Beef Wellington

Top rendering job QiGang,
 
Would like to learn more about this planed kit
 
Nils

Some renderings

Today was the kind of day that you have to keep telling yourself that you're having fun.  No really. This is fun! The most tedious stuff ever!  I must have glued about 3 million tiny triangles.  At least it felt like it!  These are some of the pics of what I have been doing for the past 2 days.

This work is extremely trying. But it wouldn't be half as bad if Pontos would put a little more effort into their docs. You spend half the time trying to decipher their directions. Oftentimes screwing up after looking at another picture several pages down. VERY annoying and I know I've mentioned it before, but it's just that bad and hopefully they get the message. The quality of this stuff is fantastic to say the least, but if you aren't used to their tricks and techniques, it will seem like a very bad waste of money.
I'm working my way towards the actual hull. These assemblies are "barriers" that go along the side of the hull between decks. Pretty soon I'll have to get into the dreaded armament, but my least favorite, those damn lifeboats!
And so it goes...

Working on the hull, so much to do.Used Tamiya Basic Type Putty for it as it dries reasonably fast. I had to add three layers ... oh what joy ... finally I could make some dust as all those wood builders are complaining about
 

 
Added the trurrets for those 15cm gun turrets at it's flanks, and after that I could put on the first two deck pieces.
 

 
The focsle has a superstructure on it, with a vent. Instead of following RGL's method of drilling it out, I cut layers from the inside until it opened the "louvres". If you look good you can see the red top from the glue bottle
 

 
Lot's more to do before I can start priming the hull. I am not painting ribs like RGL, I have been over photographs for quite some time, and studied them thoroughly, but I cannot find a single one showing the lines so typical for the modern ships. I may have to take into account that the bottom hull plating at that time was far thicker than presently applied. The upper hull has been armoured and doesn't show any ribs or oilcanning effects either, which will make this build comparatively easy to paint. However I will be trying my hand at chipping and weathering. First things first though: Finishing the hull for priming ... off at a slow pace

Especially for Sam (so he finally starts working on his own build) ... movement registered at the yard ...
 

 
Couldn't get the halves nice and flush, so I'll be filling and sanding a bit

If memory served me right,   I ran a strip along the center line  as part of my armour belts (on my warpy kit)  that way it hid the bottom hull join.
 
OC.

Because I still was reluctant to continue with gun rigging, I put the transom in place and started on its decoration. While trying to fit the flexible decoration part I found that it was too wide and would not fit around the quarter galleries stern windows. As it was already mutilated after scratching away the elephant I brought myself to cut it in half, taking out about 1,5 mm in the middle. (A similar operation had already worked for Pickles boat so I did it again.)
 
The now 3 parts were painted and glued onto the transom. After much re-gluing, light sanding, touching up again and again with the 4 colours used (black, yellow ochre, white and flesh) and mending Pegasus' broken wing I achieved an acceptable result which even for once looks better on the pictures than in reality. Using only 3 basic colours and just a little more on the central image of Bellerophon on Pegasus looks right to me - not pretentious but with a simple elegance. Again, less seems to be more.
 
After closing the side galleries I could see what benefit I gained from the extra work with hollowing out the gallery frames to give a view into the lower part of the side gallery: Well, not a big one, but I'm still glad I tried it. Next time I should radically cut away as much as possible of the part where it touches the hull.
 
 

3 parts of the transom decoration ready to be glued on
 
 

the yellow ochre looks a bit more golden than in reality
 
 

the transplantation of Bellerophon was quite successful

Well, I couldn't resist  - The stump masts were looking a little.... stumpy?
 
So I sat down and worked out what lengths I thought the masts ought to be... AOTS has them as being significantly shorter than the Jotika plans - two to three centimetres. 
 
This is what I came up with...
 

 
So the measurements are taken from the bottom of the mast to the upper deck (marked "B") - this was measured from the stump masts, I'd already made. Then the second measurement was taken from AOTS diagram F1/5, F1/6 and F2/1 from the upper deck braces to the top of the mast. By working out the distance between the upper (gun deck) and the fore / quarter deck above it (which turned out to be approx 3cm) I could then work out the entire length of the mast from mast step to top. As I said, this ended up 419mm for the main mast, 345 for the foremast, and 239 for the mizzen. Top and TGt masts were also calculated using the AOTS diagrams F1/3, F1/4, F1/5.
 
And here it is, with some scrap left at the top of each mast for when I put it into the lathe to turn it down... 
 

 
In other news, I also attached the channels on the port side today, and drilled the holes for the chain plates to attach to the hull.  
 
As always, thanks so much for the likes, and here's to happy building!
 
Rob

Hi Jason, I worked out the dimensions at 5 cm intervals, and then planed, then sanded some 5mm square strip to those widths (they were only shaped on one side, so completely flat on the other. Those were used as the templates on either side of the strips, which were laid down edge down in between those strips. Once held tightly in place with masking tape, they were sanded down with a sanding strip. It took a while, but once done they were all done in one go. The hardest thing was handling all of the strips and getting them lined up and fixed down in the first place. It was an exercise in patience. I've tried to draw the process below... 
 
QuarterdeckPlanks.pdf
 
I've also attached the plan I made of the deck based on measurements from my model... (I wouldn't recommend relying on these measurements for yours too much, as I know I could have done a better job with the fairing of some of the bulkheads, so I have a little bit of a bulge on my model, but it gives an idea.)
 
ethaliondeck.20190222.pdf
 
Yes, this really is one of (if not the) most challenging bits of the model. I haven't worked it out yet either, but I'm relying on lots of card templates, eyeball 1.0, and plugging away bit by bit. I  figured if I got the rails in place, I could start thinking about the gratings. Curved gratings? That does sound like a massive challenge. I think I may go for a number of flat sections... perhaps if the turns were gentle enough a curve could be sanded / scraped in (using a template with sandpaper over the top, or a curved scraped used across, rather than fore and aft) rather than building it curved? Just thinking out loud. I may use the kit supplied parts as a starting point and see what they look like. 
 
I haven't made the vanity rail yet, so that's the next challenge. Also, I need to work out how to scrape a nice profile on the head rail as it changes width... and thin it down a bit. 
 
Anyway - those are my thoughts so far  A few deadeyes to secure on the channels first. Starboard finished, but port still to go.
Happy building
 
Rob

Sorry for hijacking here, but just to add Rob's excellent summary above.  The other factor to be aware of is what the ship plans show, they could be as designed, as built, as refitted etc.  Its possible to purchase the Diana plans at full scale and it amazing the amount of additional detail that can be seen, and notated on other plans (for example, the Diana plan indicates that the Jason's and Diamonds foremast was moved forward 6 1/4 inches), suggesting that specifically identified plans per the NMM may not be unique to a ship, but more to a class.  Regarding the open bulwark topic, the fashion was shifting at exactly the time these were designed and built.  Armament carried is a similar situation.
 
Bottom line, even for specific ships, there is latitude to build how you would like and still be 'historically accurate' - just look at the debate that goes on about the configuration of HMS Victory at Trafalgar, and she's still in existence!  I'd recommend buying the Diana AOTS book, in the historical preamble there is lots of context to the above points.

Lovely stuff Jesse, rigging looks very neat and you did a great job with the line you used.  Glad I didn't miss the end which seems to be approaching soon 🙂

Lovely stuff Jesse, rigging looks very neat and you did a great job with the line you used.  Glad I didn't miss the end which seems to be approaching soon 🙂

Sorry for hijacking here, but just to add Rob's excellent summary above.  The other factor to be aware of is what the ship plans show, they could be as designed, as built, as refitted etc.  Its possible to purchase the Diana plans at full scale and it amazing the amount of additional detail that can be seen, and notated on other plans (for example, the Diana plan indicates that the Jason's and Diamonds foremast was moved forward 6 1/4 inches), suggesting that specifically identified plans per the NMM may not be unique to a ship, but more to a class.  Regarding the open bulwark topic, the fashion was shifting at exactly the time these were designed and built.  Armament carried is a similar situation.
 
Bottom line, even for specific ships, there is latitude to build how you would like and still be 'historically accurate' - just look at the debate that goes on about the configuration of HMS Victory at Trafalgar, and she's still in existence!  I'd recommend buying the Diana AOTS book, in the historical preamble there is lots of context to the above points.

Sorry for hijacking here, but just to add Rob's excellent summary above.  The other factor to be aware of is what the ship plans show, they could be as designed, as built, as refitted etc.  Its possible to purchase the Diana plans at full scale and it amazing the amount of additional detail that can be seen, and notated on other plans (for example, the Diana plan indicates that the Jason's and Diamonds foremast was moved forward 6 1/4 inches), suggesting that specifically identified plans per the NMM may not be unique to a ship, but more to a class.  Regarding the open bulwark topic, the fashion was shifting at exactly the time these were designed and built.  Armament carried is a similar situation.
 
Bottom line, even for specific ships, there is latitude to build how you would like and still be 'historically accurate' - just look at the debate that goes on about the configuration of HMS Victory at Trafalgar, and she's still in existence!  I'd recommend buying the Diana AOTS book, in the historical preamble there is lots of context to the above points.

Hi Vane,
 
Thanks for your encouragement  The Anatomy of the Ship on HMS Diana note nine ships as you mentioned. Of these the seventh and eigth (Clyde and Tamar) were built out of fir rather than oak (the latter being in short supply by that point in the Revolutionary Wars. The final, Ethalion, was built out of oak again.
 
You can look up the plans for each of the ships on the Maritime museum's website, and that's where I began my search when I was thinking about building Ethalion instead of Diana. As it turns out, the differences between the sister ships are somewhat lesser than the differences between the kit and the actual frigates. These differences include the width of the stern, and so the layout of the gallery and stern lights, etc..., the layout of the gun ports, and the layout of the channels to name but a few. The more you look, the more you'll see subtle differences.
 
The following is a side-by-side comparison of Ethalion, Artois, and Jason (from the RMG plans) compared to the Anatomy of the Ship plans for Diana to give you an idea of some of the subtle differences. If you look at the mizzen channels for Jason and Artois you'll notice they're split, whereas Ethalion (and Diana from AOTS) are the same. That has a bearing on where the chainplates land around the gunports towards the stern, but the hull shape remains unchanged.
 
One of the more noticable differences as well is the bulkheads on the quarter deck... on Ethalion here. they're open - vertical pillars with a rail on top. On Jason and Diana below, they're enclosed (as the kit Diana depicts)... I've chosen to build them open - a decision I may regret when I get there! but I believe Ethalion's rails were enclosed in a refit. Also Ethalion's rails terminate at the fore end in a vertical... the others are more ornamental.

The diagram above is comprised of pictures from the following links from the Royal Museums Greenwich website:
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/82225.html  (Ethalion)
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/82174.html   (Artois)
http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/82195.html  (Jason)
 
Also, the profile from diagram A1/1 by David White in Anatomy of The Ship - The Frigate Diana. For comparison purposes only.
I trust having cited these there will be no copyright issue, but please advise me if this is incorrect as I will happily remove the image.
 
Having said all this, my primary desire was to build a ship that hadn't been built before. One must be careful when doing this not to accidentally end up using plans of other ships that had the same name (i.e. Ethalion 1802). I found following the historical trail of the ship fascinating, and it really did feel like I was treading on scarce travelled paths in doing so. I was able to go into the National Archives and read the master's and captain's logs which was a true privilege.
 
The Diana kit is a great challenge, and a tremendous kit... it's not only big, but about as beautiful as shipbuilding got. I wish you every success should you follow me and others building these frigates. Do make a build log! It'll show me where I could have done better

Beautiful work Greg and very interesting subject.  I go away for a few months an you start, and nearly complete, this beast...

Lovely stuff Jesse, rigging looks very neat and you did a great job with the line you used.  Glad I didn't miss the end which seems to be approaching soon 🙂

Got out the anchors supplied with the kit. They are very pitted, not the same thickness and have spots of missing metal, and this is after some burnishing to see if it was possible to use them. There is no way O can use these.
 

Ahh, line in from Chuck. Progress can continue.
Here are the latest pictures. It is odd how the camera shows things distorted like the masts looking out of line. 
 
Jesse
 

Beautiful work Greg and very interesting subject.  I go away for a few months an you start, and nearly complete, this beast...

Completed yards.....
 
Jesse
 

I have been slowly working on things a little at a time during the short spells i feel like it enough. I started shaping and constructing the yards back in December. Got them all made and started adding all the blocks, stirrups and footropes. The blocks seemed like they took me forever to rig. I did order a bunch of them from Syren Model Co. so they would look better.
 
Jesse
 

Beautiful work Greg and very interesting subject.  I go away for a few months an you start, and nearly complete, this beast...

Thanks everybody for the feedback about clamps!
 
The log was a bit silent for a while, but for a good reason. Me and Admiral finally found a good apartment worth the upgrade (larger, pretty new, pretty good neighbourhood, good school right across the street, etc), so we were busy selling the previous one, settling in a new one, etc. We moved in around Christmas, but the todo list was pretty long. So plenty of home-remodeling instead of shipbuilding   Now 90% of all the renovation stuff is done, and we managed not to go crazy while doing it. 
 
Moving the display case was tricky, it is not really designed for the ease of mounting. 
Here it is, protected by some sofa cushions:

 
But it survived the move pretty well, and found its new place next to a "french balcony" (don't worry, there is a real balcony on the other side):

 
And I got a nice corner for my modelling area, super prime spot!  
Admiral got a whole room for her knitting hobby, so she is satisfied with the arrangement.


 
The downside of having a lot of windows is not having enough wall area to mount shelves. Though all frequently used tools fit that single shelf pretty well.
To hide the rest, I took some space in the storage area in the hall, which is pretty close by:
 
And some tools are stored in the shelves under the display case.
 
So I hope to finish the renovation todolist in a month or so, and get back to sawdust making!
 

Aaaaand I’m done. Up to the others to shine now.