit, so before I just went ahead and removed the excess wood, I thought I would ask for some opinions. Kurt, since you also had the BJ kit, did you run into this same issue?

Hi guys, Yes, the kit does come with the carving. I was going to attach this after painting. I'll probably have to trim it a little to get it to fit properly, but hopefully not too much

Thanks Jon, I decided to skip the top cleat and the free standing sheave as well. I had been waiting on some #24 fish hooks to arrive to use as eyebolts. They finally got here and they are perfect. These things are tiny. The wire is .014" which makes the "eye" just slightly smaller than 1/64th. For comparison, here's a photo next to the 1/32 eyebolts provided by BJ With fish hooks in hand, I went about assembling everything. As I did, I got a little crazy. If you look at the photos above, you will see that the copper I used to make the "shackles" on the double blocks was a little thicker than the wire on the hearts. I decided to at least give a try at putting a hole through these and using a pin to attach them. I was successful on three out of four, so three of my blocks actually move freely. Everything else is glued fast with CA glue. I made up the cleat for the side using flattened copper wire. I bent a piece to make a little "J" shape and soldered this on to a flat piece. After snipping it down to size and using a very fine file to tidy up the solder, here is what I ended up with before attaching it, I actually thinned out the bottom edge a little more with a file. Finally, for the aft side, I used copper foil tape to make the square nut. I layered the foil to four thicknesses to give it some depth. I tried to make the little round nub that sticks out, but that was simply too small. The eye bolt on this side is a bit larger than the ones that connect the hearts and blocks on the other side, so instead of the fish hooks, I used one of my home made eyebolts, which are smaller than the 1/32 ones but bigger than the fish hooks. After getting everything on the catheads, this is what I got I just dry fitted one to get the photo, and for those paying attention, it is on the wrong side, but of course I will be sure to correct that when I permanently install them, which I will do once I get a coat of paint on them. All in all I was pretty pleased with the outcome. I'm ready to move on to the bowhead now.

Thanks Jon, that's perfect. Not sure I will bother with the free standing sheave on top. At my scale, it won't be much more than a pin head

At least it looks like a cleat, I'm not real sure.

Actually, now that I look a little closer, there is a cleat that is perpendicular to the top of the cat head just in from of the "hump"

r Thanks Jon As far as I can tell, there is just an eyebolt and the nuts for the bolts from the other side unless I'm missing something? Is there something in the shadow there close to the hull? I did forget to include the stop cleat on the other side, what you called an "H" bracket