vossiewulf

On the other hand I use CA for almost everything and have no problems with it. I recommend you apply CA in dots instead of spreading it to keep it neat, this also increases its open time by an order of magnitude over trying to smear it over the surface of a joint. If any squeezes out you used too much.

I'm not sure that Victory kit is actually buildable, the plans are wildly in disagreement with each other and it will at least require a significant amount of kit-bashing to come out with something workable. I started it at one point, but found the plans so far out of agreement and fairly nonsensical that I ended up putting it back on the shelf. There are much better kits to start with for your first ship, from Model Shipways' long boat and pinnace to the various cutter kits available (Sherbourne from Caldercraft, Lady Nelson from Victory models, and the new Avos from Master Korabel). Besides the very poor plans, Victory is a three-masted full ship rig, pretty much as complex as it gets.

Various deck bits. I made two pin rails with 5 holes each per Rick, so hopefully will have enough belaying points. For the catheads, the mortise needed was narrower even than Mikhail's narrowest tool so I made an xacto blade into a chisel on the disk sander. In one of the pics you can see the falconet mounts are all filled in, the eyebolts blackened and installed for the guns, lower cathead parts and the bow knee are done. Just have to do the windlass and knees for the stern and the deck furniture will all be done. I haven't glued in most of them for the simple reason that I don't have to yet, I will finalize all the parts first. I think I've changed my mind and am probably going to paint the furniture red, it doesn't make much sense to have the bulwarks and pin rails and catheads all painted with the rest of the furniture stained- I should either have everything bare wood (too late) or correctly painted.

Leave it to the Russians to face the companion sideways. Thanks for the link, that is cool and it looks like an extremely good kit. That looks like a good one for you considering your interest in cutters. I may pick that up also, it's overall much more accurate and representative of the cutter design I've seen. Except for maybe the jib boom embedded in the bulwarks narwhal-style, that seems to have been not very common.

Not sure how tape would stick to wood throughout all the handling required to build the hull. I'd either do the pinstripe with paint, or place the tape just before the hull gets its finish. Otherwise I have a feeling you're going to be constantly fiddling with that tape and replacing it several times due to lack of adhesion before you get a finish on the hull.

Not sure I follow You're saying you're going to outlast any silk rigging, meaning it will come apart in your lifetime and you'll be faced with re-rigging the whole thing at some point. I really like the look of the silk also, but I doubt I like it enough to be willing to completely re-rig models in 15-20 years.

Thanks Rick I'll see if I can add knees to the stern. Also, I'm going to add knees to the catheads, that makes much more sense to me and there's a good model in the NMM collection showing knees on the catheads. Also I checked and yes even for small boats like these the catheads had twin sheeves, so I'm making them that way. Why didn't you put um.. the gaff jaws on the stern? Some kind of jaws, most of the cutters have cradle jaws there for stowing the gaff boom, I assume when at anchor. Even though this stern is pretty thin I was thinking to install something on mine. BTW, you did what seems to be the most popular color scheme, did you stain the areas of the yellow/orange visible wood? I thought everything that didn't move for more than three hours on a ship going to sea was painted, like today. But the models seem to show an unpainted varnished surface with black rails and wales. I wish I had seen even two models with somewhat similar furniture and rig for the jib boom, it appears they never closed in on a common working system- every designer had their own try at it.

Rick, what did you do for part #25, the bow knee? It does not appear on the side view so I'm not sure whether it should be level with the deck or canted upward to follow the cap rail. If it cants upward it makes a little more visual sense but then it would need to be grooved slightly for the jib boom. I spent some time looking at cutter models at the UK National Maritime Museum for details. One interesting thing is I cannot find a contemporary model with a stern anything like that of this kit- all have reinforcing knees on the bulwark/stern joint and/or storage/seats of various designs around the tiller. And to facilitate that, it looks like the cap rail didn't extend inboard at all but was flush with the inner surface of the bulwarks, unlike the overhanging rail of the kit. There seems to be no commonality at all on deck furniture, number and placement of windlasses, whether the jib boom is on the port or starboard side, the design of the jib boom (some are square inboard, some not), etc. and it's surprising how many were clinker-built. Does anyone know why? I wouldn't think there is any hydrodynamic advantage and it's an oddity when as far as I know just about everything bigger than ship's boats were typically carvel-built. By the way, look at this monstrosity, a circular ship, it must have been all sorts of fun to try and steer a straight course, and I can't for the life of me think of what the heck they thought they were gaining from such a design. The mirrored half-model is an interesting presentation too. http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/67012.html

Mikhail's sets are the best choice but also the most expensive of the options discussed. My set was ~$500, which is even more than the Lee Valley set I mentioned above. Yes, it's the best option and honestly a steal for the number of tools you get, but it's a premium expenditure. And then there's the problem of getting in Mikhail's queue, and also sometimes he decides he's not going to make anything for a while, so I wouldn't hold my breath for quick shipping if you go that route.

That's probably what I'm going to do, I just wish I'd thought a bit more before mounting those pieces. Well at least they make good plugs for the holes

I wish I'd considered that option before attaching the 10 boxwood pintle mounts

Is there anything NOT being built from the Heller 1:100 Soleil Royale right now?

Cedric, considering that basically nothing matches- hull lines, head shape and position, mast position, gunports... is it really an advantage to start from the kit? I'm wondering if you're going to spend more time trying to change one into the other than you might spend just drawing bulkhead lines and scratching it from styrene (if that's your preferred medium).

Popeye, the chop-it thing uses a regular double-bevel razorblade so it puts a slight bevel on the end of anything it cuts, you'll still need to hit the ends with sandpaper to get a good fit. I suggest you look at the disc-sander mandrels for rotary tools from my build log, you don't need a micromotor with a 90 degree attachment, that just makes it a bit more convenient- the mandrels will work in any rotary tool, and you just need to touch a plank end square to the disc sander and you have a perfectly square plank end. And the disc sander is even more useful when fitting planks at the bow where you need to set two angles at once for a good fit. I sincerely doubt my planking would have turned out as well as it did without the use of the disc sander mandrels.

Anyone have recommendations for falconets? The copper ones in the kit are unusable, cast in badly misaligned halves. I've found a series of falconets offered from various manufacturers at Cornwall, does anyone know which ones I should order? Or are all of them terrible and I should make them myself?

Thanks Chuck for the starting a thread and posting the info above. I am thinking of getting a ropewalk so even if I can't talk you into carrying polyester maybe I can give it a spin myself. But I think you should support polyester, maybe make it a premium special order or something where you'll only make what people order and they'll have to wait a bit for delivery. As for colors, one is pretty green and the other is a more saturated yellow, I prefer that one from an aesthetic standpoint but the green one may be more realistic.

Thanks Rick and Grant Well I should have known the windlass was required for the anchors, but the image I posted above confused me- the lines coming off it and running through the grate down below doesn't look heavy enough to be an anchor cable.

Thanks Rick. I am now confused about the windlass- after looking at Tony's period model pics and Chuck's builds the only thing I can say is a cutter had a windlass to control the bow yard. What they looked like seems to be highly variable. From Tony's pics, this is the one closest to the kit version, but it has a pin rail which seems odd, and I really can't see what is going on there. It seems they were square section passing through a mount that had a square pin that would pass through the yard, so the positions you could put the yard in where fixed and the yard couldn't be moved in and out dynamically. I also assume that was something of a reefing mechanism where the bow yard is hauled progressively inward as wind force climbs. And there was a flap-style ratchet mechanism but it had to work differently than shown in the kit drawings, which is just a strip of wood glue in place. I can't really see how that should look.

Thanks Rick. I haven't decided on finish yet for the windlass and other bits, natural and black and red all are choices. Yes, was looking at the pumps and they will have to go. BTW do you know if brass blackener works on copper? I'd assume it does, but the kit's provided eyebolts are copper.

Thanks folks. So... I know I have to finish the deck furniture, but any suggestions on order from this point? There is probably a rational order in which to do everything, but I have no idea what it is.

Very difficult part executed perfectly. Really excellent work. The impression I get is among this community of builders, wood bending is the standard by which skill is measured, so he who can do more bends and more difficult bends than the other guy, wins. So we have parts like the cabin roof bent into multiple smooth curves for no functional reason, and a hull shape that is closing in on being a circle

Done with deck except for clear coat. Starboard side fought tooth and nail to go off the rails, starting when I managed to put a big belly sweep into the first nibbed plank that's supposed to be all nice and straight. I had to make wider planks and then taper the rest of them on the starboard side to slowly remove that bend over four planks, lots and lots of fitting and sanding. But it looks reasonable now.

You don't think you will offer the polyester as an option Chuck? Switching over completely does sound a little extreme but it's very pretty rope and the explanations and instructions could make it clear that it's caveat emptor, make sure you're prepared to handle it. And I'm thinking a flexible CA glue would probably work well to control the fraying. Or at least I'd be willing to give it a try

Nice job with a pretty hull shape. It's going to be an eye-catcher.

That will work if Ron won't help, but will be a fair amount of work to process it into what you want. On the up side, PM-V11 steel and you'd definitely feel like it was your personal knife. Below is a piece of wenge wood planed down with my Lee Valley low-angle smoothing plane with a PM-V11 iron. I don't anticipate having a need to do better than this.