Craigie65

As I am waiting for the rings I purchased to come in to complete the hatch covers, I, like Glenn UK decided to do a few other repetitive tasks that need to be done. I decided to assemble the carronades and long guns. First a lot of char removal as it is hard to cover when airbrushing.
 

 
 
Although made easier by this nice tool
 

 
Next came sticking them on my painting board
 

 and finally a good airbrushing, a bit out of focus.
 

 
 
The final assembly with eyebolts and rings done. Total time to do all the guns about 6 hrs. 
 

Hello 

Sorry for the delays,  Im trying to shape the masts and spars and that is going okay I guess.  The main mast I could put the dowel into a screwdriver and shape it with sandpaper. As for the spars I dont know if I can do the same without breaking one end considering that both ends are supposed to be small on each ends of the dowel i might not be able to risk it.  

I did have a mishap in the form of me slipping on ice and breaking some fingers a week ago and that makes my modeling harder now that im limited to one hand and a couple of fingers. However I did manage to paint the main mast head today so I hope I can get on track and finish this model 🙂 

First off, thanks for all the likes and views, much appreciated.
 
The fronts of the ply gunport patterns were soaked in warm water for a few minutes then the patterns were clamped in place on the hull. They were left to dry, helped by a heat gun, then glued into place, being careful not to get glue on the bulkhead tags, which will be removed soon.




I had a problem though. The instructions call for the pattern front ends (ie the tabs) to be hooked into the prow. The photo shows the slot in the prow and the tab on one of the patterns. (You can also see a slight break in the top of the prow above the slot - my fault, pushed too hard.)

The slot in the prow though is not large enough to take both tabs, so I sanded the tabs until both fitted. There was a side effect though - the hole through which the bowsprit comes is now much reduced and I needed to enlarge it.


Cheers
 

Post 21
Pearwood Planking
I begin with making a Drop plank to fit directly below the wale at the bow.
Above and running into the drop plank is a plank that runs the remainder of the way along the hull also directly below the wale.

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This plank I fit first, it terminates at the third bulkhead with a tapered width of 3mm. It then runs at full width to the stern.

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A temporary plank is run beneath to gauge the bottom line of the Drop plank.

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With this in place a pattern can be made for the Drop plank. This also tapers to 3mm at the stem, butts against the plank above it on its topside, and runs beneath it with a tail to bulkhead four.

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The patterns are cut out of some spare Pear fret.

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Dry fitting the drop.

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After a lot of tweaking and dry fitting they are glued into place.

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My next job will be to check the remaining strake numbers required and size up the Garboard Strake.
 
B.E.
18/01/2025
 
 

So after checking, the deck beams were all glued in place. All carlings were fitted without any problems. The ply sub-deck was then eased into place. A little tricky, but carefully did it. However the deck did not sit quite flush at the stern. You can see in this photo that the deck is bulging slightly. A close inspection showed that there was a problem around the port half of beam 16 (this is in two halves). The deck was popped off and it could be seen that the beam had been seated such that it partly blocked the slot that the deck should have clicked into. I have no idea how this could have happened as the upper surface of the beam was flush with the adjacent beams, so apparently, it was correctly seated. A misalignment somewhere. So, a little bit of surgery to clear the slot and the deck was replaced with it clicking into all the slots. The stem, keel and rudder post were all glued. These three are core pieces and will later be covered with veneer. There is a slight gap between the stem and the keel, but this will be covered by veneer, so nothing needs to be done about it. As B.E. found out, the rudder post needed some trimming to fit over bulkhead 17. Two supports for the prow were glued and pinned. The instructions for this step in the manual are out of sequence (too early) and it could not be done until the stem etc had been fitted. The two ply stern counters were added to the hull, the lower first. The upper needed some trimming to match the curve of the lower where the two met. Cheers

good evening everyone
slowly bringing this project to a close, this week i pretty well rerigged her, and toned down the white using a grey wash, it not quite so in yr face now
i think another week. and then revamp the man cave before the next project on the build table
im not 100% sure what it will be yet, but it will be back to my daily posting 
 
 
 
 
 

Done 👍 

Andrew,
Sorry to hear about your health, hope you are on the mend. Please take care of yourself.
I am sure the warmer weather is just around the corner, and you will be back in your shipyard soon. 😁

The first photo in this post shows the stove base assembly which I have made. The printed floor tile pattern has been glued to a 1mm thick base plate, which had been painted black. The printed tile pattern was smaller than the base plate so there is a nice black surround.

I decided to paint the internal lower deck panels a light grey colour. Before applying a couple coats of paint the patterns were sealed. I am still waiting for the delivery of door hinges & handles from Syren which I will add to these panels before they are fixed in place on the harpy lower deck. 


I opted to use some Amati eyebolts and rings for the hatch covers, as shown below. After I added the rings to 56 eyebolts they were chemically blackened and inserted to the lower deck.

The next photo shows the stove assembly dry fitted to the deck with the upper deck beams also dry fitted.

The next two photos shows the sail room assembly dry fitted to the deck along with the dry fitted deck beams. I will probably use some diluted wood filler to fill in the gaps between the frame and outer patterns.
The final two photos shows the lower deck arrangement, with deck beams, gratings, stove and sail room dry fitted. The two long inner bulwark patterns have been glued. I did use deck beams 2 and 10 to ensure these panels were correctly positioned. Once I was happy with the positioning the deck beams were removed and plenty of clamps were then added. 

 

Thank you!  I am fine, I think I just needed a little break, as I haven't really stopped since 2019! I need to take it a little slower this year, I think..
Thank you, I have said before that I personally would prefer the 3-d printed hulled boats over standard if I were buying the kit. I had to make sure they were as accurate as they could be, using original plan lines in most cases. Before, I know many had to settle with what looks roughly correct, but really wasn't, as there were very few choices. I wanted to ensure I have a full range of the most often used boats for my kits, with all the hard to do detail already done - especially for the clinker planked boats. 3-d printing allows me to do this, and at a near scale thickness, too, rather than white metal or cast resin, which always made the boat look way too thick and toy-like. I know some still love the all wooden ones, but I also know there are very many more who prefer the pre made hull versions, and with the 3-d printed hulls, there is no longer any need to compromise on historical accuracy so much.

Andrew,
Sorry to hear about your health, hope you are on the mend. Please take care of yourself.
I am sure the warmer weather is just around the corner, and you will be back in your shipyard soon. 😁

Next ,although not required, painted hatches and capstan base

 
 
Next sail locker, really need to clap on veneers to prevent curls. Also orient veneers so plank lines align around
 

 

 
Blue Ensin and Glenn UK took photos of brick pavers to print a base.  As I do not have a color printer decided to do something different. Used scrap base then cut out wood bricks from some 1x3. Then glued them in staggered pattern.
 

Filled with wood filler

Then painted red and rubbed down

 
Added white wash for mortar lines and rubbed again then light rubbing again with red paint

 
Next painted stove and added metallic filings to age it and mounted on faux brick base
 

 
Of course did not glue stove pipe chimney, that comes much later
 

 

Excellent job on the second planking, nice symmetry to your work. 
 

Looking forward to this build, popcorn at the ready. 🍿

Once all the partitions were in place, I dryfitted all the deck beams after sanding the char off the tops. A few needed a touch with a sanding stick to properly seat, but otherwise all was good. There are three beams that cross the sail room. The latter was put in place, not glued, and the fit of the beams checked. The location of the stove relative to the beams fore and aft was also checked. Finally, as this is the last time before the deck is closed off, dowels were used to represent the masts and pump outlets and inserted to make sure their respective mounting holes were clear. The three bitts were similarly checked. The sail room and stove were then glued in place. I too have copied B.E. and put a base under the stove. After finding a downloadable tile pattern that I liked (not as easy as you might think), I fiddled around on the computer to get a 6x3 print that seemed to be of an appropriate size. It was edged with 1x1mm pear. The stove is not glued in place in this photo. Cheers

Thank you Chris and Nipper it's satisfying to know that my Logs  are of use to others. I too am grateful for the logs of others who also help me along the way.
 
Post 19
Topsides
The beautifully detailed Topsides save a lot of effort in planking around the gunports and what look like sweep ports.

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Before I started, I marked the station lines down the hull to assist the planking.

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The pattern was soaked at the forward end and clamped to the hull overnight to take the stress out of the bow curve.
 
 A useful innovation designed by Chris are gunport alignment jigs.
These are handed Port and Starboard and fit the ports  from  2 at the Bow to 10 at the stern.

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Before I applied glue anywhere near the patterns I dry fitted with the jigs in place. The jigs need a little cleaning-up by removal of any fret nubs to ensure a perfect fit. Once gluing is in progress you don’t want to be fiddling around trying to get the jigs into place.

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Once I was happy with the fit of the jigs I glued the two sections together.
 
I did find that I needed to finely shave the bow end of the pattern by degrees to allow alignment with the ports, several dry fit checks were necessary before I committed to glue.
This is a critical part of the build and it has to be correct.
 
Gluing is a tricky business given the length of the pattern.

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I chose to start at the bow, gluing and clamping along to the third port whilst checking the alignment at the stern. The pva was applied to the hull.
I did find it necessary to pin all along the bottom edge of the pattern to counter the tendency to curl.
I used slightly thicker pins than those provided for this purpose.

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I then progressively glued along the hull at three port intervals, constantly re-checking the fit of the jigs, and removing/ replacing them to avoid any risk of stray glue sticking them.

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It has taken the best part of a day to get one side fitted.

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A main consideration is to guard against marring the surface of the Pearwood veneers. Unwanted pva or ca will be problematical, and I have both clean water and Acetone handy to immediately clean off any spills.
 
Onto the Starboard side.
 
B.E.
13/01/2025

Following on my last post I have now removed the laser char from the all the deck beams and additional filler pieces. With another dry fit all the parts are a perfect fit. At this stage it is always a good idea to check the various dowels will locate through the various access holes. As can be seen in the following photo there are no issues.

I really liked @Blue Ensign idea of adding a stone floor effect to the stove area. After looking for some suitable image files I downloaded a couple of different patterns. Once I had resized the images they were printed out. Although I prefer the top pattern, as shown in the photo below, there is an embedded watermark which means I am unable to use that image.

After carefully cutting the holes for the bitts and stove I did a trial fit of the pattern. Overall it does not look too bad. I will need make another floor tile pattern as the one shown below is a tad too small. I am also deciding weather to glue the floor tile pattern to a 0.8mm wooden base before adding it to the deck. I will also compare the floor tile pattern with a version printed on photographic paper. This will probably be a bit bright and shiny.

 

Next, the outer bulwarks have to be attached, along with the strips that form the lower boundary of the gun ports.
The main strip for the lower edge of the gun ports was easy to lay. For the stern area, I hot-bent a second strip and then laid it with the front part butted up against it. However, I am not completely satisfied with the way the strip runs in the stern area, so I will have to make some improvements.

In the middle area, small gaps of approx. 0.1 to 0.2 mm in size were visible between the edge of the gun ports and the border moulding. I filled this with liquefied putty. The gun ports will have to be sanded flat later anyway. That's the nice thing about working with wood. You can fix anything somehow.

A strip had to be glued over the gun ports. There was a gap of about 1 mm between this and the lower strip. This was also filled with diluted putty, avoiding the area of the gun ports.

To fix and align the aft bulwarks, I pushed a square rod through the last gun port flush to the aft and upward.

With the help of spirit levels, the port and starboard bulwarks were levelled against each other.

Clamping the bulwarks after gluing them proved somewhat difficult, since the clamps should not touch the LED under any circumstances, so that essentially only the area of the gun deck gun ports was left for the clamps.

 
The bulwarks in the bow area are a good match.

 
 
What I don't like at all is the transition at the stern. I'll probably have to add a little more putty here over the next few days.

Post 17
Dressing the Hull
As a break from planking the time has come to fit many of those engraved Pearwood veneers that complete the outer look of the model.
These essentially replace the need for individual planking of the topsides and stern counters. I am mostly at ease with these simplifications as a similar system was used on the Sphinx model and I like the look of her.

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Firstly, additional veneer pieces representing the Knee of the head, including the Fiddle scroll, keel and stern post are glued and pegged into place.

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The stern post pieces needed a little fettling to fit. A gentle touch is required, these are fragile parts.

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I have not yet fitted the pre-printed lower stern boards, I have something in mind for that area.
 
B.E.
11/01/2025

Today's task was to glue the two laser etched patterns to the forward and rear deck bases. This was a task that I took my time, with plenty of dry fitting of items that would be added later on in the build process.
 
I started with the rear deck section. After checking the rear cabin pattern would locate in the slot I brushed plenty of plenty of wood glue on the base and I carefully aligned the laser etched deck pattern and used plenty of clamps. I also made sure once the deck pattern was in place that the rear cabin pattern would still locate in the slot. All was good, as can be seen in the photo below.

Once the clue had cured the clamps were removed and the assembly was added to the hull framework. The deck is held in place with 4 locking keys, as indicated by the blue arrows in the following photo. I was very pleased that everything was a perfect fit and the locking keys were inserted without any issues.

The rear panel was test fitted once again, and all looks good.

Before adding the laser etched deck to the front deck base I wanted to make sure that the various key components would locate in their respective slots. This is shown in the next two photos. All looks good.


It was now a case of brushing plenty of glue to the base and then clamping the laser etched deck in place. I used the sail room framework assembly to ensure the laser etched deck was correctly aligned.

As the glue was curing I made a few more checks that the various deck items would locate fully in their respective slots. By taking my time with the aspect of the build I am very happy that the various deck items could be fitted without any issues.

It was then a case of adding the forward deck assembly to the hull frame work. Once again the locking keys were inserted without any issues. The two cable house sides were also added to the hull frame and were locked in to place using a series of locking keys. The deck items and cabin patterns were test fitted (again). I have also checked the fitting of one of the deck beams and I was pleased that it was a perfect fit.





So far so good and I think taking time to double check the fittings before gluing parts together has certainly paid dividends. There are a few more parts to add before diluted glue will be painted in to the various bulkhead and deck joints.

I'm still fairing the hull.  Going very slowly, just because I'm being deliberately (overly probably) careful with my first time at this.  I also found that I needed to look for other build pics showing specific areas that I wasn't sure about, for example blending the fairing into the keel area, including understanding how the planking fairs in. 
 
But it's mostly into finishing sanding at this point.  The bow section portside is almost done, and I wanted to soak and dry fit the outer bulwark to check on my fairing there.  A hair more to do perhaps, then it's over to the starboard bow section to match it up.  The stern is maybe 85% done.
 
Even though it's slow going, I'm having a hoot with it, and I think I'd sufficiently bored family members yakking about it before Christmas that they gave me a "gift certificate" for another model if I wanted.  I'd been thinking about getting a smaller model just to have something else to go to that would be more straightforward.  So the other day I ordered Sherbourne from Vanguard Models.  But the idea is definitely not to drop Indy while I build Sherbourne.  I'll see how it goes, but in principle, Sherbourne can be a go-to now and then when I'm itching for faster progress on Indy, and also a good learning tool if e.g. I were to do planking on Sherbourne first.
 
I just have to be careful not to mix up parts and end up with a freakish Indybourne.
 
Nick

Post 16
Sanding the hull
For this I am using flexible sanding blocks and papers. I start with 120 grade papers.

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I decided not to use the B&D Mouse sander, seemed overkill on a small hull like this and Limewood is fairly soft to sand.
Indefatigable it ain’t.
Where there were hair gaps between the strakes pva was run in, sand dust sprinkled on, and then sanded in.

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I finished off with 180 paper.

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The hull seems to have scrubbed up nicely, I’m still amazed when I reach this point that it looks as good as it does given the state before sanding, but the display planking will be a job of a different calibre.
 
The next stage involves fitting the lower stern boards.

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These are pre-printed 0.8mm patterns that should just sit above the first planking layer, presumably to meet the second Pear layer.

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Worth checking before the hull sanding stuff is put away.

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The sanding job has taken around 3 hours, but I will review my efforts tomorrow as a final check.
I will apply sanding sealer to the hull but it’s far too cold in these ‘ere parts for outdoor work, so that will have to wait.
 
B.E.
09/01/2025
 
 

After quite a break, I'm back building a wooden (instead of card) ship, specifically Vanguard’s brig-sloop Harpy. To me it's an attractive vessel, only two masts so not too many ratlines, 18 guns only and of a size that I can accommodate. Also of course the designer, Chris Watton, has introduced many innovations to his kits, and it will be interesting to see what awaits.   Before buying the kit, I read James's prototype build and thought I can handle that, so the kit was ordered. Two weeks to Australia, which was very good considering that this was over Christmas/New Year. I'm not going to describe the kit's contents as James has done so in detail. So onto the build.   The first photo shows the bulkheads and the false keel. Four bulkheads (1,2,3 and 17) needed chamfering before assembly, and this was aided by them having a laser etched line to guide this. Five minutes after that photo and this is the result. Bulkhead 17 is put in place sometime later. All bulkheads fitted onto the false keel with little pressure needed, except for No3, which wouldn't quite go. A gentle pass with a file fixed that, only the char needed removing.   Chris’ innovations include not using any glue until quite some way along the build, with various parts being held together with pegs. This was done with the keel doublers, one on each side of the false keel, with the pegs going through all three pieces. The pegs for this were a little tight and needed a gentle touch with a sanding stick before inserting. The ply sub-decks were dry-fitted. The etched decks were also dry-fitted to check. No problem, everything fits together so well. Removal of the dry-fitted decks was easy, but here I deviated from the manual which calls for the ply sub-decks and the etched decks to be laminated before final fitting. But first, longitudinal braces were slotted into place and pegged. I know from experience that laminating two largish pieces of wood (or worse, card) can go horribly wrong if the alignment is not spot on, so after test dry-fitting, I decided to first fit the ply sub-decks to the hull then glue the etched decks to these as alignment would be easier. The fore deck is held in place with pegs and then the etched deck was glued to it. The aft deck needed to be glued in place first as the pegs that should have been used are designed to hold the laminated deck in place, not just the ply sub-deck.  
Cheers
 
 

It is now time to start the Harpy build in earnest. The first task was to remove the bulkheads from the MDF sheets. There are 17 bulkheads in total. There are laser engraved guide lines on bulkheads 1, 2 & 3 which enable these parts to have the initial pre fairing bevelling. I really like this design aspect.

I used a combination of a Ginour rotary tool and sanding stick to bevel these bulkheads to the guide lines. Bulkheads 1 -16 were then inserted into their respective positions on the keel, ensuring they were all fully engaged. As per normal with the Vanguard Model builds no glue is used as this stage.

The keel is very flimsy so thankfully this is soon corrected when the two keel doublers are added. To ensure these keel doublers are correctly aligned they are held in place using a series of locking keys.

The basic hull frames is then strengthen further when the two longitudinal support parts were pushed into place.
 
It was then time to check the installation of the two lower deck bases. No problems were encountered. There are locking keys to hold these deck bases in place, once fitted. However, before that can be done the laser engraved deck patterns need to be glued to the deck bases.

When removing the removing the bulkheads I also removed all the other parts from the MDF sheets which were
a) the various gun port jigs
b) the sail room framework
c) Two stern cabin frameworks.

When test fitting the forward laser engraved deck pattern there seemed to be a slight alignment issue when using pins located in the eyebolt openings. When I positioned the laser engraved deck using the sail room frame, I was much happier with the overall alignment, but I may need to use a micro drill for some of the eyebolts. In the photo below the laser etched deck is only dry fitted as I was checking which rubber bands would be best to hold the deck in place while the glue cures. I also want to check the other items will fit in the various positions before I commit to gluing the parts in place.

When looking at the laser engraved scuttles, I did consider copying Blue Ensign approach to plank the deck base and to add scuttle covers but after a little bit of thought I have decided to just use the laser engraved deck pattern as is. I will plan to follow Blue Ensign idea to fit a printed brick pattern for the stove base area as I think that it really enhances the build. I have also ordered some different hinges and handles from Syren which I will use for all the internal panel doors, as I really liked the ones Blue Ensign has fitted.