robdurant

Introduction
 
It’s time to attempt something I’ve been wanting to have a go at for a long time. A frigate of the napoleonic era. Having spent a lot of time looking round, I decided that I had neither the tools, the time, nor the expertise currently to complete a fully-framed scratch build. I was drawn by Chuck Passaro’s HMS Winchelsea, not least because I am sure the instructions when they are released will be utterly brilliant and the builds look beautiful so far, however at the time of writing the prototype is not yet completed. Given these factors, added to the expense and difficulty in sourcing good quality wood in the UK, I came back to model kits. I hope to keep on dabbling in scratch building though, and I have a cross-section of Triton underway for that purpose.
I wanted to build a model in 1:64, partly because it would give a good contrast to the boats I already have in the house, which are of the same scale. I looked at Victory Models, however, though there Pegasus and Fly models are very handsome in their own rights, I could not reconcile that they were not quite Frigate enough in my mind to fit the bill.
Having built two of Caldercraft’s models in the past (HM Schooner Pickle and HM Cutter Sherbourne), I was keen to come back to the same manufacturer, as I have found their models to be rewarding to build, and to have a level of detail that is manageable, but results in great looking models.
Sadly, HMS Surprise, though prototyped, has not been released by Caldercraft so that was not an option, though I am a great fan of the Aubrey / Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. However, Caldercraft do have another Frigate already in their line-up. HMS Diana. An Artois-class Heavy Frigate of 38 guns.
Having seen other builds of sister-ships on ModelShipWorld.com, and since I am married to a Classicist, my interest was piqued by the other boats in the class, and I settled on Ethalion – built in 1797. In part because I didn’t really want a scantily clad woman glued to the front of the boat when I finished it, and Ethalion brings the possibility of a dolphin.
Once that was decided, it was time to break out google and a some books, and try and track down firstly, who Ethalion was, and secondly some of the history of this particular HMS Ethalion.

Thank you Albert. 
 
I've been quietly following your beautiful Naiad. It's a true masterpiece!

Gunports (all 28 of them!)
 
Having finished the first planking (phew!), I got out the AOTS plans, and the Caldercraft plans and measured and double-measured where the gunports needed to be.
 
I wanted the gunports to be where they were on AOTS, which meant that some of the heights were going to be out for where the gundeck is - I'm happy enough with that, as those gunports will be well hidden under the deck. Given that I'm going to be looking at the outside of this model and not the inside, I want those ports to be where they ought to be. That means a lift of anything up to about 5mm towards the bow and stern. In those places, I'll work out something to do with the gun trucks to get the barrels up to height - whether they'll look okay a little raised, or whether I'll need to raise them up somehow, I'll work out. That's the downside. The upside is that the beautiful sweep of ports goes up to line up with where the galley windows are. Hopefully(!). I figure we're talking about little booster-seats for the guns to sit on towards the far-stern end and forward two guns that'll never be seen by anyone. In retrospect - and building this again, I would build up the gundeck to be the correct height! But that's a woulda for the next model.
 
Anyway - Here's the progress along those lines...
 
Closing up the port side first planking:
 

Marking out the gun port positions with stern galley
 

And then taking my heart in my hands and starting drilling (a new drill from Proxxon made all the difference with this - it would have been a very painstaking process otherwise!):
 
 


 
I've also begun to line the ports... (literally just begun!). The ports are drilled out as 16mm wide x 14mm high, then cleaned up and lined with 1mm x 10mm maple to bring them down to 14mm x 12mm. The maple is my own stock left over from the planking. I decided to use this wider stock as it makes lining the sides easier. They can be put in straight up and down as they have the extra width to accommodate this. And that means every cut is 90 degrees. I decided against leaving the sides that join against frames unlined, as I felt this would be less tidy. It's just a little bit more effort in a job that's going to take a _long_ time   To aid trimming the ports I made up a sanding stick that was long enough to go through the opposite port on the other side of the frigate. This helps keep everything lined up between inner and outer skin of the hull. I'm also realising that maple is really hard, and perhaps I slightly over-engineered the inner skin on this one!

 

Hi I congratulate you for the good work you are doing, good continuation.

Gunports (all 28 of them!)
 
Having finished the first planking (phew!), I got out the AOTS plans, and the Caldercraft plans and measured and double-measured where the gunports needed to be.
 
I wanted the gunports to be where they were on AOTS, which meant that some of the heights were going to be out for where the gundeck is - I'm happy enough with that, as those gunports will be well hidden under the deck. Given that I'm going to be looking at the outside of this model and not the inside, I want those ports to be where they ought to be. That means a lift of anything up to about 5mm towards the bow and stern. In those places, I'll work out something to do with the gun trucks to get the barrels up to height - whether they'll look okay a little raised, or whether I'll need to raise them up somehow, I'll work out. That's the downside. The upside is that the beautiful sweep of ports goes up to line up with where the galley windows are. Hopefully(!). I figure we're talking about little booster-seats for the guns to sit on towards the far-stern end and forward two guns that'll never be seen by anyone. In retrospect - and building this again, I would build up the gundeck to be the correct height! But that's a woulda for the next model.
 
Anyway - Here's the progress along those lines...
 
Closing up the port side first planking:
 

Marking out the gun port positions with stern galley
 

And then taking my heart in my hands and starting drilling (a new drill from Proxxon made all the difference with this - it would have been a very painstaking process otherwise!):
 
 


 
I've also begun to line the ports... (literally just begun!). The ports are drilled out as 16mm wide x 14mm high, then cleaned up and lined with 1mm x 10mm maple to bring them down to 14mm x 12mm. The maple is my own stock left over from the planking. I decided to use this wider stock as it makes lining the sides easier. They can be put in straight up and down as they have the extra width to accommodate this. And that means every cut is 90 degrees. I decided against leaving the sides that join against frames unlined, as I felt this would be less tidy. It's just a little bit more effort in a job that's going to take a _long_ time   To aid trimming the ports I made up a sanding stick that was long enough to go through the opposite port on the other side of the frigate. This helps keep everything lined up between inner and outer skin of the hull. I'm also realising that maple is really hard, and perhaps I slightly over-engineered the inner skin on this one!

 

A brief update... and a little milestone!
 
I finished first planking on the starboard side... Now I'm working down the port side.
 

 
And here she is on her new stand - not perfect, but it's nice and solid, and it'll do for building purposes.
 

 
Thanks for looking in and the likes and encouragement

It's been a while since my last update, and lots has happened, so here's an update.
 
Deck planking
 
I completed the gun deck, with 1mm maple. I'm pleased with how this has come out, and I'll be wiser when I start the quarter deck later on in the build. Replacing the wood seems to have been a good choice, not least, because I've been able to vary the widths of the planking to reflect the real ship more truly.
 

 

Inner planking for gundeck
 
I pre-painted the gundeck inner walls red using the admiralty paints and installed them.
 

 
Stern
 
Using Ray and Beef Wellington's logs as a guide, I approached this part of the build with trepidation. Only time will tell whether I've got it right, but I used scans of the plans as templates as others have done before me to line up the parts for the stern. So far, it doesn't look too bad!
 


Once the stern parts were in place, I opened up the area where the keel former would go to take a wider stern post from boxwood.
 


 
 
First hull planking
 
This is in 1.5mm by 6mm lime. It's lovely wood, actually. Really sharp and easy to form. I filled at the bow and the stern with balsa to act as a support for some of the more complex curves that this hull contains.
 


 
I started putting a plank on each side (to prevent the keep getting twisted) and once I reached where the gun deck was, I marked the frames and the gun port positions (The height of the port rises slightly at the back (between 21 and 25mm from the gun deck)) before I lost the frames as a reference behind the planking.
At present the gun ports are marked out as they will look when framed, so the holes made will need to be larger. This has helped in terms of understanding where the bulkheads meet up with the gun ports. (For some of the gun ports, one side of the port frames will be bulkhead.)
 
I've used a mix of plank nippers and boiling water to edge bend the planks so they aren't forced round the corners. After reaching roughly the point where the wale is, I started to work all the way down on the starboard side. Here's the progress so far.
 

 
 

Thanks for the likes
 
I’ve added the 7mm waterways, and continued planking with 3mm from the centre out towards the edge. To do this I needed to find a way of cutting a whole bunch of 3mm planks to the same length. I used a template with a stanley knife blade, hitting it with a hammer, to cut the planks one by one. This was surprisingly effective and quick, and I’ve been very pleased with the results. The template was made using "display case section" offcuts stuck onto a ply offcut. I used the display case section because I had it left over... the advantage being that it's nice and square, reasonably cheap (from Cornwall Model Boats) and a good size for this stuff... and they can be quickly and easily glued with carpenters glue.
 
Hopefully the following pictures are fairly self-explanatory. It's probably worth saying that if you're going to hit a stanley knife blade with a hammer, please wear safety goggles!
 

 

 

 
Once cut, the 3mm planks aren’t very sharp on the edges, so I made a second template to sand them to size… this was a head-scratcher, because I wanted the planks to end up exactly 3mm wide… eventually, I settled on using 1.5mm plasticard glued together with plastic-weld… This allowed me to make two sides (one fixed, and the other floating) that could be put on each side of a stack of planks… One edge was flattened using a scraper, and then the planks were turned over to scrape the other side to get the width down to 3mm.
 

 

 

 

 
The pressure of the scraper and a hand holding the floating side of the template in place was sufficient to get the job done...
Once scraped, I edged all the planks with a sharpie marker.
Here are the results...
 

 
Once I got to the edge of the top and butt planking, I started adding these in. I’ve been using Shipyard Sid’s template to do this, and it’s been extremely helpful.
 

 
I’m almost finished on the port side, then it’ll be the same again to complete the deck.
 
Here are the results so far... Not perfect, but it hasn't been scraped yet, so I'm pretty happy. The caulking should tone down a little bit when it's scraped, and I'm aiming for the newly built look, so I don't mind if it's fairly dark.
 

 

 

 

 
That's it for now
 
Happy building
 
Rob
 
[edited to restore photos, 11, 13 July 2017]
 
 

"HMS Ethalion in action with the Spanish frigate Thetis off Cape Finisterre, 16th October 1799", Thomas Whitcombe, 1800
(public domain image from Wikipedia)

Introduction
 
It’s time to attempt something I’ve been wanting to have a go at for a long time. A frigate of the napoleonic era. Having spent a lot of time looking round, I decided that I had neither the tools, the time, nor the expertise currently to complete a fully-framed scratch build. I was drawn by Chuck Passaro’s HMS Winchelsea, not least because I am sure the instructions when they are released will be utterly brilliant and the builds look beautiful so far, however at the time of writing the prototype is not yet completed. Given these factors, added to the expense and difficulty in sourcing good quality wood in the UK, I came back to model kits. I hope to keep on dabbling in scratch building though, and I have a cross-section of Triton underway for that purpose.
I wanted to build a model in 1:64, partly because it would give a good contrast to the boats I already have in the house, which are of the same scale. I looked at Victory Models, however, though there Pegasus and Fly models are very handsome in their own rights, I could not reconcile that they were not quite Frigate enough in my mind to fit the bill.
Having built two of Caldercraft’s models in the past (HM Schooner Pickle and HM Cutter Sherbourne), I was keen to come back to the same manufacturer, as I have found their models to be rewarding to build, and to have a level of detail that is manageable, but results in great looking models.
Sadly, HMS Surprise, though prototyped, has not been released by Caldercraft so that was not an option, though I am a great fan of the Aubrey / Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. However, Caldercraft do have another Frigate already in their line-up. HMS Diana. An Artois-class Heavy Frigate of 38 guns.
Having seen other builds of sister-ships on ModelShipWorld.com, and since I am married to a Classicist, my interest was piqued by the other boats in the class, and I settled on Ethalion – built in 1797. In part because I didn’t really want a scantily clad woman glued to the front of the boat when I finished it, and Ethalion brings the possibility of a dolphin.
Once that was decided, it was time to break out google and a some books, and try and track down firstly, who Ethalion was, and secondly some of the history of this particular HMS Ethalion.

Looking great Rob.  As I'm sure the other Diana builders will attest, I'd suggest double checking the stern fascia and window position as well just to make sure of placement.  

Thanks Mark

Apologies to people who couldn't see the few pictures on this log. I've moved them from photobucket to MSW, so there shouldn't be any problems. (I've learned my lesson.)
 
Hope to have more progress to report here soon. I haven't disappeared. Just paused this while I learn more skills with the Ethalion. Thankfully the wood is patient

Apologies to people who couldn't see the few pictures on this log. I've moved them from photobucket to MSW, so there shouldn't be any problems. (I've learned my lesson.)
 
Hope to have more progress to report here soon. I haven't disappeared. Just paused this while I learn more skills with the Ethalion. Thankfully the wood is patient

Thanks Pat. I just attached around 240 individual handrail stanchions. Rigging them will be even more painful

Thanks all, the anchor chains and stoppers all rusted up. 

Rigging complete, really very simple on this one. I have now replaced the three 12.7mm high altitude guns, these are so much nicer than the Flyhawk ones. I also threw in the 2 quad torpedo tubes. Coming together. 

Nice work, Rob.  I fell behind in following and I love a kit bash as it expands one's skills and horizons.  Even us lurkers learn.  

Thanks for the likes
 
I’ve added the 7mm waterways, and continued planking with 3mm from the centre out towards the edge. To do this I needed to find a way of cutting a whole bunch of 3mm planks to the same length. I used a template with a stanley knife blade, hitting it with a hammer, to cut the planks one by one. This was surprisingly effective and quick, and I’ve been very pleased with the results. The template was made using "display case section" offcuts stuck onto a ply offcut. I used the display case section because I had it left over... the advantage being that it's nice and square, reasonably cheap (from Cornwall Model Boats) and a good size for this stuff... and they can be quickly and easily glued with carpenters glue.
 
Hopefully the following pictures are fairly self-explanatory. It's probably worth saying that if you're going to hit a stanley knife blade with a hammer, please wear safety goggles!
 

 

 

 
Once cut, the 3mm planks aren’t very sharp on the edges, so I made a second template to sand them to size… this was a head-scratcher, because I wanted the planks to end up exactly 3mm wide… eventually, I settled on using 1.5mm plasticard glued together with plastic-weld… This allowed me to make two sides (one fixed, and the other floating) that could be put on each side of a stack of planks… One edge was flattened using a scraper, and then the planks were turned over to scrape the other side to get the width down to 3mm.
 

 

 

 

 
The pressure of the scraper and a hand holding the floating side of the template in place was sufficient to get the job done...
Once scraped, I edged all the planks with a sharpie marker.
Here are the results...
 

 
Once I got to the edge of the top and butt planking, I started adding these in. I’ve been using Shipyard Sid’s template to do this, and it’s been extremely helpful.
 

 
I’m almost finished on the port side, then it’ll be the same again to complete the deck.
 
Here are the results so far... Not perfect, but it hasn't been scraped yet, so I'm pretty happy. The caulking should tone down a little bit when it's scraped, and I'm aiming for the newly built look, so I don't mind if it's fairly dark.
 

 

 

 

 
That's it for now
 
Happy building
 
Rob
 
[edited to restore photos, 11, 13 July 2017]
 
 

It's been a while since my last update, and lots has happened, so here's an update.
 
Deck planking
 
I completed the gun deck, with 1mm maple. I'm pleased with how this has come out, and I'll be wiser when I start the quarter deck later on in the build. Replacing the wood seems to have been a good choice, not least, because I've been able to vary the widths of the planking to reflect the real ship more truly.
 

 

Inner planking for gundeck
 
I pre-painted the gundeck inner walls red using the admiralty paints and installed them.
 

 
Stern
 
Using Ray and Beef Wellington's logs as a guide, I approached this part of the build with trepidation. Only time will tell whether I've got it right, but I used scans of the plans as templates as others have done before me to line up the parts for the stern. So far, it doesn't look too bad!
 


Once the stern parts were in place, I opened up the area where the keel former would go to take a wider stern post from boxwood.
 


 
 
First hull planking
 
This is in 1.5mm by 6mm lime. It's lovely wood, actually. Really sharp and easy to form. I filled at the bow and the stern with balsa to act as a support for some of the more complex curves that this hull contains.
 


 
I started putting a plank on each side (to prevent the keep getting twisted) and once I reached where the gun deck was, I marked the frames and the gun port positions (The height of the port rises slightly at the back (between 21 and 25mm from the gun deck)) before I lost the frames as a reference behind the planking.
At present the gun ports are marked out as they will look when framed, so the holes made will need to be larger. This has helped in terms of understanding where the bulkheads meet up with the gun ports. (For some of the gun ports, one side of the port frames will be bulkhead.)
 
I've used a mix of plank nippers and boiling water to edge bend the planks so they aren't forced round the corners. After reaching roughly the point where the wale is, I started to work all the way down on the starboard side. Here's the progress so far.
 

 
 

Thanks. I do feel blessed to be making this kit

A brief update... and a little milestone!
 
I finished first planking on the starboard side... Now I'm working down the port side.
 

 
And here she is on her new stand - not perfect, but it's nice and solid, and it'll do for building purposes.
 

 
Thanks for looking in and the likes and encouragement

Hi Jason.
 
Thanks for your kind words. I am enjoying this build and having other build logs of cc's Diana is so helpful for ideas and encouragement to kit-bash and change things as I go. I feel rather like I'm standing on all your shoulders to get to where I am! Looking forward to seeing the next update on HMS Jason.
 
All the best
 
Rob

Apologies to those who looked for the pictures and found them missing. I had been using Photobucket, but lesson learned. I've moved the pictures all onto MSW, so there shouldn't be any further problems.

Apologies to people who couldn't see the few pictures on this log. I've moved them from photobucket to MSW, so there shouldn't be any problems. (I've learned my lesson.)
 
Hope to have more progress to report here soon. I haven't disappeared. Just paused this while I learn more skills with the Ethalion. Thankfully the wood is patient