TJM

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my next project, which will be a Vanguard Models Sphinx build with a substantial Danish twist! I got into the model ship building hobby with the aim of building models of Danish ships – I am a Dane and being from a country with such a rich naval history as Denmark, I would very much like to twist my projects in that direction. Now my ship modelling experience is still not very great, and my first model, HMS Flirt, was a kind of test to see if I could achieve a result that was good enough for me and to see how I liked all the different elements of a build. Flirt passed on both accounts, and so I started looking into which project to do next. I considered various Vanguard, Amati and Caldercraft kits, but in the end, I settled on Sphinx for a few reasons: · I know the manual is great (having done Flirt and read through the Spinx manual pdf) – I think I still need all the help I can get for the actual building, so this was the safest choice! · I was hesitant to choose too big a ship as the next one (so many cannons, ect…) and I would like to stay with 1:64 scale as smaller would probably become too fiddly for my liking at this time. · Sphinx is a very nice-looking ship! I hope it is not considered sacrilege to kit-bash in this way! I have seen all kinds of modifications performed on kits to make them more historically accurate or change them into other ships of the same class, but this is a little different – though I think this will still be around 95% a kit build! In particular, I hope that Chris does not mind this kit-conversion! So, my aim is to build a Danish ship – fortunately, the Danish National Library (Rigsarkivet) has one of the world’s most extensive and complete collections of original drawings of our ships, especially from around 1690 onwards when shipbuilding was nationalized (as opposed to being done by foreign shipwrights from the German states, England or the Netherlands). There are thousands of plans for hundreds of ships. Also, the shipbuilding fashion in Denmark turned progressively more and more in the English direction during the 1700’s (though there were French inspiration as well!) with Danish shipwrights studying in England and also drawing existing English ships as case studies – the archive is full of these as well. There are even some original English ship plans that were somehow procured during this time. This all means that it is not too difficult to find a Danish ship that very closely resembles the Sphinx. An additional criterion for me was that the stern decorations should be relatively simple, for me to have chance of modelling it more or less from scratch as a replacement for the Sphinx ones from the kit. The historical sources: I therefore present to you, the Light Frigatte ‘Christiania’ from 1774 of 20 guns (8 pounders) – drawings from Rigsarkivet with translation of the headlines and main text: G2624. Drawing of a frigate to be built in Frederiksværn carrying [8 pounder cannon_20 pieces ; 1 pounder falconettes_10(pcs)] Length over the bow/stern: 115’, width on outer bulwark: 31’, width of stern/gallery: 19’4½”. Nyeholm, September 13th, 1771. G2625. Drawing of the sails along with dimensions of masts and booms for the new frigate of 20 cannon and 115 feet of length that is being built in Frederiksværn. (The dimensions are given in the table, the main mast being 76’6” heigh). Nyeholm, July 26th, 1772. G2626. Drawing of ‘depth-cut’, plan of the decks and divisions in the hold so that supplies for 6 to 7 months for the frigate that will be built in Frederiksværn of 115 foot length. Nyeholm, November 16th, 1771. G2627. Drawing of middle spant and dimensions of lumber and armour for the frigate of 20 cannon that is to be built in Frederiksværn. Nyeholm, September 13th, 1771. G2901. Drawing of Stern, Gallery and Figurehead with and without imagery for the frigate which is being built in Frederiksværn. NB. The lion for the figuregead could be completed here and be sent up there. The war-armature on the stern and the Greek-like on the galleries will be painted and all the rest can be made by carpenters and woodworkers. Nyeholm, August 8th, 1772. G2926. Drawing of ornaments for the stern, galleries and figurehead for the frigate Christiania. Copenhagen, August 2nd, 1779. As can be seen from the last two pictures, the figurehead was changed from the classic lion (this motif was repeatedly used with only small variations on very many ships in the Danish fleet – the resemblance to the well-known Norske Løve from 1765 is striking) to a lady in Greek dress. This is a bit of a pity, as it would be much simpler to get a good lion figurehead! I will have to see what I can do about this. It is however interesting that the second drawing is from 1779 – 5 years after the ship was launched. Could it be that the ship underwent some repair at this time, and that the figurehead was changed only then? In that case, I could still go with the lion figurehead and present her as ‘at launch’. This would also give me a reason to keep the nice decorative patterns on the bulwark as it could be seen as ‘artistic license’ on part of a modeler presenting the model for the admiralty and/or king to approve. I am not decided on what to do on the figurehead front yet. The name Christiania was then the name of Oslo, capital of Norway, which was then under the Danish Crown authority as the dual state of Denmark-Norway (Norway became independent from Denmark in 1814). After the medieval town of Oslo burned down in 1624, King Christian IV build a new city closer to the Akershus fortress and named it Christiania after himself. The city was renamed Oslo in 1925. The frigate Christiania was built in Frederiksvern, around 70 km south of the city Christiania – it was not common for ships to be built in this location, most were built at Nyholm (in Copenhagen) where this ship was also designed. The Design was made by Fabriksmester F.M. Krabbe (in office 1758-1772) as one of his last ships. See Wikipedia for a list of ships designed by Krabbe. The plan: There are of course a number of differences between HMS Sphinx and Christiania and I will do my best to adapt the kit where I can – but I am not aiming for a perfect reproduction of Christiania (that would require a much more experienced modeler than I and probably a scratch build!). My aim is to make an attractive model that captures the main features of the ship, but also allows for some artistic license (I want to keep the decorations on the sides from the Sphinx kit among others). First, I will show some mock-ups detailing the similarities (and differences) between the two ships: The overall structure is a very good fit – the nominal length of Christiania is given as 115’ (1 danish foot is 0.3139 m), and this seems to be from bow to stern (see G2624 above) but I can’t find an exactly comparable measurement for Sphinx: the keel is 89’73/8” and the gun deck is 108’. Christiania may be a bit longer, but based on the overlay above, it seems the two ships are very close in size. Bu scaling the ships visually (as above) and measuring, I arrive at a scale of around 1:67 for my Christiania, when based off of the 1:64 scale Sphinx – close enough to work! The gunports are placed slightly differently, but not by more than one gunport width/heigh and most often less. I will not change the location of the gunports, as the design of the Sphinx kit is not easy to modify here. A small difference is the 10 swivel guns on Christiania – I will add the posts on the quarterdeck for these and modify the rail accordingly. As for the main armament, Christiania carried 20 Danish 8 pounders, Sphix carried 20 British 9 pounders – but as the Danish pound was then 498 g, the weights are actually very close – 3.98 kg vs 4.08 kg!s The width of the two ships at the middle spant are quite similar: 31’ (Danish) for Christiania (9.73 m) and 30’1” (English) for Sphinx (9.17 m). It seems Christiania was a bit wider at the waterline. I may be able to build out the bulkheads a bit to emulate this. Christiania is also a bit shallower at the gundeck, but I won’t be able to do anything about this – it is only by around 0.5 cm at this scale, so I am ok with that. The main difference lies in the profile closer to the stern, I will try to add material to the bulkheads here as well as the horizontal stern profile below the galleries. It seems that F.M. Krabbe was inspired by hull lines from French ships, and this may be a more French looking hull – please correct me if I am wrong! I will only do modifications below (or just around) the waterline, to avoid messing up the structure and fit of the decks, etc. This will not be a perfect conversion to Christiania’s hull lines, but I will do what I think is feasible. The main difference and modification I will have to make is the stern galleries. Apart from having to model the actual stern and side galleries more or less from scratch, I will have to modify the internal structure, as the spacing between the windows is significantly different and they will have to fit in between. I have some ideas on how to go about doing this, but it will be easier to determine with the actual model and a mock-up of the stern in hand, so that will not be completely planned out beforehand. I have a Silhoutte Cameo cutting machine that I can use to cut templates and even some thinner materials like cardboard and then I have recently acquired a diode laser cutter (just a small 20W machine) to use for all kinds of projects. With this I can cut up to 4 mm MDF, so I will be able to cut modified parts designed in CAD as well. I am a CAD novice, but have been using QCAD recently and are having good success with that program. And I have successfully made some tests of converting original design drawings into simple cut files for the laser, so I think I will manage the design element of the structural modifications I need to make here. I am more worried about the decorative stuff! As a proof of concept, I have made some cutting templates and made a mock-up in thin craft cardstock and in 0.5 mm graybord: This is just a rough first prototype with a lot of refinement left still, but based on this, I am pretty confident that I can get the stern gallery to work. I particularly wanted to see if the laser cutter could make the fine detail window frames, but It seems to work fine – this is just kraft cardstock – I am still wondering which material to use on the model. A word on colour: The colour sheme is an important part of the visual impression of a model. I really like the colour scheme on HMS Sphinx, but it seems that blue had fallen out of favour after the 1750’s in the Danish navy. The following is the best references I have for ships around the time that Cristiania was built: Stern galleries of ‘Printz Friderich’ 1762. The small Frigate ‘Søeridderen’, 1756 – from the atlas of King Frederik V. This was one of the very first ships designed by F.M. Krabbe after his return from tour of European ship building nations. It was slightly smaller than Christiania. Ships of the line ‘Neptunus’ and ‘Odin’, 1791. Modern model of the Cutter (Danish: 'Hukkert') Amager, from 1760, also contructed by F.M Krabbe. Based on the above drawings and paintings, it seems clear that the predominant colours used in this period was black and yellow with some red accents here and there, particularly the window frames! This may look a bit strange in a modern aesthetics view, but it seems to have been prevalent throughout most of the 1700’s. After 1801, and perhaps even more after 1807, red disappeared and Danish ships were using only black with yellow battery lines and stern decorations and later this was changed to black with white lines and decorations (as also seen on the frigate Jylland from the 1860’s, still in existence today). A small point of interest is that all through the 1600’s and 1700’s, the gun port lids often had Dannebrog (the Danish flag) painted on the inside. I will do so as well. Nothing is completely set in stone yet, but I think I will do the following on my model: the parts that are blue in the manual will be black and the sheer and waist rail decorations will be yellow. On the stern, the background colour will be black with red window frames and yellow decorative details (perhaps some will be gold, but I am not sure about that). I may keep the inner bulwarks natural and use red sparingly for specific deck details, or the do the opposite and make the inner bulwarks red and the keep most of the deck fittings natural. Lastly, the Scandinavian navies used pine tar for the standing rigging, which results in a dark brown colour, as opposed to the (almost) black coal tar used by British and continental navies. So, I will replace the black rigging supplied with the kit with dark brown equivalents from Ropes of Scale. My hope is that this will result in a consistent colour palette and one that is realistic for the time period. Even though these changes are small, I also thing it will give a quite different impression compared to the standard kit colour scheme and help distinguish the ship as a different one that Sphinx. There are also other minor visual changes planned, like the wales (two thin wales on Christiania, as opposed to the think one on Sphinx) and a ‘cut-away’ of the bulwarks around the bowsprit. So, with all my thoughts on the upcoming build as presented here, it is time to get started! The first part will be modifying the inner stern structure and the bulkheads, perhaps the modification I am least confident about! Good to get that going from the start then! I hope some of you will follow along on this journey I am about to embark on and bring with you all you good comments! BR TJM

This is very true. At these scales, details, especially cloth details, needs to be accentuated a bit to give the painter a chance to play with highlights and shadows. This is a stable in wargaming miniatures. This looks perfect to me Chris, and I will buy a set for sure! BR TJM

Thank you all for the nice comments and all the likes! It is much appreciated. And see you soon for the next project! BR TJM

That worked, thanks! 😃

How do I rename the log to include 'Finished', or is this done by a moderator?

Log entry 39 - Finale! With the anchors attached, I now consider my Flirt finished! I whipped out the old DSLR and the big flash for the images to give it justice - though of course it also showcases all the shortcomings 😉. Overall, I am very happy with how it turned out. What an absolutely fantastic kit @chris watton has made! It is truly a testament to the quality of both the kit and the instructions that a first time builder like me can achieve something like this, even with all the small rooms for improvement I know I have! Big thanks to all who followed along and commented and liked along the way. This community and all your logs and helpful comments is a big part of the building experience for me. So really, thank you! I will now take a short intermezzo doing other things (not least; a thorough cleanup), but I am itching to start up the next project, so it probably won't be long before I am back. The next project will also be a Vanguard Models kit, though I plan to give it a Danish twist! So stay tuned for that! See you around! TJM

Yes, this is surely the way to do it. If I could just do a reasonable job of it. I will try again on the next project, and try to do them as I go 😉.

Ok, I will have to give up on the rope coils. I have been struggling for hours, trying out both Thukydides' method and others and this is simply beyond my skill to do at the moment. I have managed one hardly passable coil and could not get it to hang nicely at all. Had it been a few, I might have persevered, but with 50-60 to do to make a consistent look, it is just not worth months of frustration. I'm a bit bummed, but I guess there has to be some room for improvement for future builds. And if I at some point mange to get the hang of this (like with the cannon breech ropes), I can just go back and add them. I will finish up the anchors, and then I will call it done. BR TJM

Brilliant, thanks a lot for taking the time to explain it so nicely! I will give it a try!

Thank you @Thukydides! Yours was the first log I was going to go for 😁. I will definitely give it a try! A few questions: Is it correctly understood that when you flip the second top loop up, you then have to thread the main loops in the coil between the first and second top loops on each pass? Meaning that a piece of thread has to be cut off the spool to begin with? My experience with CA and light thread is that it seeps into the thread and permanently colours it - but I don't see any sign of that in your image! How do you do? Use tiny amounts? Is it the low viscous or gel CA? Thanks!

Thank you Chris, that means a lot!

Log entry 38 The rigging is done! Phew! That was a learning process, and while there is a lot of room for improvement in the small details, and a few mistakes here and there, I am very happy with the overall result. Fun fact: it has taken a little more than half of the total build time to do the masts and rigging - around 85 hours or so total for that part. This was about twice as long as I had anticipated! It is not a problem, and the effort is worth it, but good to know for setting my own expectations in future builds! Now all that is left is the anchors and some rope coils - I am not really happy with my first tries at making coils, so I will peruse the forum for good techniques to do these. BR TJM

Log entry 37 The end is fast approaching now! I am just missing the bowlines and the lower yard sheets and tacks of the rigging. I have been enjoying these last few plans most of all the rigging. Probably because progress is fast compared to the earlier stages. Apart from the last bit of rigging, I am missing the anchors and swivel guns and then I will add a bunch of rope coils at all the belaying points. Next post will be when I finish the rigging, stay tuned! BR TJM

Log entry 36 Things are progressing. The yard ties are done and I am halfway through the yard lifts. Less than two rigging plan sheets left! The plans have the following note: Does this mean that I should hold off on these till the very end? After rigging everything else? BR Thorbjørn

Log entry 35 A bit of progress! I have completed the mast stays and added the ties for the mizzen boom and gaff, so they are now fixed on place. This really ups the appearance of the ship! A few blocks are turning the wrong way, but it is not very noticeable, and no-one apart from me or members of this forum would ever notice. I'll live with it and do better next time 😉. As I completed the mast stays and the model started getting more busy with ropework, the missing cannon rigging started to stand out to me, and looking at what I had recently achieved in terms of inaccessible blocks, I wondered that I had had to give up on that a few months ago. So, I gave it another try, and apparently practice does matter, as within 5 min, I had threaded the breaching ropes on one canon and the bulwark eyelets. I had not managed one in 1 hour of trying a few months ago! At this point, the shrouds and backstays are really in the way, so I had to compromise a bit, and so the rope just lays across the end of the barrel, not tied around the end knob. I think it look ok, and the overall impression is much improved and definitely woth two hours of fiddling. So overall I am very happy that I made another effort to do this! Now it is time to move on with the rest of the yard ties. BR TJM

Congratulations, a true inspiration!

Log entry 34 A lot of things got in the way of building in the evenings lately, but I am slowly processing with the mast stays. Accessing the eye bolts behind the foremast to hook on the block for the main topmast stays is extremely difficult. As is threading that block when tying down the stays. I wonder if it would have been smart to prepare some of this much earlier in the build - before the masts were even installed. It would perhaps have been a bit messy, but dealing with them now with all the shrouds in place is also very tough. Anyways, I'm sure I'll manage eventually 😉. BR TJM

Log entry 33 I have now added the main and main preventer stays, including the first of the crowsfeet. It was a bit fiddly to thread the thin crowsfeet line through the bulwark, and I think it is a bit longer than it should strictly be, but I won't redo it. I will just make the foremast crowsfeet a matching length . BR TJM

Log entry 32 The yards are now done! I must admit that preparing the second set for the mainmast was not the most interesting part of this build. I think I am more of a 'hull guy' than a 'rigging guy'... But it is done and I a happy with the result! Apart from the anchors and the swivel guns, this concludes the building of parts and all that remains now is three plans of standing and running rigging. And while I am sure some challenges will present themselves, I am looking forward to this process as there is not much exact repetition and every line will add a new feature to the model. I hope to make more frequent updates than of late in this part, as there will be more visual progress to show. BR TJM

Congratulations, really well done! She looks absolutely amazing!

Based on contemporary models at the Danish Krigsmuseet (War Museum), it seems to me that blue was not really used much on Danish ships after the 1720's (it was quite used in the 1600's though!). The colour palette of this period seems to be red, black, white and yellow/gold. But the interior of the contemporary models are not detailed, so there are room for speculation/interpretation. I would go with natural or red - or perhaps a clean off-white? BR TJM

Log entry 31 It has been a while since my last post, but I have not been idle! It is just that progress is slow for me at this point of the build and I have not had much to show until now. I have made and mounted the yards on the foremast: I am excited to see the final 'shape' of the ship starting to appear, thought a lot of rigging is still missing. Now I just need to repeat the last week's work to get the main mast to a similar state! BR TJM

Just amazing! 👏

Wow, it's moving fast now! Very nice! I am looking forward to this part of the rigging process myself.

Log entry 30 Rigging of the bowsprit is now complete: It went well overall, though it is difficult to get to some part of it! How @Thukydides and others manage to make such beautiful knots and splices at this scale is beyond me! Hats off to you! But from a few feet away, I am happy with how my efforts are turning out. Now, on with the yards. BR TJM