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

[vossiewulf]

Have had company in town for the last week, little time to do anything, I just finished the two anchors. I ended up rigging both of them up, although I liked the idea of hanging one from a cathead I keep having to remind myself that I'm doing this for the first time and I don't need a lose anchor floating around waiting to be ripped off while I thrash with full rigging for the first time.

 

I made two brass cleats for the cathead hauls, I think that's what they're called, and set them at an angle as seen below because one in line with the cathead would have been rendered too small. So I went once again with the what would I do if it was my boat method, and made reasonably big cleats and set them at an angle. I made them out of two pieces as that seemed the simplest method with a cleat this small.

 

I'm also spending time fiddling with the lines to get them to drape correctly as if they had real weight/stiffness ratios.

 

[Rick01]

I used a wash of PVA glue on the cable eventually to get it looking reasonably authentic. It's quite frustrating otherwise.

 

Rick

[Landlubber Mike]

To get the hang, I added a weight to pull the slack down.  I forget what I used - it might have been a toothpick or a pin - something heavy enough to pull it down yet light enough so the rope would naturally hang without looking sharply angular at the nadir.  Then a couple of coats of well diluted PVA to set things.

[vossiewulf]

Had company for another week, and haven't gotten much done but am plugging away at the #%##@@#$@#$ rudder. Well not the rudder itself, it's ok, but the damned brass gudgeon straps that go on the hull, I have been driven past distraction to insanity.

 

Star Fleet personnel couldn't glue brass. I don't know why all frying pans aren't made out of brass, because nothing sticks to the stuff. Not even lacquer primer on a cleaned surface, just handle it for a few seconds and pieces will fall off. GAH!

 

I made the tiller as close as I could to one of the Tony's contemporary models, but this kit is designed with the tiller going around the top of the rudder rather than inserted into the rudder head as I see in the contemporary models. It's done except for a flat clear coat on the tiller.

 

In other news, I had lost my previous Dockyard Supervisor last year, her name was Takita. She sat in my lap pretty much every minute I was home for 16 years, because I was not competent to do much of anything without her input.

Yesterday I went to visit the new Dockyard Supervisor, who is also Tonkinese like Takita, but four weeks old. In two months when she is 12 weeks she will begin her education into how ridiculous humans are and how they desperately need cat supervision at all times.

 

[Rick01]

I ended up using a small drop of superglue on the brass then coating the whole thing with a good dose of a clear water base satin varnish. I seems to help secure the straps (just don't put any pressure on them afterwards 😉 ). As to Dockyard supervisors how did you manage to go so long without another boss? I also lost mine April last year but could only go six months before another applied for the job.

 

Rick

[Gregory]

Very nice work..  I really like the tiller.

 

Too late now, but since  you are blackening the brass, did you consider wood?  ( a' la Chuck )

 

 

I have also used black card.

[vossiewulf]

8 hours ago, Rick01 said:

I also lost mine April last year but could only go six months before another applied for the job

Takita and I were very close. It was quite a long time before I could even think of the subject.

 

4 hours ago, Gregory said:

Too late now, but since  you are blackening the brass, did you consider wood?  ( a' la Chuck )

Thanks Gregory. These brass straps have pretty much become a giant white cetacean and I'm playing Ahab. Although if I can't get them looking better than they are now, I will end up ripping them all off and having to resand and refinish the entire lower hull, the planking is old enough now that it's oxidized and darkened a bit so there is no way to do spot sanding.

 

The easiest thing to use would be styrene, but I don't much like putting plastic on a ship. Second best is probably wood as you say. Another option that I have used many times is paper soaked in thin superglue. once it sets but before it fully hardens, you sand both sides smooth and it makes a very strong and reasonably flexible composite material.

 

I'm just using brass because that is what is traditional so I wanted to do it that way at least the first time. That turned out to be a terrible idea.

[paulsutcliffe]

Ah beautiful new supervisor!!

[vossiewulf]

8 hours ago, paulsutcliffe said:

Ah beautiful new supervisor!!

Thanks Paul  Tonkinese frequently change their color significantly starting around week 8 or so, Takita looked very much like the new little one does now when Takita was a little kitten. But it's not predictable, should could end up fairly light colored as she is with small contained points, or she could go the direction of huge points and very dark red hair of Takita.

 

As for the ship, in all likelihood I'm going to rip these brass pieces off and bite the bullet and resand and refinish the lower hull and start over with a material somewhat less perverse. Very annoying but brass just can't be used this way very well, only way to make it work is with actual mechanical connections by drilling holes in the strap and using round-head brass nails. Also annoying as although the straps are still fighting me, the rudder is perfectly positioned and aligned at the moment. Ah well, I went down a path thinking I could work around brass' dislike of glue but that turned out to be a misjudgment. Cue plan B.

 

[davyboy]

Hi Vossie,

 

I had the same problem on my HMS Cheerful and I pinned mine which worked a treat. Or you could try some rapid curing epoxy resin which will adhere to brass providing you roughly score the inner face. Lovely job your making of this build 👍

 

Dave 

[src]

Vossie,

Catching up here. Looking real good as we have come to expect. I second Dave's suggestion of epoxy. I used 30 minute on mine rather than the more common 5 minute, its stronger although you have the added chore of how to clamp it properly. I made round headed nails and the combination seems to have worked well. My bigger challenge was when the started growing fuzz on them. I believe from the baking soda/water i dumped them in to neutralize the blackening solution.

Congratulations on you new dockyard supervisor, mine has finally given up on trying to school me in ship tasks. She used to remove any parts not up to her expectation and carry them into the kitchen where the became House Hocky pucks.

Sam

[vossiewulf]

On 5/22/2019 at 6:04 AM, src said:

Congratulations on you new dockyard supervisor, mine has finally given up on trying to school me in ship tasks. She used to remove any parts not up to her expectation and carry them into the kitchen where the became House Hocky pucks.

Sorry Sam, somehow missed your reply here.

 

Yes, this is going to be a challenge  Right as I cross into doing rigging, I'm going to have a 12 week old fuzz-covered energy bundle that some people call Tonkinese kittens. With Takita when she was little, I had to keep an array of pens on the edge of my workbench so she could entertain herself while sitting in my lap by throwing the pens on the floor. I have no idea why cats think that is the funniest thing ever, but they do. I had to keep continuously replacing the pen supply or the next thing on the floor was an important part. I can only hope the new one doesn't decide that ship parts are prey items like yours did.

 

Speaking of the rudder, it's finally more or less done, will post some pics tomorrow.

[src]

 

7 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

Sorry Sam, somehow missed your reply here.

Not a problem vossie.

 

As far as entertaining your new supervisor, perhaps she will need an assistant? 

 

One advantage to my Enterprise taking so long, mine is old enough the rigging doesnt much interest mine.

Sam

Edited May 25, 2019 by src

[Rick01]

15 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

I can only hope the new one doesn't decide that ship parts are prey items like yours did.

Having been bossed by 12 cats over my adult lifetime there's one thing I have learnt and that's the fact that you just have to go with the flow with these guys.They all seem to have their own ideas of fun, all with one common theme "pay attention to me NOW" 😉 Luckily my workshop is not in the house and they are banned from it for their own safety - but really I can't imagine life without one or two hanging about to boss me around.

 

Rick 

[vossiewulf]

6 hours ago, Rick01 said:

Luckily my workshop is not in the house and they are banned from it for their own safety - but really I can't imagine life without one or two hanging about to boss me around.

Unfortunately in my place I made the workshop impossible to cut off, seeing as it's the house's alleged dining room  I've had no problems with cats knowing that there are places they aren't allowed on, but of course the young ones will jump up just to prove they can the second you leave the house. So extra safety measures will be required at least until she gets out of bratty cat teenager phase.

 

I didn't have cats until I was 21, when I moved into a house with a girlfriend after college, and pretty soon there were four cats and three dogs. For whatever reason I picked up cat language pretty quickly and have had them since. My wives have always laughed at me having regular conversations with them as they follow me around the house and monitor my activities.

 

Progress remains slow, just haven't had much time to work on it, but steady in that I try to move forward a little bit every day regardless. Unless I talk myself into rudder pendants, the rudder is done. I just don't see pendants on the contemporary models, but I still find it hard to believe they'd go into the North Sea and the channel with nothing holding the rudder on but gravity. At least I'd feel like a colossal moron for drowning in a capsizing ship because the rudder just fell off and I had no backup to catch it.

 

This was also one of those cases where cup burs come into play. I don't use them super regularly, but when I do, boy howdy do they speed along the process. Here as you see below, after I tore off the brass and started using styrene, I drilled holes for .030" styrene rod, and after letting the CA set for 30 seconds on those rod pieces, I just clipped each one off close with a good nail clipper.

 

Then I went over them all with the right size cup bur in the rotary tool, and we have reasonably even nice rounded bolt heads very quickly. By the way, I drilled the holes in situ instead of on the mill or something to give it a more handmade look, but I ended up wobbling more than intended in a couple places. Rarely does a good idea go fully unpunished.

 

Next up is deadeyes, which I've started but am at the moment wondering how to chuck them somehow to properly round them off. I've tried a few things so far with no luck, I'm considering just drilling a hole through the danged things and then filling them later with side grain wood.

 

 

[Rick01]

Looks really good Jay - nice solution to your problem and the cup burr has worked well. 

I've actually only had one 4 week period in my life without cats (with my surname it's not really surprising) and that was when we migrated to Aus. by ship. My latest addition is someone else's reject rescued from the local pound, his only problem is that he talks constantly if I'm not around so I'm in immediate trouble after spending any time in the workshop 1/ with my wife because of Benny; and 2/ With Benny for not being where he could find me! He's learnt pretty quickly where he shouldn't go but that doesn't stop the occasional foray just to show who's boss. 🙂

 

Rick 

[KeithAug]

Beautifully neat work as usual Vossie. 

On 5/14/2019 at 7:06 AM, vossiewulf said:

Tonkinese frequently change their color significantly starting around week 8 or so

Nothing in life is certain - I bought a white dog and ended up with a spotty Dalmatian that thinks it's a seal.

[vossiewulf]

11 hours ago, KeithAug said:

Beautifully neat work as usual Vossie. 

Nothing in life is certain - I bought a white dog and ended up with a spotty Dalmatian that thinks it's a seal.

That's amusing, I thought Dalmatians had their spots from day one. I love dogs just as much as cats, but I never replaced my last dog who lived to be voting age. Also people in the Bay Area love animals, but there are houses and cars packed together in every spot possible, so you have to either work at getting them proper room to run or take them to doggie daycare which dogs love but it's expensive. With my job I just don't have the predictable time required, we have emergencies at all hours and I can be directing the application side of the response for many many hours and that's a weekly thing at least. I hope I'll be settled down again one day someplace dog-friendly. 

Edited May 28, 2019 by vossiewulf

[src]

Great work as always, where do you get your cup burs?

On 5/26/2019 at 12:27 AM, vossiewulf said:

Rarely does a good idea go fully unpunished.

I am so stealing that!!

Sam

[Thunder]

Have you not watched 101 Dalmatians? I thought they were plain but slightly pink. 

 

Love them, don't see these types of breed much any more only mongrels with poo in the name somewhere!

[vossiewulf]

14 hours ago, src said:

Great work as always, where do you get your cup burs?

Otto Frei is where I've bought many, many things. The Venn diagrams of professional jeweler's tools and ship modeler's tool needs overlap quite a bit.

 

Contenti is another very good supplier, I just tend to use Otto Frei as they're just on the other side of the bay from me so I get next day delivery with standard UPS. If you know anything about the Bay Area you'd know why driving over myself is a seriously less than entertaining option, getting anywhere around here now means fighting 8 and 10 lane wide 20mph traffic everywhere, even on weekends. About 3AM Sunday night is the only chance you ever might be able to use cruise control for more than a few seconds. I've had a 535 for over a year and I haven't even figured out how the cruise control works, much less used it. I'd go completely crazy from the traffic if I didn't take the car up into the hills near me on the weekends for some back road, no traffic, windy road driving at irresponsible speeds.

 

In fact when I went up to see the new Dockyard Supervisor, it required crossing the hills north of Santa Rosa, very windy with lots of switchbacks, and some serious fun was had. On the way back, some 20-something in a Hyundai Veloster thought he was going fast until the old dude in the BMW twice as heavy as his car made it clear that said old dude could pass him if he wanted

 

It's not threadjacking if it's your own thread!

 

On 5/14/2019 at 11:40 AM, davyboy said:

I had the same problem on my HMS Cheerful and I pinned mine which worked a treat. Or you could try some rapid curing epoxy resin which will adhere to brass providing you roughly score the inner face. Lovely job your making of this build 👍

I forgot to answer this also Davy, sorry. You maybe have better luck than I did with epoxy, I tried two different kinds on brass that was brightened just before bonding and the damned things still popped off with the slightest stress. The key with brass is the first thing you said, you mechanically pinned it. If you pre-drill holes in the straps and use mini brass nails to mechanically attach them, all is good. I considered that too but I didn't think the nails at 1/64 would be strong enough to get them into pressure-fit holes, I might have been wrong about that. I have more 1/64 kits sitting in the closet so we may revisit this, but at least I'm sure now that if I get annoyed with brass I can make something strong enough with good detail in styrene.

Edited May 29, 2019 by vossiewulf

[Picard]

On 3/13/2019 at 9:29 AM, vossiewulf said:

Hi Vossie, i miss the how you linked the tackle loop with the ring. It's very hard to open the ring once it's mounted to the ship's side.

 

 

 

 

[Malazan]

Anyone know what become of this guy? This was a hell of a build, like reading a novel and not finding out the end?

[Bob Cleek]

Excellent question! I wondered the same thing the other day. Vossiewulf was a valuable member of the forum community. He's a very accomplished modeler. I've learned much from him over the years. Perhaps the Admin could give him a ping.

 

 

[drjeckl]

I'm building the LN, my first build, and I followed Vossie's log as my bible.  I was also extremely disappointed that he dropped off this site; too bad.

[vossiewulf]

Thanks for the kind words folks, it was a minor five year layoff. The fact is that work became even more time consuming and stressful and I couldn't spin down enough to manage the precision I strive for daily, so I stopped spending time in the shop. 

 

The good news (from my perspective at least) is that I retired from Visa in June, and after much preparation I have finally moved away from the stress of working in Silicon Valley for the relative peace, quiet, and much lower living costs of Charlottesville, VA. I and my partner have spent the last month working every day all day to unpack, and considerable time was spent setting up my new workshop.

 

Um first question is why is inserting an image from an Imgur URL failing? I tried inserting the link wrapped in BBCode too and that didn't work either. I guess I will just attach images to the post until I figure out how to insert them inline again.

 

Anyway, one pic is my new workshop finally fully operational, the other is the agenda- as you see I have a few kits piled up including three ships of the line (Vanguard, Victory, and Montanes), a race-built galleon in HMS Revenge, and Model Shipway's Constitution. That's not even counting the three brig models or all the rest, the point being I have enough to keep me busy for quite a while. I may not have been able to work the last five years, but I kept stocking the kit closet 😀

 

With respect to the workshop, not seen on the other side of the room are the three Byrnes machines- the saw, the disc sander, and the thickness sander. I was saddened to see he had passed away and I feel even luckier to have his machines.

 

Anyway, as I wrap up the final steps of unpacking I will finally have time to start spending my days on the Lady Nelson and getting her rigging done so I can move on to one of the brigs. I have been reviewing Lennarth Petersson's Rigging Period Fore-and-Aft Craft which is excellent, but I have questions about the cutter rig described within. I'm going to post a separate thread with the questions as I think that will get more answers than just asking them in one of many many build logs.

 

 

[Gregory]

Great to have you back.

I like Petersson’s book, but it has it’s critics, keeping in mind he copied what he saw on a model.

I don’t think you can go wrong with Chuck’s Cheerful as a guide.  You can download the instructions on Chuck’s Syren Ship Model site.

Chuck’s and Glenn Barlow’s Cheerful build logs are great “go-to’s”.

You could also do well to look at Thukydides Alert.

[Landlubber Mike]

Welcome back!  I was hoping everything was ok as you hadn't posted in a while.  I don't know if you remember, but you helped me with a bunch of tool purchases years ago.  The one I'm most appreciative of is the Japanese micromotor - that has made modeling for me so much easier and more precise, particularly as I fell into the black hole of plastic model kits.

 

Charlottesville is a magical place, I'm jealous!  I went to UVA for grad school and have been counting the days to retire back down there.

 

By the way, nice looking shop!  

[BANYAN]

Good to see you back mate.  Look forward to seeing more of your fine work and tool discussions.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[vossiewulf]

11 hours ago, Gregory said:

Great to have you back.

I like Petersson’s book, but it has it’s critics, keeping in mind he copied what he saw on a model.

I don’t think you can go wrong with Chuck’s Cheerful as a guide.  You can download the instructions on Chuck’s Syren Ship Model site.

Chuck’s and Glenn Barlow’s Cheerful build logs are great “go-to’s”.

You could also do well to look at Thukydides Alert.

Thanks! And yes, I expect the final rig to be a mishmash of Cheerful and Petersson's illustrations. One thing I noted in both is they have belaying points both on the stern and the bow that my Lady Nelson doesn't have, I'm going to have to do some kind of surgery on the existing ship to belay all the required lines.

 

4 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Welcome back!  I was hoping everything was ok as you hadn't posted in a while.  I don't know if you remember, but you helped me with a bunch of tool purchases years ago.  The one I'm most appreciative of is the Japanese micromotor - that has made modeling for me so much easier and more precise, particularly as I fell into the black hole of plastic model kits.

 

Charlottesville is a magical place, I'm jealous!  I went to UVA for grad school and have been counting the days to retire back down there.

 

By the way, nice looking shop!  

Thanks Mike, and of course I remember you. And I agree with you, brushless micromotors are teh shiznit when you're doing precision work like ship modeling. They're just so much better than Dremels. I look forward to you joining me here 😀

 

1 hour ago, BANYAN said:

Good to see you back mate.  Look forward to seeing more of your fine work and tool discussions.

 

cheers

 

Pat

Hey Pat, great to see you! When I was packing for my move here, I was both laughing at myself when for example I counted no less than 11 different sets of needle files in different sizes and cuts and manufacturers and crying at the time it would and did take to organize and protect everything for shipping. You can't have too many tools until you have to move 3500 miles.