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Thanks Kurt, glad you like it, and thanks again for all your help and input.

So, I've made alot of progress on the bow. @KurtH has stated a couple times that the first thing he looks at on a model ship is the bowhead. "if the heads are done well, the rest of the model is probably done well". With that in mind, I set out to make the best bow that my limited experience and skills would allow. To recap a little, I complicated the situation by deciding to make the ship as she was in 1812, during the battle with Guerriere, my main reference being the Isacc Hull model and the Revell plastic model. This meant that I had no real plans for the head rail timbers, or the rails themselves. The Revell model has one integral piece for the rails, and I used this extensively to decide on positioning everything. When placed on my model, the part fit perfectly. This is the part: I first made a template of the canvas cover to establish the shape of the main rail. From that template, I made a jig to shape the cast metal rails that I had filed down earlier. Prior to shaping them, I tapered the ends where they meet at the billet head. Here's where things got difficult for me. Although the piece fit perfectly between the billet head and the catheads, I wasn't sure how to position them laterally. Since the grating is supposed to fit just inside the main rail, I used this as my guide. Using the photoetched grating supplied in the kit, I made a template from cardstock. This was easily bent to follow the contours of the main rail and this allowed for the accurate placement of the main rails. Since at this point, these were just "hanging out in the wind" and only attached at their ends, I decided to beef up the connection. I drilled small holes in each end and using 28 ga wire made pins to reinforce the attachment. To ensure a strong bond, I used JB Weld to make the attachment. Once both were in place, I remembered that the back side of the grating needed a support along the hull. This was made from 1/16x1/16th stock and preshaped to fit the hull. Fortunately, I still had the jig I used to shape the planks at the bow. Her's what I ended up with So far so good. Now for the bowhead timbers. The Hull model has only three bowhead timbers instead of the current five. One of these is obviously the one attached to the hull on the current ship. I assumed to other was the one furthest forward. With that in mind, I looked to the Navy plans provided in the kit. (I think these are also available on the museum website). Excluding the first and last timber, I fashioned mine based on sections 6,7, &8. Of course the initial pieces did not fit, they were tall enough, but did not reach out to the rails. After some back and forth, measuring and cutting, I finally got some pieces that fit. Before installing, they were painted and the initial white pinstriping was applied Since I wasn't quite sure where the second rail was going to be positioned, I didn't yet make the notches for these. After thinking for quite a while about how to do that, I came up with a plan. Using the fabricated timbers, I made copies from card stock. These were lightly glued in place (easy to remove). I then made up the second rail. This was tapered quite a bit more at the end to fit in just under the main rail. Again using the Revell model as a guide, I bent the rail so as to fit against the timbers and meet up with the hull in the appropriate position. This is where I realized that the main rail was dipping down just a little too low. Based on the Revell model, the second rail should fair into the hull at the top of the gun stripe. If I positioned it there, the gap between the second and main rail would be very narrow and not look right. I had to settle for positioning the second rail a little lower. Since most folks don't see this version often and certainly anyone at my house would not know that difference, I figured I could live with this tiny discrepancy. Once in position, I marked the paper timbers. After removing the paper timbers, these were used to correctly position the notches for the second rail. After using a square file to make the notches in these tiny pieces, they were glued in place, fitting perfectly against the main rail. The second rails were then double checked to make sure they fit properly against the bow head timbers and met the hull where they were supposed to. Before attaching, they were painted and the pinstriping added. After getting both sides attached, here is what I ended up with It may not be the best looking bow ever made, but for me, I was very happy. It's pretty symmetrical and everything fit together. Now to put the grating in and all the other details.

Hi Jon, The skylight and canopy look awesome. As usual, your ability to creatively tackle these little details is remarkable and inspiring. The talent for detail obviously runs in your family. Your sister's paintings are amazing. If you had not said so, I would have thought they were photos. Pretty incredible.

Hi Tom Very nice build, it's coming along well. Being a scientist myself (chemist) this is a ship I've considered once I finish the Connie I'm currently working on. Of course, at my pace, that will be several years from now. Anyway, love your details. your connie build is one I have read through several times and I definitely will use a few of your techniques. keep up the great work.

Nice job Jon, the ladders look great. I can certainly imagine some of the words that helped get the task done. I am married and my wife is always asking if I really do enjoy what I'm doing. It often doesn't sound that way. Keep up the great work

Thanks Kurt. Greatly appreciated, I definitely feel a bit better about the whole thing now. My bow is not quite as sharp as yours, but definitely not semicircular. I'll have to see how everything fits once I get the main rail in place to see if I'm going to need to trim up the grating on the sides. The aft edge will of course have to be trimmed to fit the hull. I may try to give it a little curve, but I'm not going to fret over it. As you pointed out, once the "canvas" is in place, you won't be able to see it. I did a quick test fit for the bowsprit with a 3/8" dowel and yes, it would only touch the very aft end of the grating once in place. However, the template for the stem had it such that it angles upward to follow the bowsprit. In order to get the grating in place on top of that, I'll need to trim it down a bit. That's what threw me off in the first place. I guess that's what I'm going to do since it seems the simplest solution. I decided to use the cast metal strips for the rails since they are so easily bent into shape. I've got them all filed down to 1/16" square now, which I did using a little jig as a depth gauge. Next I plan to make up the bowhead timbers using the plans from the instruction manual and my laser engraver. Once I have those, I'll see how everything comes together

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

Just so everyone can see what I'm working toward, I thought I would share the photo I got from Jon. It shows the hearts and the double blocks

I've been working on the hardware that goes on the catheads. Many folks seem happy to just put the eyebolts on, but these are there to attach three hearts and two double blocks. Tiny little additions, but one of those details that I felt worth adding. Using some photos received from our resident photo guru @JSGerson (thanks Jon) I estimated the size of the hearts needed were 1/16 and the double blocks were 3/32. Thankfully, he kit includes some 3/32 double blocks, but the hearts needed to be fabricated. I already had some tiny little jewelry crimp couplings, which are basically short little pieces of brass tubing - alot easier than trying to cut them myself. For the stropping around the heart, I used 28 gauge wire. These are attached to eyebolts on the cathead by means of a shackle, not a ring. I thought about a few ways to simulate that and finally came up with what I thought was a decent solution. After figuring out roughly how much wire was needed for the circumference of the heart, I then flattened out the wire on both ends. After wrapping the heart, this left the two flat ends sticking up to go on either side of the eyebolt. For a moment, I actually thought about trying to drill a hole through the "shackle" in which to put a pin but then came to my senses and decided to just glue these to either side of the eyebolt. I could have probably left the center open, since at this scale, it is hardly noticeable, but then decided to fill in the center with epoxy putty and using a very fine drill bit, opened up the top half to give it more of the look of an actual heart. The double blocks were also stropped with 28 gauge wire, but since these weren't round, I could never get the flat ends to come together properly and look like they should. After trying a few different things, I finally ended up stropping the block as tightly as possible and cutting the top of flush. Then, using a flattened piece of wire that was shaped in a "U", I VERY carefully soldered it to the top. Since the blocks supplied in the kit are made of cast Brittania metal, you can imagine how careful this operation needs to be. Too much heat and the top half of the part will just melt. At first, i used the same stainless wire used for the stropping to make the "U", but I found that this became very brittle after being pounded flat and did not take the solder that well. I changed to copper and found it to be much better to work with. It is far more malleable and solders easily. Also, it conducts heat much better and so I could touch the soldering iron to the copper instead of having to get so close to the actual part. that made it easier to keep from melting the part. Although great care had to be taken, the solder does have the advantage of being much stronger than glue. Here is the final result. They look a little crude, but once they get a coat of paint, i think they will look pretty good: Of course, the eyebolts here are going to be pretty tiny as well. I had talked before about making some very small eyebolts, and what I came up with was pretty decent, but someone else on this site had suggested fish hooks. Sure enough, these come in unbeleivably small sizes and are perfect. I've ordered some #24 fly hooks and waiting for those to arrive. Once they do, Ill be able to put everything together and paint it all at once

Progress is being made, slow but sure. As with all the other challenges of this model, the catheads were no different. I wanted to fabricate these with the triple sheaves in the end. The idea was to use a laminate method like that used by @JSGerson (post#661). The problem is, at my scale, it meant the layers to make the holes were going to be very thin. There was also a problem with the dimensions. The catheads are meant to be 15 inches thick, which at scale would be 5/32 (10/64). There was no easy way to divide that up so that the spacing was even. My solution to the latter problem was to make them just slightly smaller than they were supposed be. With 9/64ths, I could make the outside edges 1/32 each and the internal spacing evenly split into 5x1/64 For most of the pieces I used 1/32 basswood sheet and used a laser engraver (one of my favorite toys) to cut out the shapes. Since I didn't have 1/64 wood sheet, I used poster board, which conveniently is exactly 1/64th of an inch thick. To make the holes for the sheaves, I used a file to thin two of the sections down to 1/64, thus leaving a 1/64th opening. These thinned out gaps were filed at a 60 degree angle to match the end of the cathead. Once installed, this gives a vertical hole. The third hole was made using the 1/64 poster beard, which was cut to match the filed down sections of 1//32 wood. Of course filing the 1/32 wood down to give uniform depth and size was tricky, however, I came up with a pretty good solution. I used the holes left behind in the posterboard from where I had cut out the 1/64 pieces. By placing the wood pieces in the matching holes, I could simply file down until the file was flush with the poster board, and marked the poster board for reference so I could keep the file properly angled. Since I'm making the bow as she appeared in 1812, the lower rail will not curve up into the cathead as she does now. Instead it fairs into the hull and the catheads are supported by independent knees. These were also cut out and assembled in the same manner to give an overall thickness of 9/64. Once all the pieces were cut and filed, they were glued together using wood glue. Here's how they turned out: Next, I'll drill a hole through the sheaves and install a piece of dowel to act as the internal pulley. lastly they'll get some light sanding to remove the burn marks from the laser and to polish up the shape and a coat of paint before putting on all the hardware.

Sorry Jon, How's this