robdurant

Hi all,

As I draw to an end with Ethalion, I was thrilled and surprised to find that in these somewhat uncertain times of COVID, the model I ordered from Croatia arrived a day early. So - I thought I'd put an initial post in what looks like being another build log that will take some time.  I need to finish my HMS Ethalion build first, so there may be a few weeks delay to getting started, but then we'll be up and running. 

What I can do in the meantime is give a few first impressions of both MarisStella and their kit, and once I've read the book about what happened to Barque Stefano and her crew I shall understand better why this is such an historically important vessel.  If you want to know more, I'd recommend looking at the build logs of MarisStella.hr, and HeronGuy who have said more on this subject.

The company

I found the company a joy to deal with. Yes, they don't have a traditional payment gateway on their website, but they do live up to their claims as far as personal service is concerned. They were quick to respond to my initial enquiry, helpful with all my questions, and absolutely true to their word when I went ahead with buying the kit. From ordering to my door was six days. 1 quicker than they said it might be. I think that's enough said.

The kit

I can't comment on how the kit goes together yet... as I haven't started it. But the kit has certainly survived a long journey in excellent condition. I bought the upgrade version (as opposed to the retro version) It was in a good heavy, outer brown cardboard box, and the inner kit box is really nice with nice big colour printed image of the model. It's built to be good and sturdy with helpful and well thought out packing inside that keeps everything really well secured. The plans themselves are heavy! (14 sheets of well printed, clearly set out plans at the same scale as the model that at first glance look really good quality). The plan booklet contains a copy in good English, and various diagrams and schematics adding detail to the sheet plans.

The materials look good at first glance - building the kit will give a better idea. The photo etch and copper plates were well packaged to give protection from the journey and arrived in perfect shape. The copper plates had some black marks on them, but I'm confident that this will come off with a little clean up. No big deal I'm sure. They are so finely etched that I'm really looking forward to fitting them. They have a lovely deep copper red lustre which should look amazing when fitted, and as has been mentioned before, they are -handed so will overlap as on the real ship (if I get it right when I build the model!).

All-in-all, I'm really impressed. 

So. If anyone wants to join in the journey, please do. I'm pretty sure that being a more modern vessel there's going to be a bunch of metal work to do that I've never done before... but it's all part of the learning experience, so we'll make it.

I'll try and take some pictures to go alongside these comments in the next few days.

Rob

I had to pause and think for a bit here... I tend not to follow the instructions very closely. I'll read them through, then look at the other build logs, think about how I've done it before in other similar builds (i.e. Royal Yacht Caroline in this case) and then gingerly pick my way through. So, it was onto the standing rigging.

I proceeded in the following order:

• Add shroud cleats to every fore shroud and the rear two mizzen shrouds, 12mm above the deadeyes.
• Add shroud cleats to the front two main and front two mizzen shrouds, directly above the deadeyes.
• Mizzen mast stay
• Main mast preventer stay
• Main mast stay
• Fore mast preventer stay
• Main mast stay
• Bobstays.

And that's as far as I've got so far. Now, it wasn't clear on the plans, but I feel I may have got the hearts muddled up... I've used the two larger on the main mast, and the two smaller on the fore, but I suspect it should actually be larger for the main stays and smaller for the preventer stays? I don't know for sure, but it's done now, and I'm going to live with it.

The mouse on each stay was made by tying .25mm thread round the rope, and then wrapping it around to effectively seize the rope back and fore, then carefully tying a couple of reef knots to secure. I used pva to help as I went.

Here are some photos of the work done.

Shroud cleats:

I found that tying a knot round the shroud cleat in the upper notch first, then tying this round the shroud, and then tying another knot round the lower notch provided a reasonable amount of stability. This worked better on the main and fore shrouds where the shroud is thicker. PVA helped to secure.

Attaching the mizzen stay to the main mast:

The deadeye was attached to the mast by first attaching the deadeye to a length of 1.25mm rope, then looping that round the mast and seizing it in the same fashion... Careful handling meant it turned out reasonable. I made the mistake of simply knotting this to the mast on Royal Yacht Caroline, and I'm much happer with this result.

Attaching the stays to the tops... 

A loop has to be made, by putting the rope through a loop at it's own end... the mouse stops the loop from tightening right up to the mast... Here are the loop (a simply seized loop on the end of the rope) and the mouse close-up.

And here are a few photos of the stay in situ...

And an overall shot of progress (just before I tightened up the fore shroud. I hadn't fitted the bobstay at this point.)

Hopefully this may be some help to others who find themselves rigging a frigate

Rob

There'll be a captain with good reason to be proud of his ship! She's looking really smart. Great idea to put the line down the middle of the mouldings for contrast.

Oh, decisions decisions.... Well, I've settled on my next build. Barque Stefano by MarisStella. I've been admiring this model for a while now, and with Ethalion drawing to a close, it was time to work out what next. 

I hope Zoran won't mind me putting up one of the photos of his fine kit here.... 

So. I'll need to finish Ethalion first (for the space at my build desk if nothing else...), but then I shall be starting a new build log.  And I'd just like to say thank you to Zoran and HeronGuy for being more than helpful with the questions I asked. I'm sure there will be many more as I proceed.

Now... back to those ratlines!

I look forward to seeing it

Hi,

Hope you don't mind me following along. Flying Fish is certainly a handsome subject. Looks like you've made a solid start. You'll find plenty of encouragement on this site.

Rob

Congratulations!  She's turned out really nicely. Thanks for sharing the build here.

Have you decided what you'll build next?

1 hour ago, captain_hook said:

Very nice work! 

Thanks  I've had to redo bits a few times, but it's getting to the stage I'm happy with.

Hi all,

Well, it's been almost two months since I posted, so here's a little post to show I haven't given up on Ethalion or simply disappeared. That said, I haven't been posting all the time firstly because I haven't got a huge amount done, and secondly because what I've done is a little on the repetitive side... But, here are a few pictures of progress. I've finished the futtock shrouds on the masts, and moved on to rigging the topmast shrouds and ratlines.

I have a workspace that wraps round the wall, and I've found this invaluable with all the turning round of the model - this is not a ship that can be built in a tiny space! And that's without the boom on the mizzen!

Thanks as always for the likes and encouragement, and I hope you're having a blessed advent-time!

Rob

Wow, you're making speedy progress. Great to see her nearing completion. She'll look very handsome on display.

It looks like you're using foam as a stand while you work on her which seems very sensible. Does she come with a display stand? 

Here's a screenshot of the file size estimate in action... I've highlighted the estimate. It updates automatically whenever you slide the slider.

Okay - I've just uploaded v1.0.1. It adds a  filesize estimate to the quality slider as demonstrated in the video below.

If you've already specified a directory for pictures you want to size, the application tests the resizing of one of those images (the first it finds) to find the file-size estimate. Otherwise it uses a temporary image I provided for the application. It won't show an estimate until you've provided a resizing dimension, but the estimate is based on that rescaling size. It is still an estimate as far as any other images you will resize, but hopefully enough to give a helpful idea:

The uploaded application file is on https://durant.biz/pictureresizer/ as before.

Thanks for the feedback 

Rob

38 minutes ago, Dr PR said:

It would be useful if you gave the resulting output file size in kilobytes or megabytes. Some web sites and email systems limit the size of files that can be sent

I agree.

Because JPEG is compressed each image will be a different size and depending on how complex the image is (how much detail must be rendered) the file size can vary quite considerably. But I could certainly provide an estimate. Or perhaps even a feature to resize to a maximum dimension or a maximum filesize (whichever was smaller). This could take a little more time for the computer to process but would certainly be possible.

She's coming on nicely. And I'm sure you're right about who notices what... we're often our own worst critics. 

I'm afraid I can't offer much help with the running rigging but you seem to be making good decisions so far. You'll be on the home strait before you know it.

Hi,

Just a quick note to say I've finished writing some documentation that basically says what I say on the video, but puts it down on paper for those who prefer to read than watch.

You may find that the video helps fill in any gaps where I haven't described it very well on paper. Let me know. 

In other news, I realised that I hadn't implemented anything to make it possible to specify the compression of the outputted image. That's done now, so when you install the application you'll see a new slider - slide it to the right for less compressed, better quality, bigger filesizes... and to the left for more compressed, lower quality, smaller filesizes... 

I'd recommend around 90 for photos that look almost uncompressed to the naked eye, but take up 10x less space on your disk than the photos at compression level 100. The number in the middle shows the number you've selected and updates as you move the slider.

PictureResizer.Documentation.20201121.pdf

Hi all,

Moderators : Apologies if I've put this in the wrong place... please do move it.

I'm aware from watching the forums over a little while that uploading pictures to the forum can be a bit confusing and stressful, especially when it comes to why pictures that look fine are rotated wrong when they arrive on the website. It's confusing for us, but it also results in a bunch of questions to the moderators and admins on this site, which are hard to answer from afar.

To try and help with this, I've programmed an application for Windows 10 that takes images in one folder and puts them into another having resized and hardwired the rotation. If you then put more photos into the source folder, it'll just resize the new ones that haven't been resized before. You get to decide the maximum dimension of the resized image, and modify the filename for clarity. You can also set the quality of the new images to alter the amount of space the files created take up on your hard drive, and how much time they take to upload / download (this last piece of functionality was added after the video below was made.

Anyway - this YouTube video gives you an idea of what I've programmed... it describes installation and usage step by step.  I would STRONGLY recommend watching the video before you download the application and try it out. (It'll help me if I don't get asked to answer questions that are already answered in the video)

If it's helpful to you, you can find the video, and download link along with the documentation I'm half way through writing at the link below:

Please be aware - I've programmed this in my spare time... so whilst I use it myself, and it seems reliable, I can't be 100% sure it doesn't contain bugs. Please don't use it if you aren't happy to take responsibility for what it does to your computer. I can't take responsibility for loss of data / time or damage incurred as a result of using it. Nor can I offer 24/7 support (because it's just me). So - if you're happy to have a go, and try it out, then go ahead.  You will be asked to agree to this when you install it.

Download link and documentation:
https://www.durant.biz/pictureresizer/

Hope it blesses you. Let me know how you get on.

Rob Durant

On 10/29/2020 at 4:04 PM, Dsmith20639 said:

Having Parkinson's makes doing fine details a bit of a challenge.

I'm truly sorry to hear this. I hope you're getting a lot of enjoyment out of the build in amidst the fine detail challenges and added frustrations... I'm certainly enjoying looking over your shoulder as the ship progresses.

Those stays look nice and evenly tensioned without pulling the mast out of true. I'm just getting to that stage on my build and I always find that stage a little daunting. More shrouds to put up first for me, though.

Glad that plan was useful. Those tops look great. When I came to put the futtock shroud in I found that the extra height the planking added meant that I couldn't use the amati deadeye strops I bought for the purpose but thread knotted above and below the top has proved a neat and effective substitute.

I've taken some photos and I'll try and put up a post on my progress tomorrow on my log.

You going to zip past me at this rate

This looks fascinating - hope you don't mind if I follow along.

Wow that's a beautiful job and her lines are really shown to great effect in those photos.

8 hours ago, TimC said:

It’s super satisfying to see the progress

And with that tricky step done, that feeling of satisfaction should only grow as you progress! Great start, Tim. She'll do her captain proud.

I tend to put a little on a scrap of card and use a cocktail stick to pick up a little and move it to the joint. If it's thin ca glue, capillary action will draw the glue in between parts. The angle of the cocktail stick can change the size of the drop of glue on the end... then it's just experience and getting a feel for it. 

There are plenty on this forum who are far better at this than me though so there may be better advice forthcoming

Stunning work. What a handsome ship!

Hi Tim,

Hope you don't mind me following along
 

Fly really is a handsome ship, and I'm sure you'll do a great job. It doesn't feel like two minutes since I built my first wooden model ship, and yet somehow six years and four models have come and gone! I couldn't have done it without the support and encouragement of the guys on this forum, so if I can pay it back at all and help you out in any way, let me know! 

Rob