BLACK VIKING

Evening all,   right  that's Five more KGL Light  finished and put away in the box  - ready for my next instalment.
 
Oh,   I also gave one of the chaps and eye patch after he received and eye injury.
 
OC.

The hatch and gratings are next.  The coamings and head ledges will be connected with half-lap joints.  These are easily made with hand saw and chisel.  There is a rabbet on the coaming to support the grating.  The hatch may appear overly tall but keep in mind that the hatch sits on top of the beams and carlings, not on top of the deck planking.  This is also a top deck hatch which would be taller to prevent water from entering through the hatch.

Glue up the head ledge and coaming.  Once dry, install the rabbet for a tight fit.  The outer edges and corners need to be rounded off to the level of the deck.  The lower two inches is left square for a tight fit with the deck planking.  The upper half of the hatch is also chamfered 1/2".  In the picture below you can see the rounding of the edges and the sharp corners at the deck.  Please make your rabbet nicer than mine!  The picture also shows the relative height difference between upper and lower deck hatches.  Both of these hatches are made from the same sheet of cherry.  I did not apply a finish yet to the upper one.

There are a few things on the weather decks that draw the observer's eye.  One of them is the gratings (of course, the capstan is another).  Once you learn how to make your own grating, you will never go back to kit-supplied ones.  What makes kit gratings so bad?  They are almost always out of scale.  A prototypical grating would have battens and ledges that are approximately two inches wide with similar sized openings.  Remember, sailors walked on these gratings so the openings need to be small enough to prevent a foot or shoe from getting caught in it.  I measured leftover grating parts from two kits.  The first was from a 1:96 Victory.  The blanks were scale 3.5" wide with openings over 10 inches square!  The other was from the 1:62 Prince.  These blanks were almost five inches wide with similar sized openings.  The next problem is that they never fit the opening.  You always end up with gratings that do not have solid wood on all four sides.  Well, I always did.  Finally, they are made from soft wood, so the teeth break off easily.  Choose a hardwood for these.  
 
They are incredibly easy to make if you have a hobby circular saw.  And you only need enough toothed slats for the ledges; the battens are narrow slats of wood that fit into the the recesses of the ledges.  Here is another "trick".  Even though I make my hatches first and fit the grating to them, if you have any concern about sizing your grating correctly, make it first and then build the hatch around the completed grating.  Take a look at the picture below.  There is a solid slat of wood on all four sides of the grating.  If you look carefully you can the the difference in thickness between the battens and the ledges.  The openings are the same size as the width of the slats.

This is a photograph of my cousin, Edward Polk, from the little town of Oxford, Florida. He is standing between his father and mother while the photo was taken just before he set off to sea during World War II. Eddie served aboard the USS Janssen, an Edsall class destroyer, DE396.
Eddie never returned home to see his parents again after being lost at sea on15 Mar 1944 in a violent storm off the coast of North Africa. he was only 20 years old. Just this past week, a gentleman from Massachusetts whose father served aboard the same ship with Eddie and was a close friend, reached out to find me and gave me photos and written history of the ship. The photos below are of Eddie's memorial service aboard the Janssen. Eddie was the only living child of my great uncle and great aunt. There is a reason why his generation are called "the greatest generation." Such sacrifice. My uncle and aunt grieved his loss until the day they died.
I am so grateful this gentleman reached out with the photos. I am sure my aunt and uncle would have appreciated it. They never knew any detail of Eddie's loss, only that he was lost at sea.
 
 

Somehow he found my family tree on Ancestry. That's the way he contacted me, through the Ancestry personal message system. Apparently his dad had the written my cousin's name on the memorial service photos. As it turned out, the man who contacted me was a commercial fisherman in Massachusetts and is well aware of the perils of storms and going overboard in rough seas. He said that often sailors are lost this way.

Further on the standing rigging.
 
Foremast question :
What is the angle at which the ratlines of the foremastge are placed?
On 2 of my "live examples", they have problems keeping the same distance from the deadeyes

Looking at drawings, the ratlines are in line with the railing and the deadeyes. So we go for the latter method.

Oops forgot this one (but this is not on Breughel's drawing)

Probably wrong

Hopefully correct


Ratlines done work in progress

Blocks for the main mast forestay

Rope serving exercise, looks good so far 

 
 
Thanks for following, comments and likes
 

Hi, some new updates:
 

Final gun deck. Some planks not mounted to show whats beneath. 
 
I will have fake vertical bars and after looking in the Backer linked Wasa dream pictures I decided to show a bit of the lower part and diversify the bars a bit.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I will also show the upper sides of the bars sticking up above the weather deck. I think I will only have one of the cannon holes on upper deck - not both.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

 

 
I will solder them and paint them black.

Carving out the M1 Garand 2 1/4" at this scale. (I use this photo to help scale items by eye).
 

 

 
 

This is multipart video build log backdating the 1/72 Revell PT 579/589 kit to PT 489.
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
Paul

In my research of the U. S. Revenue Cutter Service, I had come upon interesting items not normally written about.  I am writing a small article about the overhaul of the U. S. Revenue Schooner Van Buren, commanded by Captain Thomas C. Rudulph, at Charleston, South Carolina during September 1845.

One of the more unusual things noted in the vessel's logs was as described,
The Gunner worked on the deck guns that remained aboard because the four 12-pounders weighed one thousand pounds each plus about three hundred pounds for each wood carriage.  Custom had the guns “blackened” in previous years, but Rudulph put his brand on them this time.  On September 16, 1845, the ship’s chandler, Captain Hugh E. Vincent, [ship chandler] delivered four pounds of “red ochre.” The Gunner and gang coated the guns and the “iron works” on the gun carriages with this mixture.  Although an unusual color for guns, its use violated no rules or regulations.  Some of the cutters painted the small boats’ interior a bright green with a white interior stripe at the top.

In 1847, William Brady, Sailing Master, USN, published a book titled The Kedge Anchor; or, Young Sailor’s Assistant, containing thousands of helpful hints, procedures, and facts for sailing vessels. Under the heading of “Keeping the Copper Clean,” Brady advised that clean copper made the vessel look good, and copper cleanliness made a statement about its crew, crew, and captain.  Hard labor and scrubbing the copper was the preferred method, but paint provided a quick fix, if not viewed too closely. The mix of red ochre and paint oil to the “color of new copper.” The application required calm and fair weather was calm because water would wash it off the wet mixture.  However, if appropriately applied, this “will preserve a good appearance for a long time.” 

Here are some more, very nicely packaged, with the sprues in the three boxes, along with a few frets of PE. Hull is quite plain, though, although a single piece. 

Evening all,  I managed to get some more KGL  troops done tonight  - I am getting a few  decent poses  out of then now, this includes Three dead/wounded,  that in itself was difficult as I had to heat then distort  some of the legs to get the right  position, also the underside needed flattening a bit, I have Five more left to make  then it will be priming/painting time.
 
OC.

Hello dear colleagues-friends ship modelers! I congratulate you on May Day! Work on the construction of the model on my desk continues.
Я занимаюсь ювелирной работой.
 
 

Cheers
 
Right now, I make sure that every penny goes back into the business, hence the reason we both still have day jobs. I believe it is important to get the business up and running and be self sustaining, with all equipment bought before I take any money from it.
 
I need another laser machine (larger bed and more powerful, for the larger kits I have in mind), and this also means I need to turn our garage into a fully fledged work unit, to house both machines and kit boxes. Before I can think about taking money from the business for ourselves, these things need to happen first.
 
By the way, orders are not delayed, we are now fully up to date!

Getting some paint on the deck. The kit has it as fairly smooth but I know there are panels on it so I’ve improvised with the airbrush. Several shades of grey, once nice and dry I’ll do some filters 

Everyone: a quick update on the rigging of sails on the Agamemnon. Finally got the lower main course sail on.. its size has a advantage its weight helps keep the rigging line tight! 
 
More pics to come soon
 
Mike Draper
Whitehorse, Yukon

Framing complete and the hull is stained to imitate the likely colour of the beast.

 

 

 

 
I hope you approve of the effect
Cheers
Dick

I continue to work on the bow of the ship. At the same time, I'm making ports for the guns on the opera deck.

Another little 'un an early Flower in Convoy 
w/c 6" X 4"

I am showing details that are often now shown.  These things are so new to me that I think I am doing something major and they are difficult.
 

 

This afternoon's little trip to the North Atlantic. HMCS Assiniboine. watercolour 6” X 4”

I cannot be certain that S.o.t.S. was this way, but my understanding is that the forward chase cannons and the two foremost broadside cannons were the same gun just shifted to different ports as needed. The reason is that with the foremost broadside guns in place, there is no room for the chase cannons to recoil or be returned inboard to reload. Looking at the picture of all of your chase guns in place, the outer two chase guns would recoil into the leading broadsides.
 
Depending upon how you want to display her, you could leave them all in place as it is much more dramatic, (I have done this on mine) despite functional accuracy. My other suggestion would be to leave the two foremost broadsides out and have all four chase guns in place. This arrangement while more accurate also adds two view ports to see some of the details under the forecastle.
 
I am honestly uncertain as to how the cathead arrangement works on this vessel. Very curious though.

I wanted to try that beautiful ligature seen on Hermione:

 

 

 

 

 
 

Hi all,
 
After a break of quite a few weeks I have now completed the rope work on the 14x cannons.
 
What I've learned is that -
a) no eyelets should be glued in to the hull before work starts on the cannons
b) paint cannon parts
c) the woodwork + metalwork on the cannons should be completely assembled before any ropework is started
d) add all rope work to the cannons whilst they are free to pick up ie not attached in any way to the deck or bulwarks
e) add all eyelets and rings to the cannon rope work
f) glue into the deck and bulwark holes the five eyelets associated with each cannon rope.
g) glue the cannons to the deck
 
I had initially made the mistake of firstly gluing the eyelets into the deck and bulwarks, and aslo glued the unroped cannons on to the deck. That all made it very difficult and fiddly for attaching the rope work to the cannons and eyelets.
 
Others may have different methods for doing all this.  As usual, any advice/thoughts are very welcome.
 
Below - Firstly I made up all the 2mm blocks and ropes (x21 off for the 7 unfinished cannons). And then coiled the ropes over a 1/8" screwdriver blade, added a touch of PVA to the coil and then carefully slid the coil off the screwdriver and squeezed the coil flat.

 
I then added the breech ropes to the cannons. I added a ring to the cannon rear for that rope to pass through.

 
Below - a collection of pics of the 14x finished cannons.

 

 

 
Aerial view of the deck with completed cannons and launch.

 
Summary - I think I hit a bit of a brick wall with the cannons since I didn't have previous experience of cannon rigging, the thought of doing it 14x times over was a bit daunting and Spring arrived 🙂
 
Yup, Spring, gardening, cycling, visiting friends (now that Lockdown has been lifted, for the moment), some good health news and goodness knows what else are incoming distractions to model building. I've a hunch my build may slow down for a while but will strive to keep at least some momentum up.
 
I think the masts are next on the agenda and I do like turning (...I've got the mini Proxxon wood lathe) so that might egg me on.
 
Take care,
 
Richard

Some of the superstructure photo etch is small and tedious (understatement).
 

Ok, the Models....
 
First up the 1994 Revell #4334 Mash 4077th Bell H-13H Helicopter....

It's an oldie and looks to have had some fairly rough treatment in various stashes over the years....
 
The Sprues....

Three sprues and a bare frame, two sprues and the frame are in hard olive green plastic and one sprue of clear.....
Not too many parts, 70 in all...
 
Instructions....




Decals....

The kit obviously models a fairy tale aircraft, no US military aircraft ever carried the word "MASH" on it's side.... As well as the helicopters used during Korea and even on the TV show were not H-13H's which is what the model depics.... The H-13H was first acquired by the Army in 1955, (it was a follow-on design to the H-13G which was first acquired by the Army in 1953) way too late to see service in Korea... It's main features (over the "G" model) were a 250hp up-rated Lycoming engine and upgraded landing skids.... You can tell the Lycoming engine by the valve covers, they are smooth with the Lycoming name embossed on the surface..... (exactly what the kit has)
 
So that decidedly places this model in the post Korea/Vietnam era.... Avionics are all over the place for this thing from next to none to everything you could find in communications... Upgrade kits (for the real bird) are numerous as well from various armament packages to full on cabin heating systems the opportunities for scratch detailing are great.... The Kit has some deficiencies which I will get into during the build portion of this thread)
 
Outside of the MASH lettering and Caduceus, the decals allow you to represent an H-13G or H model from almost any period after the Korean war... (as long as your not modeling a specific aircraft) 
 
Overall it looks to be a decent kit...
 
The Kit offers two different schemes
Mash Medevac..

And a high vis red & white scheme...

Personally I'm now leaning towards something Ft Rucker.... (a nice red or red & green instrument training bird would be nice as well)

 
Next up, the MRC HTL-4
 
Onwards...