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robdurant
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Everything posted by robdurant
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Hi Jobbie, Thanks for starting this log. I'm half way through building a Caldercraft kits too. I've brought a cushion for the pew, and look forward to seeing this one come together. Looks like you've made a great start. It's surprising how thin the stern needs to be to accommodate all the planking, isn't it. If you're still wondering how you can get it slightly narrower, one option (an option I've seen others use on this site) is to only take the first planking up to the bearding line... This means the part that reaches the sternpost only needs to be planked once (the second layer of planking) straight onto the keel former. You can see the rabbet at the bearding line for the first planking in the first photo below, and the first planking completed in the second photo. I'm sure you'll do a fantastic job regardless. Your previous builds look great! Rob
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Thanks for the kind words Jason. And thanks to everyone for all the likes. I'm also planning to wait until the quarterdeck is on before putting on the higher rails. I have found it a challenge to visualise precisely where the deck edge Will be so won'tfeel confident I'm putting the top rail in the right place until then. I do want to make up the rails in one go though as if I lost the scraper it would be tricky to make one just the same. I shall scrape them an store them until the right moment. I haven't thought much about the headworks yet other than to keep an eye on where they terminate on the hull. I want to get the stern sorted and the quarter galleys first. My son and I are making two p51 mustangs side by side now... he seems to be having fun but time will tell whether the bug really bites
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So, I took those vertical pieces off... fenders? - I wasn't happy with the colour, so I used some very watered down Admiralty Paints Yellow Ochre as a wash just to tone them down a little... I don't want everything to be exactly the same colour (that's the beauty of wood, surely) but close enough that it doesn't whack you in the face when you look at it... It looks better to the naked eye - these close-ups are brutal! I took the opportunity to narrow them down equally (to 1.6mm at the bottom), and align them better... the photo makes them look uneven, but the ruler tells me the vertical centre lines are parallel. I also added the paint, although this will need touching up. Overall I'm closer to happy with them. Side steps next. I have a scraper lined up for them. The fenders now...
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Oh, and I forgot to mention, the profile is 2x1.5mm maple scraped using a custom scraper and painted with yellow ochre.
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I'm still transcribing the logs for Ethalion - it really is fascinating... They're very matter of fact, recording this sort of thing from Thursay 12th April 1798. HMS Ethalion had just left Spithead and was passing the Needles. I found this description of the "bridge" at the Needles... From the following link (with which I have no connections - just found it googling: http://www.yachtingmonthly.com/specials/pilot-the-isle-of-wight-the-needles-to-st-catherines-point-3161/2 Now, I appreciate I'm no professional sailor, but no matter how professional you are, that's got to be a bit of a heart stopper when heading for a thousand tons of wooden ship bumps along the bottom at sea! Anyway - it all adds to the picture as I begin to detail the hull... Having shaped these strips (don't know what they're called?) I'm not entirely happy with the colour - they are box, but they're much whiter, and look more like maple... I'll see if they tone down, and otherwise might remove them and remake them... we'll see. The paint at the top also needs touching up, and the yellow adding, but I just wanted to get the boundary line marked on before I stuck them in place. The top rail is clipped in place so I can measure up and check how it's all working out. It will be trimmed to go to either side of these verticals when the time comes.
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Looking really good. As far as the photo rotation goes, there are two ways of rotating a photo on a computer... one is to actually change the file data to be the rotated image (this is a fairly big job as all the compression maths that keeps the file small probably has to be reworked). The second is to just set a parameter in the file metadata (Exif)that says e.g. "display this file rotated90 degrees clockwise" . The second option is much quicker and many desktop computer programmes and cameras use this function... so it will look rotated in your screen. However internet browsers / websites often ignore this data so an image rotated the second way will appear as it originally was. The solution is to find a programme that actually rotate your photos as per the first method. Hope that makes sense. Rob
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Thanks Zappto. The cut pieces of tile can be really fiddly but the results are worth the pain
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A major milestone! The coppering on the hull's complete! I'll be honest, I won't mind switching back to wood glue from CA. The mask worked really well, though. It's definitely worth paying a little extra for a proper vapour mask (not one of the wood dust masks). I used the following mask... 3M 4251 Maintenance-Free Organic Vapour/Particulate (it was around £22 and worth every penny) I ended up with a fair number of copper tiles left, so Caldercraft seem to have supplied ample spares. I may well go along the keel and tidy up a few of the first tiles I put on... they're pretty easy to pop off if required.
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That all makes perfect sense.... I wasn't aware that was even an option at this scale but the results speak for themselves. Fascinating. I'll go back through your and Pat's logs and take a closer look. Thanks Rob.
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Those look fantastic. So helpful to see the way you've gone about making the parts ready to fabricate these parts. Hope you don't mind my asking what may be a silly question... When you say weld, is that tin and lead soldering / silver soldering or another method, and do you add flux separately or use fluxed solder? I've done some electrical soldering, but never had much success with brass parts... perhaps because my soldering iron wasn't powerful enough. Those jigs look really neat, though, and the result speaks for itself!
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Oh, yes... and here's what my son and I have been working on at the same time His first airfix kit! Not bad for a 7 year old. He's really excited about the second one, now. A DeHavilland Mosquito's in the post. Happy building!
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Not much to update at the moment really. The time finally arrived to start the coppering of the Port side of the hull. I find it fascinating the way I tend to get into the groove after a while, and it gets done... I reckon I've probably got about 300 tiles on so far. I put a line of masking tape over the wood that'll be exposed above the waterline, just to protect it from superglue marks from tiles that slip... On the starboard side, I put a coat of black acrylic to seal the wood and give the superglue something to stick to (otherwise it all sinks into the wood and leaves nothing to stick the tile - this reduces the amount of superglue I get through a lot)... this time, I used some matt enamel varnish. It was lovely to see how the box and walnut came up. The first photo shows the difference with the varnish... at the top is the varnished wood, and at the bottom the untreated wood... left is box, right is walnut... (and the grey marks are my pencil marks from marking the waterline ready to put the batten on... this is that tricky bit at the stern where the hull tucks round. I've carried on transcribing the Ethalion logs... turns out Ethalion went to assist the ships of the line the day after the battle of Camperdown, and helped Isis bring her prize home.
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So... I'm working on transcribing the master's logs for Ethalion - a time-consuming process, but I'm finding it really interesting, and the task of reading the handwriting well enough to write it down accurately helps me take in what's being said. So far I'm completely amazed by the sheer amount of fresh beef a Frigate got through! So far Ethalion has taken her maiden voyage to Copenhagen doing convoy escort with HM Sloop Scorpion through some pretty unpleasant weather... the Topgallant masts have been up and down a few times already in only a month or so. The logs start in July 1797, and Ethalion spends a good part of July and all of August in the Nore. One of the things going on at that time is hangings for mutiny aboard various ships to be witnessed... I wonder whether these are punishment for the Nore mutiny a few months earlier. Certainly it must have been a tense time for everyone. For example: Tuesday 1st August 1797 SSW to WSW P.M. Mod’t and Cloudy. Employ’d occasionally. Answer’d Signal for a Lieutenant. AM fresh Breezes with Rain Sent a boat Manned and Arm'd to attend the execution of the Mutineers of H M Ship Sandwich. Read the Articles of War to the Ship’s Company. Sandwich was the flagship in the Nore at the time with Admiral Lutwidge aboard. And below is the original (apologies, the photo I took of this page was somewhat blurry): Anyway - a little progress on the model, too... after a LOT of sanding, the gratings are finished. The row nearest the camera is the upper (gun) deck, and the row behind is the forecastle and quarterdecks... both laid out so right is towards the bow, left is towards the stern. Thanks for all the kind comments and likes. Rob
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Great idea with the mast collar. She's looking really smart.
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Wow! You've done a lovely job with this model. It makes a fascinating subject. I laughed out loud when I saw the bucket Glad the pictures were helpful.
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Exciting news! (for me, anyway) I'm heading up to the National Archives in Kew (London, England) on Thursday (my day off) - I've signed up for a reader's ticket, and I've ordered up the original masters' logs, musters, pay logs, and a box labelled: "Ethalion . Capture of La Bellone, 1798.", which will be about the Battle of Tory Island. It'll be pretty special to look at the very documents from the ship I'm building a model of. I love history! Hopefully the documents will be available, and there'll be lots of fascinating insights coming up! These documents still exist, because although Ethalion was wrecked in late 1799, everyone on board was saved, presumably along with the most recent logs and documents, and so here they are. Waiting for me! HMS Ethalion (1797-99) makes a good study, because she had a short, but busy life... I can't imagine how many documents there are for a ship like Victory. I wouldn't know where to start! More soon. Rob
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Now you say that, it makes perfect sense... A little more progress to show. I've been working on the transom again... I soaked the transom in boiling water and bent it round a frying pan (with vertical sides), and clamped it. That's resulted in a pleasing curve. I also started working on the side galleries. Looking at those photos, I'm not sure with the way it curves upwards, so a rework is called for. But I'm pleased with where they end up w.r.t. the gunports and the transom. For a little light relief, I've done some more work on the gratings, surrounding them with 2x6mm boxwood, and using a stock pot with sand paper inside to sand the curved profile on the top. Happy building Rob
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Thanks Jason and Paul. It really does cause a fair bitof head scratching but I think I'm getting there... at least I'm over the psychological "what on earth am I doing" hurdle. It really is great to have other builds to look at and follow. There's no way I'd be getting on this well without them. The instructions are brief to say the least. Take care Rob.
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Time for another update. I've been working on the stern lights, trying to work out how to create these myself so that I could ditch the photo-etch ones, which others have documented are not the same shape as the lights in AOTS... they are smaller, and the curve is not uniform. To that end, I started making some 5mm deep ones, version 2 was 3mm deep, and now I'm trying some that are ~2mm deep. All out of .7mm boxwood veneer. These are built up on a CAD drawn template based on the AOTS stern view (which has been extended vertically to take into account the diagram being directly stern-on, and the actual fascia being tilted - further astern at the top and further towards the bow at the bottom. I've also been working on the stern fascia itself. I've taken "Beef Wellington"'s lead and recreated this myself. The kit parts are all 2mm ply... I've used 3mm walnut, and used the extra depth to shape the covings. They're also based on the vertically extended AOTS pattern, which was cut out and stuck onto the walnut to provide the template to cut out. The new cutouts for the lights are to proper scale, and should fit the new windows nicely (it looks pretty close at the moment, but time will tell.) As it stands I'm feeling much more confident about this part of the model. The stern will be considerably narrower than the kit, but the lights should look more to scale. It will mean that the quarter galleries will need to be shallower. If I were starting again, I would have narrowed the last few frames to bring this in... but this would have been far from simple, and it'll have to stand now. Planning: (this is all a bit Ted Heath, but I'll have another crack at it now I've got a bit further with the stern fascia.) Stern light trials... They are very uneven here, but the uneven face will face into the stern, and the even face (face down on the board) will be the side that you see... And the stern fascia... Using some maths (that was a bit of a shock to the system), I worked out that for 140mm of width, and 8mm of depth for the horizontal curvature (creating a radius of just over 310mm), the additional length for the stern fascia would only be 1.1mm.... basically, I need to leave a tiny bit on instead of sanding down to the line! Much happier with this than with the kit-supplied parts. Nothing wrong with those parts... they'd be fine... but I'm enjoying the kit-bashing aspect of this even more (and it has the added benefit of making the whole process last a bit longer, and giving me an excuse to use lovely wood.) Happy building and a very happy new year to you all! Rob
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Wow! That's a serious Bowsprit - being so long must have really increased the sail area... The rigging and hammocks in the netting look superb to me.
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You can really see the shape appearing now - lovely work - doesn't look like you'll need too much elbow grease - just a small tin, perhaps? I've got a soft spot for this hull shape, because it was the first boat my father built (a Mary Ann Billings), so had a big effect on my wanting to start the hobby! Looking forward to seeing it all sanded down again. Those stern blocks look perfect. You'll be painting before you know it.
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