Greg Davis

I know its been awhile and I had said I would be spending more time with this model; however, I started another and got a bit caught up in the new build. After finishing the dredger model, my confidence level went up a notch and I started into building L'Invention from the ANCRE monograph. It's a big project - a four-masted privateer constructed in 1799 - and I'm having fun with it, but I need to get this one done and gifted. Over the last couple of days I fitted cleats to the bulwarks - while doing this, I admonished myself a few times for not putting them in before the deck furniture! Skids for the two fore and two aft ship's boats are in place, as are the six ladders for going from deck to deck. I've also started on the lower masts. I want to get the masts assembled so that I can better locate the positions for the chain plates. After going back and looking at photographs of the actual ship I noticed that the chain plates should thread through the rails. I wish I had made that observation earlier as I could have made slots when I was laminating the rails. Now I can't think of a way to introduce thin rectangular slots in rails that will have a really good chance for success - there are 42 chain plates to deal with. So either they are going on the outside of the rail or I will make notches in the rail for them to be embedded. I guess I'll need to make a decision soon. In the meantime, here is how Le Pourquoi-Pas? looks this evening: Hopefully more soon!

Here the final 5 Type B frames are drying between glass plates. So all 34 of the type A and B frames are now assembled. Now I can decide between preparing more 4mm thick material and assembling the Type C frames or spending some time standing at the spindle sander and finish sanding what is already assembled. This evening I'm thinking the spindle sander might be a nice change of pace!

All 25 of the 'Type A' full frames are assembled now. I have turned my attention to roughing up the 'Type B' full frames with their two-piece floors. I'm finishing assembling frames 9 - 12 this evening. When done I will have half of the frames assembled. I decided to cut some wood so it wood have a 'V' shape when glued together. The templates for the larger floor pieces were then lined up and cemented over the joint. I felt this would be easier than cutting the 2 halves of the floors and then joining them. Similarly, wood was prepared with a horizontal joint for the smaller floor pieces. Here's what the backside of the pieces for frame 10 looked like after cutting them out The joint on the larger piece is clearly visible; but that on the smaller is hard to find as the grain is so fine and straight. Perhaps the horizontal joint will show up better after a finish is applied and there is a chance for the finish to seep into the seam. If not, I still know the joint was made! Five more to go and then onto 'Type C' frames. There are then 10 additional frames to arrive at the required total of 59 frames for this ship.

No Idea: Thank you for hopping aboard. I just got a look at your 1/24 scale Le Rochefort - it really is an inspirational piece of work! Greg

A quick progress update - spent some time with the scroll saw today and have cut out parts for frames 13 - 20: Once assembled, I will have put together frames 13 - 37. These are the ones that were my first goal to complete. (Of course sanding / shaping will take a few hours to give them their final shape). In the meantime the pile of frames continues to grow: The next set of frames that I will work on will be 9 - 12 and 38 - 42. These 9 frames will have 2 piece floors of a certain type. The remaining 20 full frames (2 - 8 and 43 - 52) also have 2 piece floors, but of a different design.

The work will be repetitious for quite awhile, but I thought I would put a note here that progress is being made. I feel that I am getting the hang of making these full frames. With the size boards that I had prepared I can make the rough frames in batches of 3. I cut out the templates in the evening, rubber cement them to the board, and then let them set to the morning. During the day, between working on house projects I find time to cut out the 36 pieces on the board and mill the 6 floor notches. Later I find time to square up the ends of the pieces with the table saw and glue up the 3 frames. After the three are between glass plates it's back to making the templates and preparing wood to cut the next day. When I feel like taking a break from the frame assembly line, there will be plenty of finishing sanding opportunities to obtain the molded dimensions. So far the work is pleasant and going well and I expect that I will be ready for the more complicated frames when the time comes!

Mic - I agree - there is still approximately 0.5mm of excess on the frames for final adjustments. I am very pleased with the wood color as well! Greg

This morning, frame #30 got some refinement on the spindle sander. It matches up nicely with the plans and will be labeled set aside in a safe place while the remaining frames are manufactured. In this picture you can get some idea of the cross-sectional dimensions that the model will have. This frame is nearly 7" ~ 18cm at its widest, and about 5" ~ 13cm high (not counting the 1 extra cm at the top of the frame). Here again I've followed the guidance of Frolich in extending the frames an additional 1cm so that shaping and the attachment of ribbands near the top will be more easily and precisely managed.

This evening I had time to 'try out' the sheets of pear. I have made good progress on frame #30 - I started here because there was little bevel to the frame. I will be working fore and aft starting with the flattest least complicated frames and moving toward the more difficult ones. I feel that they will go better once I get a good feel for the required part sizes and how the wood works as this is my first try with pear. Here's the process that I will be following for a good number of weeks (months?): Made copies of the frame, cut out templates for the 12 needed parts, and rubber cemented them to a sheet of wood. Cut the parts out with a scroll saw and milled the juncture with the keel. Glued up the pieces with white carpenter glue - here I'm basically following the instructions provided in 'The Art of Ship Modeling' by Bernard Frolich. I've placed the glued up frame between to heavy sheets of glass. They will stay there for a good 12 hours. Once nice and dry, the frame will be sanded back close to the final molded shape.

Ok - it has been slow getting started. For the last week or so we've had both of our kids home for a visit (with grandkids and dogs); with 7 people and 5 dogs running around there was not much time to think about ship building. But I've prepared some material for the frames - got to use the table saw, band saw, and thickness sander a bit. I now have six sheets 3" x 18" of 4mm wood to layout the various pieces of the frames. The frames should be made out of 189mm / 48 = 3.9375mm material. Once the two halves are glued together just a little final sanding will bring the structures very close to the desired 7.875mm thickness.

Now nearing completion of adding deck structures. The fore deck has all the details now that a couple of chests have been put in place. Going aft, the aft deckhouse is in place, as is the ships wheel, one of the binnacles (the other being on the observation structure), a companionway, a structure over the engine (I think the hatch on this structure may have been where coal for the boiler was loaded), ... . It sure is getting to be a crowded deck; there doesn't seem to be any space that is underutilized. There were 30 individuals on the 1908-10 expedition. The crew was 22 and the staff members were the remaining 8 - three naval officers, a geologist, two naturalists, a doctor, as well as Charcot who headed the expedition and was a bacteriologist. Currently, I am working on 8 sets of stairs / ladders for traversing from one deck to another. I've blackened all of the cleats and will start attaching them to the inner bulwarks soon. Once that is done the beams to support ship boats can be added. This will then pretty much complete the hull and deck work. It will then be time to begin masting and rigging - I am looking forward to the next steps as I find rigging to be particularly satisfying!

With respect to the ships boats I ordered from Model Expo. You would expect that such a company would honor their online marketing - especially for something so inexpensive. One of their tenants has been 'replace missing or broken parts' for their models! Fortunately there are other places to do business.

Added skylights and bench midships. It took several try's to assemble the bench. The instructions called for 8 1mm x 1mm strips between the castings. For the life of me, I couldn't get them in place / spaced right; let alone squaring up the structure. So instead I put 2 0.5 mil strips of cherry between the castings - this I could square up. Once dry, I milled each into 4 slats. Didn't quite follow the instructions for the skylights either. They suggested inserting the brass rods and then putting clear plastic under them. Since the view thru plastic would not be to an actual interior, I decided to first put in (old-school) blue windows (i.e., a wood support) and then added the brass rods. The blue windows here match the blue windows on the sides of the deck structures - so I'm calling this maneuver 'consistency in presentation'. Later this deck will get two boats. They will position left and right of the skylights. Le Pourquoi-Pas? was fitted with 6 boats for the 1908 - 1910 Antarctic voyage, but the kit supplies just 2 metal castings. I've sourced 6 ship boat kits from ModelExpo to replace / supplement the castings.

Unclear; but, I haven't been able to find a build log and/or any construction pictures of the model. I have always assumed that there is some urgency to get the monograph to press. The time between when plans are drafted and the 'test' model is fully built may not be what is needed for the publication schedule.

According to the monograph, the pursuit lasted 10 hours much in a strong gale. Three of the lighter-built masts of L 'Invention 'ruptured'. My assumption is that if the weather was not so extreme she would have easily sailed away from the frigates.

I have finalized my decision to build the French four-masted privateer L'Invention based on the recent ANCRE monograph authored by Gerard Delacroix. The ship was built 1799 - 1800 and sailed its first campaign in 1801; unfortunately just 9 days later L 'Invention was captured by a pair of English frigates. It was soon sold, reconfigured with three masts and put into use as a trader. Later it was captured again, resold, and was lost in 1810. When initially captured by the English (in 1801) and evaluated by the Royal Navy, L' Invention was highly regarded for its construction and sailing qualities. While not having an exceptionally long life, L 'Invention appears to be unique in design having 4 masts and a very streamlined hull shape. The ratio of length to breadth was 5.28 - typically frigates of the time had ratio s between 3.7 and 4. Importantly, Delacroix notes that the hull shape and masting foreshadowed clipper ship design that would appear 50 years later in the U.S. Over the past couple of weeks I have immersed myself in the monograph and the included 34 plans in order to visualize the order of construction that I will follow. I have decided to begin with frame construction. In particular I will first concentrate on the frames from 13 to 37. These should be the simplest to construct. I will then move fore and aft was the frame construction becomes more complicated. Once that is done, I hope to have become familiar with the qualities of the Swiss pear wood that has been chosen for the model. I will then move to, what I expect to be much more challenging, the axial framework; i.e., the stem-keel-sternpost structure. This order of construction should also keep my work area more open for quite awhile as the big building board will not be needed initially! I am currently milling sheets of pear that will be used to create the frames. Pictures of progress should appear soon!

Several smaller deck structures have been added in front of the kitchen area. The kit supplied windlass is not spectacular and was difficult to get to a passable state - it would have been nice if this had been done as a casting!

How true - 2 years ago I build the ModelExpo kit of Emma C. Berry and I was able to access a good deal of information about the vessel. Books on her history and reconstruction were available and there were pictures from different periods of her life. In many ways this made decisions on how to represent the the ship more difficult. A model can only represent a snapshot, so its hard to pick one if you have information spanning decades but not a great deal at any specific timepoint. I think that's the problem here with Le Pourquoi-Pas? - the available (undated) pictures of a ship that lasted nearly 40 years show some of the potentially many snapshots and we only get to make one in static model form.

In Charcot's journal of the polar expedition, 1908 - 1910, there is a picture of the ship in which you can make out that the bridge is like that in the Constructo kit. So my guess is that the basic bridge with canvas wind block was original; then perhaps, it was decided that it was too cold so the small enclosures were added; and finally, the structure was cut down / simplified before the Pourquoi-Pas? was lost in 1936.

I saw a couple of pictures online that seem to indicate that the bridge / observation area changed a number of times thru her history. In the model the observation area is open from side to side. In this picture enclosures have been fashioned on the sides. Ans in this picture, it looks like the observation region has been removed. Unfortunately, I don't have any idea as to the timing of these images.

Just read your entire Terror log - simply spectacular!!

Starting to attach subassemblies to the deck. The three large deck structures that were made earlier are cemented in place. The 4 remaining ventilators have been attached to the deck. Anchor davits, bitts, etc. are being added. The deck of this vessel is pretty 'busy' so for a while little structures / details will be constructed and added to the model.

Mr. Delacroix: Thank you for your input; I've spent more time exploring plan sets for both of these ships, and have now decided that in the near future I will open a build log for L'Invention. I am also fairly sure that the model will be made primarily with pear wood. As with the dredger, I will do my best to make an honest and high quality representation of your work. Greg

I got back to working on this ship last evening - hopefully there will be regular progress until completion. First addition this week was a set of handrails made from 1mm x 3mm material. There are a lot of holes in each - 10 for stations and 25 for belaying pins. I cut the handrails to length and marked the location of the holes, then I drilled 70 0.5mm pilot holes. The rails where clamped to their locations over the deck and the station holes where enlarged / drilled through the handrails into the vessel - first with a 1mm drill and then enlarged to allow for the 1.5mm brass wire the stations are made of. Everything was glued up with CA, the excess brass snipped off and then filed flush to the handrails. Also, my dredger project was completed (hours) before the 46th Annual Midwestern Model Ships and Boats Contest held at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. Here is what it looks like completed and mounted. When the awards dinner came around Saturday evening, I was hoping that my work would at least have earned a silver award - so I was extremely pleased when the dredge and my name was called for a gold award. But the evening was not over, and still unbelievable to me - the judges had determined that this model would be awarded Best of Show!

I do have a question - Do any of you know of documentation / plans any other interesting service boats (short of anchor hoys)? I found this dredger to be fascinating, and I think that many should be indebted to G. Delacroix for bringing his study to us, but now I am interested in whether or not there is a logical / related follow up project! If not, then I may make a seemingly irrational decision to dive into either L'Egyptienne or L'Invention - both that interest me greatly .