robdurant

Hi Peter, Sorry - just catching up with modelshipworld, so this information may be too late. I ordered the following: Boxwood Flat Lines Approx. 0.7mm Thick 1 Metre Long 4x option 1: 4.5mm Boxwood Flat Lines x 10 (40 in total) 1x option 1: 3.4mm Boxwood Flat Lines x 10 (10 in total) Black Flat Lines Approx. 0.7mm Thick 1 Metre Long 1x option 1: 4.5mm Black Flat Lines x 10 (10 in total) I also ordered a strip of 6mm square, which has proved helpful for carving small shapes for the rails round the top. In retrospect, I wish I'd ordered slightly more. I used the black flat lines to second plank the wales (in theory to avoid having to paint the wales, although I ended up staining these as well (walnut from the layer beneath was showing through. Anyway - hope that helps. Rob

Oh dear. I'm no expert on wood but I ordered some "boxwood" from Euromodels as well... here's a comparison of the colour against the castello and european boxwood I have. I chose notnto use the euromodels wood in the end. It was not only a different colour but very soft compared to the other boxwood I have. It seemed to me much more like the limewood / basswood in hardness. I got my boxwood from: (I have no connection with them) http://www.originalmarquetry.co.uk/category_Lines_and_Stringing_1.htm

It's been a while since I posted an update.. that's for a few reasons. Firstly, I've been agonising over the deadeye strops. The kit includes some pre-bent wire, which can be soldered shut - the problem being that the joint ends up at the bottom, where the chains connect... It may be my soldering, but I found that the joint was coming loose, and that meant the chain just fell loose. That was irritating at this stage, but I didn't want to start the standing rigging and find deadeyes were coming loose, and I guess they're going to have a fair amount of tension on them by the time they're rigged. So... I scratched my head... and waited while I thought about it. The second reason was that I went away for a few days, and took a model with me, and I still haven't finished it I haven't put a build log on here, becuase it's just for fun and I'm chucking it together. It's a 1/350 Tamiya Prince of Wales with _some_ photo-etch from Eduard on it and a wooden deck. Those of you who know the ship well, or know the photo-etch kit, or know pretty much anything about plastic / photo-etch builds, will see a myriad of problems ... and I don't care it was just for fun! I had a bit of a play making a seascape for it, to make it a waterline model... and here's the current state of it. I'm going to finish it off so I have my boat building desk back to get on with Ethalion. It should be done in the next week or so. Back to the deadeye strops, and I've found a solution. Caldercraft sell them as photo-etch sets separately, so I've ordered a bunch, and that should take the cork out of the creative bottle as they say! I'll let you know how I get on. Rob

Kind words Peter. Thank you. If you want to see someone doing a really beautiful job with boxwood you could check out Beef Wellington's HMS Jason... it's also based on the Diana kit but his skills surpass any I have by many degrees. Along with Ray's excellent build, that's where I've been going for inspiration The wales look good from here. I know that the bottom of the wale ended up almost touching the waterline so this may be a good moment to roughly check the waterline towards the centre and make sure the wale won't clash with it when the time comes. Rob

Hi Peter Lovely to see another Diana on the way. Looks like you've made a great start! Rob

Hi. Thanks very much. I borrowed the idea for the blue from Jason (Beef Wellington). It's Tamiya XF-18 acrylic - "Medium Blue".

Today I managed to add the decoration onto the port gallery so that it matched the starboard. I've also added the capping rails onto the forecastle. I added walnut strip to the edge of the capping strip to widen it before pre-painting it and then fixing it onto the hull.

When I had to put a badge on the funnel of my HMS Cottesmore, I tried using printed transparent decal paper but it was too see through where it was printed. So I printed it out then carefully painted in the colour and used that as the decal. This allowed me to get the fine detail but also the painted look I was going for. The whole was then sealed with varnish (and because of the paint didn't run. Perhaps a light grey printed decal gone over with white paint? This was at 1:48 though so you.may find 1:96 lettering too fine for this approach.

Don't know whether these guys have already been suggested... http://www.becc.co.uk

Exciting stuff! Pulling up a chair. Rob

Hi all, First of all, thanks very much for the likes Just a little update. I've been working on the channels and chain links that pass the pull from the stays and deadeyes down to the hull sides. The first job was to get the plates at the base of these links in place. So I put the stub masts in, clamped a 30cm ruler to it them and used cotton thread to show the line the stays would follow. The thread was weighted down with small bulldog clips and passed through the notches in the channels. Masking tape on the hull side allowed me to mark the locations of the pins, and then drill them without marking the hull sides. These are fiddly blighters. I blackened all the photo-etch parts, and now I've made up the brass wire links that complete the links I'm ready to blacken those. Just the 5mm deadeyes on the fore and main channels done so far and dry fitted. To strengthen the parts, I soldered the parts surrounding the dead eyes to make them a closed loop. So far, so good... none of the chains, lined up to follow the lines of the stays, obstruct the gun ports! 😅 And in other news, I had a surprise on Saturday. I turned 40 a few days ago, and my wife had organised a surprise party... in Bristol... a harbour trip on the Matthew (the replica of John Cabot's caravel from 1497)... they even let me steer! (brave of them!) Not something I ever thought I'd do, but a nice way to start a new decade! Rob

Hi all, I've been spending a little more time transcribing the master's logs for Ethalion. It's a fascinating process... Lots of it is repetitive but then you find passages where the entire rig of the ship is taken down and set up again... As others have speculated in the past, it is clear that lots of knowledge was simply assumed - the passage below logged when Ethalion was moored in Hamoaze demonstrating that nicely... Tuesday 18th December 1798 Varble NNW Light Winds & Cloudy, fitted the Bobstays and set them up. Riggd the foretopmast and Mizen Mast, Sway’d up the fore & main top Masts and set up the fore and Main stays &c. &c. AM Modt and Cloudy, Got the top sail Yards across & Rattled Down the Fore & Main Rigging, Recd 354 Pounds of Fresh Beef Recd also Boatswains stores. It's nice to see the humanity of the Master (James Duckworth) creeping in too... (Not quite a month of Sundays, but seemingly a week with two Thursdays!) . The error continues to the end of the page (with Saturday rather than Sunday) and then suddenly skips back to the correct day... but perhaps the error was never spotted? There have been a few places where that happened. A sign of the similarity of days aboard a ship of war? I found myself writing about putting on the dead eyes on the same day I've been starting to set these up on my build. A pleasing coincidence! For those who would like to read more about the order in which the ship was re-rigged (having had considerable amounts of the rigging condemned), you can find it in the December 1798 entries in the following PDF (a work in progress). LogTranscription.James_Ducker_Masters_ Log17980701-17990630.ADM-52-2983.20190325.pdf More on the build soon. Rob

Thanks B.E.

Almost the same in English... https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lath Love these lesser used words... they make our languages rich and interesting. Back to the ship and she's looking terrific. I built a deans kit 20-something years ago and struggled with the printed styrene... the printing didn't seem to be quite accurate (or it may just have been lack of skill on my part)... You're doing an amazing job though. The view along the superstructure is amazing and looks absolutely true... impressive for a structure that long and thin. Keep up the good work! Rob

Hi all, A short update. I've completed planking the forecastle, gangways and quarterdeck. The next task was to plank the bulkheads, which were pre-painted red ochre. These could have been yellow ochre, but I figure light levels aren't an issue on an open deck, and I like the contrast. I planked the bulwarks on the quarterdeck, which was simple enough, but when I reached the foc'sle I realised that I'd cut down the hull too far. A good while has been spent building this up again so that the sheer rails look right next to the rail at the top. I think I'm nearly there, but it's tedious, fiddly and time-consuming... I'd work harder to avoid this in the future. Thankfully it's on an area of the hull that's painted. To break the tedium I decided to add the channel supports. As others have noted, there are 22 supplied, and _at least_ 26 are required according to the Caldercraft planks. I reused some of the rudder hinges (which I'd replaced with black card because they seemed too bulky for that) for this purpose. Even then, I reduced the six supports on the main channel to five so there were enough to go round. (One could buy another set of the Diana photo-etch, but at £95 it's a bit steep for 6 channel support brackets! The brackets were blackened first. The channels themselves aren't glued onto the hull yet, so they were removed and the brackets stuck to the bottoms, then the channels temporarily reinstalled. These will need gluing on soon, and once glued on, then I'll drill the holes to pin the brackets to the hull sides. (After a good sleep, and when I'm feeling confident I won't leave the hull looking like a swiss cheese!) I'm very pleased with the results so far. All comments welcome, and all likes appreciated. Rob