rybakov

Hello,
thank you Druxey.
Because we have here the best weather to sit in the basement, it's cold and rainy, the carpenters mostly finished the fife rails and the painter painted them. And all without a disaster. 

POST Forty-five
As planking continues, I become aware of an undesirable feature developing.
The word is snying.
In this context it relates to the excessive upward curve of a plank where the centre is higher than the extremities.

1258
This is a common problem in the bow area and I note on my hull there are slight indications of it developing eight strakes down from the wale.
Probably due to deficiencies in my lining off/and or incorrect tapering, it occurs where the planks are edge bent as they round the bow, and strake upon strake, the effect is magnified.

1260
My solution is to remove a section of the last fixed bow plank, and spile in a new section to reduce the extremity of the curve for the next plank to lie against.

1261
Fortunately, the section came away cleanly without too much effort.

1262
The spiled insert is not easy to spot and is a better option than carrying on regardless with the result of visible excessive snying.

1263
With ten strakes now completed each side I am now below the waterline, and the planking runs looks better to my eye.

1268

1277
I’m about a third of the way down the hull, I will now add a further strake above the Garboard, re-check the strake arrangement, and carry on.........
 
B.E.
03.07/2023
 

Hello and thank you for all the likes
today the carpenters build the port side fife rail. Unfortunately they have forgotten to paint the underside of it. I hope that that would not end in a disaster.
The plank for the other side is now already painted. 

Hello,
because it's not really summer here at the moment, the carpenters decided to build the timber heads. They are not fast installed, that comes tomorrow.

 

Hello,
another little step in finishing the fore castle. The rail at the beakhead bulkhead.

Hello,
this rail is now ready. It was easier then I first thought.   But there are some more left 

Hello
today we started with the fife rails. First I tuned the arches for the reserve mast storages, then build the rails itself and fitted them in. The rest will come the next days.

Post Forty-four
The first Band.
I am using fairly scale lengths with a 140mm maximum and around 45mm minimum lengths.

1219
I am not going for a set sequence of repeat patterns, but I am giving mind to the positions of butts on adjacent strakes.
For deck planking I will take a more structured approach.

1224
I plank side and side about, and Ca is used throughout, with a pot of Acetone handy for wiping excess from plank faces as I go along.

1251
The required shape for the bow timbers is transferred to the planks, which are dampened, tapered, edge bent, bevelled, and generally fettled to fit.
I found this necessary from around Bulkhead five to the stem.

1231

1253
One of the advantages of the Indy hull is that apart from the bow area there are long sections of using full width planks which proceeds quite quickly.

1247
Looking a bit rough at this stage, but I now need to re-mark the hull for the next band of planking.
Onwards….
 
B.E.
01/07/2023

Before figure modifications:
 

and after:

I’ve been debating, for a little while, whether I can improve the scale of the Europe and Asia figures to better complement the shortened height of the stern.  After the initial round of fitting and back-fill, the figures look like this:

The problem I’m having with this is that these figures were designed to sit atop a taller backboard, and now the horse and camel necks seem a bit too long to me.
 
Fortunately, I have a number of spare parts with which I can experiment.  I had an idea that if you cut the animal heads at the right angle, the kerf loss and clean-up would reduce their head height just enough, and the rejoin could be easily faired.  I also, while I’m at it, wanted to see whether I could decapitate the continental figures, themselves, in order to correct the angle of their gaze; they should not be staring out blandly at Soleil Royal’s wake, but instead be lovingly focused on the carving of Apollo, below:

And, so, I put on my surgical gloves and got to work:


The horsehead is rejoined

And after filing an angle into her neck insert, so that her chin drops:


The differences are subtle, but the modifications are not difficult to make.  Now that I’ve seen that it can work, it doesn’t seem so risky to modify the figures that I’ve already invested a ton of work into.
 
I’m still cobbling together the head grating, in the evening.  That is all looking very promising.
 

Post Forty-three
The Preparation
I have (26) 5mm planks at midships which are marked off on the hull using a tick strip.
I intend to work a first band of six strakes below the existing planking, and I’m looking to have the plank ends at the stem not less than 3mm in width.
With this in mind, I apply the lining tape.

1173

1179
The first application of the tape, now the tweaking begins.
In these shots the upper tape marks the line of the first section.
 
I am aiming to get a smooth sweep up to the stem using edge bent and tapered strips only. I hope to avoid the need for spiling except perhaps when I reach the under belly of the hull.
 
The trouble with lining off is deciding when it is at its optimum line.
This process is more art than arithmetic and I find myself in an agony of indecision wondering whether I have reached that point.
Using strip wood there is inevitably error creep strake upon strake, so I will fit the first section and then recalculate.
 
The following photos show the point where I think I am getting close to an acceptable run.

1191

1193

1195

1199

1212

1205

1207

1203a
I think it needs a slight tweak as indicated.

1216
This looks better to my eye.
I can now proceed to mark off the strake widths at each bulkhead point and begin planking.
 
B.E.
27/06/2023.
 
 
 

fixed the aft bulkhead:

Hello,
and thank you scrubby and Glenn for your comments, and all the others for your likes.
Now the belfry has also a bell.

Time well spent:




There is some sense of foreground and background.  The proportion of the carving, relative to the area of the back board, closely copies the Berain drawing.  I am happy.

It is fascinating to me how different this is from the stock kit.
 
Thanks for looking-in!  More to follow..

Hello,
the belfry is now at least ready. The next step is turning the bell

Aft bulkhead construction:

I realised that I had wrongly coloured the sides, making the black end too high. !



 

Hello,
I build the side parts, because drawing them would be nearly impossible.  And then came the hardest thing, to assemble the parts. But at least all went well and the shipwright is pleased. Tomorrow the painter has to paint it all.

Hello and thank you for all the likes,
after my last post, my cat and I decided to enjoy the now warm sunshine after a more cold spring and being lazy. But yesterday we had here a little, long awaited, rain and I started with the arch of the belfry. The first attempt did't work, so today part two of it


I think it worked this time
.
 

As was the case with the amortisement, it takes a good deal of fettling to get all of these elements to nestle together nicely, the way they were drawn.
 
I now have the clouds positioned and Apollo’s head centered on the cornice archway:

As you can see, there’s still profiling to do on the port side of the chariot.  I think this last element of the carving should be fun to model.
 
The horses will take some effort to get them to where they need to be:

It’s really such a small area, but I can begin to now see where the fade line should be between the Cerulean sky and the Ultra Marine heavens.  My idea may not work out the way I hope, but I will try to create this soft transition with multiple dilute applications of the Ultra Marine.
 
Little by little..

@wefalck
That is very true, and I think that one or the other was involved with a specific work.
 
@dvm27
Glad I could give you a suggestion. That is an honor for me.
 
@druxey
Glad you like it. 
The rose lashings looks more difficult than it actually is. Just give it a try. 
 
@Gahm
I hope not ...  😁
 
Thanks to all for the interest and the LIKES.
 
 
Continuation: Equipment of the fore yard - Jackstay / Filière d`envergure; Blocks for buntlines and clewlines / Poulies de cargue fond et poulies de boulin
I would like to explain the installation of the jackstay in a little more detail using the fore yard as an example. According to my research and the Paris model, the jackstay was completely served to obtain the required stiffness. The eye splices for the yard arms and the thimbles of the tackle in the center of the yard were also served. 
How to implement this for the model in conjunction with the eyebolts? 
The solution is a bit tricky, but quite feasible, as shown in the following photo collage. I think the pictures are so far self-explanatory.

 
The assembly on the yard, on the other hand, was very easy to accomplish.

 
The rope for the tackle was pulled in and lashed as well as the blocks for buntlines and clewlines were already attached. 

 
 
To be continued ...
 

I continue from the stern with the upper deck set-up:
 

This is a placeholder post of sorts.  My daughter had taken over my workspace with finals studies, the prior two weeks, so the kitchen table was never free until 10pm.  By that point, I had nothing left in the tank for modeling.  The NBA playoffs were also particularly interesting, this year, so my attentions have been divided for a good long stretch.
 
I did manage to fit and secure the under-framing for the tafferal backboard, but apart from that - not much else has happened on the model itself.  Most of what needs to happen on the model requires my utmost concentration.  Now that the kids are done with school, and we aren’t running around all over the place, I should have deeper reserves in the evening time.
 
I have been chipping away at the tafferal carving, itself, though.  I decided that the best way to go about this was to break the carving up into separate elements, as I had done for the amortisement.  Not only did this make the carving more manageable and replaceable by section, if need be, but it enabled me to more easily glue-up laminations of different thicknesses so that there would be a perceptible foreground and background to the composition.
 
The clouds in the foreground are the thickest stock, the horses of medium stock and the chariot the thinnest stock:


I have completed the clouds, which were further subdivided into port and starboard.  I haven’t taken pictures of them, but they are fluffy, happy clouds that would warm Bob Ross’s heart.
 
What I am working on, now, are the horses.  I began with the port pair, which was the more challenging side to figure out.  My thumb gives a pretty good indication of scale:



I’ve made a start on the starboard pair, which is moving more quickly.  I think the whole ensemble with capture the depth and drama that I am looking for.
 
Thank you for your interest.  More to follow..

Headworks (Part 2):
 
@DaveBaxt - the diamond cutting wheel is similar to this, easily cuts into the razor blades (545 Dremel | Tools | DigiKey ) with suitable eye protection!  Sure there are many other similar items and prices from other retailers.  The razor blades were bought in bulk...similar to these Multi Purpose Razor Blades (Pack of 100) (double-glazing-parts-spares.co.uk).  Also, have provided a little more detail in update below...The wood used is either pear or castello box depending on what I have on hand, these woods are great for this.  I would suggest you have nothing to lose, and much to gain by giving it a go....think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how simple it is with a little practice.
 
Much fiddling, fettling and fine tuning has been going on with the headworks, but this should bring me up to date.  Think the back of this challenging task has been broken as I will likely be needing to spend much of any available time on unrelated projects.
 
Once the shape of the head timbers had been finalized, the covering boards could be added.  These are identified as being 1" in TFFM, so these were cut from 0.5mm pear sheet to approximately the correct dimension.  TFFM suggests shaping these and attaching once the lower rail is in place, but am going to try and simplify because I'm not sure how successfully I'd be able to do this.  Photos below show work very much in progress.

Once finalized, the time head timbers can be finished.  A scraper was made specifically for the purpose to scribe the profile, with a long inner face than usual to act as a guide on both the fore and aft sides, and to account for the very different angle the face presents.  A light coat of blue paint was applied to the outer face of the covering board to aid the eye in seeing the results of introducing the profile.  Unfortunately, the only photo I had of this was of horrible quality, so apologies in advance but you get the idea.  The scraper detail and a more final version is also shown below with paint applied.

The lower rail was profiled by temporarily attaching to some spare sheet and again a custom scraper.  Finding one that followed approximately the desired profile and looked acceptable took quite a few attempts.

With all the key components really only requiring the some final finishing, it was time to cross fingers for another dry-fit - it gives confidence knowing that any additional tweaks can be easily addressed before glued to applied.  The covering boards introduce a 'ledge' for the main rail to sit on, something that the simplified approach to shaping the head timbers did not include but seems prototypical.  Some slight alignment issues apparent in the photos below should disappear when finally secured in place with glue.  Next up is clearly some touch up after seeing these pictures on the PC!

 

Update
She is 87 cm long and the shape is that of an good old heritage steamer of 1918
The planking is going on quite well, I`m down to and already around the bilge bend on both sides ....
My small model building room, for the more rough work,  needs some tidying up afterwards
 
Nils
 

I started a bit of scraping job with hardened scraping plates, it works well when carefully taking off wee  "flakes" of the thin planking, and still it may take a bit of one-component filler to smoothen out in certain places only