DelF

Looking very smooth - good work on the planking!

Just catching up Grant Gene Glenn. The name may change, but your work stays the same - top drawer as ever, complemented by superb photography. I particularly loved the quarter shots from the bow and stern. 

Derrick Derek

Good work on the cannon David. A couple of points:

5 hours ago, desalgu said:

I was doing very tiny parts, and I believe I didn't keep them separated by stirring enough while blackening.  Some blackened fine and others not so good.

I found the same problem. For me, the answer was to put the parts in a small leakproof container with the blackening solution and shake them for a minute. That way I was able to treat 100+ components in a single batch.

4 hours ago, desalgu said:

I really only used this to get a length for the breech rope, and it was still a bit of a guess.

Breech ropes were generally 3X the length of the barrel (Lavery; The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War, 1600-1815) to allow sufficient slack for just the right amount of recoil. I take that not to include the seizings, so for example with a 30mm barrel I would allow about 96mm to include short seizings at either end. If you make the rope too short it won't look right on the model - you should aim for it to drape down on the deck when the gun is run out, like this on the real Victory and my Speedy:

Sometimes breech ropes were frapped up out of the way, but they still had to have the same amount of slack. 

You're getting well ahead of me! I've been spending time on one of my other hobbies, astronomy, so I'll need to get back to the workshop to catch up😁

Derek

Oh no! Hope you feel better soon

You might want to double check Dave. I used a digital angle finder to measure the v-cutter, and whilst it's not easy to get a reading on such a small bit, I doubt if it was  as much as a degree or two off a right angle. Depending on the application that should be accurate enough.

Dave

I use this set of Proxxon bits, which includes a 90 degree v-cutter. I believe it can be bought separately.

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

On 1/26/2022 at 4:09 PM, Rustyj said:

I don't have good luck blackening so I appreciate your advice and will give it a go

13 hours ago, desalgu said:

After seeing what you do, I'll have to try blackening again sometime

I've found that blackening is like silver soldering - preparation is everything. Skimping on any part of the process will spoil the result. For me the game changer was the pickling bath that I read about in the forum post I referenced earlier. I couldn't find the Sparex brand in the UK but the jewellers' pickling solution I buy works fine. Apparently the "PH minus" products people use in spas and hot tubs also works. I can't vouch for that as my wife treats our spa as her personal domain and I'm not allowed near the chemicals. The second game changer was using the leakproof bottle to shake the components, enabling me to deal with large batches. The process may seem time consuming but once you develop a routine it's pretty straightforward and well worth the effort. Certainly a lot easier and more effective than painting!

One final point. If you lightly buff blackened components with a soft cloth or Q-tip they will look even more like iron - look at the cannon barrels in the earlier link. 

I would also suggest you look at Vanguard Models, one of the forum sponsors. As well as top of the range warships, the designer Chris Watton has also produced a range of fishing vessels that provide a good introduction to planking. Manuals for all the Vanguard range are viewable and downloadable on the website, and there are many build logs on the forum. Here's a good example. I should add that Vanguard ship worldwide.

Belfry - an exercise in char removal!

I spent an inordinate amount of time on this task, mostly dealing with char removal and related issues. Don't get me wrong, I love the quality of the laser cut parts and for me they add greatly to the model, but they bring their own challenges. I have also noticed a difference in the quality since Chris got his own laser cutting machine, For example, on Speedy some of the tiny parts such as cleats tended to crumble - they were so small they were as much char as wood - whereas on the Duchess the laser seems to have achieved very fine tolerances with no bad effects. This allows great detail in the laser cut parts; the downside is that the more intricate parts are more challenging to de-char. This is particularly true of the end grain where the char seems to be particularly stubborn, and of course the end grain on components cut from flat sheets can appear in a variety of places. Also, I'm working in boxwood which tends to show the char more than pear.

I use a combination of scraping, filing and sanding to remove char. I've even resorted to taking off fine slices on the table saw and mill. Sometimes however even that isn't enough, as evidenced by the belfry where I just couldn't get rid of the striped effect created by the end grain of the main upright sandwiched between two veneers:

I considered several options including painting the belfry and fitting a copper roof. I decided to maintain as much of the bare wood look I've gone for with this model. The solution was a spare piece of boxwood cut to 0.4 mm on the Byrnes saw. I  soaked it in boiling water for five minutes before clamping it to the belfry and leaving it to dry. I reverted to wet bending as I didn't think dry heat would work on such a short length with two fairly tight changes of direction. Anyway it worked. Once dry I clamped it again, this time with PVA:

Here it is after a light sanding:

Incidentally I've fitted the metal handle for the bell. This isn't described in the manual but is listed in the parts and shown on the plans. From a practical perspective it saves crew having to climb on the winch to ring the bell! The slightly tricky bit is ensuring the pin holding the bell is very short, otherwise it'll foul the hole required by the handle.

The next job will be preparing the winch that sits just aft of the belfry.

Derek

Gratings & Blackening Revisited

The bending method I tried out on the main hatch worked equally well on the hawse hatch:

With lots of hooks and ringbolts to blacken I decided to revisit the process I use. For some time now I've used Birchwood Casey Brass Black in conjunction with the preparation method I found here on the forum. In brief, I put the pieces to be blackened in jewelers' pickling solution heated in a slow cooker for 10 minutes (holding small components in a plastic tea strainer for ease of handling), then into a baking soda solution to neutralise the acid, then isopropyl alcohol for final degreasing (others use acetone but I prefer IPA) and finally a minute in Brass Black before rinsing in water.  Generally this works well, the only problem arising when I have to blacken large numbers of small components and I find it difficult to ensure all surfaces get properly treated. Consequently I would find myself doing lots of small blackening runs. The solution when I thought of it was so obvious I was annoyed with myself for not thinking of it sooner. I found a small plastic container that my wife had years ago for cleaning contact lenses and was therefore leak-proof. Here it is alongside the slow cooker (£cheap from Argos):

 Once out of the baking soda, put the components in the container with a few drops of IPA, shake vigorously, rinse and replace with Brass Black, shake again and rinse. Result - I was able to treat over 100 items in one go, all well and evenly blackened:

It's not easy to see on this photo, but the pumps didn't blacken quite so well. However I think that was because I'd glued the components together before blackening them and some of the CA had leaked where it oughtn't. Not a problem that some minor touching up won't solve.

More deck furniture next.

Derek

Gratings

The kit supplies nicely made wooden gratings and coamings for the fore, main and hawse hatches. The gratings on Speedy were photoetch which, although well made, didn't allow me to camber them. On previous build I had cambered gratings by rubbing them against sandpaper stuck to a board with a gentle concave curve. However the Duchess's gratings come with very finely etched lines to represent the battens and ledges and I didn't want to lose them, deciding instead to use heat bending.

Starting with the main hatch as a test piece, and with a fair degree of trepidation, I put it in freshly boiled water for a few minutes before clamping it face down inside a tin of the right diameter. I tried using the outside but found it was too tricky trying to get two clamps on such a small component. One clamp in the middle on the inside did the job:

Once dried the grating fitted neatly in the coaming with a pleasing camber - apologies for the poor focus but I was holding my phone one-handed:

The next job was to add a curved section to each end of the coaming to match the grating. I started by gluing two small pieces of scrap boxwood to the coaming. Once dried, I pared down the excess with a mini chisel and finished with sandpaper:

Here's the final result:

Worth the bit of extra effort, I think. I'm pleased that it's still possible to see the battens running fore and aft, as they should. Now I know the method works I'll try it on the hawse hatch. Although it's a lot smaller I should be able to impart a slight camber if I'm careful. However the fore hatch is a lot smaller still - the grating's only about 10mm square - so I'd be on a hiding to nothing if I tried to bend it. Besides, it's so small I suspect any camber would be almost imperceptible.

In between finishing hatches I'm planning to start blackening batches of ringbolts which need to be in place before I fit the deck furniture.

Thanks as always for the likes and supportive comments.

Derek 

More great work, some of which I'll shamelessly copy. I'll try that wood dye as an alternative to spraying, which I find a pain - especially the cleaning up. I'm also seriously tempted to get one or two of Chris's new boats.

Derek

Completely agree about the PE parts, especially the belaying pins which are far better than the out-of-scale Christmas tree bulbs that masquerade as pins in most kits. None of the hooks and eyebolts look flat when viewed normally on the model. The only ones I changed on Speedy were the ringbolts on the gun carriages - not because they looked flat but just because they looked a little large to my eye. They were easy to replace with home made versions.

I use these. Not sure if they would be available where you are?

Channels & preparing the spars

Pinning the channels to the hull and fitting the covering strips to the channels was straightforward, following the instructions in the build manual. 

Gluing the covering strips after the channels were in place proved quite tricky, especially on the fore channels where the strips had to be curved. Clamping worked but was messy and had to be redone in a couple of places. On reflection it would have been easier to fit the strips off the model. 

I tickled the channels with 400 grit paper to soften the edges and gently round the front corners:

A quick final job for the day was to cut timber from castello boxwood sheets for the spars. Nothing wrong with the kit supplied dowel, I just prefer to make my own from boxwood. I like the colour and the ability to work from square to octagonal to round. I was fortunate to find some small offcuts left over from Caroline and Speedy that gave me all the sizes I needed. To keep track I made up a quick spreadsheet checklist - possibly OTT but I've learned from experience how easy it is to go astray on jobs like this. Where necessary I'll add extra for holding in the lathe or milling machine. Here's the sheet and the initial spar blanks waiting to be cut to their final lengths.

I'm just glad there are no stuns'l booms! 

Next job, some more deck furniture interspersed with spar making.

Derek

Hi Dave

If you're treating Endeavour as a 6th rate built before 1773 then I would have no reason to doubt Lees. Half the topsail yard may sound small for the topgallant, but it actually looks OK on models of the period. The length of topgallant yards changed in 1773 from half to two thirds of the topsail yard which would make yours about 132mm if Endeavour had been built at this later date. Still well short of Caldercraft though.  Personally, I would trust Lees.

Derek

Hi Rodric

I can highly recommend the micro woodturning tools made by Robert Sorby of Sheffield. See here for their use on my current build. The set I have includes a parting tool which works well, although I must confess I often use the method @wefalck describes in the previous post. On small diameters, <5mm, I use a jeweler's piercing saw instead of a fretsaw.

Derek

1 hour ago, glbarlow said:

just how huge are those deadeyes and the rope making up the shrouds. 😳 

Just to prove I can be as pedantic as the next person, those look like the fore shrouds (judging by the anchor buoys) so should be 11 inches in circumference. Standard deadeyes were 1.5 times the shroud circumference, so 16.5 inches across. Or in layman’s terms, bloody big😂🤣

+1 for the Proxxon - I wouldn't be without it. If you go for it I would recommend you consider the optional 3-jaw chuck. The collets supplied with the lathe are fine, but the chuck makes setting up quicker and easier. You can also get a bed extension, but I've never needed it - as @LyleK1 says the hollow headstock allows you to turn any length.

8 hours ago, desalgu said:

I've done one post and am happy with how it looks.

That'll look great when it's gilded - you've matched the etched side perfectly.

The aft deck is looking very neat and shipshape.

Derek

15 hours ago, desalgu said:

 

I'm curious about using dark brown for tarred ropes.

Hi David. The colour of rigging in the days of sail is often a topic for debate!. My understanding is that standing rigging was treated with pine tar, also known as Stockholm tar, which is very dark but not the same as the tar used on roads nowadays. It can look black in ordinary light, until you see it alongside true black. The latter is just too stark for my taste. I googled this shot of Victory's shrouds which shows the effect light can have, with those in shadow looking black and the rest looking more or less brown as the sun hits them at different angles.

Notice also how pale the running rigging is. Of course modern ropes aren't necessarily the best guide to those used in Nelson's day, but by all accounts the hemp used in running rigging did bleach to a fairly light shade. Personally I don't like the rigging to look too bright, preferring a light grey such as this rigging on one of Victory's guns:

As with much of ship modelling, historical evidence on the colour of rigging can only take us so far, which leaves plenty of scope for exercising personal preference.

One final point on colour. In the later years of sail rope was replaced by steel cable for standing rigging. If the square riggers you saw were of this vintage you might have seen steel rigging painted black. 

On footropes, I agree the ones shown in the manual look a bit too straight. However to provide a secure platform for the sailors they wouldn't have been too loose either, apart from the upper yards that didn't have stirrups. Google helped again with this shot of the footrope on Victory's fore top yard:

You'll see there is a gentle curve between each pair of stirrups. I've found the best way to achieve this is by applying dilute PVA to the footrope after it has been fitted and then hanging about three bent pieces of wire (nothing too heavy) over each section of rope while it dries. This imparts a satisfactory catenary curve, and is best achieved before the yard is fitted to it's mast.

Hope this helps.

Derek

1 hour ago, David Lester said:

I think I'd like to tackle this one next myself.

I'm sure you'd enjoy it. You're doing a fine job on Speedy and the Duchess feels like a natural progression. Similar skill level, but with different points of interest and challenges - no coppering but lots of decoration, for example.

Steering Gear

The ship's wheel was a straightforward construction from laser cut wood and photoetch. I primed the PE by blackening the parts before painting them with Admiralty walnut.

Before rigging the wheel I prepared and fitted the four cleats required on the aft deck. It's worth spending a few minutes with a fine file to round the cleats into the correct shape:

The 2mm pear blocks for the tiller rope are truly tiny. As noted in @desalgu's log they appear considerably smaller than the regular blocks supplied if you don't go for the pearwood option. As I've said before, I would always go for the pear option in Vanguard kits - they rival any other commercial blocks on the market. To strop them I used Gutermann Mara 120 thread, seizing them to ring bolts with 18/0 fly tying thread. I've covered these techniques and materials extensively in my Speedy log . For the tiller rope itself I used the Rope Rocket to make a length of 0.25mm rope using three strands of Mara 120. 

I figured it would be easier to reeve the rope through the blocks before the ringbolts were fastened to the deck. As per build manual I applied dilute PVA to the rope to hold it round the wheel - here's the quadhands coming in useful whilst the glue was drying:

Incidentally, there is a right way to wind the rope on the wheel and a wrong way. On the port side the rope must come off the forward end of the wheel, and off the aft end to starboard. This is because the holes for the ringbolts immediately below the wheel are offset so that the port block is further forward, ensuring that the rope is led straight down to the blocks on either side. This might be clearer in a picture from the manual:

Needless to say I got it wrong, but fortunately spotted the problem before applying glue. Once I'd got that right glueing the wheel and the ringbolts in place was straightforward, finishing off with seizing the tiller rope to the aftmost ringbolt on each side:

In this picture I've also fitted the roof to the little tiller housing, rounding the front corners to better match the half round pillars on the front face.

Btw, the tiller rope looks a lot darker in this picture than in real life.

I might look at the channels next. Thanks for looking in.

Derek

13 hours ago, desalgu said:

 I'll get to use my new flush cutter to trim off excess brass rod.

That wheel's come up really well. At the risk of trying to teach Granny to suck eggs, be careful not to cut the brass rod too flush to the uprights otherwise you won't be able to smooth off the pinched ends. I cut mine about 1mm from the uprights and used a fine file to tidy up the ends:

Derek

Beautiful planking Gene Glenn.