rybakov

Hello, and thanks to all:
 
 

Hi ☺️
 
March 2013
 
 

Hi, and merry Chistmass ☺️

Hi, and Thanks to all  ❤️

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Hi, and thanks☺️

Hi 🙂

Hi 🙂

Hi 😊
 

It's been a couple of weeks since I've been able to get to the museum due to our train drivers causing industrial problems, however I've continued to work on the rigging hardware at home and now have all but two of the square yards complete and ready for sails.
 
The model is also now sporting three square sails - two rigged and one simply attached to the mast. I've also got quite a few lead blocks seized into the rigging, but as they're painted, they're very hard to see.
 
There will be another slight hiatus in progress as the Admiral and I are off for a couple of weeks holiday down to coast shortly, but hopefully, now that the yards are almost completed, there will be a bit more rapid progress in the future.
 
I have a problem with the speed of progress on the model. Our Senior Curator is really anxious to get her finished and into a proper display case ("The Registration Papers are all complete and ready to sign, John"), but the Museum Director wandered past yesterday and was very enthusiastic about the model being under construction for as long as possible in the gallery as an attraction for visitors! 🙂
 
John
 

hi everyone,
 
Druxey, those 18th century shipwrights sure enjoyed playing with fluid shapes; the shipwrights must have groaned when they saw the latest shape to manufacture!
 
Greg, Kevin and Cisco, thanks for your thoughtful comments about the complexities of these constructions. I continue to be amazed when the underlying logic or geometry finally reveals itself, as I struggle to fit all the parts together in three dimensions. I am in awe of the original shipwrights who could visualize and then construct such complex forms. And how the complexity all adds up to something exceedingly beautiful, and simple in its overall visual effect.
 
Hakan, yes, that is a Tormek in the background. I bought it many years ago, struggled to make it work for me, and then put it away. I pulled it back out more recently, to see if I would have better luck now I have had more years of experience with tools. It doesn't help with the small chisels, but some success with the larger ones.
 
Steady progress, but slow going as I work out the intricate geometries of the stern and quarter galleries.
I redrew the stern, expanding the geometry in the x and y directions to get a true projection of the sizes and angles. I taped some card to the stern and marked various key points including the important diminishing of the verticals. I then scanned this and put it into CAD, where I could extend the verticals to a common point on the centerline, allowing me then to find the correct angles for the outer edges of the quarter galleries. Here is the flattened drawing:
 

 
 
This then allowed me to fabricate the false window walls on the aft side of the quarter galleries, which provides all of the important locations for everything in this area:
 
 



 
and then I used spacers to locate the middle railing and top surface of the captain's head. (The horizontal plate one down from the top is a temporary form to help me locate the railing at the base of the windows at this location; it will go away once the railing is in place).
 
I discovered that in this recreation of the original Bellona design of 1760, the captain's space here is pretty tiny. He has about 14" of clearance between his forward door and the curved side of the quarter gallery. It gets a little wider towards the seat at the stern, but even there he has only 2'-9" of clearance. It looks great on the outside, diminishing the entire quarter gallery as it ascends to the top; but the captain could not have been very happy with this. Indeed,  in the 1780ish rebuild shown in the second Bellona model, the captain's head is much expanded to match a little closer the size of the officers' head below.
 
Today is the 254th anniversary of Thomas Slade's death, the famous shipwright for the Bellona and Victory. He must have been annoyed when asked to expand the captain's quarter gallery; it looks so much better the way he originally drew it!
 
To help with cutting and shaping these increasingly small and awkward pieces, I bought the Veritas miniature workbench clamping devices. I made up a surface with regular holes, which can attach to the front of my workbench with the GRS mounting plate:
 

Here is the GRS plate holding a Knew Concepts bench pin and saw. I am turning to these increasingly to shape these small parts. 

This turned out to be such a handy surface for fine work, I added a bench hook for cutting small pieces with the razor saw. It has dowels on the bottom that drop right into the flat surface holes:
 

 
All for now,
 
Mark
 
 
 
 
 
 

Hi photo Anson.

Hello,
last week we had here a lot of sunshine, so I was't realy often at the shipyard. But at least I managed to finished two other strakes. Only 4 left

Now it starts to look more like a ship then a raft.

Moving along with one gun deck, on the Port side. But first, the "Instructions":
 

 
The first thing I did was to glue all the grates on their respective supports:
 

 

 
The grates must be flush with the planking: no stumbling during the action!! Planking can then begin. I start from the stern and go back to the bow, keeping the front of the planking as a reference. This way, I make sure that the curves are correctly matched between the planks. Numbering them is also a great idea:
 

 
Planking will butt against the cabin wall, near the stern. Moving forward....
 

 
About half way done...
 

 

 
Planking around the grates, has been completed:
 

 

 

 
Did you notice? Nothing is flat or straight on that vessel....  Three more planks to install:
 

 

 

 
A little cherry wood strip to finish the edge:
 

 

 

 
A couple of Wipe on Poly coats and it is pretty much finished. The gun deck at the bow of the boat is a little bit high and the gun is not fitting perfectly. I will have to be creative to find a solution. Contrary to British ships with large gun ports, these French vessels have very small gun ports and the adjustment required to match the hull openings with the gun carriages is tricky.
 

 
I am not installing the 4x4 strip preventing the guns from rolling into the sea yet. I want to make some progress on the hull planking and finish painting the bulwark.
 
Yves

@Keith Black
@druxey
@Thukydides
@Dr PR
I am very grateful for your interest and the nice comments.
I would also like to thank everyone else for the LIKES.
 
Hello Phil,
I'm very pleased if my reports are of any use to you. I also benefit from other colleagues. My understanding of a forum of this kind is give and take, to help us all become better model builders.
Hopefully the belaying needle can be a solution to your rigging problems.
 
 
Addition: Securing the ropes of the running rigging with a belaying needle
It is obvious to me how the last loop is to be guided when securing the ropes of the running rigging with a belaying needle. However, this is not clear from my previous illustration on this subject.
A model maker colleague asked a question on this.
In this respect, I would also like to explain this step here with this additional explanation:

As can be seen in Fig. 1, the rope can be guided under the last loop with the belaying needle. In the second step, the rope is then unthreaded by pulling it back, if necessary with the help of tweezers in hard-to-reach places. Fig. 3 shows that the belaying needle can simply be pulled out of the loop by tightening the rope.
 
I hope I have explained it clearly enough. For me, these processes are easy to carry out, as I have already done them many times.

 

As my quest started with the design of the oars, I was coming from the other direction, but leading my straight to the heart of this topic.
 
Having created oars and sweeps respecting Steel´s data, I was putting them to the test on some of my boats.
 
This lead first to the confimation of the knowledge, that my kit´s versions of boats are not really suitible for the job. Apart from missing all structure and details they also had the thwarts far too high. After reworking the 32 ft pinnace by using only the shell and reconstructing a more true interior it was getting nearer to the real thing.

Now I was able to put some crewmen and oars. As a good landlubber I placed immediately two of each on each thwart as suggested by the tholes.

But here began my surprise. As Steel indicated: "A leather button is nailed on the foreside, about two inches from the loom, and that edge rounded, to work easily in the rowlock: ..." This lead to the fact, that the oars were far too much in for a double banked use. Basically a crewman should be sitting on the opposite side to be able to grab the handle of his oar, thus crossing the other one.

 
The other fact that can be seen is that in this configuration the crewmen sit far too much on the outside of the boat, resulting in a ridiculus lever for rowing, as already mentioned by Roger in #2. So even if the leather buttom was ignored and the oar taken more out, it would have been a problematic setup.
 
This resulted in the only realistic setup with single banked use and everything looked much more logical.

The lengths of the oars fit, the leather button on the right place and a realistic lever for rowing.




On the other side I also tried a more broad launch.
For these Steel indicated straight sweeps without leather buttom.
[note: This is still the original kit´s version, but I think it will do the job this time.]

Here we have the space for double banked use. The sweeps do not collide in the middle and the crewmen have enough distance to the rowlock to get a workable lever. This confirmes Allans original quote of Lavery's The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War where he writes that "in 1783 it was ordered that all launches should be equipped to row double banked."



And so I am thankful for the topic here, as it was filling the gaps of my puzzle and giving the right contemporary sources to finish it off. This means with my single banked 32ft pinnace from the first pictures I will fill every second thole, alternating on each side. Also the originally intended number supplied of oars (as for double banked and seen in the first pict) for this boat can be halved.
 
Another question concernes the uneven number of oars on each side, in my 32ft pinnace 4 versus 3. Was this in use as for the uneven propulsion or was the bow place then left free? On the other side in the models of RMG there are many boats with a uneven number of tholes regarding the boat´s sides.
 
As someone once called it "experimental archeology in miniature" 😉
I hope it supports or even confirms all the informations to be found in the previous posts.
 
XXXDAn
 
 
PS: Had a fast Photoshop and eliminated the supernumerary tholes.
This gives a nice detail in between single and double banked boats even in stowed position. 🙂

 
 
 

Preparing the final rigging

I cleaned up my small basement shipyard as much as I could and took the little French girl out of her "exile" (dust cover). She was then positioned on my height-adjustable platform so that she could be accessed from two sides for rigging, as far as space allowed.
It has been a long time since I did the final rigging of a model ship (over three decades). So I tried to refresh my modest knowledge of rigging work for the running rigging of sailing ship models, to acquire new knowledge about it and to think about the further process.
I had already raised the question in various forums about which direction and order the model should preferably be rigged in? There was a mixed opinion about when to start rigging, whether at the front or the back. However, everyone agreed that rigging should be done from the bottom up. Contemporary works note that the usual rigging process began with the bowsprit.
In order to have fewer disruptions caused by ropes that have already been set, I follow the philosophy of starting from the beginning and then working yard by yard from bottom to top and from belaying point to belaying point.
For belaying pins and cleats, I use a belaying needle that I had used as a boy when building the "Adler von Lübeck". I made this according to Graupner's instructions from a steel knitting needle that is around 27 cm long and has a handle and is slightly bent at the other end over a length of around 10 mm. I forged out the front end of the bent part and shaped it accordingly with a file. Close to the filed front edge, I drilled a hole with a diameter of 0.5 mm, similar to the eye of a needle.
Many people will certainly know that Karl Heinz Marquardt was responsible for the plan processing for Graupner's "Adler von Lübeck" and was involved in the development of the kit. In this respect, I assume that the description for making this belaying needle also comes from him or was suggested by him. He was also an excellent model maker. What I often see is that many model makers mainly use hooks or tweezers for belaying. However, I have managed very well with my homemade belaying needle so far, as the rope can be guided safely and tightly even in hard-to-reach areas. Therefore, I will continue to use it, including for this model.
With the next picture, I want to illustrate how this belaying needle is basically used.

 
Following the recommendations of fellow model makers, I also got myself a pair of Castroviejo micro scissors in order to sensibly expand my rigging equipment.
In the following picture I show a compilation of my most important tools for rigging:

-Belaying needle
-Stand for thread rolls
-Superglue with cannula (ø 0.3 mm)
-Hollow spike, ø 1.2 mm and ø 0.8 mm for splicing
-Micro scissors according to Castroviejo
-Thread scissors, straight and curved
-Tweezers, straight, curved and offset
-Scalpel
-Shoemaker's wax for "sailor's thread"
 
This article heralds the last chapter of the model building of the French corvette "La Creole" on the long road to the goal. Once again I would like to thank my many companions, with the hope that they will get through the final stretch with me.
So, see you soon... 

A bit of an update. Outer hull is painted black, ready for the coppering. Inner bulwarks are painted white. I realized I hadn't cut out the sally ports, so I did that. I stuck a piece of 3/16 wood in the hammock netting to stabilize it while I made the cut, and the put brown painted hammock net ends in place.
 

 

 
I spent some time finishing the deck and trimming it to size. Here are some photos (not tacked down). The combination of the stain and the suggestions from Tim and Nic removed most of the apparent gap. Once it's tacked down it will be even less obvious.
 

 

 

 

 
No more for at least a week as I am I. The UK for a job interview in Manchester, Oxford, and London and won't return until next Tuesday.
 
Thanks for looking in.
 
Regards,
George

A quick improvement over the kit, that I would recommend dearly: Nail (for real), the gun deck supports. I used again nickel silver nails made with electronic component pins.
 

 
Add at the stern and the bow some re-reinforcements for the end of the gun deck planking:
 

 

 
With these improvements behind us, we can now start the planking, properly speaking. First plank goes against the frames (at least that is the way I am approaching it):
 

 

 
Then installation of the grates and tons of precise cuts.....
 
Yves

Before moving further with the planking, I have decided to take a look at the gun decks and see how these are being built.
There is nothing easy on that model, as we have nothing flat and straight, besides the bottom of the keel.
As always, the instructions are scarce:
 

 
The Chinese ideograms are simply indicating that you can cut the blue parts to the correct length. Thank you. Nothing is really being said about where the red parts are to be sitting against the frames and the plan is of little use as well. So, after digesting plans, Monograph and the above picture, I decided to place them so that the gun deck would be horizontal as much as possible.
 

 
I traced a delineation line on the deck, using the gun deck planking provided in the kit. That line allows me to determine the length of the support bars.
After installing a gun on the support bars, the gun seems to be about horizontal, so it may work.
 

 

 
At this stage, all supports have been installed and the planking seems to fit nicely, more or less.
 

 
The picture above gives a clear understanding how this ship is architectured. With such a convex deck, platforms to hold the guns were absolutely necessary. The picture below shows the upcoming gun deck planking. It is composed of 9 planks and 9 grates which are sitting on the deck supports. There will be a lot of cutting  and fine adjustments to make it look decent.
 

 
In the meantime, I am painting the bulwark in red, as the Monograph seems to indicate. That is done in a much easier way by limiting the height of the hull planking. With this kit, you have to approach the various tasks in a scrambled and mixed way.... Not easy!! Have I said that before?
 
Yves

Hi thank you very much for yours comments and likes, photo Anson.

14 frames complete. The shape of the vessel is starting to make itself known.

I'm currently agonising over the cannons (yes, I know its a bit previous to be doing that at this stage, but that's me.) So 15 guns were found associated with the wreck, but only two will be behind gunports (as that appears to have been the way it was in the very early days of gunports - see earlier posts). So what happens with the other 13? Are they on big wheels so they reach over the gunwale?
 
And then there are several guns retrieved in 1531, one of which was a large bronze perrier (meaning the balls it shot were of stone), and there were a number of swivels. Also several wrought iron guns of different types, one type very long compared with its calibre. Unless I much mistake, except for swivels, all the wrought iron guns needed to be deck-mounted because they weren't structurally strong enough to support themselves. But that would presuppose gunports unless they had big wheels. There were a number of big wheels found on board, some of 120 cm diameter, some of 148. This would mean a gunwale of somewhere between 60 and 80 cm high if they were to poke out above it. That's 2 feet to about 2 ft 7 in. Not terribly high. Sigh. I'm in a bit of a quandary.
 
It's assumed that between 1516 when she sank and the retrieval of 1531 the citizens of Nice may well have plundered the wreck for cannons, but there's no written record of that.
 
Swivels could be in arched openings shown to the forecastle in Carpaccio's paintings, or even in the aftercastle as shown in others. It's a matter of deciding what goes where. Though she was a merchant ship, it looks like the Lomellina was upgunned when she was hired by the King of France to transport munitions. And perhaps some (or all?) of the guns were cargo rather than armament? 
 
Oh, and they recovered two bronze arquebuses (precursor of the musket, but considerably heavier construction.)
 
It's a problem at the moment, and any solution I come up with is going to involve a tremendous amount of speculation and guesswork. I'm trying to make it educated guesswork.
 
Steven
 
Steven

Hello, and many, many thanks for your comments and likes
Today I finished the Meginhufr.

All other planks for now are 0,5mm thick ( 25mm ),the meginhufr is 0,8mm thick (40mm in real)

And for cure over night, a corset. That is a bicycle tires and a sandbag

I needed to complete one final item before I could start refining the head... a solid base for my wooden bowsprit mast.
 
I sawed a fine slot in the base of the mast and inserted a piece of styrene to duplicate the tab on the kit mast. This tab snaps into a square of styrene attached to the front edge of the middle gun deck.... the kit slot for the bowsprit mast is faintly visible to the left of the white tab, showing that the mast base moved forward about 1 inch.
 

 

 

 
Then I used a laser level to make sure the base of the mast was locked onto the middle gun deck in the right position before I cemented the base in (I may even beef this up further with some ApoxieScuplt).
 

 
Finally... a rough template for the head is held in place... I have some adjusting to do! My goal... develop and fit as much of the head in advance as I possibly can.
 

 
 

Hello, and many thanks for your comments and likes
Life was against working at the shipyard most of the week, but now I have all collecting planks ready. I started also with planking the meginhufr.
I hope to finish the strake tomorrow.

Here are some of the parts, who did't it  ☹️