brunnels

Here is my first dry run at rigging the cannons, nothing is glued in place, I just want to get my process down before I start an assembly line. My feelings are mixed, for the amount of work that is involved I'm not really sure if the effort pays off at this scale. I'm fairly happy with how the breeching line went, but the gun tackles and rope are so tiny that I can't really get a good looking result yet. The blocks are Chucks 2.5mm resin printed blocks, they look fantastic but their size isn't easy to work with. I was going for something like this on the gun tackles where the excess rope is wrapped around the line, but the .1mm rope is so small that you Its hard to make it look nice without looking like a blob of white rope. I know many like to coil the ropes to the side, and I think that looks great but I don't really want to go with coils at the moment, plus I'm just horrible at making coils. Here is the other side At this moment I'm considering just doing the breeching lines, but I'm still working on alternative ways to rig the tackles to make them look good. I just don't want to spend a huge amount of time working towards a result I won't be 100% happy with.

Those cannon look great, I think you made the right choice doing the cannons first.

Before I secure the cannons in the ship I wanted to install the deadeyes and chain plates. Looking at all the pieces required on the photo etch was fairly intimidating, but it all went together fairly easily and I had no real issues other than needing lots of touch ups on the paint. Next I finished the carriage quoins which was the last non rigging piece of the cannons I had left to finish. Cannons aren't glued in yet, as I will do that after I figure out the rigging of the guns. Next step will be rigging the guns (if I can manage the super small blocks)

Well looks like I am going to need to by some more replacement parts. Not sure how or when this happened, I opened up my fittings box this weekend and noticed the lanterns had somehow got crushed. Does anyone know if the Syren lantern kits are similar in size and shape to the ones that come with the Sphinx? Trying to decide if I should order another Vanguard set or go with one of the Syren kits.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who had to use a ton of nails on the wale.

You are giving me too much credit lol. Only reason I am rigging the cannons after is because I have never done it before and am ignorant to which way is easiest. I'm sure in the next week I will be wishing I did it your way.

I never even considered a jig to rig the cannons up, I may have to steal your idea. So you rig them on the jig, unhook the hooks from the jig, and glue and hook them onto the model?

Amazing model, I'm bookmarking this thread for when I get around to a Speedy build.

For medium CA glue i like to use those long nozzles you can get online, they really cut down the flow rate so you don't use too much. Below is an example of some I use. CA Nozzles Lately I have been using thick CA glue more and more as its a little more controllable than Medium CA glue on small parts. For planks I just use the bottle and a smaller nozzle. For smaller more precise applications, I like to pour a bead of thick CA glue in a small cup or piece of plastic, and then dipping from that bead either use toothpicks for less fine work, or these glue loopers which have quickly become a staple in my toolbox. Glue looper

That looks great, what do you use to glue PE that small without tons of excess glue?

I think you all are on to something with the weather and wind regarding the doors, it would make sense that the stove would need some protection from the elements considering the gun deck is open. Small update, I have all the wheels on the cannons, and I only lost one wheel to the black hole under my desk so I will call that a win. The only task left on the cannons before gluing down and attempting to rig are the carriage quoins. I haven't touched these yet so I will have to remove the char, sand, paint, and varnish 20 of these as my last step on the carriages.

I am planning on it, and even purchased a bunch of super small 2mm blocks from Chuck to do it. But to be honest when I saw how small those 2mm blocks were I started to get some second thoughts haha, I know some curse words are going to be said while trying to work with those little buggers.

That looks absolutely fantastic with some WOP.

Howdy everyone, happy monday. Here is my progress update from the past few days. My time was mostly spent on cannon duty which means lot of tedious work on lots of very small parts. Luckily the Olympics kept me entertained while doing things like char removal on 80 cannon wheels. But first I installed the water pump handles, and the caps. I'm out of nails so once I receive some more I will pin the caps down with the nails per the instructions. I also added the rope railing around the steps. I'm not sure if I am going to keep the rope fairly tight, or if I should add some droop to the lines, I'm thinking a little droop will look more natural. While I am waiting on more nails to come in the mail for the deadeye chain plates, I decided to do some work on the cannons. Working on the guns always gives me more respect for you builders who do larger ships with more guns. Each cannon just has so many pieces and lots of small pieces takes time no matter how good the kit design. Carriages painted ready for installation of the guns. When I first saw the design of the carriages I wasn't sure If I would like the cap squares being one piece with the carriage side. But after putting these together I must say, doing a little detail painting on the cap squares with some black paint is FAR easier than fiddling with some super small PE pieces. I really like this design and once painted you don't even notice that they are one piece. Cannons painted Cannons installed on the carriages. Cannon cross bars, and 7 eyebolts installed. Next step will be touching up the eyebolts and crossbars, and then installation of the wheels.

Amazing model, I had to do a double take when I saw how massive it really was, the size of some of these kits really gets lost in the macro haha.

Can't go wrong with any Vanguard kit, plus the Duchess is a beauty. I look forward to your progress.

Does anyone know where I can get the brass nails or a similar size that are used in the kit? I just realized the deadeye chain plates also require some nails, and I have run out of the nails.

Upper Frieze's: Finished the upper frieze work, these were quite a bit smaller than the lower frieze patterns, so It was hard to do a ton of shading and highlights without it looking like an absolute mess. So I kept it fairly simple on these, they don't look the best on macro, but they do look acceptable when viewing from normal viewing distance. The upper patterns on the bow are very small, so these only got a very simple Ochre Yellow on top of Ochre Brown base. Lastly I painted and glued in the 4 cleats that go in the bulwarks on the gun deck.

For my Sphinx I printed mine on some 200g brochure paper I found at work. I had the same thought about applying some varnish on top, but it ended up making the lines on the paper bleed and not look good. I used a laser printer, so not sure if paper type or printer type would make a difference on preventing the colors from bleeding. Here is how it looks on my sphinx.

Howdy everyone, thanks for the likes and compliments on the frieze work it really boosted my painting confidence. While working on the frieze work between coats I have also been working hard on equipment on the gundeck. Ships stove: Assembly is very straight forward, assemble to wood frame, glue on the brass PE and then paint. I used Vallejo black mixed with a little steel pigment powder. I have never really used pigment powder, so I am not really sure if I used too much or too little, but I am happy with how the stove turned out. I really struggled with painting the bricks, I have discovered mixing paint is a skill I am not very good at. After probably a dozen attempts I got a brick color I was happy with. Next I used a light grey wash for the brick mortar. I have never used washes before, and I never really figured out how to use it properly. No matter what I did I always seemed to remove the wash in the cracks when trying to remove the excess wash. Finally I just used a 000 paint brush and painted it in the cracks as best I could. The doors in front of the stove. Can someone explain the purpose for these doors, because their purpose doesn't really make sense to me. The doors were pretty straight forward, glue two sides together add the hinges and door handles and glue on the frame. The frame I had some issues with as it was very fragile and I snapped it in a couple places. I repaired It best I could with a piece of 1x2mm wood I had, but some of the frame is still missing above the closed door. Capstan: The capstan looked like it would be very fiddly to put together, but it was actually a very easy process that went together in no time. Here is how the ship looks as of 7/30/24, hopefully I haven't missed covering anything.

Yes I paint them while still attached to the sheet.

Thanks, that's what I was trying to go for.

I have started to work on the frieze work. This pretty much is the limit of my artistic abilities at this scale, I've always had lots of respect for miniature painters and this just increased that respect even more. It took me several days and tests to decide what colors to use and how to use them. I ended up with a base of Ochre brown, followed by Ochre Yellow as a main color with highlights of Ivory white and red. I found that at this scale you really have to keep it simple or it starts to look really messy so I decided to use no more than 4 colors. It took a while to learn how to highlight and shade on these really small parts, if you look at it with a macro it may look messy, but from a couple feet away I am very satisfied with how it turned out. I still have the upper frieze work which I am going to work on this week. Those will be a bit harder as they are figures and the patterns at the bow of the ship get incredibly small, so I will probably have to minimize the colors even more on the smaller stuff. Here is my lower frieze work. The PE around the gangway steps didn't fit, so I will have to hand paint those portions.

Looks great, I really debated hard with myself on using gold when I started the kit. Are you using the Vallejo Liquid gold? I tried using their Liquid Copper paint and haven't had much success with it.

Can't wait to follow the progress on this one.