catopower

Forward, Back, Cha Cha Cha... That's the kind of dance it's been the past couple days on this project. I made the standing portion of the vangs. Are these pendants? Anyway, made all four of them with 8mm fiddle blocks stropped in their ends. Then, I realized that I didn't rig them with beckets. Had to redo all four... 😖 Today, I fixed the issue, cut away the temporary line I had in place of the vangs, and rigged the vangs. All looks good. They're not permanently in place, since I may have to remove the gaff when I rig the sails. During this last step, the stropping of one of the double blocks (the very last one I was working with, of course) gave way, so I had to remove the eyebolt for that block. It didn't want to come out, but finally did. I destroyed the eyebolt in the process, so had to replace it and re-strop the block to it before finishing up... three-four... cha cha cha... Now, I'm all set to get to work on the sails. They're basically cut and ready to finish up. More on that next time.

Flag work aside, and with all the main detail work done, I finally made some progress on rigging.

In my own experience, contact cement has worked fine for attaching wood veneer planking, and I think it will continue to do so. If working with thicker planking, I would use PVA and a little CA glue. But, there is very little hold necessary for veneer planking. It's not like a countertop or shoe that has to stand up to decades of abuse. Never seen contact cement bond fail. But, that's just me.

Hi Gregory, for the folds, it's hard for me to describe. It's basically a matter of holding the mounting edge tight, while pulling down on the top edge of the flag. I start closest to the mounting edge. I guess the trick is to fold back and forth, just keeping in mind how gravity keeps pulling down on it, while the wind is trying to push out on it. Because it's plain paper, it keeps its shape pretty well. I haven't decided yet just how windy the conditions are for the ship! On the tissue paper, yes, I taped it to a plain sheet. Did that a couple times. The way my printer, a Canon IX6820, feeds, it doesn't feed it evenly, and I end up with a crumpled mess. I might try again in the future, but for now I'm pretty happy the way the single-thickness plain paper is turning out.

Made my first attempt at printing flags on tissue paper and couldn't get the paper to not jam up in the printer ☹️ I was able to print on regular paper and thought about folding them over, but I know how thick that ends up. Decided to see how good the alignment consistency is on my printer. Turns out, if I'm careful and have the images perfectly centered, I can print one side, flip the paper over, and print on the other, and it's pretty darned close. I have three usable flags done this way now, and just the pendant left. I don't have any artwork for that flag, so I'll have to draw it up from scratch. Pretty basic, so it shouldn't take that long to do. I only folded the flag above. I didn't try to wet it at all. I'm not sure of the colorfastness of this ink. I'm using some cheap third-party ink, so I think I have to spray this with something to keep the colors from running. But, I'm not sure if that's just going to make the whole flag itself waterproof, and prevent me from using water to shape it. It probably doesn't matter, as I think the flags will shape nicely, even without wetting them. The one thing I forgot about is the white edge of the paper. It's just like paper modeling, one needs to color the edge to take off the bright white color. Note that I tried to give the above flag some texture, but I made it a bit too wrinkly. I'll keep that in mind for the final flags.

Hi Patrick, thanks for the link! That's exactly what I've been thinking of doing. I hope I can get my flags to look as nice as yours!

Didn't get any feedback on my questions from my last post, but I'm moving on now. Looking at the flags in this Mamoli/Dusek kit. They appear to be printed nylon. They're not really dissimilar from the flags in the Woody Joe Charles Royal Yacht kit, but those flags could be shaped quite nicely. These don't seem to hold my attempts at shaping. I've found what I think is appropriate artwork on the Internet, so I'm considering printing the flags on my color inkjet printer. I think I want to print both sides of the flag and fold over and glue. I'm considering trying to print on silkspan if I can get that to work. Any suggestions on how to do that successfully? I just don't want them to be look too thick. I just noticed that the first flag is truncated slightly on the left side. I think I can fix that without too much trouble. Alternatively, anyone know of a source for the needed flags?

Still working on finishing up my "inherited" Yacht Mary build. It's actually been nice working on wooden ship models for a bit. I'm now waiting for an order I place with Syren Ship Model Company, so I thought I'd pick up a little side task that's related to this HMS Wolf build. Specifically, I've been playing around with my AnyCubic Photon Ultra. This is a dip resin printer, for those that know about these things. I got mine a couple years ago. I don't use it a lot, particularly since I don't really know much in the way of 3D CAD work, but I've acquired some 3D print files for some figures that should go well with HMS Wolf. I printed them out prior to the weekend, and I've been trying to modify them a little and paint some of them. HMS Wolf, being a brig should be commanded by a Lieutenant with a midshipman as an assistant. So, below, I painted what I believe is the correct uniform for a lieutenant, shown on the right side of the photo below. To his left is his midshipman, then petty officer and sailor. Not too happy showing photos of the figures, as they look much better to me by my unaided eyes. It's been a long time since I've done much miniature figure painting, and I did a LOT back in the 80's. So, these are 1/72 scale. Hopefully, these uniforms are right. I'll be painting a handful of sailors as well. Haven't decided how many figures I would put on the model, but I think it will be nice to have a few for scale reference.

I guess I'm a bit late here. Given the small scale (1/8" scale, correct?), have you considered just "faking" the beckets by using your halliard to strop the block and then continuing it on to run through whatever tackle it's part of? That's what I do when I have a becket block that's too small for a real becket (blocks maybe 1/8" or smaller). Let me know if that makes sense.

I agree that the Vanguard Models Sherbourne should be a great way to enter the hobby. And, as I DO have a connection with them 😉, I should mention that Ages of Sail, just down the coast from you is a Vanguard Models dealer. You'll find the prices, plus free domestic shipping (any order of $150 or more), and proximity of shipper should give you the best experience. Just sayin'! Welcome aboard, in any case Duane!

Thanks Druxey. Nothing like a snugged up rudder. It's so nice to look at the model and not be instantly drawn to that huge gap! Well, I'm turning my attention to the rigging now. I've already simplified the rigging of the topsail and spreader yard, based on the great photos and paintings people have contributed. Now, I'm looking at the rigging of the gaff and mainsail. Below is from the Mamoli kit drawings. My plan is to make some small modifications based on the photos of the Utrecht replica. Special thanks to Gregory and Patrick(Baker) for the painting and Utrecht images. 1. I'm going to replace this block(Fiddle block?) with a single sheave block attached at the gaff. 2. This brail block will be moved down the gaff slightly. 3. This brail block will be move down and replaced with a double block, so the brail from block 2 will pass through and down to the deck. 4. No need for this extra block, since block 3 will have a pretty clear path down to the belaying points at the deck. Something else I noticed about the Utrecht replica and wondering about this on the Mary, is the lack of ratlines on the shrouds. It's been my plan to rattle down the shrouds. But, there's really no need for anyone to climb up the mast, except maybe a lookout. In the following excerpt from Ab Hoving's new book "Dutch 17th Century Ship Models in Paper", he shows another state yacht with no ratlines. Since this is essentially what the Mary was, would it have been without ratlines? Or, being a ship of the British Royal Navy, would they have added ratlines? I'm not quite at the stage where I have to worry about the ratlines, but we're getting very close. Any thoughts? Oh, and in the meantime, I decided to practice working with my laser cutter to make the 5-hole deadeye for the mainstay. I think this one is large enough, but I made parts for a slightly larger one. I guess I'll go ahead and make that one and see which looks better.

Thanks Patrick, John! I'm much happier with the appearance now. De-bugged, indeed! Meanwhile, since I was in the process of trying out the gun tackles, I went ahead and just rigged them all. Was a bit of a challenge with only a small amount of cursing. During the process of making the gun tackles, I'd managed to lose a couple blocks to the rug monster. Later, I decided to hunt around for scattered debris. Interestingly enough, I not only found the blocks I'd lost, but two other, larger blocks, that I didn't recall losing. And then, most important of all, the yellow item on the right side of the photo below. That's one of two sweep port lids, from my as yet unfinished HMS Wolf model, that I didn't realize I'd lost! 🤣 It's now safely in storage for when I return to work on that model. Hopefully, that will be sometime late next month.

A minor update, but fairly significant for the model. Today, I got sick of the enormous gap between the sternpost and rudder and I clipped off the pintles and just pinned the rudder into place. I think it makes the model look a whole lot better! Yes, it's not perfect, and you can see one of the pins if you look closely. But, I'm not striving for perfection here. I'm just going for a better appearance, and I think this works. Now, I can move on to other things, as this is the last item that just bugged me!

Hi Glen, Here are the pics, for what they're worth. The model scale wasn't specified, or at least I never saw it. It's a pretty good sized model, 1.4 meters long. It's an interesting model. But, models in Japanese museum models are often very so-so in accuracy, I've found. They're often there just to give people things to look at. Scale can be way off. In fact, in this same museum, there's a nice model of a Japanese Edo period warship. It has figures on it in one size, and then a giant figure sitting in a chair on it, depicting the daimyo, or clan leader. Probably not much here you can use, but they're interesting to look at... Of course, the term Kentoushi-sen is rather generic, and could refer to different ship designs that were all used as envoy ships at some point. Anyway, as you know, very little information regarding Japanese ships before the Edo period was documented. Most documentation seems to consist of an ancient scroll painting, and maybe a brief description. But your model looks like it's coming along swimmingly, and I'm enjoying watching your progress!

Ah, got it. I do seem to recall something about this. Well, for those waiting, I hope the kits make it into production!