robdurant

Thank you for the likes.
 
I haven't stopped working on this, but it takes me a good couple of hours to put the bolt rope on each sail, so here is sail BS 4 getting bolt rope...  COnsidering I haven't done a lot of sewing before, I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming out.

Yes, it's a work of patience, definitely .... but I find it quite relaxing

Yikes. Another reason to not put on sails...
 

Thank you for the likes.
 
I haven't stopped working on this, but it takes me a good couple of hours to put the bolt rope on each sail, so here is sail BS 4 getting bolt rope...  COnsidering I haven't done a lot of sewing before, I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming out.

Thank you for the likes.
 
I haven't stopped working on this, but it takes me a good couple of hours to put the bolt rope on each sail, so here is sail BS 4 getting bolt rope...  COnsidering I haven't done a lot of sewing before, I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming out.

Thank you for the likes.
 
I haven't stopped working on this, but it takes me a good couple of hours to put the bolt rope on each sail, so here is sail BS 4 getting bolt rope...  COnsidering I haven't done a lot of sewing before, I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming out.

Thank you for the likes.
 
I haven't stopped working on this, but it takes me a good couple of hours to put the bolt rope on each sail, so here is sail BS 4 getting bolt rope...  COnsidering I haven't done a lot of sewing before, I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming out.

Thank you for the likes.
 
I haven't stopped working on this, but it takes me a good couple of hours to put the bolt rope on each sail, so here is sail BS 4 getting bolt rope...  COnsidering I haven't done a lot of sewing before, I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming out.

Hi all,
 
I've finished hemming the sails, and now it's onto bolt ropes. For this, I made some thinner rope (3 threads per strand of #50 DMC cordonnet thread). The bolt ropes come to an end at each corner of each sail, and they're used to attach the corner fittings for the sail. These were blackened ready for use. I've simplified what the instructions call for a little, but things are going well so far. 
 
Here's a photo of the photo-etch corner fittings.
 

 
Step one is to attach the over-length bolt rope.

Step 2 is to attach the corner fittings... This results in something of a spiders web at each corner, but it all gets tidied up once everything's attached. In the photo below the photo-etch corner fitting has been attach to the left boltrope, but not the right.

And here are all the hemmed sails laid out ... 34 in all!
 

Plenty more sewing to enjoy... After this step - which will take some time! - comes reefing points, attachment holes, and lots more work on the yards to get them ready.
 
Thanks for looking in
 
Rob 

Thank you for the likes.
 
I haven't stopped working on this, but it takes me a good couple of hours to put the bolt rope on each sail, so here is sail BS 4 getting bolt rope...  COnsidering I haven't done a lot of sewing before, I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming out.

Thank you for the likes.
 
I haven't stopped working on this, but it takes me a good couple of hours to put the bolt rope on each sail, so here is sail BS 4 getting bolt rope...  COnsidering I haven't done a lot of sewing before, I'm pretty pleased with how it's coming out.

I couldn't resist seeing the model so far jump off the drawing board into real life, so I've started to make a basic paper half-hull mockup at 1:96 scale to get a sense of the lines. At the moment there's no lateral support for the frames, so they're all over the place, but an interesting exercise nonetheless, and adding the poop / quarterdeck / upper gun deck will help matters no end. The deck locations are marked with solid lines and waterlines are marked with dashed lines. This half-hull should help me work out how to go about realising the internal structure.
 
Progress so far... 
 

I spent a few hours working on the station lines yesterday - these are a first draft, but they contain the waterlines and upper and lower deck limits, which should help me double check them against the half-breadth.

One interesting point was that there is an vertical extension to the bulwark at the forward end of the poop deck which allows the height between quarter deck and poop deck to be sufficient to accommodate the ship's wheel without having extreme camber on the poop deck. This extension doesn't show up on the Winfield Leopard 50-gun ship, Leopard plans. (My CAD from RMG plans on left, Winfield on right)
 

The same images are shown below super-imposed: red is the sketch from Winfield, and black, from the Bristol NMM plan. Here, we notice that either the gunport location was slightly different (a matter of different framing?), or the Mizzen mast was moved between Leopard and Bristol, by a few inches (the more likely, I would think.) Nevertheless, the difference in height for the poop decks (between the beams) would have felt pretty significant if you were on the helm all day. 1.86m for Leopard at the centre line, and 1.92m for Bristol, or 6' 1" and 6' 3" in old money. Being 6' 2", I think I would have preferred Bristol!

I also reconciled the mid-point stations for the aft stations (l.h.s of the plans) and the forward stations (r.h.s of the plans), and was concerned that they were miles out - until I realised that I was very zoomed in, and it worked out as a difference of 1.3cm on the full size ship - or 0.2mm on the model. I think I can live with that - a brush of sandpaper, or swipe of the scraper should reconcile the difference!

I couldn't resist seeing the model so far jump off the drawing board into real life, so I've started to make a basic paper half-hull mockup at 1:96 scale to get a sense of the lines. At the moment there's no lateral support for the frames, so they're all over the place, but an interesting exercise nonetheless, and adding the poop / quarterdeck / upper gun deck will help matters no end. The deck locations are marked with solid lines and waterlines are marked with dashed lines. This half-hull should help me work out how to go about realising the internal structure.
 
Progress so far... 
 

I couldn't resist seeing the model so far jump off the drawing board into real life, so I've started to make a basic paper half-hull mockup at 1:96 scale to get a sense of the lines. At the moment there's no lateral support for the frames, so they're all over the place, but an interesting exercise nonetheless, and adding the poop / quarterdeck / upper gun deck will help matters no end. The deck locations are marked with solid lines and waterlines are marked with dashed lines. This half-hull should help me work out how to go about realising the internal structure.
 
Progress so far... 
 

I couldn't resist seeing the model so far jump off the drawing board into real life, so I've started to make a basic paper half-hull mockup at 1:96 scale to get a sense of the lines. At the moment there's no lateral support for the frames, so they're all over the place, but an interesting exercise nonetheless, and adding the poop / quarterdeck / upper gun deck will help matters no end. The deck locations are marked with solid lines and waterlines are marked with dashed lines. This half-hull should help me work out how to go about realising the internal structure.
 
Progress so far... 
 

I couldn't resist seeing the model so far jump off the drawing board into real life, so I've started to make a basic paper half-hull mockup at 1:96 scale to get a sense of the lines. At the moment there's no lateral support for the frames, so they're all over the place, but an interesting exercise nonetheless, and adding the poop / quarterdeck / upper gun deck will help matters no end. The deck locations are marked with solid lines and waterlines are marked with dashed lines. This half-hull should help me work out how to go about realising the internal structure.
 
Progress so far... 
 

I couldn't resist seeing the model so far jump off the drawing board into real life, so I've started to make a basic paper half-hull mockup at 1:96 scale to get a sense of the lines. At the moment there's no lateral support for the frames, so they're all over the place, but an interesting exercise nonetheless, and adding the poop / quarterdeck / upper gun deck will help matters no end. The deck locations are marked with solid lines and waterlines are marked with dashed lines. This half-hull should help me work out how to go about realising the internal structure.
 
Progress so far... 
 

I couldn't resist seeing the model so far jump off the drawing board into real life, so I've started to make a basic paper half-hull mockup at 1:96 scale to get a sense of the lines. At the moment there's no lateral support for the frames, so they're all over the place, but an interesting exercise nonetheless, and adding the poop / quarterdeck / upper gun deck will help matters no end. The deck locations are marked with solid lines and waterlines are marked with dashed lines. This half-hull should help me work out how to go about realising the internal structure.
 
Progress so far... 
 

I couldn't resist seeing the model so far jump off the drawing board into real life, so I've started to make a basic paper half-hull mockup at 1:96 scale to get a sense of the lines. At the moment there's no lateral support for the frames, so they're all over the place, but an interesting exercise nonetheless, and adding the poop / quarterdeck / upper gun deck will help matters no end. The deck locations are marked with solid lines and waterlines are marked with dashed lines. This half-hull should help me work out how to go about realising the internal structure.
 
Progress so far... 
 

I should have jumped onto finishing the carronades but I felt like I needed a change so I had a stab at one of the masts. I chose the mizzen as it is the easier of the three. I checked all of the heights against using Steel, Lees, Caldercraft and AOTSD. The AOTSD and kit lengths are fairly close although the diameters are a bit different. The dimensions in Steel are all shorter but he was quite the short mast evangelist. I decided to stick to the AOTSD dimensions as I had used those heights for the dummy masts that I used to position my gunports.
 
For the mizzen I used an 8mm diameter beech dowel which sits between the Steel and AOTSD dimensions but the last time I had a go at enlarging the hole for the mizzen with the dremel I nearly set fire to my ship. Luckily the 8mm diameter mast did fit into the lathe so I used that to get the taper using sandpaper and multiple dimensional checks to see that it was going in the right direction. The taper is as per Steel's formulas and is quite subtle but noticeable. The end was squared off with the milling machine and the taper to that done freehand which ended up a bit wonky but that gives it a nice homemade feel.

I added the cleats to the bottom of the mast as per the AOTSD drawings. I had to eyeball the height based on my 1:64 captain figurine but I do not think it is critical. I used modified Bluejacket cast Britannia metal cleats. I gave the mast a coating of yellow ochre and painted the top black. I left off the top iron hoops for now until I have fitted the crosstrees.
 




I remade the hounds and bibs as two separate pieces rather than the all-in-one kit version. This will also allow me to splay the bibs. I notice that the drawings show this for the main and fore masts but they are quite shy in describing the condition at the mizzen. For consistency I am planning on splaying all three.
 

For the wooldings I did a couple of samples using 0.3mm diameter rope as per Steel and 0.5mm diameter rope as per other sources. I could have gone either way on this but eventually plumped for the 0.3mm. I then realised that I did not have any of the dark brown from RoS in this size so had to revert to the 0.5mm. I noticed that they now do a 0.35mm diameter version which would probably be the sweet spot in terms of dimension but I am too impatient to wait for delivery.



The timber hoops above and below the woolding were fashioned using a 0.5mm sliver of cherry wood cut from a 0.5mm thick shim. This was then well soaked and wrapped around the mast. It was nigh on impossible to do this without getting glue on the woolding. It does have a nice yellow colour so I can forgo the painting and avoid further mischief to the woolding.
 

I started on the top. This turned out to be a bigger adventure than anticipated. I looked at many drawings describing these structures and most of them seem to be based on the one included in Steel. This is a beautiful drawing to be sure but it is full of ambiguities. The AOTSD drawings sort of fudges the matter and is such a small scale that it is very hard to see what is going on. I eventually found out what I needed to know in the Longridge Victory book. His drawing is not as evocative as Steel's but has much greater clarity. A further study of the existing condition on HMS Victory and HMS Trincomalee confirmed this solution. To start I rebuilt the deals using individual planks. Here I shamelessly copied Rob Durant's colour scheme that he used in his Ethalion build and left the planks in their natural state. It is a non-regulation colour scheme but I like the way you can see how the top was put together. Although these planks would not have been caulked, I did darken the edges to give better definition to the layout.
 
Studying other builds I noticed that it is quite popular to plank over the kit piece, which was tempting, but I wanted to see the planking on the underside as well. Lees gives a drawing that shows how these planks are scarfed together which got me fretting as to how I was going to be able to mill a plank exactly in half to form this scarf joint. Luckily, I had no planks of the required thickness but I did have some that were half as thick which made me realise that it would be a lot easier to form the scarf by laminating them together and save myself the milling headache. That done it was fairly easy to glue them into the required pattern and cut out the final shape.
 



At this point I should include a "do not try this at home" disclaimer as I decided to represent the nail pattern to highlight the scarf joint. For this I used some dark 0.18mm diameter filament that I found in a drawer. I do not exactly know what this material is made of as I cannot recall where I purchased it and it has no label. I inserted the mystery material into a 0.2mm diameter hole. This was very frustrating, time consuming and ultimately not that successful. Having done it on the Mizzen top I am in the dilemma of whether to carry on and do the same thing for the Fore and Main top or to remake the Mizzen top. it is a 50/50 decision.
 




I added a copper strip to the side to represent the plate that prevents the futtock plates damaging the timber. I then constructed the rim and the filling out of walnut. I made the copper bearing plates out of styrene and milled the slots for the futtock plates. These slots do not go through the top but pass to the side hence the requirement for the protective plate at the edge. I formed the timber battens out of 1.6mm thick maple. This was a painful process as each one has to be notched, chamfered and shaped to fit. I added some blocking under the gunwale to accept the stanchions for the rail.
 







I decided to use 1mm thin-walled brass tubing for the stanchions rather than timber as it was more structurally robust and it was not uncommon to have a metal rail structure. The top rail was formed out of 2 x 2 mm walnut. I left off the fabric cover as I did not think that I would be able to make this convincingly enough. To finish off I drilled some speculative holes for crows feet which is a future aspiration. Now that it is finished, I am wavering over the natural finish. The temptation is there to just paint it all black. I am going to hold off on that decision for now until I have built more of the mast.




I have not yet fixed the tops as I realised that I have to make the top mast to ensure that everything fits together. 
 

Hi All
 
Yet another update on Le Rochefort.
 
So firstly were the limber boards. These are nice and easy to make 👍  A small strip of wood is placed up against the keelson in my case I cut it 1mm x 0.5mm which did the trick.  Then the actual boards needed a rebate cut into them which I did on the table saw.  Sorry I only took 2 photo's but once made they just slot into place and have no nails as they are supposed to be removeable.


You can see them again fitted in the next photo's.
 
So then I moved onto the hold deck beams - These are very very difficult to get right and its an angle challenge all the way!  Its so easy to start off level and then start to go off of level as you move along the hull.
 
I did make an error as I did not space the forward 4 beams correctly and ended up short on the bulkhead.  Now I could have removed them but I took the easier route and simply added another beam.  There are also 2 half beams that sit next to the pump well and they require a post to support them.  I have also only placed a beam on one side of the mast step as I'm not planking the other side and did not want to loose this detail.
 
Enough words here's the result.








So the next job is to cut the planks for the hold deck and then half timber it so as the beams etc can be seen through the side holes.
 
Cheers Mark
 

Thank you Druxey. I'm using QCAD Pro (https://qcad.org) - I used a mac and linux for a good while, and this program is robust and works beautifully on each, but also on Windows which I used now. It has a free version which did the vast majority of what I wanted, but I was so pleased with it, I thought it worth supporting the developers. It can generate dxf files which import into blender, so there's no great problem if you want to take the work and use it for 3D work, too.

I spent a few hours working on the station lines yesterday - these are a first draft, but they contain the waterlines and upper and lower deck limits, which should help me double check them against the half-breadth.

One interesting point was that there is an vertical extension to the bulwark at the forward end of the poop deck which allows the height between quarter deck and poop deck to be sufficient to accommodate the ship's wheel without having extreme camber on the poop deck. This extension doesn't show up on the Winfield Leopard 50-gun ship, Leopard plans. (My CAD from RMG plans on left, Winfield on right)
 

The same images are shown below super-imposed: red is the sketch from Winfield, and black, from the Bristol NMM plan. Here, we notice that either the gunport location was slightly different (a matter of different framing?), or the Mizzen mast was moved between Leopard and Bristol, by a few inches (the more likely, I would think.) Nevertheless, the difference in height for the poop decks (between the beams) would have felt pretty significant if you were on the helm all day. 1.86m for Leopard at the centre line, and 1.92m for Bristol, or 6' 1" and 6' 3" in old money. Being 6' 2", I think I would have preferred Bristol!

I also reconciled the mid-point stations for the aft stations (l.h.s of the plans) and the forward stations (r.h.s of the plans), and was concerned that they were miles out - until I realised that I was very zoomed in, and it worked out as a difference of 1.3cm on the full size ship - or 0.2mm on the model. I think I can live with that - a brush of sandpaper, or swipe of the scraper should reconcile the difference!

That's good to know. I like to change from Windows to Mac in the future.
 
I have bothe original design drawings for the Alert cutter at home. Also there are some bigger differences. The drawings were handmade and each copy will show other difference. Here you are comparing an old drawing and a modern reconstruction. In this cases I would alway go with the old drawing, if this is possible.