hexnut

It’s been a solid week in my dry-dock.  I decided, after all, to fir-out the stem piece, and now - short of a Battle with Bar Floor, as Popeye2Sea once funnily quipped - there should be little chance of my bow crumbling.

I also added a series of tabs 1/8”x1/8”, along the hull/base joint before glassing the whole thing over with epoxy.

So, now I could turn my attention to the fully scratch-built component of this project - the stern.
 
Earlier, I had created an over-wide pattern for the lateral/outboard (port to starboard) curve of the round-up, but I also needed to create an over-wide pattern for the upward-arching camber of the round-up, as round-up is a combination of these two curvatures.
 
For this camber pattern, I used the bottom edge of the stock kit stern plate to establish the line.

This is necessary because I will be extracting the stock stern windows from this plate and heat-bending them to conform to the lateral round-up.  I’m always looking to recycle what I can, so I suppose the stern isn’t “completely” scratch.
 
For my immediate needs, though, I duplicated the camber pattern and made a glueing fixture with a 1/4” separation between the two curves.
 
The reason for that is that I am laminating 2, 1/16” pieces of sheet styrene to form lateral framing ties that bridge the transom, and tie the whole model together.
 
The first of these, above the base plate, is in the position of what would be the wing transom of a traditionally framed ship.  For the sake of all SR nerds out there (like me 🤓), I will note that the Tanneron/Heller positioning of the wing transom is below the stern chase ports - as popularly became the French practice after 1672?/73; the actual first SR had a wing transom that remained above the chase ports, even after the re-build of 1689 - if the Berain stern drawing is to be interpreted as a literal document of the ship’s actual framing.
 
So, for this model, I set to work patterning my “wing transom” below the ports.  In order to make reasonably accurate measurements, inside the hull, I cut two strips of scrap styrene so that they were each about an inch longer than the centerline.  I cut points on one end if each strip, and then I lapped the strips and extended those points to both the outboard and inboard spans that I was trying to measure.  Once I made contact, at each end, I marked the overlap of the strips with a sharp pencil, so that I could then measure that against my ruler.  One picture would have explained all of that very succinctly, but I failed to take that picture😔
 
Anyway, after a fair amount of fitting, I got one lamination pretty close to the right fit (without spreading the upper span of the stern more than I wanted), and then used that first piece to mark out and cut the second lamination.  Factored into the layout of these pieces is an extra 1/32” of an inch, beyond the straight span, so that the piece will still fit snuggly after the camber is induced.
 
After spreading plenty of styrene adhesive, I taped the assembly into my camber jig and left it over-night.

Although I was skeptical that such a shallow curve would impart much permanence to the cured assembly - there was virtually no spring-back:

So, then, I did the final fitting (except for the stern post notch) and glued the wing transom in place.  In order to make the glue-up easier to locate, I glued in positive stops (small trapezoidal tabs) just above each joint, in order to ensure that the WT lands between the two lower main wales, on each side.


Tabs visible in pic, below;

For the stern post, I laminated four pieces of 1/16” sheet into a 1” x 2” billet.  It’s way over-size, but I wanted plenty of room to layout the vertical round-up of the lower transom and the corresponding rake of the stern post.  After easing the plate notches to accommodate the stern post billet, I was pleased to see that the assembly had remained square.
 
My plan for the stern post is that it will notch into and also support the wing transom from underneath, as a means of ensuring that the camber remains consistent throughout the construction process.  In the next picture, you can see how the billet notches into and over the base plate and into and under the WT:

Also pictured are the lateral blanks being made for the next  level of the stern, at the level of the stern counter.
 
For visual guidance, in laying out the vertical roundup, and the rake of the stern post, I referenced Lemineur’s monograph of the SP (visible on the chair):

The curve of the round-up is pretty well proscribed between the outboard edge of the WT and the planking rabbet of the base plate.  I had to re-draw the rake of the stern post several times in order to find the happy medium that looked appropriate, while helping to balance the somewhat exaggerated overhang of my stern counter:

The outboard parallel line indicates the beveling of the stern post.  The rudder, itself, will be a separate assembly, however, I am not concerned about that, at the moment.  I will be, though, when I have to pierce the counter planking, in order to accommodate the rudder head - what the French call the “Jaumiere.”
 
I’ll now need to profile the stern post.  I’m not sure whether the stern post also receives a slight out-board taper, but I’ll investigate that.  It may be possible for the sternpost to notch into and support the camber for the counter-spanning piece, which I have nearly completed fitting:

Here, my finger induces the camber that the gluing fixture will soon impart:

Once this second camber piece is glued in place, along with the stern post, I can frame in the vertical members that will make planking possible.
 
Thank you to everyone for your likes, your comments and for looking in.  Have a wonderful weekend!

Thank you, Chris, for posting these wonderful pictures from the Floating Baroque exhibition.  I had wanted to get a better look at the SR model, which is very nicely painted, but the museum had only released the one photo of the stern.  Your  pictures, though, allow for a more thorough examination.
 
It appears as though the modeler has chosen to show the waist of the main weather deck as being open;  beams are in place, but the opening seems much wider than would be allowed for the hatch gratings.  Is that, in fact, the case?
 
As for my SR, it has been a busy week of structural re-inforcement. The weakest area of the model is the bow, where I glued in the extensions.  Although I had a good mating, welded bond here, the thought of this area springing open, sometime down the road, is not a welcome one.  In an effort to avoid that I have added styrene backing pieces at the top and bottom of the joint, where it was practical to do so:



The upper backing piece will be visible above the planking of the short beakhead deck planking.  Visually, this adds a little needed heft to what is a pretty anemic stem piece.  While it would be preferable to add that stem depth to the front, only the most astute eye may notice that the stem extends a little further aft than it should.  I may, yet, add a 1/32” strip to the forward face of the stem, where it is most needed.  Before I can do so, though, I needed to true-up the face of this joint.
 
One casualty of the heat-bending for the bow extensions is that the stem pieces no longer matched the same bow curvature.  It is worth mentioning that, even if you build this kit straight out of the box, the bow still won’t align neatly, however, my surgery only exacerbated the problem.
 
Rather than sand the proud side down to the lower (and risk further diminishing the outboard stem profile), or using filler (which is not a good glue surface) - I elected to add in styrene strip, and then fair back that surface to one uniform plane:



Whether I decide to add another strip, or eventually proceed with the cutwater and knees of the head, I will have a good bonding surface to build from.
 
Next, it was on to gusseting the interior.  I noticed, after installing the first pair of gussets, that my bottom plate no longer seemed to lay flat against my dead-flat counter surface.  Now, to my dismay, there appeared to be a consistent crown, athwart-ships, that ran the whole length of the bottom plate:

After I had been so careful to true the bottom edges of the hull, as well as to ensure that the base sheet of plastic was totally flat, I was really confused as to why I suddenly had developed this crown.  I feared that something about the glue-up process of either the hull, or now the gussets, was distorting the base shape.
 
Ultimately, did it matter what was happening beneath the lowest gun deck, I wondered?  As long as it wasn’t getting worse, I reasoned, then it did not.  However, then I realized that I had to box-in a stepping for the lower main mast, directly onto the mid-ship doubling.  This does matter because you can’t have a bouncy main mast.
 
Before shimming, I decided to carry through with the gusseting, in order to see whether there was any change:


Fortunately, there was not.  About midway, through though, it dawned on me where I had made my mistake.  Rather than scribe a center-line down the base plinth, I should merely have penciled in the line.  When the razor tip breaks the surface tension of the plastic, the sheet then crowns upward; I had done a particularly deep scribe too, which would explain the degree of deflection.
 
While I didn’t initially put two and two together, I did notice that when I scribed for the doublings, the base plinth also crowned in the other direction.  I didn’t think much of it, though, as it benefited the glue-up.
 
So, satisfied with the gusseting and that the problem wasn’t getting worse, I went in and glued 1/4” x 1/16” strip down along the center-line, and then sanded down any high spots, checking with a straight edge.

At this point, even without the transom framed in, the hull is fairly rigid and very strong.  I took great care to ensure that the gussets were neatly scribed to both the hull and the angle of the base plinth.  When I glued them in, I really wet the edge with liquid styrene adhesive and allowed a 10-second count so that the glue had enough time to melt the edge.   Then, when I seated the plastic with moderate finger pressure, I was guaranteed that the softened white plastic would fill whatever remaining voids my eyes could not see - even with backlighting, during the fitting process.
 
So, now, I will go back and feed epoxy into all of these seams.  I will epoxy-in the 1/4X20 nuts, so that I can secure the model to its plywood construction base.  And then, the real fun can begin with the framing and planking of the lower transom.
 

Slow progress, but I finished adjusting the frames. Thing is, I don't know at this time if the sizes are correct. I measured them from plan, aft side, but there are so much differences.
If one expects same precision as laser-cut plywood, not the right place.
My feeling is that the log was 'warped'; the aft side is much more asymmetrical and had a lot more material to be removed (I really hope I'm right!)



The following photos are not following bearding line, but they show the discrepancies, mostly on stern half.

I think the best thing is to leave enough 'meat' on the frames and sand them to proper dimension when fairing the hull.
 
What I tried to do was to center the tops AND have the feet as symmetrical as possible, which is challenging because the frames seems warped.
Advice: don't use the papers they provide, they are warped. Make yourself new ones and print enough of them.
I measured on top of the paper but I used new templates; I found that if you have a proper drawing on paper you can cut it directly, but this doesn't work with what the provide because the lines are warped

Got this kit from BlueJacket because I want to make transition to scratch built from kits. I hope it will help with some techniques, hopefully.

The kit seems good, lots of material and fittings

 

WOW two updates in one day
 
good evening everyone
 
i finished the supports to the port side bulkheads, i will prime these and then paint red orche later
 
typical not wained today and high pressure moving in, lol im back to work tomorrow
 
any way time to dust the build off and let her get some Vitamin S
 

good morning everyone
 
well i enjoyed my week off and managed to progress on the St Nectan, but non of the outdoors jobs that needed doing, due to the very wel November Somerset weather
 
the bulkhead are nearly ready for the whale back, still to be adapted to accept the deck, Hawse hole for the single anchor and now making the bulkhead stiffeners 

Good morning everyone
 
fitting the Whale Back
 
this is one of those jobs where i could have done with being outside with plenty of space and another set of hands, but it was pouring with wain and on me own
 
lol thank god for superglue and activator/accelerator
 
i had earlier fitted a sheet  roughly the right shape to the underside and strip wood on the inside of the hull to double the amount of contact area   i spread ca on the white plasticard and held it against the hull and bonded it with a quick spay, 1/2 hour later all done,
 
the sanding down has revealed a gap at the bow, other than that im very happy with it 


more hand rails made ready for painting, if u ever decide what could to finish the build in

 

Good evening everyone
 
work on the stern around the cod liver house, 
 
the rudder chains pass along the superstructure and then through a block along a skid and dissappear under the cod liver house. thats fine, BUT the superstructure is removable the chains on the blocks are not, so i had to think of a way to allow that
i have created a dummy tubes that passes over the one fixed to the superstructure

then made up the hans rail on top of the cod liver house

Good evening everyone
 
with the exception of weathering, the steam winch is now completed

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Good evening everyone
perhaps the best days modelling i have done for some time
 
The more i do on this winch the more i find to do, not from instructions but from real life photos and other build logs, lots of anti twist/bracing bars to go in still

Good afternoon
Still wip, what a fun, enjoyable project

Good evening everyone
 
I have a weeks holiday, so back to the trawler, started to paint up the steam winch 

Good evening everyone
 
back to the after part of the superstructure getting the derricks done and main mast, god knows why the mast is so tall can only presume it is for reception
 
mast is in two [arts and requires little tapering, most of the work is cleaning up the metal parts, everything is pinned for security
 
 

Good evening everyone
 
sometimes you just have to admit that you are wrong, and i do it perhaps to often, I avoid the hull, i just seam to not want to do anything thing with it and when i eventually get the work done, i say well what the hell was all the fuss about
 
i hate putting holes, as they always used to be in the wrong place, and spend twice as long correcting it, but the rudder assembly went in with out to much fuss and now sealed it the correct position with 2 part epoxy
 
the shaft still needs work doing to it as it is not in line with the keel

i never knew these vessels had deck lighting, so that has been sorted, each one works but not tested them all at the same time, the fittings are small portholes sunken into the deck and the leds were secured and i have poured pva glue into the the void to give a lens effect

 
the cod oil house sits above the rudder,  to gain access to it i drilled a large hole under the oil house and the put a cover over it which can be clamped down and also serve as a base to keep the house in position 
 

That is some fine work with the decking  she looks super.
 
OC.

Good afternoon everyone
 
Foredeck now needs attention, so i have again used 6mm x 1mm x 300 Lime strips, i ordered 100 of it knowing i would use about 50% of it on the deck alone
 
perhaps went to far wrt the nibbling lol (never heard of the word before this build) but now finding it difficult to get the margins fitted, and then the bow will be closed in with the waleback 
 
the  5 squares will be the the fish hatches, they are covered over and was no need to cut them out, but in my cutaway idea i left the option open, should i display what they look like within the hull
 
 
 
 

Good evening everyone
 
work continues as a when i have the opportunity, which is a lot more recently due to changes i have made with my free time, 
 
the superstructure  has now got the wheel house fitted, i used two part epoxy for that, to ensure i had time to line it up


 
bracing has been added under the boat deck, and more lighting, perhaps i am overdoing the leds but they dont all have to be on at the same time and they are adjustable brightness

 
the cod liver house has been made ready, but at present i dont know how much of the step has to be removed as the rudder cables come from under there 

 
the colours are the admirals choice, being built for her, i even like the yellow, it will appear on a few things like the funnel
 
gallows/otter boards still very much wip , the video explains it better than i could

 

 
 

Thank you Mark, Caroline and Ken  .
 
The smaller bogie wheels have fewer parts than the main ones, so making one didn't take all that long :

 The kit supplied a template for gluing the spokes to the rims, there are 3 of these - one for the bogie wheels and two for the drive wheels as two of those are different to the other 10. I turned the templates into jigs by mounting the thin paper to heavy card and adding some stops where needed to make assembly of the others much easier later on :


The finished wheel :



I needed the wheel to align the brakes properly. Here are some of the parts for the mechanism :

One brake completed :


Danny

I think I've worked out why it's taken Stephan a couple of years to get a little bit past this stage - the wheels  . One wheel took me 12 hours to make - 17 more to go. At this stage I'm only making one large and one small wheel, as I need to check a few measurements before continuing on with the brake assemblies, and my laser-cut frames and wheels are still on the way from Poland.
 
The parts for one of the driving wheels. Nearly every part needed to be laminated to 1mm thick card. I'd ordered 10 sheets of 0.5mm and 10 of 1mm card from GPM two weeks ago, it arrived yesterday (pretty good for them). This card is MUCH easier to cut than the far denser card I'd bought from Officeworks :

One wheel finished :


You may notice that I'd scraped the gluing surface of one of the red discs. Most of the red parts have a coating on them, probably clear lacquer, which doesn't glue very well.
 
Danny

The rear bogie is much more complex. There's about a week of work involved in this. Once again a lot of rivets. I used the laser-cut ones for this, as cutting about 200 1mm diameter rivets was not an option. I pre-painted them before cutting them off the sheet. They were supplied in black, a thin coat of grey spray primer was applied first followed by artist's acrylics vermillion straight from the tube which was a very good match :


 
Aligning each part was critical to the outcome. I used 2mm and 3mm tubing wherever I could to ensure that :

 
The parts for the brake/suspension assembly frames :

 
Fitting the brake/suspension frames to the main bogie frame :



 
The completed rear bogie :



 
Danny

Major slackness on my part, as far as updating this log goes and not in the amount I've accomplished. Sorry about that, I hope the following couple of posts make up for that  .
 
The front bogie, which only has a pair of wheels attached. Not a lot of pics unfortunately, but the last one shows the completed unit ready for fitting to the main frame (when I finish that) :




 
More in the next post, Danny.

This assembly is the smoke box. A lot of laminating was needed, no doubt the laser-cut sheets (which are still in transit) would have had the middle supports included but I forged ahead with several layers of card. This assembly therefore took me three days to make, I'm quite happy with the results :

 
A bevel needed to be cut for the "roof" section :

 
The "roof" didn't fit very well - it was too short in one direction and too long in the other according to the glue markings despite the accuracy of the rest of the box. Apparently it's a problem with the kit design, as another builder (Stephan) found the same thing with his. I'd read his build log where he pointed out the mistake, so I was extra careful to align the box in case he hadn't, but came up with the same error. Hopefully there aren't too many more errors down the track, this one was quite easy to fix.
I used the black laser-cut bolt heads this time instead of cutting my own :



The tabs on the sides will be covered by the main frames later on. The two that extend out are used to align the box with the inside of the frames.
 
Danny

The 12 main springs. These consist of 7 leaves each, all are back-to-back laminated :


 
A doubled binding strap encircles each one :



 
Last things are the support arms and "nuts". I made a jig for ease of assembly of the nuts which saved a lot of time, holding the things was a bit difficult without it :



 
Danny

Welcome all  . Yep, quite a few Jan. There are only 180 part numbers, but a LOT of these are multiples of up to 12 or 15 individual parts. From memory they quoted about 2,000 on the website. And don't forget the 5,000 or so rivets  . Also all the wire "plumbing" etc.
 
Thanks for that link to the German build log. The translation is terrible but understandable. Odd, considering that German to English isn't some obscure language swap. At least he's documented all the small problems he had with the laser-cut parts matching to the printed ones - perhaps some modification has been done by Modelik in the 4 years that he started building it. Jeez, he's slow  . At the rate I'm building I'll catch up with him in about 2 or 3 weeks, less if the laser-cut parts turn up in the next couple of days  . I only made my first cut 5 days ago, and bear in mind that I've had to laminate all those parts needed so far.
 
Here are the pics of the right side frame (I'm holding off on the other side for now). There are 6 assemblies to each frame - a red outer skin, a grey middle one and a red inner one. Each printed piece is laminated to 0.65mm card. The two sets of 3 are joined in roughly the middle, as even A3 size sheets are too short to make them in one length :

 
I used a pair of 3mm drills to align the axle holes and prevent slippage while gluing the three sections together :


 
Now is a good time to add all the "bolt heads". I didn't use the laser-cut ones I'd bought for these, as a bit of experimentation showed it would take a lot of work to repaint the black laser-cut ones. The kit supplies all the 250 bolt heads needed (in red) so I cut them out and glued them on. This wasn't as difficult as it looks, once I worked out a fairly quick way of cutting them and colouring the edges :



 
Danny

Hi all,
 
After waiting a ridiculous 12 weeks my Card model locomotive has finally arrived   . Yayyyyyyy  . No blame can be attached to the Publisher, as they sent the kit within 2 days of receipt of the order - either the ship carrying it needed more rowers, or (more likely) it's been sitting in Australian Customs for most of that time. The worst part was that I could only track the package as far as the Polish dockyard, then it disappeared until it showed up on my doorstep. Ah well, I had a few things to keep me occupied while I waited  .
 
This kit is by Modelik from Poland. They publish a large range of (mostly) European rail kits in three scales - 1:25, 1:45 and a couple of 1:87 (I guess more of the latter may be coming soon) along with Aircraft, Ships, Armour, Vehicles and Buildings. Laser-cut parts are available for a lot of the kits. From my initial observations the kit is quite nicely detailed, although no "weathering" has been printed on. They suggest you do your own with pastels or paint if you wish, as well as super-detailing if that's your go. The cardstock it's printed on is good quality, and the instruction pictures are easy to understand and follow. Written instructions are only in Polish, so Google Translate gets a workout. Service, as previously mentioned was good although they need to use a faster ship   . Postage from Poland (as always) is a bit of a killer - it came to more than the kits themselves. I also bought two carriages to accompany the one I got earlier from Fenten's in Brisbane :


 
On to the model. This is a 2-6-6-4 configuration, meaning that there are 2 bogie wheels at the front followed by two sets of 6 driving wheels and a 4-wheel bogie at the rear - a total of 18 wheels. Information about the loco can be found HERE. The original was a bit over 18 metres long and 4.3 metres tall, making it the largest steam locomotive built in Europe. They were built between 1931 and 1943.
 
The model is a whopping 730mm long from buffer to buffer. Parts come in 24 A3 size sheets, with an additional 5 sheets of Templates. I'm not sure how many sheets of Laser-cut there are, as I forgot to order them with my original purchase (or perhaps they were unavailable at the time, I don't remember). This has caused a real headache, as it seems I bought the LAST kit that Modelik had available - it's no longer listed in their catalogue, and neither is the laser-cut kit. When I first opened the package there were quite a few laser-cut sheets, but it turns out that they were for the two extra carriages. I didn't actually realise my mistake until I'd laminated one complete side of the main frame (12 pieces in total) to 0.65mm card and cut the lot out. At the time I thought it very odd that these parts weren't in the laser-cut pack. Laminating the amount needed for this kit by hand would take forever, as the card I'm using is quite dense and isn't easy to cut.
 
What to do? I went back on the Interweb and found two other sites that listed the laser-cut kit as available - Yay! I'd almost finalised the order transaction - my finger was actually hovering over the "Confirm" button when a thought hit me. The price seemed way too low. So I double-checked my order and found I'd almost bought the 1:45 scale version! Damn!!
 
So I checked out the other site (JadarHobby), and sure enough they had a kit available - in 1:25 scale. Bewdy!! I immediately ordered it from them. They also send it via Air Freight and quote a delivery time of 2 - 5 days! We'll see.
 
Here are some pics of the cover and some of the parts :





 
I also bought the Decal set and about 5,000 laser-cut rivets and bolt heads :



Last things I did was scan and save all the sheets to files and make my customary "Part Finder" Spreadsheet which helps find each part on the corresponding sheet MUCH easier. Well worth the couple of hours it took to make :

 
Danny