Beef Wellington

I know that some modelers consider such ships as hybrid abominations, but I think they represent a rather interesting transitional period in naval architecture -- too bad that they are not well-represented in the model kit world.

'Thenistocles' trooping during WW1 w/c 11” X9”

This afternoon's effort 1960’s HMS Lowestoft and RFA Tidereach W/C 11” X 9”

New Zealand Star
Small sketch 9.5” X 7.5”
Jim

Today's effort Orient Steam Navigation Company liner Orion at Aden 
Watercolour 14” X 10”
Jim

Uruguay Star in the Southern ocean with accompanying Albatross.
W/C 14” X 10”
Jim

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.

The Coppering is DONE! It was hard and I'm not completely happy with it but it just going to have to do.  The humid summer weather has arrived and the finger smudges now stick out so it needs an application of polish.  Brasso works well, but the question is do I varnish afterwards or not? I have a test strip of tiles I varnished 2 years ago and it holds up well and stays shiny.  Or I could let it patina naturally.

You look to be off to a really nice clean start Stone, good choice of first build.  As you and others have found, the instructions are somewhat dated, so definitely don't feel constrained by them.  The gunport pattern is a common cause of concern, but is surprisingly strong.  Definitely put some PVA glue on the lower edge to get a good join with the top plank of the first planking as a safety measure.  Look forward to following along, and feel free to ask questions.  I'm intrigued to see how a 32lb'er fits, I know I played with an 18lb'er from Jason next to 9lb'er chase guns I used and it looked HUGE!

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 🙂

Pat,
I am most impressed by the pivot-gun and the slides ! 3D-printing really seems to be the way forward. I am tempted to scrap my laser-cutting stuff.
 
In our German forum there is a guy building the French BRETAGNE of 1855 in 1:75 (https://forum.arbeitskreis-historischer-schiffbau.de/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1548) at the moment and he got himself an SLA-printer. I have to show him your results.

catching up with your progress Pat.......the overall picts of the deck look superb........the layout is fantastic!  the cannons are done very well........very cleanly done.......the screw is cool too!     ...just beautiful workmanship   

Glad to have you follow along Jean-Paul, I very much enjoyed reading through your QAB log, a model to aspire to.
 
Frame Installation:
 
Additional work done on the keel was some final shaping of the stern post, finishing of the keel taper, installation of the transom, and a coat of wipe on poly for protection.  One thing I have noticed with cherry is the grain can cause optical illusions.  In a couple of places I know the surface is as smooth as I can make it, but the grain makes it appear quite course still.
 
I had been working on making up the frames for some time, for many this simply requires to a frame foot to be glued to its corresponding futtock after cleaning off some areas of laser char.  Pretty simple as each has its own guideline which is well explained in the instructions.  The grooves on the assembly board needed to be filed out a little to allow the frames to be inserted, primarily due to the thickness of the wood and the slight angle introduced by the laser cutter.
 
I think this is good opportunity to share an observation about the kit.  It is definitely a well thought out design with very clear instructions, however, that does not mean that some experience is not required as I was soon to find out....I'm sharing my experience below because every other build log of this kit seems to go together without a hitch, so a little humbling that I found this so problematic.
 
First Attempt:
First off, the assembled frames were inserted and the keel glued according to the instructions making sure that frames aligned well beforehand and that the bottom of the frame floor were at the right height to sit in the keel, and best effort to keep this in a straight line as well as by eyeball trying to keep what will be the top of the frames smoothly aligned.  Everything seemed to work fine, and once the glue had had sufficient time to set, I started to fair the frames.  This is when a first inkling of problems started, I noticed that some of the frames were moving in their slots, and upon further investigation some the frames were not really secured solidly to the keel.  Although the planking will definitely add to the strength, I wasn't convinced the frames would be rigid enough to allow planks to be installed.   Given the construction method, its not possible to remove and re-glue a single frame, so the isopropyl alcohol was brought out to remove all the frames....
 

 
Second Attempt:
Upon analysis two things became clear.  I hadn't used enough glue in the joints, and that my judgement of what 'play' was needed for the frames in the build board was wrong (the instructions say that these shouldn't be too tight or too loose), but it was really only trying to go through the process of fairing that indicated what this should be.  Some tape was added as suggested in the instructions to more rigidly seat these, and the process to align and glue repeated (using more glue this time around).  Unfortunately, in the final stages of seating everything,  I somehow placed too much pressure on frame G and the result was that the frame foot broke in two places, and the small tabs on one side of the futtock popped prematurely (these are weak by design to allow easier removal at a later stage).  The isopropyl alcohol was brought out once more to remove all the frames........I don't have any photos of this, honestly I was too despondent to record it...
 
Third (and so far final attempt):
After examining the break, the cherry had broken with the grain and looked like it could be repaired.  These are delicate pieces, but I don't think will be subject to much stress once the planks are on.  The breaks were located on each side of the foot where there is a small dark element of grain, and can just be seen in photos below.  The small tabs on the futtock were also given a tiny spot of glue, and to hopefully provide a little more strength a splint was glued to the central section to absorb some of the shearing forces that will be unavoidable while fairing the frames (this is NOT glued to the actual futtock itself). 
 
So far, things seem to be back on track, and work has resumed on fairing the frames which is where things sit currently.
 

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 🙂

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 🙂

Great photos Pat, really looking good and shows off all of the excellent detail work.  I'll be honest, and I'm no expert, the air vents did not jump out at me as being  oversized at all when I saw them and considering the period.

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 🙂

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 🙂

Hi folks,  I have made some progress with the guns and now have them fitted (except for tackles to be added to the broadside guns. 
 
The pivot gun  is now complete and shown in the stowed position; a tampion will be added soon.  Note the barrel is deliberately sloped very slightly down ward to assist with drainage should any water ingress.  As it is shown in the stowed position the breeching rope is not fitted, and the gun tackle used as the forward lashing; the eccentric tackles have been removed.  i have left the eccentric levers 9and rollers) fitted purely to show the detail; in reality these would have been removed and stowed also.  Note the size which makes the compressors very flimsy at this scale.  They have been 3D printed and I hope they survive time 9and cleaning) - especially the T-Handle.
 
The carriage fitting for the pivot gun are based on the Improved Ferguson Slide Carriage of 1847, with slight modifications based on contemporary illustrations (1855).  The colour of the wood in the photos appear much more orange than they actually are.
 
The overall shot also provides the hint of the bowsprit which I am working on now.
 
cheers
 
Pat
 

 

 

 

So the past week progress has been slow but a fair amount of work has been done to the ship. I’ll go back to where we left off and continue from there for this post. So in the last post,   had just finished assembling the bulkheads and planking the hidden third deck, I also added some reinforcements to the bulkheads to strengthen the gun deck. So continuing from there I bevelled the bulkheads and installed the keel with the exception of the rudder section.
The reason for leaving the rudder piece of the keel off for the time being is that I’ve yet to complete the beveling of the keel section as can be seen. I also started the planking of the gun deck while I waited for the keel to dry overnight.
Using the same method as the deck below I marked the edges of the planks with a pencil to bring out the seams but I decided to change the lengths of the planks to 2 bulkheads long and create a pattern that alternates between continuous run and seam at the bulkheads.

The following day I realized that one of the supports I added was in the way of a hatch. So I removed it and added some more material  to the wide open spot in the middle of the ship to aid in reinforcement.
After this, I got to work on planking the gun deck. It took most of the week as I worked in small timeframes each day rather than for a long period. Ever new plank made me more excited for the process of sanding the deck and adding nails.


I left the area near the bulkheads in the center of the gun deck unplanked because I will need to cut those later in the build and will finish the planking then so it's flush. The next day after planking was completed I finally got to sanding the gun deck I started this process by scraping an Exacto knife against the deck to remove big lumps of glue and level the deck a bit. Then I sanded the deck with three different grits of sandpaper starting low and finishing with a high grit. The result looked like this.
I also cleaned up the cutouts in the center of the deck before sanding. After this, I continued to begin the process of adding the initial nail holes in the planks. I do this with the tip of a pin to add the holes then proceed to soak the tip of the pin with a dark stain from a furniture repair marker and insert it into the holes I had previously poked this makes the holes stand out and also represents the nail in the board as adding actual metal at this scale is way above my level of skill.
As can be seen in the image above the insertion of stain into the holes really brings out the false nails in the deck.
And finally were up to date to today. I finished the nail details this morning it took nearly two hours but its finished. I also corrected the upwards bow effect that can be seen in the above image of the dry-fitted gun deck one side with nails and one without.
Then I decided to start working on some of the deck furnishings which is one of my favourite parts of building models. I started with the front bitts and upon cutting and sanding the parts out I knew I wanted to reshape them into a more pleasing shape.


The reshaped on the left and freshly cut on the right. I also decided to leave a little bit of the laser burn on the parts that bring out the grain and will high light it upon staining. I then added some nail holes to the bitts for detail and set the pieces aside to work on the main mast Bitts.

Then I decided to dry-fit the gun deck and the bitts to check their fit and appearance.
So that's where I'm at so far. Right now om deciding what stain to use for the deck furnishings and waiting to get varnish for the deck. Next step will be assembling more deck furnishings and preparing to add the gunport ply pieces before finishing ad finally installing the gun deck.
 
-Jamie

Here's the Shapways3-d printed 1/700 HMS Argus having the  WWI dazzle camouflage paint scheme being applied displayed with the Combrig 1/700 Armored Cruiser HMS Drake work in progress;  As for the aircraft wing, I'll use some of the AJM 1/700 Vindictive Sopwith Pups' Camels etc for the Argus included in their 1/700 HMS Furious converted battlecruiser/Aircraft carrier kit.  Also shown are Shapeways Argus model in its original form and Argus WWI dazzle camouflage scheme.

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

The last couple of days have seen some slightly cooler (albeit no less sunny) weather. I've begun work on the seating... although... some assembly required. The Grandt Line seats are great, and although they are a D&RGW prototype (that's Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway for the non-railway types), they are about the only proper walk-over type seats out there. Most of the other available seats are the "sleepy hollow" streamliner seats of a much later era. For those unfamiliar, walkover seats could be set up to face forwards or backwards by moving (walking over) the seat back. 

The seats consist of a beige moulded seat and back, and grey moulded armrests and legs. And as you can see by the 1cm grid on the cutting mat, they are not particularly large. There is a limit to how many I can make in one sitting without going crosseyed!

The first few finished examples. These are just dry-fit on the car floor for now. The actual spacing with have to be carefully marked out in conjunction with the windows, and the centre aisle. 
 
Hmm... I think that bulkhead needs some attending to as well... it's awfully curvy.... 
 
Andy

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.