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Thanks Jon, I guess I would have to agree with your final assumption. Seems they would have had something. Besides, it's a nice detail

You can use dry transfer decal paper that can be purchased at most hobby stores. When burnishing, use light pressure. The decal should only transfer to the raised details

Thanks Jon, greatly appreciate the photos. I guess I'm not using the correct terminology. I'm fairly certain these brass canopies were not present in 1812, however, what I was really referring to were the rope handrails next to the stairs. I went back and looked at your log, and I guess these are called stanchions. The plans you showed were from the 1931 restorations, but I'm still not sure these would have been there in 1812. Just for clarification, here is what I'm talking about

So here it is all stained up and ready to go on the ship. Before installing, I wanted to add the shot storage and the ladders leading down to the berth deck. Big question I have regarding the handrails for the stairs. Would these have been present in 1812? I know a lot of safety measures we take for granted now were not common practice at that time, and although it seems common sense to have something in place, I'm still not sure they would have been there at the time. Would appreciate any input anyone has. Jon, do you have photos of the Hull model showing the hatches and whether they had any kind of handrail?

Nice job Jon. Your guns look awesome. I hope to be working on my 24 pounders soon and no doubt will be using alot of what you have posted for inspiration.

All the pieces came together nicely and everything fits well. Unlike the current hatch coaming, which have a skirt that goes around and comes up about 2/3 the side, the plans from 1931 show only a slight curve at the bottom where it meets the deck. At this scale, that is a bit difficult to replicate, but I wanted something there. I cut some very thin strips from the remaining .020" material I had and used this to put a slight piece of molding all around the base. With a sanding stick, I then sanded that little piece of molding to give it a little chamfer. and here it is with the gratings dry fitted. I'll get these glued in and then put some stain on it all

Main Hatch I had planned to use my laser engraver to cut the grates. This worked pretty well on basswood, but apparently with the hardwood it was a little more difficult to cut. To burn completely through, it scorched the remaining wood too much and didn't look very good, even at .020" thickness. By dropping the power down considerably, I could get marks that from even a short distance away look like holes, even though they are not truly. According to the 1931 plans, the coamings are 161/2" tall. All the cross pieces are 4", except the very center which is 8". After getting all the wood sized to the proper thickness and cut into strips, I cut all the individual pieces. Sometime ago, I had made a little carpenters T. I used this to keep the pieces square and straight as I assembled them. The gratings were used as spacers and not actually glued in yet. Although I prefer to use PVA when gluing wood, I needed a quick grab here because it is pretty difficult keeping all these tiny pieces positioned correctly. I opted for CA instead. Here's a photo during assembly

As much as I wish I had one, I do not have a Byrnes saw. I do have a cheap little mini table saw that does a decent job cutting thinner pieces of wood. I used my big boy table saw to first get the wood down to manageable strips. With a good table saw, it's not difficult to get down to 1/16". The draw back of course is that you are wasting more wood than the piece you create. Once I had my strips, I used my mini saw to cut to smaller strips without wasting so much wood. However, even here, I have limitations on how thin I can get. Ultimately, I was going to need a thickness sander. According to the dimensions in the 1931 plans, the hatches were made of 2x2 slats and the visible part of the hatch coamings were either 4X16" or 8x16". Since I wanted to make the hatches out of wood and not use the PE brass in the kit, I was going to need to get down to 0.020". I didn't really want to spend the money on a fancy sander, so I decided to make one and came up with a very simple, but quite effective solution. On my mini table, it also has a belt sander on the side. My solution was to mount an arm under the belt sander that could be raised or lowered to change how far it was from the drum. I started by making a base to mount the saw on. This was made from two pieces of 3/4" laminated plywood that was slightly wider than the saw including the sanding belt. The top piece of the base was then cut so that it was just the width of the saw casing. The cut off piece then became the arm to be raised and lowered. At the front edge of the base, A hole was drilled all the way across to accept a long bolt, which became the pivot for the arm. Finally, at the other end of the arm under the drum, I inserted a furniture insert nut into the base. I made a thumb screw by cutting out a small disc of wood (hole saw) and screwing it onto a bolt that could be screwed into the furniture insert. By turning the thumb screw, the bolt moves in and out of the insert, thus raising or lowering the arm. Here is what it looks like It is a very simple design, and it does have its limitations, but it works great. Of course, the belt is only 1" wide, so it is limited to pieces of about 7/8" max, but I was able to accurately thin down to 0.020"

I decided to start off with the hatches. Of course this brought in a bunch of questions regarding the proper layout for the time period. After looking over several different plans, I finally decided to stick with the arrangement shown in John Lord's 1931 plan (#24423). This is the arrangement provided in the kit, and BJ insists that their kit is an accurate representation of her 1812 appearance. To fabricate the hatch coamings, i wanted to use a hard wood, since it would hold a crisp edge better. The wood I chose was Persimmon. I know everyone out there is thinking - why? Persimmon is actually a great wood. As hardwoods go, it is one of the hardest. This can make it a little difficult to work with, but at our scale, since the pieces are actually quite thin, cutting is not a problem. Also, it has a very small, tight grain, which looks good for scale. Mostly it has a nice light color, although sometime the heartwood can be darker. Lastly, I have an abundance of it here on my property, so it costs me nothing but time. I've never milled any scale lumber before, so this was going to be yet another learning curve, but I have plans for the spardek that will require me to do so and this will give me some experience. Here's what the wood looks like:

Well, it's been quite a while since my last post, but I'm back. I finished up the sheaves and got them installed in the gun deck bulwarks. The holes were made by drilling two small holes next to each other then used a #11 xacto blade to carve out in between them. Finally, the hole was enlarged and squared up using a couple different jewelers files. I managed to get a pretty tight fit for each Now to actually move on to the gun deck

e I was waiting to decide where to put these sheaves, I went ahead and assembled them. Although it might have been easier to just drill a couple holes and carve out a groove, I had already made these for the aft end of the ship, so I wanted to do it right here. Having paid a little more attention to the instruction manual, it turns out BJ actually includes some tiny little sheaves made from Brittania metal. Of course, they had some significant flash and needed to be cleaned up a bit before using. As with the aft sheaves, I assembled these as a kind of "sandwich" that will slip into the holes. I used some wood strips that were the thickness of the bulwarks and thinned them down to 0,020". These were then cut to 1/4" long pieces. To make the axle of the sheave, I filed down a toothpick. Everything was then glued together layer by layer with CA glue. Here is the assembly: Now I just need to cut some small, perfectly sized holes into the hull. piece of cake....right?

Thanks Nic, I appreciate you getting back to me. No doubt that BJ did their homework on this, and the kit well represents the ship as she was in 1812. To add to it all, I recalled that I had actually asked Jon about this very thing back at the beginning of the year (my memory is not what it used to be). He had shown the Campbell plans of the Gundeck bulwarks in his posts and they clearly show a mainsheet sheave: Considering Nic's comments and those of Jose, I'm going to stick to the plans and put the sheaves on the gundeck as indicated.

Hello Jose, Thanks for the input. You make a pretty good argument for how they would be used (or not used) in battle, but it still seems odd to put them there in the first place. I've been studying it a bit more and the only rationale I can come up with is the fact that they are located where the waist is and no there is no spardeck bulwark there. That would also assume that the angle and position of the shave must have been important. By the way, I have read your FSM build log. Did you finish the ship? You had a great build going

Hi Jon, I totally agree with that last part. Makes no sense to me either why they would have anything controlling the sails on the gun deck. I'm taking your advice and contacting Nick.