rybakov

Hello,
the Tiger and I decided to have a brake at the yard and enjoy the beautiful spring here. To the left you see the real Tiger, my model for tigers and lions. 😉

Hello and many thanks for your nice comments and likes.
the last days I finished the drift rail here at the fore castel. I took her out of the basement, so that the paint could dry better. Since I changed there my light system to LED, is that a problem.
The next days I would first build the rest of the head rails and then the cat head supporter. So it may take some time before you hear again from me.

Right you are, Bill!
 
The reason that I will not labor to remake the bracket is illustrated right here:

The figures’ vestments will completely obscure the stool that they sit upon.  In fact, those pesky clothes will obscure most of the detail I have labored to create on the forward side of the archway bracket.  That is perfectly  okay with me, though.
 
Vic, I suppose that a real-time video of me “whittling,” as my work friend likes to quip, would be intensely boring; ever watch a termite bore through wood?
 
As a near-sighted person for most of my life, I am adjusting to the mid-life reality of constantly removing my glasses for close work, while simultaneously resisting the pressing need for bi-focals/transition lenses.  This is the status of my mid-life crisis.
 
I’ll post a picture of the three main brushes I use, a little later.  They are great, but not especially spectacular; all synthetic, and totally in-expensive.

Marc,
The angle of the cap to the piece you made doesn't look right as it violates the ship's lines aft. It is the only piece with a down-slant aft looking at the broadside view. The forward view looking aft shows the piece tilted downwards.
Bill
 

The more I consider your specific point about color saturation, Marc, the more I can appreciate the truth of atmospheric conditions and the way that they impact our perception of color, in real life.  Once again, when it comes to diorama ships, Herbert Tomesan comes the closest I’ve seen to getting this right.  Your point is well-received and I will do my best to tone it down a bit more.  And, yes Vic - one does need to be careful with clearcoats.
 
So, the process of making this first starboard bracket has been highly educational!  Anytime I’m making a part like this, I am designing a process to arrive at a level of detail with the least amount of difficulty.  For these brackets, one of the primary details that I wished to capture is the pierced filigree of the false canopy.  This, much like the trailboard at the head, can only be arrived at through careful piercing and paring, from one side to the other and back again.
 
As always, though, I like cleanly delineated shoulders and panel reliefs, so I thought it would make the most sense to build the bracket up from three primary layers of .028 styrene sheet which, I will show later, gives me just nearly enough part thickness to mount the Four Winds mascaroon.  Carving  the filigree into a larger supporting lamination is far easier than carving it as an independent insert piece.
Above, I’ve already carved the filigree and laminated the aft layer to the center.  The edge that joins with the hull is also about a 1/32” oversize, to allow for precise scribing to the hull, a little later.
 
The bottom of the scroll, where it mounts to the bulwark rail, has been left deliberately overlong for final shaping, once the three layers have been laminated together.  I was mindful, at this stage, that the back-raking angle of the bracket would necessitate a raking angle for the scrolled foot, as well; were I to shape each lamination to size, before gluing, I would end up with a significant gap, at the forward face of the foot.
 
After lamination and initial scribing to the hull and gallery rail, the foot looks like this:

With the bottom angle of the foot established, I could proceed with shaping the scroll and fairing the leg to it’s final form.  Here is a montage that shows the evolution of this process:
 

One thing I have found to be true; it is much easier, at times, to “draw” with the tools, than it is with a pencil.  I was able, for example, to emphasize an elegant sloping transition into the foot with my files and a sanding stick.  Now, when I position the bracket on the model, the negative space of this archway is at a more complementary angle to the adjoining windows than my initial drawing/template.



It’s a little hard to read in the following picture, but I have introduced a slight taper to the scroll foot from bottom to top; this is the first step along the detailing path of a scrolled volute.  I will show the relief work, in this area,  in the next post, after I have attached the acanthus brackets.

So, with this much established, I could focus on fitting the mascaroon that I had retrieved from the kit quarter gallery.  Given the difficulty of carving convincing faces, it is always worthwhile to see whether one can salvage the kit sculptures.  The mascaroons are oversize, but I thought I could make it work.  

What I am trying to achieve:

After much fettling, the mascaroon pares down quite a bit from where it began:

Now - the head is unavoidably wider than the bracket, but I will show a little later how simply softening these hard edges makes the sculpture look more like a deliberately rounded relief.  I was able to retain just enough of the headdress, so I consider this sculpture experiment a success!

Next, I turned my attention to the mouldings which are really just a continuation of the top and bottom rails of the upper gallery bulwark.  My idea was to simply profile a piece of scrap 1/16” styrene and then “rip” the moulding off the blank:
 

After truing the back edge, it was a simple task to profile the ends and secure them to the bracket:
 

This approach results in a generous perch for the seated figures:
 

I am currently adding-on the final layer of appliqués:  paneled headers, bell flower escutcheons, filigree accents,
and acanthus brackets.
 
Here you can see how softening hard edges helps turn a shortcoming into an advantage:
 


Honestly, I don’t think I can do a better job of satisfying the design and artistic challenges of this complicated part.  Nevertheless, it did dawn on me that my approach resulted in a fundamental architectural flaw that would never have found its way onto the actual ship.  Can anyone spot it?
 


I’ll give you all a little time to mull it over, and then I’ll explain why it won’t matter for this model, and is not worth the monumental effort of remaking the part.  I got lucky, this time, but the insight has only deepened my appreciation for these 17th C. shipwrights who managed to knit the whole structure together seamlessly.
 
As always, thank you for your support!  More to follow..

Hello !
Hello Vic, the guns are juste laid on the sill of the gunports, in place just for the picture, I have since removed them
Concerning the guns, I thought it might interest some of you to know how I painted them. I was inspired by the guns in front of the Strasbourg mess, as well as those that can be seen in museums. I found their patina was very elegant, not too marked, and highlighting the decorations. The difficulty is mainly related to the scale; at 1/72 the painting, even well diluted, does not behave as at 1/48 or larger scales, especially on reliefs as small as the ones on the bronze guns. So I included a picture of the guns as received, already passed through the burnisher by Alexey. Pretty but a little flashy and not homogeneous from one to the other, going from very dark to quite light. After going through the burnisher to have a very dark working base, I apply a coat of green (house mix) with an airbrush to give the dark bronze color. The airbrush makes it possible to have a very fine layer of paint which does not thicken the reliefs of the decorations. We get a very matte result. I then apply a thin coat of protective oil for metals which will protect the base during subsequent operations. The verdigris patina is then done with Citadel's "nihilakh oxide" paint. It has the consistency of a wash, and after passing it sparingly I wipe it away, leaving it only in the hollows. The final step is to rub the barrels with the shine brush of a Dremel, which will smooth the paint a little and restore the metallic aspect to the tube. It's quite difficult to take a picture of this. I tried with different lights. the last picture  is "burnt" but the color of green is the closest to what we see in real life.
That's all !

 

Hello,
except for his knee, the cat head is now ready. The knees comes then together with the rest of the head rails. But before that I would build the rest drift rails around the beakhead bulkhead.

Hello,
only a short update. I carved and painted a little over the weekend. 

Hello and many, many thanks for your likes and comments.
My garden took at least a lot of my attention the last week, so the shipyard had to pause a little. The beakhead bulkhead is now fast installed and yesterday I build the seats of ease in front of the round houses. Today I started with the cat-hats and -tails. I think, the pictures speak for themselves.

Continuation: Cleats for the topgallant lifts and royal lifts
Since tying the cleats to the shrouds did not turn out to be as problematic as originally feared, I went a step further to approximate the original method of execution.

Source: "Le gréement des navires anciens (1700-1850)", Gérard Piouffre
 
 
The following picture shows the result:

Accordingly, I will now attach the cleats for the lifts of the topgallant yards and royal yards to the topmast shrouds.
 
To be continued ...
 

As always, Druxey, you are very welcome.  I appreciate your sticking around through this slow, steady climb.
 
It has been suggested to me, by a friend on the other forum, that my pass-through arches might benefit from a slight re-design.  His point was that the pedestal support, as it rises from the balcony rail, appears to move slightly away from the ship side:
 

I related that part of the reason for this is that I needed a wide-enough seat to accommodate the figures of Africa and the Americas, so that they wouldn’t seem cramped beneath the quarter-piece supports for the side lanterns.
 
When I reduced the sheer by 1/4”, I lowered these quarter-pieces, as well, so that they would be in-line with the sheer railing, as opposed to above the sheer railing.  I even carved away the lower finishing of the quarter pieces and reduced their depth, somewhat, but they still present a challenge to spacing.
 
Nonetheless, the more I studied the problem, I could appreciate that he was right, and I found a path to get ever so marginally closer to what he was suggesting.
 
Now, the differences are slight.  I kept the canopy at the same projection as before, but I redrew the support pillar at a slightly steeper angle toward the ship’s side, while increasing its heft.  I re-drew all of the scrolls and the acanthus brackets and they are better now.
 
Here is the difference:
 

I will minor-tweak some of these panel reveals, as I make the parts, but this is what the new bracket design looks like against the ship:

This is not a dramatic difference, but it is a worthwhile improvement, IMO.
 

More progress today. I managed to get the wheel finished and on the ship. I could have used the laser cut spokes, but I decided to scratch them instead. Either way would have worked just fine.

Mike

Continuation: Cleats for topgallant lifts and royal lifts 
Mostly it comes differently than one thinks! 
So in this case. While I had thought that binding the filigree cleats to the topmast shrouds would be very difficult, my first attempt showed that it would be relatively easy.
Before I started with the shrouds for this model, I first built a corresponding jig for experimental purposes. This served later among other things also with decisions for attaching the ratlines. And now it served to test how best to attach the cleats to the shrouds.
The trick, if you can call it that at all, is to tie the cleats comfortably to the shrouds from the front, and then simply turn them backwards to the desired position. 

 To be continued ...
 

Cleats for the topgallant lifts and royal lifts 
I almost forgot!
Wasn't there something else with the shrouds? There are a few details I'd better mention now.

The description of the monograph for La Créole itself does not clearly state how the lifts for the topgallant yards and royal yards are to be attached. As far as I could tell from the description, the lifts were attached somewhere in the area of the top. On the original photos of the Paris model of the La Créole, you can clearly see two cleats on each of the topmast shrouds. Until now, I could not clearly identify the ropes used there. However, after some research, my suspicions were confirmed. These are the lifts for the topgallant yards and royal yards.
 

Source: Monograph by J. Boudriot, detail of original model
 
The next step was to clarify the shape and size of these cleats, a total of 3 x 4 pieces, which I derived from the original photograph and drew.
 I made the cleats from service tree. The following pictures show different stages of the production. 



     
      
The last picture shows the result.

 
Attaching these cleats to the topmast shrouds will probably be another small challenge to master.
 

Yesterday was a milestone day as I completed the main deck gallery of stern windows and finally completed the wrapping balcony.
 
Per usual, there was quite a lot of touch-up, but here is where we are after applying the walnut ink wash:

Somewhat remarkably, I managed to avoid breaking the aft bulwark supporting knees, the angle of which had to be faired a little to match the corresponding rake of the corner joint.
 
Because the nature of this reverse-engineering project precludes a comprehensive drawing, from the outset, the build is always evolving, in-process.  I realized, for example, that increasing the camber on this main-deck tier of windows ultimately necessitated adjusting the camber of the bulwark railing, if those two things were ever to agree with each other.  Even though I thought I had set the camber of the windows to match that of the bulwark, it didn’t quite pan out that way, in actuality.  Unfortunately, this only became manifestly evident to me AFTER I glued the bulwark in place.  For the sake of comparison, here is the relatively flatter camber of the bulwark, prior to alteration:
 

Fortunately, there was enough solid-bond glue surface to enable me to re-shape the bulwark, in place.
 
The bulwark cap-rail, itself, was determined by making graphite rubbings along the top edge with masking tape.  This gave me the precise shape, as well as the location and depth of all of the pilasters, so that I could arrive at a reasonable overhang, without making the railing appear too heavy.
 
The forward end of the side cap-rails required some allusion to timbering, considering the need to cover the relatively large-scale expanse of the wooden end-piece beneath it.

My big idea was to wrap the side railings over the corner join to the aft bulwark, thus re-enforcing the construction.


A few different perspective shots with all of the paint re-touched:
 





So, now the stage is set to make the pass-through archways that also serve as supports for the figures of Africa and the Americas.  My adaptation of the Berain design is as close as I can keep it, while still respecting the particular slope of tumblehome on this model.  Here, I’ve drawn my proposal directly to a cardboard pattern:
 

These will be fun to make, as I’ve made all other things like this, before; there will be a primary sandwich of three layers of styrene, with two thinner appliqués that make up the acanthus brackets, and applied mouldings that continue the lines of the upper stern balcony.  There will be pierced fretwork and applied ornaments and all kinds of fun that add up to about a week of effort to make each bracket.
 
I’ve extracted two of the Four Winds carvings from the stock QGs, that will be fitted to the outboard surfaces of these brackets.  I didn’t bother to draw them on the template, but here they are beside said template:
 

They will be reduced, accordingly, to fit between the upper and lower scrolled volutes.
 
As always, thank you for looking in, and for your kind comments and support of the project.
 
More to follow…
 

Hello,
it is done, I painted the bulkhead! 😲 

The breastrail which was one of those in between projects I've been working on is finished. It looks pretty straight forward, but the six columns required some time to shape. Luckily the laser cut side gave me the shape that needed to be duplicated on the adjacent side.

Mike

Well guys, sort of out done my self this time on updates, figure it was time to work on the mast to make sure it fit in place before I can't get to certain places. After a couple of daysI finally got the fore mast looking some thing like a mast, but still a long way to go with it but its a start. Have to say thank you to Alan and druxey for info on the mast and helping me bring it to life. 

Hi Every one, Its been awhile since my last update and most probably figure I fell off the ends of the world. Well the misses sent me a life line and  finally went back to doing some thing on her. I sort of been stuck  on the cables and how the messenger was routed. Ben from Ropes of Scale help me on the cable and Druxey gave me the ideal about the snatch block.  So  I went to work on making a snatch block for the messenger using Lee's measurement, from his  book The Masting and Rigging of English ships. It didn't come out to bad But I leave that up to you. 

Hello, no the workers are busy at the yard 😉 
and after fine tuning the rails for some hours, I decided that it's ok. And that is the result


I would say, here would nobody would have an easy seat. So the seat of ease has to be in front of the round house and I have to change the decoration there.

I didn't realize that it's been almost a month since my last update. Actually I've been working on the ships wheel, binnacle, QD rail, etc., as the mood strikes. Kinda gives me time to think about my next move on making a specific part.
 
Getting started on the QD rail proved to be finicky when I tried to add too many parts at once. My only suggestion is that however you go about it, don't do that. I ended up only adding and securing the pieces that I felt would would form the foundation for the remaining pieces.
 
Every timberhead and post that goes on the rail should be set vertical. Everything was pre-painted beforehand.
 
The two sections are ready to accept the remaining parts. I can move either one forward or aft while setting up the post, etc.

 
Ofelia, my fiancee, shows how to use a short stick to establish the proper angle for the posts. The stick is placed along the two upper moldings and the top outside edge of the post. Before the glue sets it's easy enough to tweak the post.

As of today. .

Mike

I finally managed to get the companionway on the ship. The uprights were pinned with 24 gauge wire to the coaming. The four long rails were pinned to the uprights by turning a tiny round end into the rails with the Dremel. Holes were drilled equidistant into the uprights to accept the rail pins.

 

 
Mike

Thank you, Michael and Gray, and also all the others for your likes.
The next thing to do should had be, painting the bulwark. But then arose the question, where are the other seats of ease? So I decided first to build the main-headrail. With build in the rail I could see where to build the seats of ease. At least not at the side of the round houses. There is not enough space for them. So I think in front of them.

 

 
That is the stand of work yesterday, and I'm not ready with them. Today I cleaned up my winter garden, and tomorrow the windows in the house are my goal. So, at the moment there is not very much activity at the shipyard 😉

The painting of the guns is finally finished. On the computer screen they appear very blue, they are a little greener in reality. Taking advantage of having all the guns painted, I did a little simulation... 110 guns is a lot of guns ! Of course they are balanced on the sill of the portholes so they are more prominent than they should be. (and the three on the forecastle are missing)
I can now continue the construction of the hull.

 
 

These window banks are incredibly labor-intensive, but the process of making them has been very enjoyable for me.  What I am doing, here, essentially mirrors what Tanneron did for the sterns of his models.  The damaged stern of L’Agreable illustrates how his windows are all pierced into one plate, as seen with the lower bank of windows:
 

 
Considering the density of detail in such a small space, this method seems far easier than framing each individual window.  Getting all of the elements (window frames and pilasters to flow harmoniously would, otherwise be quite difficult.
 
As I have done previously, I add window backstops to the bulkheads as added insurance that the windows can’t drop out of their frames, if the CA bonds should ever fail:
 

 
I remain indebted to Druxey for showing me how to make really good acetate windows by simply scribing the mullions into the acetate, and then filling those engravings with medium grey acrylic paint:
 

 
It really is simple and it just looks so much better than anything else, at scale.
 
Of course, I will next plank-in beneath the windows, but I am pleased with how the stern is rising:
 

 
One detail that isn’t so apparent now, but will become so after planking, is the chamfer I filed into the door sides; this chamfer will create a shadow relief that will more clearly delineate the door opening.  For the door handles, I recycled a pair of my frieze scrolls, which had the right shape and were sized closely enough.
 
The round-up really helps to minimize the warped geometry of my stern:
 

 
At this stage, it is becoming more apparent how the increase in hull-width has established a more ship-like impression of a stable gun platform:
 

 
This is quite a difference from the stock kit.
 
So, I will plank and paint beneath the windows, install the balcony bulwark, and create the cap-rail for the balcony bulwarks. I will then take a break from the stern so that I can focus on finishing certain details.
 
I need to paint and install the starboard spirketting on the main deck.  The f’ocsle beam needs re-touching, where I installed the moulding.  The starboard bulwark joint needs to be puttied and painted.  I need to fit, paint and install the quarter deck beam.  Then, I need to retouch the exterior joint for the starboard aft bulwark.  Finally, I need to install the starboard channels and fit all of the buttressing knees.
 
When all of that is ship-shape, I will return to the stern.  One fun thing to make are the pass-through archways that support the figures of Africa and the Americas:
 

 
On the back-burner of my mind, I’ve been thinking about how best to make up this piece so that I can represent the delicate acanthus carvings.  I think I know what to do now.  The most important thing is getting the scale and shape of the opening right.
 
Following that, I’ll tackle the third level of stern lights.
 
Thank you for your interest, your likes and comments, and for looking in!