Vivian Galad

And here are the roofs of QG that were relatively complicated to create:
 

Hello dear friends,
thank you very much for your kind words and comments. I do appreciate them a lot.
I'm finally healthy so I can do my full job at Royal Katherine and enjoy it.
 
To BETAQDAVE: What a lovely parrot you have. My feathered assistants are not very interested in the ship, though one of them loves destroying wooden clothes pegs and cockatiel usually has a rest under the huge ship hull till finally falls asleep.
 
To montañes: Thank you for your praise, Amalio. In actual fact nothing is so difficult as it seems to be. I usually search the the easiest way, how to make various things..... For example here is a video ( I promised some time ago to record a short video, where I am shaping card using steam to achieve better results and perfect final performance):

To popeye the sailor: I suppose there will be a lot of other modifications during the work. I love sailing ships and after finishing Sovereign of the Seas I have finally found another gorgeous ship - Royal Katherine, which I consider to be equally beautiful. I would like to achieve best result and maximally realistic model appearance, as possible and depends also on my abilities of course.  Last week I have started with sculpting and decoration, that is my favourite part of work. 
 

I finished roofs on Quarter Galleries and added a bay window (oriel window) on the stern. I use high quality card finished with black foils. The columns and upper parts of the hull (under railing)are wooden.
 

Wow! That's an interesting project to follow! Will take a seat too! Can I?
 

Hi Mates,
Needed to start this section over – just not “working”. As I had noted in previous update.
Patrick: thanks, yes that would make sense that caulking would not be really needed in a closed section of the ship. I have seen cross section builders have mixed builds in this regard. So I did not know either-way. But your thoughts made the do-over much easier. Thanks for your illustrations as well.
Paul: thanks for you nice comment. And thanks all for dropping by as well.
 
A couple of thoughts – Have not yet determined how many more treenails and or pins to add to the installed lumber.
Once I get the other side installed I will determine how much of the sides will be visible once the rocks, barrels and a side shelf with lumber and ropes are added. Then will add tree….and pins as needed. The floor part will be all covered up with rocks.
 
PS: for the treenails, so far I have found this to be a good substitute. Granted its not a bit darker wood, but it visually works. I drilled .5mm holes slid in a pencil lead and just snapped it off – leaving the lead to fill the hole. Made for very clean and precise holes. The weather and gun decks may not serve too well with this look - (to be determined)
 
And these mixed up lumbers are certainly period incorrect, but they look better IMO than those anemic basswood planks.
 
Cheers,
 

Spanish shipbuilding, 2 centuries earlier.
About the same pricipe. Only  the frames are built differently and there are no ceiling planks on the inside.

After assembling the build board, I began assembling the keel pieces.  In the photo below you see the three elements..The rising wood on top,  the two keel pieces glued together in the center and the false keel below that.  I darkened the seam between the two keel parts so they would really stand out using a soft pencil.  I had my two screws and bolts ready as well.

I used the screws to help align the layers and glue them together.  Note how I left all the laser char in place until after all the keel parts were glued together.  I also darkened the seam between the keel and false keel.
 

Then the rising wood was added but first I needed to glue the two nuts into the laser cut holes provided for them.  I simply placed a nut on the table and positioned the rising wood over the top of it.  Then I pressed down firmly to push the wood over the nut.  This placed the nut perfectly.  I added a drop of glue around the nuts perimeter to secure it flush with the bottom of the rising wood.  I was careful not to get any glue on the threads of the nut.
Then I glued it to the top of the keel.  After applying some titebond I actually screwed it into position to be aligned.  The middle keel was intentionally left a bit wider because now I will remove the laser char.  There is more char on the thicker keel pieces so I left that thicker so it wouldnt be over sanded in the process.  It cleaned up pretty good.  I was careful not to remove too much.  I applied some wipe on poly afterwards.

All cleaned up and test fit with the screws on the work base which you might notice I made a bit wider in this final version...The bottom of the base uses another piece of laser cut wood to make sure the screws dont stick out to far on top of the rising wood.  There are several supplied to use as spacers if need be.  Then I removed the keel to start on the rabbet.


To make the rabbet I used a laser cut scraper tool designed especially for the job.  See below as it is pretty self explanatory.  Brass strip filed to a point and used to make the rabbet.

Several light passes at first working from the center outward.  Then I cleaned up the rabbet with some sand paper and files.

To finish off the keel, I used some 20 pound black fishing line for the bolts.  I realize these would have been copper but I really dont like that look.  But you guys can substitute if you prefer.   I like them blackened as shown instead.  Next up I will detail how to build the frames.
 

Thanks for all the encouragement and likes! 
 
Completed the Main preventer stay, Fore stay and the Fore preventer stay. Same process as the Main stay. I did a much simpler mouse for these and can't visually tell any difference.  It was much easier to do the lanyards on the Fore stays because the location of the hearts. If only the rest of it could be this easy to get to, lol. I couldn't find any illustrations on the proper way to tie off the lanyards so I just did what I could on these.
 
Jesse

Still trying to get caught up with my build log posting. Seems this Lyme is keeping me in sick bay more than the shipyard. Another bad bout with it this week and had to change a starter while sick, no fun.
 
Anyway.....Served and eyed a rope end for the Main Stay. Tried the more elaborate way to make a mouse for it. I have never done this before so I just had to find out how hard it was. Got it done, completed the Mainstay/ lanyards hearts, etc. Even though the heart looks good this way up close under magnification, I just don't see the need for doing it this way at this scale. The next one will be much simpler- winding thread around to proper shape and glue/paint/whatever.
 
Jesse

Rigged the lanyards through the deadeyes. Got all the lower shrouds completed.
 
Jesse

Made brass spacers for the deadeyes. Sorry about some of the pictures not being as clear as others - old damaged camera. 
 

I had to go back and shorten every one of the middle and toe links so that They did not end beyond the wales.  Used a temporary shroud line to line all the chainplate assemblies to the proper angles.. Got them all done and touched up with paint.
 
Jesse

Added the sheer poles fruttock staves and fruttock shrouds. The wood supplied with the kit was too weak for the sheer poles and fruttock staves so I sanded down toothpicks for them, worked much better. Looking at the plans I probably should have the poles about a mm lower but will go with them as they are.
 
(Somehow the pictures loaded in the opposite order that I added them. They should show from the last one to the first)
 
Jesse

So...forgive me if parts of this repeats from earlier posts.  But after the tweaking and experimenting I have started on the final prototype version of the Pegasus cross section.   In the end I abandoned experiments with that new wood.  The reason being, the cross grain was just not working.  Whenever I applied any finish to the end grain of pieces they just turned very very dark.  Almost black actually.  This was a deal breaker.  So although much more expensive, I will be using Alaskan Yellow cedar for the cross section and also in the end offering it in cherry as well.  This is my cedar version from start to finish....a quick photo to show them both side by side first.  
 
Cedar is a beautiful wood and the only reason why I didnt use it to begin with was its slightly more expensive cost and lack of a reliable supplier.  But that situation has now been solved.  So its a win-win all around.
 

 
 

First planking is slowly coming along.  I have seven or so strakes glued from the keel, and decided to switch and start from the gun deck down.  This is what Pete recommended in his helpful Euromodel notes, and was the approach Keith Julier took in his Period Ship Handbook 2 (which has a chapter on the kit).
 
This is my first time working on a multi-deck level warship.  To help ensure that I had a smooth guiding line for the gun ports, I decided to run the top of a planking strake along the top line of the gun deck template.  When checking for symmetry, however, I noticed that in some areas, the outer edge of the gun deck template between the bulkheads was at a different height from one side to the other.  I think what happened was that with all the dry fitting, the two pieces of the template ended up having a slight bend to them, and although generally symmetrical where they were glued at the bulkheads, the outer edge of the templates between the bulkheads ended up differently.  
 
I was a bit worried about this, as not only would I have asymmetry, but the cannons would be all over the place in terms of height it I cut the gun ports out along the proper line.
 
So, what I ended up doing was gluing spacer blocks between the templates and the bulkhead bracer blocks that I had installed before.  In some cases I used the blocks to raise the edge of the templates, in some to lower, and in some to help change the the sweep.  A real pain, but I'm glad I took the step.  Now, the gun deck has a smooth sweep from stem to stern, and is symmetrical on both sides.
 



 
I was thinking about selling this kit and moving directly to scratch building, but I'm glad I decided to stick with it.  Not only is it a beautiful model, but I've been learning a lot along the way.  Maybe some of these things matter less with scratch building (like the bowsprit housing and my recent gun deck alignment adventure), but I think the general lessons learned, especially how to think ahead, will come in handy.  The Euromodel kit is great too in that it gives plenty of optionality to detail the kit as much as you'd like, so I'm sure that will help if I should happen to want to scratch build in the future.

Thanks for everyone that offered thoughts on what to do with the last bulkhead.  I ended up adding two planking strips to it, then fairing the bulkhead back to the original line on the aft side.  Seems to have worked very well - I now have a firm, wider surface to glue the end of the planks to, while having a nice smooth transition to the stern.
 

Mike,
Maybe I'm late to the party on this... here's how Licorne's tail end in planked.   Pictures show it better than I can describe it.
 

 

Hi Hubac, thanks for looking in.  It's always harder to describe, but maybe this picture helps:
 

If you look at the circled area, you can see that the last bulkhead is not faired, with barely any area to glue the plank to.  To fair it will change the orientation of the planking considerably to a sharper upward angle.  I'll also likely have to fair the bulkhead or two immediately preceding it to ensure a continuous curve.  
 
Fairing the last bulkhead will also change the shape of the lower part of the counter shown in yellow below:
 

My guess is that highlighted area will flatten out a bit.  But maybe that's ok?  Looking again at the plans, seems like the same area is a bit flatter than what the lower part of the bulkhead is shaped like from the picture above:
 

Does that all make sense?  I guess I'm just trying to figure out whether to fair the bottom edge of that bulkhead - which will provide better support for the planking yet change the shape of the bottom edge of the bulkhead/counter -- or not fair it, but find some way of adding a better planking surface (for example, adding a thick strip to the bottom of the bulkhead and then fairing it to the aft line of the original bulkhead.
 
Sorry for the confusing question.  Hope this makes sense.

For folks building the kit, the cast metal pieces are pretty close to the Chapman plans (the kit plans shown below are exact replicas from Chapman).  There are some differences though, which people should be aware of.  For example, the upper tier of lights is the right dimension, but the kit is simplified in having a rectangular row, rather than slight curves as in the plans.  The gallery balcony railing is pretty close.  The quarter gallery lights are pretty much spot on.
 
What is a little off is the lower tier of lights/upper counter area, the wrap around section that goes to the quarter galleries, and the tafferel - all of which are smaller than the plans suggest:




 
They aren't off by much, but it's something to be on the lookout for.  My guess is that the tafferal can be bent outwards to widen it a bit at the sides.  What is tougher is the fact that the lower lights section of the stern is not as wide or tall as the plans.  I'm not sure the reason, but maybe it was intended to simplify things for the builder a bit.  It looks like builders have taken all types of approaches to make the cast parts work, since the plans and parts don't match up precisely.
 
In particular, I think that the lower half of the quarter gallery should extend further out as in the picture below.  I think you could use the cast part, but my guess from the Chapman plans is that one would need to add some filler under the cast metal piece to accomplish this.
 

So, I think I'm going to try scratch building the stern as much as possible.  It's complicated, and has taken me a lot of time to work through, but I think in the end I'll be a little happier.  Plus, I won't have to try to fill in caps between the cast metal pieces, open up the window panes, etc.

Some more progress - got the first seven strakes of first planking on, starting from the keel up.  

I also finished the upper stem blocks.  These took a little time because I wanted to make sure that not only would they provide support for the planking, but that they would also help keep the bowsprit in alignment.  Because the false keel is about 5.5mm in thickness but the bowsprit is around 8.5mm, I added some spacers to the blocks (hard to see in the pictures), with the correct bowsprit angle built in.  So, everything now fits like a glove and I won't have to worry about the bowsprit alignment.
 

Slowly making some progress.  Finally got the bulkheads and filler blocks faired and started with the first planking.  First three planks starting from the keel are in:
 


 
So far so good.  Lots of curves on this ship.  There's a lot going on with the stern, so I spent quite a bit of time going over the plans and how the cast metal parts are supposed to fit together.  The interesting thing about the Euromodel plans is that they will be true to the Chapman plans in some drawings and simplified (e.g., straight, less curvatures) in others - sometimes on the same sheet.  So, you have to be mindful of that when building.  The cast metal pieces for the stern are pretty good, but in some cases like the row of stern windows fronting the balcony, follow the more simplified square approach, whereas the Chapman plans show more curves intended that follow the curvatures of the decks and balcony.  As is often said with respect to these Euromodel kits, they are quasi scratch kits that are intended allow a builder plenty of latitude to build the model as simple or as detailed as one would like.
 
I think I'm going to challenge myself and scratch build some or all of the cast metal pieces for the stern.  I'd like to follow the Chapman plans as much as possible, and I think the cast metal parts deviate in certain respects.  For example, there are windows at the lower drop area of the quarter galleries and between the balcony and counter/chase ports - but the cast metal parts have these filled in.  Building them from scratch would probably take close to the same amount of time as opening these and other windows up.  Along with potentially not doing a clean job opening the windows up, I worry that the seams where the cast metal and wood parts meet would need to be filled, which sometimes could be a hard thing to do.  Then of course, there is the need to paint the cast metal parts, and I'm not that great when it comes to detailed painting.  I just think that I can achieve a crisper finish scratching these items than I can from working with the cast metal parts.  The good news is that the parts and plans give a very good model for me to base my work on.  I'll try to detail some of the changes from the kit in future posts.
 
 

After a family vacation and being busy with work the past few weeks, I haven't had as much time on the build.  I did make some progress, including gluing down the gun deck templates and making a little more headway on the hull fairing.  As a break, I also glued up the grating strips to begin making the hatches and other grating items.
 


Yes, a messy shipyard!
 
At this stage I've been working on fairing the bulkheads and filler blocks.  This stage takes a long longer than one would think, but I've learned that it's better to take time now, rather than have to later do a lot of filling and sanding.  I had a slight wave in my false keel, which was largely straightened after attaching the stem and keel.  Unfortunately, the top of the false keel lists slightly by about 1-2mm to the port side between bulkheads 8 and 11.  I'm a bit annoyed because I spent a lot of time dry fitting, using square blocks, spacers, etc. to make sure that the bulkheads were square and perpendicular, but it looks like I couldn't fully get the keel fully straightened at that section.  This resulted in the tops of bulkheads 8-11 listing slightly over to port, which in turn required a bit of opening up the gun deck template slots and the port template being slightly askew at the stern (still scratching my head on that one).
 
These are all small deviations which I am fixing by adding extra material on the starboard bulkheads, and will sand a bit off the port bulkheads.  In the end, I'm expecting these end up being non issues, especially after two layers of hull planking, etc.  I keep thinking back to my Pegasus build, where Amati used MDF that was perfectly flat and everything fit like a glove.  

Aldo!  Thanks for looking in my friend.  It's a really beautiful subject, and Euromodel makes a nice kit.  Plenty of complexity and optionality from Euromodel to help me learn new skills.  It, along with the other two models I'm working on should get me to the point where I can start trying scratch builds.  I see you mothballed your Pegasus, are you going to take it up again?  I'm at the point where I am going to start scratch building some of the decorative elements of the ship.  I wanted a little more experience before doing so, and started the Charles Morgan.  Then I needed a break from the Morgan so started the Renommee.  I ran into stages of burnout with the Badger (some lasting six months) that I found bouncing between builds helps keep my interest going.
 
Nils, thanks very much and thank you for looking in.  It's a beautiful subject, and Euromodel makes a very nice kit that allows you to add as many details as you would like, so it's been fun to work on.  I was originally thinking of selling it last year to move to scratch building, but I've already gained valuable experience with this kit that I'm glad I'm building it.

Figurehead
 
In my hull prep work, I cut out a portion of the first bulkhead and a bit of the false keel and filler blocks on either side to help seat the bowsprit.  I figure that rather than having the bowsprit sit on the gun deck, it would be a little more secure if it went through the gun deck and then the gun deck and planking could serve as a sort of anchor just like mast slot blocking on for the masts.  In doing so, I decided to test fit the figurehead and discovered a few problems.  
 



 
As you can see, the figurehead doesn't sit squarely on the stem.  Even if I squared the figurehead's, uh, bottom, a bit (or filed down the stem) so that it would sit flush, the problem is that the figurehead still will sit too high on the stem for the bowsprit.  In the second picture, you can see the problem, even with the figurehead sitting at the front edge of the bowsprit.  I went back to the plans to see if perhaps the rake of the bowsprit as set by the false keel and stem (two parts of which matched perfectly) was off, but the rake was in the range of both the plans (oddly, plan 7 specifically says 29 degrees from the waterline when plan 17 shows 32 degrees) and Chapman's Architectura (which was about 31 degrees).  The false keel is around 31 degrees, so the problem is not with the false keel.
 
So given that the rake of the bowsprit as set by the false keel is correct, the figurehead needs to sit much lower, as the bowsprit should clear the top of the figurehead by around 6mm.  As you can see in Chapman's Architectura, the figurehead pretty much sits way back on the stem against the curly piece of the stem, and the line of the curly piece to the top of the figurehead is roughly parallel to the line of the bowsprit.
 

 
Interestingly, in the few pictures I've found of others working on the kit, it seems as if the builders chose to increase the rake of the bowsprit to accommodate the figurehead.  I think I'm going to stick with the current rake, and instead figure out what to do with the figurehead itself and the stem.  For this stage of the build, I just needed to ensure that the rake of the bowsprit and seating was set up correctly, so I don't have to make any decisions at this point.  My guess is that I will at some point have to lower the seat on the stem.  It might come down to carving a new figurehead too if I can't modify the kit figurehead to sit squarely on the stem.  

I made some good progress over the last week or so.  Nothing particularly interesting, but I've installed all bulkheads except for the last, added blocking for the masts, and added some filler blocks at the stem.  I also epoxied in some nuts into the keel to take the screws for the pedestals when I finish this build in 10 years   I forgot how long all this prep work takes!
 

 

 
So far so good.  I did have to open up the slots in the deck pieces a bit to accommodate the bulkhead tops.  When I had dry fitted the bulkheads and decks as a test early on, everything seemed to fit ok.  I think after squaring up the bulkheads, adding the stem and keel, etc., that things shifted a bit and so the deck slots needed slight adjustments.  Things probably fit on the dry fitting because there was a little flex with the parts.  When glued however, particularly with the bracers in between the bulkheads, things were locked in.  Some people have seen issues with the slots not lining up with the plans, and in some cases, being misaligned between the starboard and port sides.  Others have thought that some of the bulkheads were not properly shaped.
 
I also had a very slight wave in the keel around bulkheads 8-10 which probably didn't help (part of the reason I wanted to install the stem and keel at this stage).  The upper part of the false keel around affected bulkheads leans about 1mm over to the port side.  I think this should be fine because at the stem and stern, and along the bottom of the keel, the keel is perfectly straight.  I'll just need to be mindful when fairing and planking the hull in that section.