Beef Wellington

You don't mention how you used the blackening solution and how much you diluted. I've found results to be much more predicable with a more dilute solution, and using a nylon brush to apply while agitating the surface. Once the reagent is spent on a small area (turning from blue colour to brown), then the brush can be simply washed in water, dried on a paper towel, and a fresh brush load applied. I've had much less predictable results using a larger 'bath' to submerge items in.

Very nice, simple utilitarian beauty at its best!

Looks great, keep the updated coming! Ballahoo looking good as well in the sun.

Ben, I think your coppering looks really good, and you've got a nice curve at the waterline batten as well which really helps enhance in my view. Obviously personal preference on pristine vs patina. I had cleaned the copper plates on my Snake with metal cleaner once finished similar to you, mainly to get rid of any skin oils from fingerprints as these seem to accelerate the oxidation process and become pretty noticeable pretty quickly. I've been surprised at how slowly the surface has oxidized, but that may be a fact of it sitting out of sunlight.

As others have said already, thats a fantastic looking gun and carriage. I can only imaging the amount of work that went into this with the 3D printing and all but the results speak for themselves. Love the overall deck shots, as well 🙂

I edited my reply after you quoted it. Just want to make sure you saw updated option 1 which would still look very good, and be by far the least painful option. I wish you the best!

Hi, yes you have Snake bulwarks! Now that you show it, it should have been obvious from your prior posts (and I feel bad for not noticing!) but so easy to miss for those of us building Snake because it looks 'right'. The larger gun port size is to accommodate the carronade armament rather than cannons, looking at your earlier pictures it seems they unfortunately, but correctly, supplied cannons. What to do? I think your options are limited to the following: Simply install the cannons in the larger port. If you look at my Snake log, you will see that I installed cannons in the first port which seemed to be practice at the time, this gives you a sense for how this would look. strip off wood and redo, I completely understand how painful this would be (if its any consolation I had to do that partly on my 'Jason' build to move upper deck gunports, it can be done with patience, but would totally understand your frustration. This might be messier if you used CA glue (which I think you did) rather than PVA glue which can be softened with isopropyl alcohol. Strip off wood as per above and paint - this would give you more options to fix less 'perfectly' or comprehensively, but....you end up using paint.... Change the armament to carronades. There would plenty of justification for this given this large class of ships would have only had cannons for a short period of time on a few of the very early built ships. A carronade armed, 2 masted Cruizer class would probably be more historically relevant/accurate. However, you would need to source some carronades. It could be worth contacting CC and explain the situation, they may be willing to provide these, their customer service is typically good. They also provide more upgraded turned brass aftermarket kits, however these are very expensive, especially for the whole ship.

Really like the look of your stand there Eamonn, I to like the knots....but "down with that sort o' thing"...

Subtle but noticeable difference...looking good BE. Looks like a fun little project. Good decision on the deck by the way, much more in tune with a working fishing boat.

Hi Rob, yes the strips were just cut straight. I was fearful these would need to be spiled but that did not prove necessary. When damp, the cardstock was very forgiving to place, each was only around 2.5mm wide.

Hi Rob, I'm always amazed at your very thoughtful and methodical approaches to things using the CAD drawings, I really want to learn that. Your cutter framing is looking fantastic. You'll have a really solid foundation there, and the photos always seem to belay the small scale of these things, feel like all fingers and thumbs. All the best!

@mugje - just to be clear, the resin hull shown is an 'aftermarket' mini-kit supplied by caldercraft, its not included in the kit. What I'm attempting to do is leverage the kit supplied items as best I can. Cutter Progress: Part 2 Keel and bow section was cut out of some spare wood and glued in place, and once the basic hull was completed, a decision was needed on how to add a second layer of planking, kit instructions specify to use another layer of 0.5mm walnut. I really wanted to try and replicate the clinker hull planking shown in the AOTS Diana book, and to do this a used some cardstock instead of wood to cut individual strakes. Fist challenge was to determine the width of each plank on the hull. This was done using 'tick strips' at about 10 points along the hull. The lowest (non-clinkered) garboard strake was simply omitted. The end of the cardstock strips were cut down (rather than truly tapered) to allow the planking to terminate smoothly at the front bow and stern which is how I believe the planking is done in practice. Each strip was cut to about 2.5mm thickness, the benefit of cardstock is that when coated with dilute PVA glue it becomes very manageable and can simply be bent to shape rather than the spiling that would have been necessary if wood had been used. Once the hull had been marked out to 'prove' the planking separation, these were not referenced again. Once a strip had been installed, the lowest point of the next strip was placed using the tickstrips. This process was simply repeated, with time allowed for the glue to dry sufficiently for the surface to harden. Dilute PVA was used quite liberally to ensure a good bond between the wood and card as the hope is for this to add additional structural strength. The final 2 strakes were completed with one wider strip as the uppermost strake is non-clinkered and would not be visible. Extra height was added for safety as this can be easily cut back once glue has dried. Once both sides had been completed, each was given a few more coats of dilute PVA for added insurance....why not?! With the exterior planking work completed, attention could be turned to the interior and the potentially catastrophic step of removing the frames. This actually went smoothly, but has to be approached with patience and a light hand. The kit base was removed as well as the actual flooring should be a little lower I feel. The frames were cut back a little more than is perhaps necessary, but this will allow flexibility as to where the floor is, and hopefully prevent them from being seen. Practically, it also allowed the interior planking to be sanded more effectively. The hull in this state clearly needs a light hand, but is surprisingly robust despite my fears. Once an initial sanding had been completed, some light wood filler was used to fill imperfections and deal with some of the slight clinkering of the topmost walnut strips. Once sanded back, dilute PVA was once again brushed on....yes, paranoia perhaps, but can't hurt. Finally I was able to add an initial coat of white point to the hull to get a better idea of how this turned out (In this case Valejo 'off white' as it was all I could get from Amazon in a reasonable timeframe). This highlighted that some finish work will be required in some areas where the eye is drawn to surface imperfections, but one thing I've learned is that the cardstock planks can be effectively sanded, probably due to the application of dilute PVA glue. Definitely some fine tuning still needed and far from perfect, but its hard not to be pleased with the result for a first attempt.

Hi Stergios, I'm assuming you are referring to the fore topmast preventer stay, it goes through the front 'hole' in the bowsprit 'bee'. The plans are really not clear at all on this and seem to have it be attached to other rigging elements. Photo below of how I did this, if memory serves it is called out in Petersson's "Rigging Period Ship Models" on page 18. This also shows a fore topmast preventer stay as well, I wonder if this is something that is not necessary on Snake because of the different sizes of the ship (?).

Thanks chaps for the ongoing interest and support. Continuing to feel my way through this. I really wanted to make the kit materials work, but had to go off on my own which was educational, and more fun than I expected. I managed to get only 3 strakes of the walnut strip, with tapering, on before it became apparent that no more could be done - even with these some clinkering was unavoidable even with the thin strip. The thin 0.5mm walnut strips (all of varying thickness and closer to 0.65mm thick) don't edge bend at all to be able to use that technique and luckily some ~1mm thick wood sheet was found from which spiled planks could be cut (not sure what it is, CMB had supplied this when I ordered maple, but it clearly isn't and my guess is its limewood sheet, its pretty soft). You can see the curvature required below. The keel former was cut back to provide a slight rebate for the planking at bow and stern, fiddly and a bit messy but seemed to work. Glad the more structural work is behind me. The garboard was installed before the planking was closed up, don't think the shape is fully correct for actual planking practice as this was not tapered at all, but it allowed the last 2 strakes to fit easily enough. The other benefit was that the final strake had a straight side which made shaping that much easier. Glue was only used very sparingly on a few strakes and frames where necessary to keep the lines true. After each strake was positioned, the surface was sanded lightly and diluted PVA glue brushed on to the whole to hopefully add some additional strength. Finally, here's a comparison of the hull form to the resin Cutter mini-kit supplied by CC, I bought this way back with the kit. This looks much more like a launch rather than the sleeker Cutter's lines and overall proportions very different. To my eye the stern fascia is probably a little big proportionally but need to consider that the keel strip is not yet installed which will change the proportion, but will probably reduce this a little by thinning down the planking thickness there. Rather than put on a second layer of planks, I'm considering using card stock as a second 'planking' layer to represent clinker planking. It needs something because when the interior is sanded down the hull could be wafer thin...to quote Mr Creosote. Any thoughts or experiences with this? Next steps will be to cut and install custom bow and keel pieces, and remove the bizarre sternpost aft of the stern bulkhead that doesn't seem prototypical.

Nice to see the update Stergios. Don't think there is any problem not adding the additional stays in place, just be careful to ensure you put them on before any of the running rigging for the yards goes on that would go over the standing rigging.