marktiedens

Hey all! Ok so I made the ratlines for the starboard side of the mainmast. Lots of beginner misstakes, but it was quite enjoyable work. To be honest shaping the dead eyes and metal parts for them was more challenging on the nerves as there where many stages. Once these are on you have a result. I like that as it gives energy to continue. I decided to do not go by a template, but did them freehand, by the eye and tried to look at the reference instead. I did end up with more rows then the original at the museum.
 
I still need to weather the ratlines and give a light coat of varnish to hide the CA but this is where Ï'm at now.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
/Matti

Grating construction Part one.
 
Not only do I want to produce  more historically accurate gratings,I wanted to produce them in Pear to match the rest of the model.As far as I am aware A.Banarov is the only producer of grating kits in Pear but ordering some gratings from Odessa would be a bit extreme,even for me
 
I decided that the ledges and battens would be 1.5mm wide with holes 1mm square.This gave a scale hole size of 60mm by 60mm.The way I have decided to produce these should enable scale holes for Royal William by adjusting the centres I work to on the miller.
 
The first step was to make some sacrificial jigs.These comprise of some mdf cut to a suitable size to allow easy clamping on the miller table.On to this I bonded some pear strip machined with 1.5mm wide slots at 2.5mm centres.

The next stage was to bond some 1.5mm by 2.5mm pear ledges into the slots.When dry the top was faced off in the miller and then perpendicular slots machined 1.2mm deep into the ledges.The gratings will be thinned in depth further when the battens are glued in place.Keeping everything oversize to start with,eliminates any deflection of the ledges whilst machining.It is my intention to curve the assembled piece after assembly and removal from the jig as everything will be far too thin to allow the curved face to be sanded on.

 
 
To be continued
 
Kind Regards
 
Nigel

Outlining the hull for the finish second layer of planking.
I have a specific method I use which works for me. There are many methods that work well. I did not invent this method, just like it better and copied it from another builder who was kind enough to publish an article in a magazine.
 
1. Invert the hull.
 
2. Divide the hull into 5 plank wide bands by taping 5 short pieces of planking wood side by side and starting from the keel, tape them to the hull midships where the planks will run parallel to the keel and at full width. Draw a pencil line at the lower edge.
 
3. Place the taped short strips on the pencil line and repeat all the way down the hull. Depending on the size of the hull, you may have as many as 6 or more bands.
 
4. Place a full length plank on the bottom of each line and tape it in a natural run so as not to twist it or bend it .
 
5. Draw a pencil line  along the top from stem to stern.
 
6. Repeat for each short pencil line.
 
You can now see how the planks run and where they will need tapering and where they will need filling in between them at the stern. By mearuring between the lines at any point along a band and dividing by 5 will give you the width of each plank at that point.
 
Vince P.

Matti - rope is made by twisting several strands of thread together on a rope walk. You would not see this twist on simple sewing thread without a magnifying glass. Maybe someone else could explain it better than me.
 
/Mark

And now I've added the tritons on the rear tower of the upper gallery, and finished one side of the stern (except for the balusters - still waiting for my drawplate to show up).  And there was much rejoicing.  I really enjoy painting the figures, but it's also a huge amount of work.
 

 
And the finished galleries together.  If I counted right, each pair of galleries has 74 sculptures.
 

 
Just for comparison's sake, here's the completely unadorned other side:
 

 
And finally, this is what the stern of the ship looks like so far.  Nothing exceeds like excess!  I still need to tweak some things, but it's by and large the way I want it.
 
 
I think at this point I'll take a break from painting and finish up some structural stuff on the outside of the hull - the rudder, message port, rearmost gun port lid, scuppers, etc.
   
 

Hello Matti
One thing to keep in mind is the ratlines are usually the smallest diameter rope on the ship.I use small diameter sewing thread.At your scale you would never see the twist of the rope.Hope that helps.Also you might try doing some with both a clove hitch & a simple overhand knot.I find it`s easier to get a naturally looking sag with an overhand knot even though it`s not historically correct.
 
/Mark

Hi Mates,
 
Minor update finishing-up the anchors; I decided to use the Corel provided stocks (the two light wood pieces are from “I don’t remember” were).
 
The anchors should be attached to two separate half stalks. I faked this by using a micro saw blade to imitate the two halves. Weak, but looks ok. Though I needed to add a shunt to fix the anchors in place.
 
Then went down to the kitchen to take command of some of the Admiral’s designer for “guest” toothpicks.  Photos are self-explanatory so will keep this brief. The Vasa did not use metal framing, but instead had treenails for joining the two halves, along with four metal bolts.
 
-----------------------------
 
My first attempt at wrapping the anchor rings with rope was, well a failure. As you can see-oops- not enough rope length on my first attempt. Second and third tries were charms. Using tarred rope was a question, but the 1/10th did not, so I mimicked that thought.
 
As I went along, I used GS Hypo to fix in place the three or four loops at a time. Came out better than I expected. After dabbing the glue I used a finger to remove excess. This glue is really cool. As you can see the glue disappears.
 
Last few pics just for the visual. Need to attach and fix anchor’s main ropes etc.…though not sure about the anchor rope, maybe too thick??  
 
Also need to make two buoys per Landström’s drawings. Speaking of whom the correct details for wrapping the rings with rope are SO beyond my skills, I saw the pic and started laughing…..
 
PS: Only port side will have the fish-davit, for a “transition look”.
PS2: Yes those eight brass nails should be black, got lazy on this bit. Time will dull them (;-)
 
As always thanks so much for your dropping by.
 
Regards,
 
Michael

Hey again!
 
I'm finally done with the channels and its details. Also did the collar holding on to the bowsprit.
 
First a pic I took at the museum.
 

 
And how mine turned out:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
Time to start planning those ratlines now...
 
 
/Matti

Next up were the vertical statues that run the length of the gallery and around the base of the towers.  The kit sculptures are all the same here, whereas the real ship uses different sculptures to surround the base of the towers.  The main problem I had here was one of alignment.  The gallery slopes and the towers don't, so the sculptures around the tower don't align at their bases because the gallery drops away and in order to keep the tops level, the bottoms can't be level with the line of the gallery.  All in all making me wonder whether I got the gallery framing wrong somehow, since it all looks quite nice on the real ship and the 1:10 model.
 

  Notice here that the small tritons on the towers cover the gaps in my shingling rather nicely.  I'm quite pleased with how the tower shingling came out given all the curves and reshaping involved.  
  Another alignment problem: the sculptures around the tower base need to be vertical, so I needed to decide whether the sculptures along the gallery would be vertical as well.  I tried it and they looked a little odd, not aligning well with the sculptures at the bottom of the gallery or with the balusters between the upper and lower parts of the gallery.  So I installed them perpendicular to the gallery, which meant they didn't line up quite right with the ones on the tower bases.
 

 
Next up are the smaller cornices between the standing sculptures.  I also need to go back and clean up the painting a little, adding darker washes on the figures.  I may also dress some of them, since the painting on the 1:10 model has some of the figures naked, and others wearing loincloths.
 
 

Time to start encrusting the quarter galleries with sculptures.  I started with the bottom row of faces, and added the warriors above.  The spacing's important, since it needs to match the sculptures that will sit vertically on the sides of the galleries.  The kit sculptures are not bad here.  The warriors are the same as the Gideon sculptures on the stern and the small Roman emperors on the beak, but reasonably close to what's on the real ship.  The faces are different from the ship (and all the faces on the real ship are themselves different from one another).  Here's a view of the finished and mounted figures, as well as the curved herm at the rear of the hull.  That was another case of having to think ahead - the curve of the hull needs to match the curve of the sculpture, so I test fit the whole thing while I was doing the hull.
 

 
Next up were the small tritons on the lower towers - I made some molding to better define the boundary between the roof of the tower and the sides.  I'm still not sure I got the galleries quite right, but it's way too late to change them.  It's possible the rake of the galleries is too pronounced, making the difference between the angle of the towers (horizontal) and the gallery (tilted) too great.  We'll see whether covering the galleries with sculptures minimizes the difference.
 

Build log part 65
 
 
a Little update to Keep the gear moving on...
Topmast shrouds (without ratlines) set, as well as top topmast foreward stays. I`ll leave away the top backstays untill later  because they would only hinder the Access to the deck in the Moment. I`m thinking of making and  rigging the stay sails, now would be the time to have relatively good Access to the belaying points
 
Nils
 
 
 
 
 
 

Main- fore- and topsail yards
 
These Yards with their soldering work at the yardtips were the most difficult.
today I received the ordered 3,5 mm deadeyes for rigging the upper shrouds and some backstays, shall continue with that sequence next
 
Nils

I didn't like the five Gideon warriors between the medieval knights and the transom grotesques.  They are the same as the Roman emperors on the beak, and the sculptures on the lower half of the lower quarter gallery, and because they are a bit too tall for the space, I needed to cut off the very tops.
 

 
I removed them and repainted them with more detail.  I discovered that they did a somewhat more accurate job with the sculptures on the lower part of the upper quarter gallery, and on the real ship those are the same as those on the transom.  So I ended up intermixing them.  The kit provides more quarter gallery sculptures than I could fit nicely - I had two left over - so I decided to alternate them with what was originally on the transom.  
 
The quarter gallery sculptures are smaller than the transom ones and fit better, but their detail is worse.  I think they are supposed to look like they are blowing some sort of trumpet that wraps around the back and over the shoulder; the effect makes them look enough like Greedo from Star Wars that I had to resist the urge to paint the faces green.  Anyway, I did the best I could with them:
 

 
And a view of the extra sculptures on the corners, again alternating the original transom sculptures with the quarter gallery ones.  I think they make the transom area look better connected with the quarter gallery.
 

Some months further now... I completed the standing rigging.
 

Some further progress...
 

 

 

Here is a picture showing how small they are.
 

 
/Mark

Mark, It's easy to tell that your happy about the nailing,thats how it was built giving you a more fulfilled feeling about your efforts,you do good work. Could you pass on the info for getting these nails,ie size,product name, and where to buy ,again your planking is first class.Edwin.

Your planking nails look beautiful.  I thought about doing the same but couldn't deal with the repetition of installing 3000 of the little guys.  I think you're right though - if you use a darker stain you won't see the nails unless you looking very closely.  Still, you will know you got the detail right.
 
mark

Mark,
 
The nails look great and to scale!
 
Frank

Really cool. Love to see it after painting/finish

Hello everyone
Here`s where i`m at - continued planking up to the position of the uppermost whale. I decided to do some nailing on the hull planks.There seems to be no pattern to the nailing on the real ship so I followed no pattern to my nailing.The nails I am using are actually model railroad items called micro spikes.They are really small - used a #77 drill bit to drill the holes. I didn`t want it to look like it had the measles so I used the smallest "nails" I could find. It may be overkill as they are hard to see at more than about a foot away.
 

 

 

 
/Mark

Hello everyone
Here`s where i`m at - continued planking up to the position of the uppermost whale. I decided to do some nailing on the hull planks.There seems to be no pattern to the nailing on the real ship so I followed no pattern to my nailing.The nails I am using are actually model railroad items called micro spikes.They are really small - used a #77 drill bit to drill the holes. I didn`t want it to look like it had the measles so I used the smallest "nails" I could find. It may be overkill as they are hard to see at more than about a foot away.
 

 

 

 
/Mark

Hello everyone
Here`s where i`m at - continued planking up to the position of the uppermost whale. I decided to do some nailing on the hull planks.There seems to be no pattern to the nailing on the real ship so I followed no pattern to my nailing.The nails I am using are actually model railroad items called micro spikes.They are really small - used a #77 drill bit to drill the holes. I didn`t want it to look like it had the measles so I used the smallest "nails" I could find. It may be overkill as they are hard to see at more than about a foot away.
 

 

 

 
/Mark

Hello everyone
Here`s where i`m at - continued planking up to the position of the uppermost whale. I decided to do some nailing on the hull planks.There seems to be no pattern to the nailing on the real ship so I followed no pattern to my nailing.The nails I am using are actually model railroad items called micro spikes.They are really small - used a #77 drill bit to drill the holes. I didn`t want it to look like it had the measles so I used the smallest "nails" I could find. It may be overkill as they are hard to see at more than about a foot away.
 

 

 

 
/Mark

Hello everyone
Here`s where i`m at - continued planking up to the position of the uppermost whale. I decided to do some nailing on the hull planks.There seems to be no pattern to the nailing on the real ship so I followed no pattern to my nailing.The nails I am using are actually model railroad items called micro spikes.They are really small - used a #77 drill bit to drill the holes. I didn`t want it to look like it had the measles so I used the smallest "nails" I could find. It may be overkill as they are hard to see at more than about a foot away.
 

 

 

 
/Mark