glbarlow

I have a different way of doing this but yours is much better. I'm going to have to read it a couple of times more when I get to this point on Cheerful. I'm not exactly clear on how you finally closed "the circle" (right photo two up from bottom) on the bowsprit once you have the four deadeyes seized. As usual, very nice work. I see the quad hands is working out well - glad I have one now. Beats the old beat up third hands thing I've had for years.

Sorry Bob, hope things get better soon.

Amazing work, well beyond anything I’d ever try. My patience is tested enough as it is with my models. Nicely done!

Thanks, that I think is a tribute to the extra time spent on fairing at the very beginning I wish I had a good answer other than good tweezers, 2.0 yellow tinted (improves contrast) reading glasses, and two bright Daylight lights on the bench. I fiddled and fumbled about dropping and losing little wire hinges and 1mm brass tubing quite a bit. I like how it turned out, but glad it’s done.

The HMS Surprise prototype has been shown on their website as coming soon for over 5 years. They’ve not made a single update to that website in all that time. Years ago I sent an inquiry and got a similar response. I will be surprised if the Surprise is ever released, but we can all hope.

Thanks BE and Derek, I appreciate your comments! I was only able to enjoy ship building in short increments over the last several weeks. Water is a tough thing to deal with when it doesn't go where it's supposed to go.

The kitchen was a pain, but we did use the opportunity to update it so at least there is the one upside. I thought about adapting some of the Clear Alder used in our cabinets in the model, but its way to hard and too much grain for ship building, but it would have been funny to do.

I elected to take what I thought was a short diversion, and at the same time had a larger diversion thrust upon me. The large one was a long undetected leak in our dishwasher drain resulted in a six week demolition and reconstruction of our kitchen. Not fun, lots of contractors, noise and dust to deal with every day and not much ship time at all. But enough of that. What I though was going to be a short diversion while all the above was going on, was completing the stern port lids. I used Chuck’s hinge mini-kit with the instructions printed from his website. It all seems pretty straight forward, but as our British friends say there is a lot of fiddling to get all the tiny pieces to come together. First I glued three strips of planking together, long enough to cut more than two lids. I measured, cut, and gently sanded to get those planks to fit flush to the opening (the WOP will bring out the seams as its done on the rest of the planking, they show up faint here). Once that was done I measured, cut and glued and painted red a smaller set of planks to to fit within the interior of the port (the difference of the 1/64th rabbit), shown here inboard with a photo also designed to display the most possible dust particles (I cut the bowsprit hole earlier today, more on that later). I created the lid lift ring by wrapping 24 gauge black anodized wire around the right size drill bit and with a little snipping, shaping, and bending, pulled it through the lid. So far, easy and fun. The fiddling comes not in following the instructions to paint, mount and install the hinge plates or cutting 1mm lengths of tiny brass tubing for the hinges along with very short pieces of 28 gauge wire, it’s getting it all fitted together and mounted. Nothing difficult in concept, just working with tiny pieces and tiny holes. Between dealing with contractors in the kitchen I managed to get it done over a longer period than I had anticipated. Anyway…patience tested and passed. Every stern on every model I’ve build has been an adventure. It seems on many kits it’s an afterthought, just that thing at the end of the ship. At least in my case it was always an adventure in adapting and overcoming little challenges to get everything to fit and call it a stern. None of that’s true with @Chuck Cheerful. It is a well guided process from the initial base, to adding the counter, completing the planking as it rises up then finishing it off with a fun to make square tuck. Then there’s the fit of the transom to the counter and the addition of rail and moulding strips. There’s my choice to follow Chuck with a RED painted counter with me adding black to the fashion pieces either side meeting the transom rail and the contrast of my choice of a natural stern post, and of course those fiddlely port lids. It all works, it looks like a stern should look in my humble opinion. I’m kind of pleased with the final finished stern of my Cheerful (still one more coat of WOP to go). I hope you like it and decide to build one of your own. The contractors are gone, now I’ll do the port side moulding.

Very sharp looking deck, very crisp work. I don’t see any reason to leave the swivel guns free. You won’t move them once the model is complete and on the shelf. I don’t even install them on the mounts until almost done with the final rigging, they get in the way and become great at snagging lines. It’s usually one of my last steps.

Shapeways.com. Lots of people in multiple scales. I have a mini-me.

I have always been inspired by your work, all the way back to the Confederacy. Now I need to go back and improve the sills on my gunports after adding the spirketting

Do you have the masts already installed on the hull? That would make adding block challenging, but seems like you’re solving the problems as you come to them. I also thing it’s always good practice to drill out the blocks before installing them, if nothing more to give the rope a smooth passage as it’s being run. I’ve also been away from the bench due to having to reconstruct and renovate our kitchen due to a major water leak. Not fun.

Gluing on these long thin strips is such fun... You made nice work of it.

Sometimes this is the best judge regardless of specs. “In my mind’s eye” is a valid measurement in my book.

As I have recently learned with Cheerful , moulding can be easily scraped from strip wood and a piece of filed brass. No need to increase kit costs. Even not scraped as a plain strip it can serve the purpose.

Thanks BE, your Cheerful log is one I frequently visit for ‘how-to’ as I move to the next step. So much about Chuck’s design just works right, it’s made my dive into semi-scratch building so much more fun. The mini-me is kinda fun, plus I like it for the sense of scale.

I don’t really know yet, it isn’t something I’ll use often and it’s a moderately priced unit. It does have variable speed, does both pin and painless blades, has a light and a blower. Those are about all The features I was looking for. I have a jewelers saw which was quite handy reducing the stern frames as I described here in my log. The scroll saw was quite smooth cutting out the bow portion of the cap rail. I don’t think it will be a big part of my modeling, I’m fine with my hand tools, but it will be handy when I need it.

That is kinda what I wear everyday - the valet is always furious.

The things I don’t know...thanks Derek. So what are the grits of your sandpaper row? So you put honing fluid on sandpaper? That guy has a lot of chisels and planes on his shelves, now I feel like I’ve neglected my tools. For the record I have a number of high end knives, and they are all kept sharp. I’m not a complete poser.

Thanks Rusty.

I love these tools, they are extremely well made. I use them a lot and for a lot more than a chisel’s typical use. I’m going to have to sort out how to sharpen them soon

Thanks Derek. I appreciate the kind words. I'm kinda happy with how its turning out. I like how the planks are a bit varying in color that stands out in that photo, it helps bring out the butt joints and that it isn't a single long run of planks.

For us Americans, I looked this up. Fettle: to prepare or arrange (a thing, oneself, etc), esp to put a finishing touch to. b. to repair or mend (something). Not sure if BE is in Yorkshire, there it means to put in order. It's a cool word, but one I'd never seen until reading BE's logs 🙂 Oh, and nice work as always BE. I enjoy your ever informative logs.

Thank you very much for saying so. Yes, the Amati scrapers were a bust, at least for this model. There are step profiles that would have worked on the 3/32 square strip, but I just didn't like the look of them. I'd recommend not going to thick on the brass. I had several sizes on hand and determined 1/32nd thick brass was best for me.

I moved to the cap rails next knowing I’d be doing a bit of sanding (and hacking up my nice bulwark paint job). I guess I could have cut out the bow section from 1/16 sheet with a #11 blade, but it was a good excuse to purchase a scroll saw. I cut out a template of the bow by tracing its outline on card stock and transferring that to the wood, along with a line 5/32 inside that one. Though a tool I’ve never used, me and the scroll saw made short work of cutting out the bow pieces, I then sanded the rail flush both inside and outside the ship. I elected to place my rail in three sections to make managing the curve a bit easier and knowing I could fill any gaps and cover with paint. I cut and sanded flush the tops of the fashion pieces (on many occasions I've snagged them and almost broke them off, no more of that) having added the taffrail earlier. I also decided to paint the fashion pieces black to match the wales and cap rail, for me it seemed to bring it all together. I’m happy with how the first phase of the cap rail turned out. As you know from my last couple of posts I’ve had a good amount of angst on how best to do the fancy moulding. In the end it was just as Chuck and others have described, cutting a profile into a piece of brass. The hard part was getting a small enough profile to work. A seemingly no brainer, it needed to be near exactly 1/16 wide and 1/32 deep. My first several attempts were just too big as were all 6 of the Amati scrapers I acquired. My approach was to use a long piece of smooth floor tile, apply a long strip of double sided tape, lay the strip wood on it and scrape. First lightly to set the groove, then tilted forward to cut, straight up to smooth, tilted backward to cut, and repeat until the bottom of the brass either side of the profile was riding the tile. By the last piece I said to myself “Self, that wasn’t so hard now was it..” Who knew. This again is where great design comes together. A long time ago part of building the sheer above the wales included two 1/16 strips. Those strips now are the guidelines for the two strips of fancy moulding, no guesswork or measurement required, just follow the yellow wood road. My favored approach is to run the moulding over the open ports to keep a smooth flowing line from bow to stern. I’m comfortable cutting them out with a #11 blade. It was bit more challenging with the rabbit, I could only use the very tip of the blade. Another reason I buy #11 blades in lots of 100, I change them often. Not being clever enough to carve two separate moulding designs, I was a little clever by turning one upside down from the other. At any rate I like the symmetry as it turned out. A note: I’ve repeatedly said how much I like the Alaskan Yellow Cedar on this model. However here it just wouldn’t work. the 1/32 strips shredded when scraped (at least scraped by me). Chuck was kind enough to ship me a selection of Boxwood strips which proved perfect and easy to shape. I cut the hawse plates from 1/32 wood by once again rubber cementing the template cut from the monograph but with an angle to match my stem, easy. I later mounted them to the ship, careful to follow Chuck’s direction to cut the holes parallel to the keel. I colored the inside of the hawse hole with graphite pencil to simulate lead sheathing as per Chuck's monograph. Next up is the “ear” at the bow stem, also from boxwood to match the moulding. Cutting one of these little jewels, which I first rough cut with my new scroll saw then shaped with needle files and sanding, was challenging enough. The real fun part was cutting as second one to match the first one, (you can see in the photo I wasn’t quite there yet). Then when you’ve done that, using the scraper to cut in the same moulding design as the strips. I was wishing for thinner fingers, yet I managed to pull it off with a good deal of time and patience. Did I mention patience and time... The last step before painting is adding a third strip of 1/32 moulding to the outer edge of the cap rail. I have to say it makes for a simple but elegant cap rail. I’m glad I asked questions, practiced, made prototypes, and wound up here with the three strips - it makes the hull really pop (even though its still sanded above the wales at this point). Then it's time to paint the rail black, touch up the red, touch up the black, scrape off the side, touch up again, back and forth. Though it's a process made easier by Tamiya tape, I’m pretty picky about paint lines. I used Admiralty Paint Dull Black for the cap rail and fashion pieces. Before moving onto the deck, I decided to add the boarding steps. I brought out my new scraping station and repeated the process with a new profile for the steps (I know how to do this now, and I didn’t care for the Amati scraper options). I thought of giving the mill a go, but for a cutter I decided a basic step would be appropriate and at this point I was comfortable scraping them, this time from 3/32 square boxwood strip. I needed six identical steps so naturally I made twelve and selected the best six, ok eight, to use for the final shaping and sanding. And with all that, along with a fresh coat of (not quite dry so I can’t polish it up yet) WOP the starboard side of my hull is complete. Now off to the port side and do it all again.