Queen Anne style royal barge - Syren Ship Model Co. - 1:24 - circa 1700

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This is Syren Ship Model's soon to be released kit. It is plank on frame and will be built admiralty style with frames showing. Chuck has come up with an ingenious way of constructing frames with floors and futtocks that uses laser cut parts. The kit uses cherry for most of the parts but some embellishments will be in boxwood.

 

This is a photo of a similar model from the National Maritime Museum

 

Edited August 11, 2016 by Jim L

[jml1083]

This is a photo of the kit right out of the box. The cherry is beautiful and this will be a striking model when it is completed.

 

 

The top piece is the build board, also made out of cherry. It comes in two pieces with slots where each of the frames will be positioned. This type construction eliminates all of the added bracing people used to try and keep frames square when they build the Pinnace. This type build board keeps the frames square and level making construction that much easier. The location of each frame is labeled on the build board to reduce the chance of placing a frame in the wrong location.The large blocks to the left are feet that will be glued onto the build board to raise it off the workbench so the tops of the frames have clearance.

 

In the middle are the sheets that contain the floors and futtocks. In another post I'll go into detail about how these are assembled.

 

At the bottom of the photo are some of the thicker elements, also made of cherry and also laser cut.

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The Keel

 

The first element I tackled is the keel which is made up of 8 laser cut pieces. Before removing them from the billets I sanded off the char that was left on the backside of the billet from the laser. There really wasn't a lot but it's easier to remove it from the faces before you remove it from the billet. Once that was done I liberated the pieces from the billets.

 

The keel has rabbets, which are nothing more than bevels, on the top side of the keel. The keel itself is 5/32" thick and the rabbets need to be 1/32" x 1/32". I cut a piece of 1/32" scrap and used it to trace a line on the sides and top of the keel which I then pared down using a #11 scalpel blade. On the curved stem I did the same thing using a scrap piece that had the correct curve traced from the stem. On the sides I used a compass with a very sharp pencil.

 

 

This photo shows the side of the keel with the rabbet line drawn. The top of the keel would look the same. This step is done after the various keel sections are glued together.

 

This is a shot of the curved 1/32" piece I used to trace the rabbet line on the stem. Just slide the piece into position and trace your line. Flip the stem over and trace the line on the other side.