Lady Nelson by vossiewulf - Amati/Victory Models - 1:64

[Rick01]

Hmmm I'm not sure if I'm speaking with you or not. Like others here I was traumatised when the build stopped - it was just like finding the last few pages of a brilliant book had been removed!! 😞 

 

Anyway welcome back mate, it's good to see you here again and I'm looking forward to seeing this little build finished. 🙂 

 

Rick 

[vossiewulf]

1 hour ago, Rick01 said:

Hmmm I'm not sure if I'm speaking with you or not. Like others here I was traumatised when the build stopped - it was just like finding the last few pages of a brilliant book had been removed!! 😞 

 

Anyway welcome back mate, it's good to see you here again and I'm looking forward to seeing this little build finished. 🙂 

 

Rick 

Haha! Sorry Rick, but I'm very glad to see you're still kicking around this forum 😀

[Rick01]

1 hour ago, vossiewulf said:

Haha! Sorry Rick, but I'm very glad to see you're still kicking around this forum 😀

Still around but now only viewing. 😞 Arthritis in my spine and dominant wrist plus a couple of cataracts to be attended to early next year have stopped me building anything at the moment. Maybe later next year as I'm also seeing surgeons about the wrist, keeping my fingers crossed.

 

Rick 

[vossiewulf]

6 hours ago, Rick01 said:

Still around but now only viewing. 😞 Arthritis in my spine and dominant wrist plus a couple of cataracts to be attended to early next year have stopped me building anything at the moment. Maybe later next year as I'm also seeing surgeons about the wrist, keeping my fingers crossed.

 

Rick 

I'm sorry to hear that, Rick, that must be very frustrating.  I will be keeping my fingers crossed also.

[vossiewulf]

While waiting for some supplies to arrive- glues, thinners, paints, etc. as I had to dump almost all of my liquids for the move, I have been looking at the rigging and at this point I am very confused about what I will do. Chruck's Cheerful and Lennarth Petersson in his book where he covers a British cutter rig, and all the contemporary models I can find in the gallery show a mainmast and a topmast and two yards, a lower yard and a topsail yard. 

 

However, the Lady Nelson plans have a very long (for the cutter's length) mainmast set up to hang two yards and a relatively short topmast that carries yet another yard- they're called lower, middle, and upper yards in the plans which doesn't help much.

 

Basically the good sources which show accurate rigs, the kind of thing I need to be able to recreate the rig in scale, means if I follow them I'm dumping the plan rig entirely and going with a scratch rig. That doesn't bother me except I will need to do something to convert the Cheerful plans to 1/64 to get the mast and yard lengths and widths, as the LN mast and yard diagrams will be wrong.

 

Meanwhile, here are a couple pics that show the Lady Nelson made it through the 3500 mile move in perfect shape. In the first pic you can see the holly decking has lost its bone whiteness for a much nicer cream color, which was the plan.

And with respect to the planking, we can see that after five years we've had just a little bit of movement so now you can see some of the plank edges where it was totally smooth before. This is also to plan, I didn't put any glue on the edges of the planks so that they could move relative to each other.

[flyenrw]

Ahh; another Lady to follow....Very nice detail work Vossiewolf and the variations you have chosen really turn your Lady into a one of a kind!                                Best Regards, Roger

[vossiewulf]

58 minutes ago, flyenrw said:

Ahh; another Lady to follow....Very nice detail work Vossiewolf and the variations you have chosen really turn your Lady into a one of a kind!                                Best Regards, Roger

Thanks Roger, you're doing cool things with yours too. I really like the added detail on your companionway, I wish I would have thought of that for mine.

[vossiewulf]

Another quick update, @Chuck was kind enough to send me his Cheerful rigging plans in PDF form, and I just took them down to Staples for sizing down to 75% and printing, that's the conversion factor for 1:48 to 1:64.

 

So I'm going to do the full Cheerful rig on my Lady Nelson, making it even MORE kitbashed, which didn't seem possible 😊

 

I also put in an order at Syren for the standing rigging-dyed rope, something I had overlooked when I bought a bunch of rope from Chuck before.

 

Only another week or so before I can really start moving forward again.

[vossiewulf]

I actually made some sawdust today ripping square castello boxwood stock for the masts and yards, so I'm officially working on Lady Nelson again. That's the up side.

 

The downside is that after ripping the stock and mounting the four-jaw chuck on the lathe, I found that my four jaw chuck key went missing in the move. And Little Machine Shop is out of stock. Found one that should work at another place, but it won't arrive until probably the 16th, so can't make any more progress on the masts and yards until then.

 

Also, my basic plan to do the Cheerful rig on the LN is pretty crazy. Starting with the something I didn't anticipate, which is that Cheerful is altogether bigger than LN, about 12 feet longer at scale. Further, the mast is stepped pretty far back and has little rake, while the mast step for the LN is about four scale feet forward of that in Cheerful and this will require some mast rake.

 

Bottom line is sometimes I wished I could just follow the directions 😊

[vossiewulf]

Still waiting for the 1/4"/6mm four jaw chuck key which is required to make the masts and yards, I've been trying to make some progress. So I started by making some hooks out of 22 gauge brass wire, which came out nice enough but they look a little big to me, I'm going to try again with 24 gauge.

 

I probably should have zoomed in more, but I think you can still see that I filed away one side of my round-nosed pliers to be able to make pretty small eyes.

 

I also started on the deadeyes and chainplates, the first thing I did was relieve the edges of the lanyard holes in the deadeyes with a small stone-setting bur. I then expanded the photoetched deadeye strops to fit over the deadeyes, then crimped them down on the deadeyes and painted them black along with the chainplate photoetched pieces.

Cutting the P/E on an acrylic sheet with a see-through hold down, two things that help prevent pieces from shooting off into oblivion when cut free,

[Seventynet]

Those deadeyes look very good.

 

Ian

[Gregory]

1 hour ago, vossiewulf said:

I probably should have zoomed in more, but I think you can still see that I filed away one side of my round-nosed pliers to be able to make pretty small eyes.

Have you considered using drill bits to make uniform eyes and rings?

 

That said your work looks really good so far..

[vossiewulf]

23 minutes ago, Seventynet said:

Those deadeyes look very good.

 

Ian

 

13 minutes ago, Gregory said:

Have you considered using drill bits to make uniform eyes and rings?

 

Thanks Gregory and Ian.

 

Gregory, yes I have used drill bits in the past to make consistent loops, but I can make tighter loops with the pliers. Which I use depends on the situation, if I have 142 circles to make I'll definitely wind the wire onto a drill bit and cut the circles off one by one.

[vossiewulf]

Some in process photos, one of those days when you don't quite finish anything. 

 

I have Lady Nelson up on my GRS engraver's block again. It's an extravagance but one I bought 20 years ago so it's amortized nicely. I honestly don't know how some of these guys do the phenomenal work that they do without an engraver's block to hold and spin and twist the subject with. Anyway, starting to mount the lower deadeyes. The chainplate is pretty generic but I don't want to scratchbuild yet another thing so I'm going with them.

They look pretty nasty right now with most of the black off from the rough handling of bending them. They will have to be touched up with black paint but not until they're tacked down and I can't find the brass nails that came with the kit, so I ordered some- another wait for a week or so before I can wrap this up.

 

On the good side, the four jaw chuck key came today, so I started working on the masting, going first with the jib boom.

Got tired, so stopped here. Tomorrow will finish off the jib boom and start working on the mainmast. BTW, I am using Castillo boxwood for the masts and yards, I really like the almost invisible grain and figure on the wood I got from Jason @Crown Timberyard, too bad he closed down.

 

[Danstream]

Happy the you resumed this build log. Your sharp work provides lot of inspirational ideas.

Looking forward to seeing the continuation of your build.

Best regards,

Dan

[vossiewulf]

4 hours ago, Danstream said:

Happy the you resumed this build log. Your sharp work provides lot of inspirational ideas.

Looking forward to seeing the continuation of your build.

Best regards,

Dan

 

Thanks Dan! Looking forward to you continuing your log too, you have a nice LN also.

 

[vossiewulf]

Well set up my milling machine to drill some holes through the newly-tapered jib boom and nothing happened when I turned the speed pot. Nada. Fuses are ok and all connections look good, power is getting to the main board (the cooling fan comes on) but when I try to spin it up the amber light on the power box comes one and nothing happens with the mill spindle. Looks to me like the motor is dead somehow.

 

It's 20 years old or so, I'm inclined to get a new high-torque (more capable) machine from Little Machine Shop. Either way, it's another roadblock. Grrrr.

[vossiewulf]

Progress is not blazing, but I finished the jib boom sans rigging. Well, a Cheerful jib boom, per plans from Chuck.

 

Used styrene and brass wire to model the iron band at the end of the boom with eyes for the guys and stays.

And I drilled and carved a sheave into the end. I think I used too big a drill making the sheave wider than it should be, but it's close enough for a first effort.

And the other end is a good fit for the bits and the cutout in the bow.

Still waiting for some brass nails small enough to anchor the chainplates against the hull, and I'm probably going to order a new mill this week. Next up is the mainmast, following the Cheerful instructions.

 

[Danstream]

@vossiewulf, your closeup pictures show a level of details which is amazing.

 

6 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

Still waiting for some brass nails small enough to anchor the chainplates against the hull

Just a suggestion, for the chainplates, instead of nails, I used pins made from a brass tube 0.7mm dia. from Albion Alloys. In this way, I could accommodate them within the thickness of the chainplates and conveniently trim their length as needed.

Best regards,

Dan