Craigie65

The Wales
 
I marked up the bottom line of the wales and intended to fit and trim two runs of pear planks to the line.
In the end I tapered the fore and aft ends of the planks to the the line of the lower edge of the wales but left the midsection, where I thought it would be easier to trim back the planks.


The forward end of each wale was sanded back as far as I dared to appear that it tapered into the rabbet at the prow when glued in place.
To achieve the required curve at the bow, the patterns were soaked and clamped to the hull and left to dry overnight.
 
I used CA gel to fix both the under-planking and the wales, applying a few sections at time. In this way the need for awkward clamping was largely avoided. I had to redo the centre section on both sides where it misaligned with the etching on the bulwark pattern.
Once I was happy with the fit, it was time to cut back the excess planking.
I was nervous of cutting into the wales as I went, so as some protection from accidental damage, I used a length of fret that formed the top line of wales held in place with rubber bands and clamps and worked my way slowly along.

Completed without mishap, I finished off by scraping along the line and a light sand.

 A bit of staining on the prow which needs some attention.


Thanks for the likes and on to the pear layer of planking
 
David
 

Forgot about the chimney, easily fixed though.

Post 95
Main stay. (Part 2)
The lower end of the stays have hearts turned in.
I am using Syren Resin versions, (6mm) for the Main Stay and (5mm) for the Preventer.
The kit provided deadeyes for this purpose are easier to fit than hearts and lanyards, but were an old fashioned option by the  time of Harpy.

4901a
It is easier to fit the Preventer stay and collar with the Main stay and Fore shrouds out of the way.
I had fitted the Preventer stay at this point but found I had fed it incorrectly through the mast top.
Annoying when you have spent  time doing tiny seizing and fitting of lanyards, but I couldn’t let it stand.

4895a

4897a

4898a
Lashing of the Main stay I used Syren 0.45mm line.
For the collar 0.88 mm line served with 0.1mm line was used. The tricky part of the collar is forming the eye in one short leg.
 
Main Preventer stay

4904a
Stropping the Preventer stay heart.
 
4905a

4908a
0.3mm line used for the Lanyard.

4909a

4910a
I can now attend to the Fore Shrouds.
 
B.E.
27/06/2025
 
 

A problem, for sure. But – a good one to have.

It's going well! The more complex the designs, the longer these things take.
 
A lot of CAD work, so nothing to show as yet. I can tell you the decal sheet is done and has been delivered, and most of the resin print production is done.
 
It is quite a large and complex kit with many pre cut and pre engraved parts, the latter more than even Indy, and all of this takes time to develop. Once I start cutting my final designs and build it up, for Jim to follow, I can post pics of my final prototype build, but until then, it is all just on CAD, on my PC. This applies also to the photo etched files. I need to complete these at the same time the laser cut designs are more or less cooked, and those are 90% done.
 
Rest assured though, this is all I am working on, although I do get side tracked a lot due to having to produce more stock for current kits....

Work has continued on the bowsprit. As can be seen in the photo below I have added all the deadeyes and blocks, using the method detailed in my previous post.

I then decided to add the spritsail yard prior to installation of the bowsprit to the Harpy. The spritsail lifts have been rigged and will be belayed once the bowsprit has been installed.

The bow sprit was then installed.

Next it was time to add the gammoning. To do this a thimble needs to be added to one end of the gammoning thread. As can be seen in the next set of photos this is an easy task, using the quad hands.

The next set of photos shows various stages of adding the gammoning, including the tying off. Please note I did redo the start as the way I used the thimble in the first photo below was not right.

I will look into it. Thanks for the advice again Craig.
 
I will probably keep building as I see it now. But I dont have as much time on my hands. And I got other interests in modeltrains too. 

Hi Robin,
I have the same difficulty with these bulkheads.  
For the stern the planking runs all the way to the keel, so for bulkheads 13 and 14 the measured length includes the area to the keel.  For bulkheads 15 and 16 these only have a few planks running from bulkhead 14. Therefore I just use the plank width measured at bulkhead 14.  You may need a stealer in this area.
 
For the bow, the 1st bulkhead is usually similar to number 2.  I think of it as part of a sphere with bulkhead 1 at 90 degrees to bulkhead 2.  
 
Hope that helps!
 
good luck 

As for stealer, the trick is to have additional planks that are wider than those provided in the kit.  You can then have a wider plank at the stern. I have a stock of pear strips from Hobbymill.EU.  The owner, Vahur is a sponsor of this site.  Worth a look if you are going to build more?

Thanks Andrew, much appreciated.

Great progress Richard, the deck and fitting/fixtures look very neat! 

Work proceeds. The photo shows several items, some just from the fret, some partly completed, and others ready for installation. Pieces of the winch are in the top left corner, those for the skylight are in the bottom right corner, there are the two gallows (one complete), the fore bitt and the completed bowspit bitt. Paint has only been applied to the above deck portion of each part.

The winch was built partly on the ship, partly off. There are two pices of brass wire required, one 19mm long and the other 32mm long. Both of these are slightly over-long, and if I had simply built the winch off ship, it would not have fitted into the pre-cut slots on the deck. The upper, shorter wire was emplaced in the two side pieces whilst these were fitted into the slots in the deck. These were kept vertical and a small drop of gel CA was applied to the ends of the wire to lock it in place and correctly spaced. This assembly was then removed and the remainder of the parts fitted. Dry fitting of the lower wire was done before final gluing. The ends of the wires were then trimmed. A little bit fiddly, but it turned out quite well.


The skylight was done according to the instructions, with the PE window frames painted and backed by clear plastic. These were then pushed into place finishing flush with the outer surface of the skylight hatch. No glue was needed. The photo shows the skylight just before final assembly (the red colour in the photo is a bit off). Some touch up of the paint on the window frames was needed first.

The two gallows and the two bitts were easily assembled.  All parts now in place on the deck. I have just realised that I have forgotten to add the stove chimney - ah well, a job for tomorrow.




Cheers
 
 

Thanks for all the likes, and to those who have just dropped by.
 
The next job was to add the hatches along the centre of Harpy. The first photo is of the parts for all the hatches plus the completed ladder for the forehatch. The various parts were then painted and assembled. The actual gratings were firstly soaked for a while then bent around a suitably sized cup using masking tape to hold them in place, and left to thoroughly dry. Some of the gratings needed slight, gentle sanding to allow them to fit correctly into the coamings. No issues with that. When dry-fitting the completed hatches into their respective deck cutouts, some slight sanding was required to allow them to seat fully home (and this check should actually have been done before painting the coamings). Again no issue, but as always, dry-fitting before gluing was necessary to check the fitting. Lastly, the ladder for the forehatch was carefully glued in place. A little tricky, but yet again, a couple of dry runs before gluing, sorted out potential problems. The previously completed companionway was also added at this time.





Cheers.
 

Good Saturday afternoon MSW.  Got a lot of pictures for you today.
 
First up is finishing the treenailing.  I got my Elmers natural wood filler in the mail and used a scrap of wood to press it into the holes I had drilled last post.  Doesn't look great while drying.

the I scraped and sanded and much better

I dinged up the wales some but will touchup paint them at the end.
 
Next up was the moldings.  This took me a while.  The kit includes a plastic material that has been laser-cut with all 3 moldings but I wanted to create my own.  After lots of searching (both in Chuck's Speedwell instructions and David's and Greg's original Speedwell books) I was unable to find the exact profile in cross-section.   So I winged it; the pictures looked like a simple double bead.   The plan shows the lower molding to be 1/8" ish wide and maybe a little thinner than the channel.   Worried that the channel I make might not be the same thickness as the channel shown in the plans I built mine early.  Pretty simple- a sandwich of 2 thin laser cut pieces top and bottom, the middle is a thicker piece.  Sand off the char and round the middle piece.  I made pegs to align the parts and used white glue sparingly placed so it didn't squeeze-out.

The channel turned out to be a bout 1/8" thick so good, on to the molding.  AVC is soft for scraping as I've said in the past so I cut an 1/8" thick strip of what I think is maple.  Then I cut the edge to follow the diagonally running grain.

Next I made my scraper, going with a hacksaw blade this time.  It took a couple tries.  After clamping the hacksaw blade in a metal vise I used a cut-off disk in my dremel at low speed to make the initial grooves and refined with some small cheap files (not my nice Vallorbe's).  The pattern I used is the lowest.  

And here I'm scraping the wood by running the blade gently tilted in both directions (it had a definite direction it scraped easier).  

then cut off the molded section with my Veritas String cutter.  

I cut it a little thick and refined with my veritas miniplane and then some sandpaper sticks until the molding was thin enough. 

 
To glue it in place I used white glue sparingly to minimize squeezeout.  The tiny piece of molding on the other side of the cannon port was then shaped to fit the channel and then glued in place.
 
And finally the painted frieze.  The kit includes 3 strips and thats a good thing because I messed up all 3.  The first two by not cutting evenly and tearing the edges.  The third I sprayed on too much Krylon digital photo and paper protectant (Chuck had recommended this in his 18th century whaleboat kit that ModelShipways sells and it worked well for me).  But it was too easy to "spray 1 more time" and ridges of solidified spray formed along the edges of the strip.  Below you can barely see the ridges but they were there and bugging me.
The directions recommend using a glue stick - the one I could find was blue that is supposed to turn clear when it dries, but my son (who is 10 years old) remarked while walking by that the blue doesn't truly go away.  This seems to be his area of expertise so i practiced using one of my failed strips of frieze and some scrap wood with a very thin coat of white glue and it worked great.  

After taking this picture I scraped the painted frieze off and printed a bunch more (6 just in case) and sprayed them with ONE coat of Krylon and resisted with all my might spraying more.  They look fine so I'll pick one and glue it on.
 
And thats where we are as of 2:42pm today.
 
thanks for reading
 
Cisco

Due to the heat wave we are currently enjoying in the UK my time is the shipyard has been severely limited as I have spent much more time in the garden.
 
When grabbing a bit of time in the shipyard I have been working on adding the various blocks and deadeyes to the bowsprit and spritsail yard.
 
The attached plan shows the requirement with regards to the deadeye rings.


I thought I would share the process I am using for adding the 4 x deadeye rings.
 
I start by looping a length of thread around the deadeye and securing with a reef knot. The deadeye is then placed in the quad hands so the seizing can be added.

In the next photo I have added the seizing to the deadeye.

Next I create a loop with one end of the thread, noting the other thread end has been cut away. This is then held in the quad hands so the loop can be seized.
Once the loop has been seized the loop is threaded on to another length of thread, as shown below.

The loop can the be closed up by pulling the free end of thread, and the excess thread is then cut away. With all four deadeyes in place the thread can be secured to the bowsprit. The position of deadeyes can then be adjusted, as necessary.
 
 

Good evening everyone, thank you for comments and likes
 
day 19- a recipe for disaster
but so far avoided- hinged gunports
 
Come on AL there has to be a better way for a gunport template
I copied the template onto printer paper, cut them out and built them up on the original template, 
took a lot of messing around to hopefully have them in the right place
 
as non of these are going to be open, i just had to remove the top planking, this side has now been roughly removed, and require some tidying up to get the lids to fit
 
free flood ports still to be marked out
 
 
 
 

 

good evening everyone
thank you for comments and likes
 
Day 18 completed 2nd planking
not in a hurry to do that again, double planking using 1mm x 5mm used appx 150 meters 
sanded using 240 grit, will do again later with a finer grade after touching up a few places, like the stern where the rudder post will eventually go, worse to come soon (gunports)
 
 
 

Sanded, filled, and sanded; ready for second planking now.  Just have to attach stem and keel finish pieces.  The rabbet is good, and the first planking in way of the rudder/stern area is thinned to allow for second planking there to be flush to the finish keel and stern/rudder post.  I had to thin the first planking in that area down to paper thin to do that, and the second planking there will have to be sanded down pretty thin, but it shouldn't be an issue.
 
Nick

i will still have to rebate the lids into 2nd planking, but none of the 140 odd liners needed, apart from the upper deck ones,  i doubt very much that with a full set of sails there would be many lids open,
Sails to get right will be the issue on this build, was going to do then on a 1/64 Cutty Sark, but thats not available for now

Good evening everyone, thank you for comments and likes
 
day 14 started 2nd planking
 
Well the 1st planking was very messy, but it was so very well worth the trouble to do it, im not a lover of planking in the first place, but with 16 frames using 2mm stripwood in 300mm lengths would have done me in
 
i have thought quite a bit how i would like to present this build and have decided - wait for it......................
 
A all gunport lids will be shut
B i will attempt to do sails on her, whether to use the kit supplied ones or do my own, still to be decided
C_ put some lights on her
 
 
 

Post 89
Now for the tricky bit -Topmasts
The kit version Topmasts are simplified but will still take some careful work using 6mm dowel. There is tapering  and creating the flared hounds, and a clean rectangular head.
 
Accurately shaped topmasts are the most complicated masts to make because they have both square and octagonal lower sections, a tapering round mid-section, rising to flared hounds, and a rectangular head.
Additionally sheaves set at a diagonal angle are required in the heel.
 
I do happen to have a couple of topmasts I made earlier during the course of my Pegasus build.
These were made to Steel’s specifications, and again by luck closely match the kit sizes.

007
The Topmast drawn out and prepared for shaping on a ‘V’  cradle.
Square stock is used throughout, it is easier to round the section between the lower mast cap and the Topmast hounds, than create the non round sections from dowel.

028
The lower section showing the square and octagonal detail and the Top rope sheaves.

029
The head section detailing the hounds.

025
The completed Topmasts.

4744a

4739a
I had to adjust them slightly to fit Harpy, the critical area being the fit between the fid hole created by the crosstrees and trestletrees.
In reality the Topmast should slide up through this section using the Topropes.
 
The kit has the Topmasts at the same length for both Fore and Main. This follows the Steel table for a 200 ton Brig.

4740a
The masts I have used  are based on a 300 ton sloop where the Main Topmast  is slightly longer by around 12mm.
Harpy is a Brig sloop, and in my version I have gone more Sloop than Brig, based on the vessel weight.


4748a
As it happens the Fore Topmast matches the Kit plan drawings. The extension at the bottom is the block below the heel, which has the lower Toprope sheaves.
 
Onwards…
 
B.E.
16/06/2025

good evening everyone
 
Day 10 1st planking port side complete
 
thank you for comments and likes
 
this build is quite the monster, i have just finished 1st planking the port side and she has taken 50 lengths of 1x5mm lime strip, the other side is progressing.
Although a slightly smaller scale than the 1/72 Victory she looks a far bigger hull. (i need to check that fact out), will certainly dominate the display area when completed
The planking is not pretty at all but gives me a lovely base for the next layer once the planking is complete i need to mark out the gunports over 4 deck levels

Post 87
Lower mast rigging -  Part two
Fore and Main shrouds
I will be using dyed Syren 0.88mmm line for the purpose.

4653a
The line lengths are held under tension for a few hours before fitting to take any spring out of them.
The shrouds are put over the masthead in pairs starting on the sb side, then working alternate sides.
The shrouds are served  for the centre section around the masthead and  down to the futtocks.
The Foremost shroud is usually served overall to counter chafing from the  sails.

4679a
Once served I attend to the seizing on a dummy masthead and then slip over the  real thing. This is much easier than making up the full mast sets off model, and then doing the work with the masts in place.

4682a
The shroud is  re-dipped in the colouring solution.

4688a
When rigging I always work from aft forward so I begin with the Main mast. Fortunately there are an even set of shrouds so  on this mast I can avoid the complication of a splice.
Fore Mast
There are two sets of two and a single spliced shroud that I have fitted over the masthead first.

4684a
This foremost shroud, as with the Main shrouds, is served overall. The spliced section needs to be formed first as with the Pendent of tackles.
This is a lengthy piece of serving covering 650 mm overall, and as can be seen there is a degree of kink in the line  by reason of the serving.

4687a
I put this set under weights to even the line out.

4692a

4693a

4694a
The shroud sets are all made up; they will now be removed for final fettlin.’
 
I have been having second thoughts about the Pendents of tackles. I think the 6mm blocks (15”) look a little heavy, and the seizings a little bulky.
I have some of Chuck’s  new resin thimbles on order, so a replacement set will be made up.
 
B.E.
12/06/2025
 
 
 

 

All of the bulkheads and stiffners have been glued to the former and themselves, this thing is now rock solid and a very sturdy platform for everything thats to come.
 
I have begun installing all of the jigs that will support the upper parts until the model has been planked on the outside, these jigs are NOT to be glued to the model as they will be removed later for all the internal work, here you can see the forward one.



 
 

day 6 1st planking
good evening everyone
 
no regrets at all on changing the planking from single to double, i have 100m of 1x5mm lime strip on its way, might need some more, at present im using anything left from previous builds
gave her a bit of a sanding, starting to look like the instructions now, working on the gundeck before it more of less gets covered over