brunnels

That thought has crossed my mind, I haven't put together any of the ships boats yet, so I'm not sure if that would be beyond my current skill level at the moment.

Few updates, been working on all the deck furnishings the last few days. It takes way longer than I was expecting to get all these little pieces put together and painted and I have only just begun on them. Ships wheel and ladders, still cleaning up the CA glue mess I made while struggling to glue down the wheel. Pin rails, I really need to get a drill press or something, because the hobby pin drill took forever on these. Poop deck hardware and mounts for the 28ft whaleboats that the kit doesn't include. Might have to see if anyone sells anything close to a 28ft whaleboat in this scale. Forecastle hardware, I glued on the carronade mount and not two seconds after i glued it something looked off and i realized i forgot to install the hardware hooks on the mount so i quickly pried it off before the CA glue got too hard, but you can see the remaining residue.

I found a little hobby saw blade attachment for my razor blade made tasks like cutting the cannon ports way easier. They will need to be cut open a couple more times during the planking. This is what I use. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08SQQHD9M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I don't think CA Glue will hold the bent wood on the first planking. You are going to want use PVA glue and either nail it down or clamp it down. I personally used Titebond PVA glue and the nails that were included in the kit and it worked great.

Got a few more items checked off over the past few weekdays. Got the port doors painted, hinges installed and glued onto the ship. Those little hinges were not an easy item to deal with, I really wish the kits would have given extras as they are insanely hard to hold onto and work with, and very easy to lose if you drop one. Copper plated the rudder, and installed it on the boat. Painted and glued on a strip of timber for a false keel. Installed the channels Started on the first pieces that go on the deck. Happy to get to this stage as it feels like a bunch of mini projects. I started with the two storage lockers at the rear, I used the spare port door hinges from the port doors that were planked over, I wasn't a fan of the instructions way of simulating hinges with cut pieces of brass rod. The red bulwarks have a really weird color tone in these pics for some reason.

Occre seems to have fantastic customer service from what i have seen. Have you checked if your kit came with enough extra timber to replank? My Occre beagle came with quite a bit of extra wood, almost enough to plank the boat again.

Thanks, that is what I already have and use and it is great. The AL Chopper was a gift, I am trying to be polite and find some use out of it with better blades.

Spent the week on the bow and stern of the ship, both taking far longer and more challenging than I was expecting. I started the week planking the bow, the instructions showed the planking on the stern as vertical, but the AOTS book showed the planking was done horizontally. I'm starting to learn to double check all the Occre instructions to the AOTS book. I then added the boards that outlined the stern. This was probably the most frustrating part of this model I have done so far because the wood needed to be bent in two directions to match the lines of the stern piece. I snapped many pieces attempting to make it look good, but after spending a couple nights and getting very frustrated trying to make it look how I wanted, I decided my skill level wasn't up to my expectations for this step and decided to do the best I could with the shape, add a little wood filler, and move on. I then formed the brass rods into stern decorations. I wasn't a fan of the use of brass, and I spent some time trying to do this part with wood, but this was another step that my skill level wasn't good enough to make me happy, so I settled with the brass. I followed up the picture with some wood filler to fill in some of the gaps. Then some clean up and paint. Other side of the stern painted, also got the quarter galleries and boards on the quarter deck glued in place. Horn davits with holes drilled and hardware installed. Unfortunately one of the holes chipped while drilling out. I need to start pre-drilling, even for 1mm holes. Horn Davit's and flag staff mount installed. While pieces were drying on the stern I was also working on the bow. OH JOY, more brass to bend. And bow painted. My next task is to get all the port doors and hinges installed, and then maybe I can start on the furnishings on the deck.

Because one is new to the hobby and wasn't sure what the tool would be able to cut.

It never even occurred to me it was a razor blade from a single blade shaving razor. I'll look into the carpet blades.

This isn't going to be a review of this cutter, I'll do that in the review section. Not sure what these blades pictured below are called, but does anyone have any recommendations on blades that don't break with light use? This cutter came with about 5 extra blades and I have already gone through 2 of them and I have cut probably less than a dozen pieces using this tool. The first blade snapped on a piece of 4x4 sapelli, so I have stuck to cutting 2x5mm strips, after a handfull of them I glances at the blade and the new one was already chipping. First blade that broke after cutting a piece of 4x4mm sapelli Second blade after about a dozen pieces of 2x5mm basswood These are the blades the cutter uses, is there a name for this type?

Nice fix, there are a few laser cut plywood pieces they want you to bend on the Beagle and all of them make me nervous. Luckily planking isn't as high stakes as if you snap a plank you can just grab another, which isn't the case with laser cut plywood parts.

I managed to get quite a bit done on this ship this weekend. I finished up the copper plating with one strip of copper tape left, I like to say that was planned but it was pure luck. I decided to stop doing extra's that aren't in the plans and complete a few tasks from the instructions. First I cut painted and glued in place the hammock railing, the instructions call for a wood piece painted while to simulate the hammocks, but I am ommiting that piece with plans to fashion up the hammocks out of cloth later on. This step was kind of tricky to glue on because normally the rails would be glued to the fake hammock piece. I then added the pieces that form up the gang way entrances. Later on I will be fashioning up a set of gangway steps. After seeing @RobTBays excellent HMS Beagle build log, he points out that the AOTS plans show a water way. I decided to also add these to my Beagle for one to cover up some nasty past planking mistakes, and two I wanted to try out beveling some pieces at an angle. I beveled a few pieces of 2x2 at a 45 degree angle. Here is a test fitting. After a coat of shellac and glued in place. Back to the instructions, I started on the catheads. These took surprisingly longer to make than I had expected. Once I got the pieces of 4x4 cut and sanded down to the right size, I drilled 6 small holes in each, painted them with black paint and fitted the two holes in the sides with some blackened brass rings. The cathead openings in the bow of the ship needed quite a bit of filing to get the catheads to fit properly. I then added the pin rail which was painted with some American Walnut paint. I then capped it off with the bow railing also painted in American Walnut paint. I'm not sure if I like this paint color yet, but I will leave it be for the meantime as it's in a location that I can easily repaint if I chose so down the road. Next I started on the big stern piece. The piece needed some curvature to install flush, so I soaked it for about 10 minutes and heated it with a soldering iron and slowly formed it to the stern. I then glued and nailed it in place. Also you can see in the image my new Styrofoam dry dock. The Misses was watching me struggle with the crappy stand that the kit comes up with, and mentioned that I should cutout a stand from the big piece of Styrofoam I was using while coppering the ship. It was a fantastic idea that I was jealous that I had not thought of myself, and it turned out to be a very sturdy way to work on the boat. While the glue was drying on the stern piece I decided to start cutting out the railing in the location I will put the quarter galleys in. Here is where I have left off, but here is a couple full ship photo's to show off the coppering of the other side and show where I am currently at. Thanks for looking.

Wow, those doors look great, much better than what I have been able to come up with.

Thanks!! I will wait a bit before I varnish the copper then.

Amazing work, you scratch builders are on a different level.

Starboard side done except for capping it off at the keel and stern post. Once I researched where to start and where to end it was actually a pretty easygoing and relaxing process although time consuming. The material is very thin so it doesn't lay down quite as smooth as I was expecting, but I'm pretty happy with the result for my first time. I used up almost all my strips for the one side, so I guess its back to the foundry tonight to make some more. A question for the copper plating veterans of the hobby. I know the copper foil will darken naturally over time, but will it still darken under a varnish? I would like to let it darken a bit more than it is now, but If a layer of varnish on top prevents that then I will add varnish later down the line.

Its funny how when I started building this model I started thinking completely differently about how I could use random items around the house and in the tool box as tools for the model. One reason I love viewing build logs on this site is so I can see the creative ways everyone achieves a task.

Got to work on making a jig for the copper plates. I decided to just keep the plates fairly simple with an outline of the nail divets around the edges. The jig is simple and could be improved, but I wanted to keep it simple and uncomplicated for my first go around. Here is my jig, I have yet to stick any of these on the model so it could be a waste of a night making them, but I think they will work out great. Here is my jig and materials i use. I made the jig out of some scrap lazer cut plywood. The gap between the two long pieces is 5mm, and i cut a slot 20mm from the edge. The sroll wheel tool is a saw blade attachement from a dremil between two pieces of scrap material using a nail as an axle and a couple plastic bushings to keep it straight., I originally tried a few cheap pounce wheels from amazon but found the spacing between divets to large and the divets themselves were too large for the scale of the model. My first step was cutting a strip of tape. I found cutting much longer than this was getting hard to manage. Next I slide a piece of wood across the stip to help flatten the curve out of it and remove as many wrinkles as I can I then lay the strip in the jig. I put a piece of 4mm wide wood on top of the tape. This gives a 1mm gap to run the scroll wheel down the side. Running the scroll wheel down the first side. I then move the piece of wood up and scroll the other side. Here is what the strip looks like after the first scroll stage. I then scroll the vertical lines, I match the stip up to the edge of the board and scroll which gives me a 20mm strip, I then align the vertical line i just scrolled with the edge and scroll again repeating the process until the whole strip is done. One could easily cut multiple gaps in the jig every 20mm to speed up this task, but I wanted to keep it simple to better control the process and it really doesn't take long at all. Here is what the strip looks like after the vertical lines are run. My ceiling light was directly above so the strip looks way messier in the picture than it really is. Again with the lighting directly above it was hard to get a good detailed photo, but here is one completed strip, I can either lay these down in a strip or cut each piece individually to lay down. Once I got the hang of the process, I could produce a strip about every 30 seconds. I found it really neat how much these strips stiffened up just by running a few lines of very small dimples down them, it really shows you how effective stamping metal is.

Yes it did have copper plating, in fact from what I have read the Beagle even had it's copper plating replaced several times during its life. There are a few ways to do it, you can buy kits from companies like Amati that are pre made copper tiles you glue on, or you can use copper tape from amazon which comes in a roll like masking tape. I already have a few rolls of copper tape from building electric guitars so I am going that route. I will share my process when I find what works best for me, but many people seem to use ponce wheels on the tape to simulate the nail dents. I think sealing the hull before coppering should be fine, I will probably seal mine first just to add another layer of protection to the wood. From my research the copper plates should be sized 20mm x 5mm.

Well the theme of last week was "One step forward, two steps back", so I unfortunately didn't take as many pictures of my progress as I would have liked. I wanted to finally finish the deck and inner bulwarks of the ship. I decided to use shellac on my deck and inner bulwarks, but ended up with an unfortunate shellaccident. I have used Bullseye brand amber shellac for years and I had bought a new can for a project just a couple months ago, so I was pretty confident applying the shellac. I used a brush and started applying thin coats as I normally do with shellac but noticed while applying the first coat that it was gumming up almost instantly in spots, not sure if that is a reaction with leftover glue or the shellac had just gone bad, but my deck ended up very uneven and spotty as the shellac was not allowing me to spread it very evenly with a brush because of how "gummy" it had turned in spots. I ended up getting the deck cleaned up to a point that I'm not really 100% happy with, but a point where I felt it wasn't worth sinking any more time into fixing spots that would hardly be seen. The sides of the "inner bulwarks" (if that is even the proper term), were a big mess as well and it was VERY difficult to clean up properly with all the little rail pieces that the model has. This would have taken me days to clean up to an acceptable level, and I was already kind of throwing around the idea of painting the inside walls of the ship in Red. I like the look of the red on the British ships, and from what I have gathered it's not unrealistic for the time that the HMS Beagle might have had red paint at some point instead of the natural wood finish the model instructions suggest. Plus Red paint will add a few knots to the speed of any boat, maybe a few racing stripes will really get the boat moving. Sorry for the wall of text with so few pictures, hopefully the red doesn't make too many Beagle builders eyes twitch. I first taped off everything using Yellow Tamiya tape, and various sizes of painters tape. I then started with a primer. I then went with Vallejo Red 70926, I had seen the color recommended here a few times so I decided to give it a go. I don't mind the color, but its a little darker shade than I was expecting. I will probably try a different shade or brand on my next model. I did struggle with how thick Vallejo acrylic paints are, even after thinning the paint out I still battled with paint building up in low spots and corners. Here is the red after 3 thin coats of red. Don't mind the messy edges where the deck meets, those will be covered up by waterway boards in the near future. At this point I also started priming the outer hull as you can see in the image. After priming the outer hull, I applied 3 thin coats of Model Shipways Black "MS4830", and 3 thin coats of Model Shipways White "MS4831" for the racing stripe that adds another few knots to the ships speed. The outer hull paint went pretty smoothly, I think I have the hang of acrylic paints on wood now. On this model I wanted to try brushing the paint on to see how it applied, but I will probably use an airbrush on my next model, airbrushes are just hard to beat for painting large areas evenly. I'm pretty happy with how the paint turned out, I think the Red paint looks pretty sharp on the beagle and will make the model stand out a little from the other fantastic Beagle builds. My next step is tackling the copper plating before I start on the more fragile parts of the boat. Side note, I can't recommend this Yellow Tamiya masking tape enough, I saw it recommended all over this forum and wish I knew about this stuff years ago. This tape will have a permanent place in my tool box, I will even be using this for home projects. This stuff really holds a line, any bleed through I had was due to my lack of preparation, not the tape failing.

Those look great, I like the simplicity of the right one personally. I just took my doors off the model again this morning as I am not happy with them, I might have to steal your door idea.

Thanks for confirming the AOTS size, I actually already have a few rolls of copper tape from building electric guitars, so I am going to go that route after a little homework on a jig.

What type of bending iron is that? It looks like it would work really well. Solid job so far, I will definitely be following.

It's a book series called "Anatomy of the Ship", they have a whole book dedicated to the Beagle.