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

[tkay11]

Glad that life now allows you to continue! Nice work!

 

Tony

[Rick01]

I sketched in the areas where the deck fittings were to be situated, planked up to them then dropped the fittings in after. Sounds a bit awkward but I found it easier than trying to manouvre planks round hatches etc.

Good to see you back! 🙂

 

Rick

[Haliburton]

Good to see you back in action!   Scott

[BANYAN]

Welcome back; I trust you have resolved all the issues so that you can concentrate on your build again.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[vossiewulf]

9 hours ago, tkay11 said:

Glad that life now allows you to continue! Nice work!

 

Tony

Thanks Tony. It's been a long time with many challenges, most of them bad, so it's nice to be sitting at workbench again making progress. Last evening and today I made the gratings, cut my small wales pieces and the external stern counter reinforcement pieces (I'm sure there's a specific name for those pieces but can't remember) from cocobolo and dry fit them, and also picked up Faber Castell india ink art markers at the local art supply store as they're the only art markers I've seen that are actually black. Prismacolor, Tomboy, Sharpie, all are dark purple, not black and that clashes with my cocobolo pieces.

 

And if you're wondering why I'm using art markers, the answer is because they're the best way to do the next step in the way I'd like it done. India ink markers, even if pigment-based, leave a much thinner film than does paint and I really didn't want to lose the texture of the wood under paint layers. Being india ink they'll be light fast, and also make it much easier to apply the black than masking everything for an airbrush or brush painting everything. I'm going to play ship coloring book and color in the black with my markers

[vossiewulf]

4 hours ago, Rick01 said:

I sketched in the areas where the deck fittings were to be situated, planked up to them then dropped the fittings in after. Sounds a bit awkward but I found it easier than trying to manouvre planks round hatches etc.

Good to see you back! 🙂

 

Rick

 

4 hours ago, Haliburton said:

Good to see you back in action!   Scott

 

4 hours ago, BANYAN said:

Welcome back; I trust you have resolved all the issues so that you can concentrate on your build again.

 

cheers

 

Pat

Thanks everyone. Things seem good and stable for now so hopefully progress will continue

 

Rick, especially glad to see you around still. Thanks, I think that is what I will do, that's a good compromise.

[Rick01]

You putting in a waterway before deck planking? I seem to remember that the plans just planked right up to the gunwales.

 

Rick

[vossiewulf]

On 6/26/2017 at 9:41 PM, Rick01 said:

Hows the planking coming on? I find the last couple of runs can be real sods when attempting a perfect fit! I guess work and your cough have probably been in the way a bit recently.

Probably after, I should have put one in first but I forgot and went ahead and painted the gunwales, which I did with airbrush after masking everything. I may try to add a small strip after the deck planking is in and hand paint it.

 

For anyone who has the Rigging Period Fore and Aft Ships or whatever the title is, the first section is of course basically this ship. I'm confused however by the shrouds he shows. On one page he shows five deadeyes per side with one paired with a burton pendant, all six pairs going to the mainmast. But then on the next page he shows two deadeyes per side running to the topmast through spreaders. Seven per side seems a lot of deadeyes for a cutter, but the vice versa is two per side going to the top leaving only three shroud stays per side going to the mainmast, and that doesn't seem right either. If someone can clarify it would be much appreciated.

[Rick01]

The beauty of this kit is that it represents a typical cutter of the period allowing for a certain amount of leeway in the build. A quick check of the book shows that the two shrouds for the topmast carry smaller deadeyes with the lower one having a hook attaching to an eyebolt behind the main deadeyes. Just to confuse matters a check of the Maritime Museum models tends to show 4 shrouds for the main mast then (where a splitter is mounted) the shrouds for the top mast have an eye not a deadeye this then is tensioned to an eyebolt again behind the main deadeyes. Check page 2 of this gallery "English Naval Cutter 1763" shows it reasonably well.

 

Rick

[vossiewulf]

I don't see a link there

[Rick01]

Oops - https://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/gallery/category/4-gallery-of-contemporary-models-from-museums-and-private-collections/ Try this.

 

Rick

[popeye the sailor]

hello there!   glad to see your back at the table     I believe that on these ships,  some of the dead eyes are for back stays,  and are not included in the ratline rigging of the shrouds.   in some cases,  back stays can even be done in a pendant and pulley assembly fashion,  not utilizing a dead eye.   when I plank a deck,  I'll leave openings for structures and holds,  but not for anything else.   hope to see more of your project........the hull looks really good   

[vossiewulf]

 

14 hours ago, popeye the sailor said:

hello there!   glad to see your back at the table     I believe that on these ships,  some of the dead eyes are for back stays,  and are not included in the ratline rigging of the shrouds.   in some cases,  back stays can even be done in a pendant and pulley assembly fashion,  not utilizing a dead eye.   when I plank a deck,  I'll leave openings for structures and holds,  but not for anything else.   hope to see more of your project........the hull looks really good   

Good to see you're still building like four ships at once

 

Smaller wale and cap rail installed and first of the black sections colored in. It was done before the cap rail was installed, and the cap rails themselves were blackened before install as both would be hard to reach easily once the cap rail was in place. Now working on channels, I am making a single one for each side using five deadeyes per the fore and aft book, although Tony's pics all seem to show them with four. They will go below the gunports, again like the book, with a gap for one gunport.

 

Well harrumph pic I uploaded is blurry. Trying again...

 

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by vossiewulf

[vossiewulf]

One for the beginners, if you need a bunch of very narrow mortises in something, cheat and make it out of two pieces.

 

And at the bottom, how she stands as of this evening, with two supposedly satin clear coats but it looks pretty glossy to me, will have to see how it looks tomorrow. May need to switch to something more satiny. But the clear coats do finally bring the cocobolo to life, it's one of those woods that looks good unfinished but finished it's whoa...

 

Bummer of the channels is that the oar port there no longer makes sense, but I didn't think far enough ahead. If done over, I'd plank over the oar ports, I see several models showing none.

Edited November 30, 2018 by vossiewulf

[tkay11]

I don't know if this helps, but during my build of the Sherbourne I had a query about Petersson's illustration of the mast tackles, or what he referred to as the Burton pendants. As you say, he has three pairs of shrouds on each side which should make for 6 deadeyes if that was his intention and if you look carefully at the illustration with the mast tackles there is one block for the tackles on the port side near the mast head but without the remaining tackle, whilst the tackle on the starboard side is shown ending on a belaying pin and a ring.

 

I found his illustrations confusing because as you note he has varying numbers of shrouds as well as being confusing about the tackles. I don't think the number of shrouds matters as Steel in his section on the rigging of cutters says

 

"SHROUDS, four or five pairs, are fitted and got over the mast-head, similar to those in ships. The after shroud on each side is wormed, parcelled and served with spun-yarn, down to the deadeye."

 

In relation to the mast tackles, I followed Marquardt's illustration as you can see in the discussion at:

You can also see how I approached it in my build log at https://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/335-hmc-sherbourne-1763-by-tkay11-finished-–-caldercraft-–-scale-164-a-novice’s-caldercraft-sherbourne/&page=8

 

Tony

 

 

Edited November 30, 2018 by tkay11
Edit mistake re deadeyes

[BANYAN]

Nice progress Vossiwolf.  I would not be too concerned with the gloss look.  I had the same issue with a matt black on Endeavour where under lights etc it looked very shiny but to the eye in even lighting looked 'flat'  - amazing how light can play such tricks!

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Rick01]

15 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

One for the beginners, if you need a bunch of very narrow mortises in something, cheat and make it out of two pieces.

Just one thing to remember - make sure that you can fit the irons through the mortise before gluing it all up. Very embarrassing when you find the mortise slightly too narrow (as I found out ) and have to rebuild it. 

 

Rick 

[vossiewulf]

13 hours ago, tkay11 said:

I don't know if this helps, but during my build of the Sherbourne I had a query about Petersson's illustration of the mast tackles

Thanks Tony, have bookmarked that for later

 

1 hour ago, BANYAN said:

Nice progress Vossiwolf.  I would not be too concerned with the gloss look.  I had the same issue with a matt black on Endeavour where under lights etc it looked very shiny but to the eye in even lighting looked 'flat'  - amazing how light can play such tricks!

I'll let it sit and I will stare at it a while before deciding to do anything. But if I do want to switch, I have at least three other compatible satin clearcoat options in the closet, so it won't be any big deal.

 

56 minutes ago, Rick01 said:

Just one thing to remember - make sure that you can fit the irons through the mortise before gluing it all up. Very embarrassing when you find the mortise slightly too narrow (as I found out ) and have to rebuild it. 

I thought about that while making them- and went back and deepened them a couple times before I felt double extra sure that any brass strip of correct size will easily fit through

 

[vossiewulf]

This evening I sanded her all over with 2000 grit to knock down all the fuzz and to flatten the finish a bit, then she got two more coats of a different more satin clear acrylic. I'll do a light final sanding with 2500 tomorrow and she'lll have a nice smooth finish.

 

The black is slightly variable, but I've decided I like it, or at least am doing a good job of talking myself into it. The markers worked well over all but had two problems I didn't anticipate: one, it reacts to dry CA glue, forming a halo around it. I had to resand things even more carefully before putting the final coat on. And two, I didn't anticipate the effects of having to go over and over in certain hard to reach areas, which is pretty much everywhere but the turn of the bilge downward.

 

However, the resulting effect looks almost like scale paint brushes to me, and there is a little bit of variability that I'd expect on a real ship. It also covered with a much thinner film than paint, leaving the woodgrain still visible. 

 

Hopefully tomorrow I will unmask the deck and start looking at the deck planking. Since I am using holly, I am not wasting a ton of wood with hooked planks, it's after 1800 so it's legal for me to do nibs. I have a good drawing of a nibbed deck that seems straightforward. Easy, no, straightforward, yes. Making the outer plank is going to be an adventure. I plan to do it similarly to how I did the rest of the planking, making the nib cuts in the outer plank in situ. I think.

 

 

Edited December 1, 2018 by vossiewulf

[vossiewulf]

Rudder machined out, deck furniture manufactured. You know the only parts from this kit I've used so far are the bulkheads, keel, sub-deck and now the grates. Do I get credit for a scratchbuild? Maybe I should request a new semi-scratchbuilt category.

 

The grate frames are boxwood in the right size as far as I can tell, with lap joints at the corner which I understand is the correct joinery. The companion was planked vertically with boxwood and then given hinges out of bits of styrene and door knobs made from squishing the melted end of a piece of stretched sprue. I would have turned them out of wood but my dowel stock seems MIA (I had to move out and back into my house over the summer).

 

As you can see in the pics, I used alcohol-based aniline dye. You can mix any color, there's no pigment to obscure grain, and even though it looks like it penetrates deeply, it doesn't; don't like this color, get out 400 grit and in five minutes your piece has no color and you're ready to try again. They're also very efficient, as you see a very little goes a long way- get a set of dye powders and you have stain for ships for forever.

 

The downside is that they'll stain anything, I treat them like nitro glycerine in terms of safe handling.

 

I also sat staring at the rudder for about two hours before I came up with what I think is a good way to make something that looks realistic while also having some strength. But I will probably set it aside for the time being to focus on deck planking.

 

 

 

 

[Rick01]

Looking good - I particularly like the hinges and door knobs. I found that the heads of brass nails worked quite well when I was making mine. I also faced the companionway backwards - most of the contemporary models I've looked at are oriented that way.

You probably haven't spotted it yet but the part number 44 (belaying pin rail) has the pins way to close together. At some point I've got to remove mine and refit with probably two rails each side.

 

Rick 

Edited December 5, 2018 by Rick01

[vossiewulf]

Oh and a gratuitous stern shot, haven't showed that. I think this cutter was owned by a smuggler, who blinged-out the stern. And then named it White Tail.

 

 

[popeye the sailor]

very nice progress.......very nice use of color     she's look'in good.

[vossiewulf]

Thanks Rick, that is noted and will help me as I have no idea how to tell if a pin rail has the pins too close. I see several variations on pin rails also so I assume it's ok to have more than one.

 

Thanks Popeye

 

Two steps forward and at least two steps back.

 

Starting with forward, I spent a couple evenings fixing some things I wasn't happy with. One was the cap rail, I thought the open grain of the walnut would be ok along with the open grain of the cocobolo, but under black it looked terrible, like the sailors wasted time by carving huge gouges out of the rail. So I sanded it down, squeegeed a couple coats of CA, sanded down, re-blacked and resprayed the top coat. The stern just got sanded down quite a bit before refinished.

 

 

[vossiewulf]

Then the next steps forward and back are all Rick's fault, because he totally twisted my arm and forced me to put in the waterway and spirketting before going ahead with deck planking. My arm is barely attached to the socket from all the twisting.

 

And it went basically fine, except my spirketting strip turned out to be thinner than I really wanted, but it still looks ok. The problem occurred when I masked everything to spray the red- it turns out this clear finish is adhering none too strongly to anything. It's not the black, it lifted from the raw cocobolo too.

 

Not really sure what to do. Switching finishes won't help much at this point as it's still the bottom coat everywhere and may induce compatibility issues. All I can really do is remove all the lifted sections and spray more coats until it disappears, and then know this finish will fall off if you look at it sideways. Regardless it will be a lengthy process to fix the damage.

 

 

[Rick01]

You know you'd have been pretty mad with me if I'd let you carry one and lay the deck without the waterway. 😉 Whilst we're at it - have you thought about making the deadeye with 5 holes for the mainstay? Not needed for a while I know but just thought I'd ask!

 

Rick

 

[Rick01]

Here's a shot of a working replica of a 53' topsail schooner pin rail. Belaying pins are about 40 cm long and you can see that there's a reasonable gap (probably about 1/2 length of the pin) allowing for easy access for rope.

 

Rick

[vossiewulf]

3 hours ago, Rick01 said:

You know you'd have been pretty mad with me if I'd let you carry one and lay the deck without the waterway. 😉 Whilst we're at it - have you thought about making the deadeye with 5 holes for the mainstay? Not needed for a while I know but just thought I'd ask!

 

Rick

 

Of course I would have, it should have the proper planking. But that wasn't going to stop me from looking for scapegoats when something went wrong!  

 

I put five holes in the stem, I think the first thing you told me a year and a half ago was that the stem needed five holes and that meant a five-hole deadeye and for some reason I haven't fathomed yet, you think making the deadeye is going to be super tricky. Generally small is not a problem for me. I remember making a 1/48 Albatros D.III, about six inches long, and I rigged it so the control column actually worked and moved the control surfaces. And then there were the 1/32 cockpits with every knob and switch and indicator light. I can't see that well anymore without help, but I have lots of experience with small and fiddly. In fact I'm very likely here to build some 1/200-1/600 ships, and if I scratchbuild a ship it's also likely to be small. I may get one of those engraver's microscopes with the 10" working distance to facilitate that work if I do go that direction.

[vossiewulf]

53 minutes ago, Rick01 said:

Here's a shot of a working replica of a 53' topsail schooner pin rail.

Thanks!

[Rick01]

5 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

I'm very likely here to build some 1/200-1/600 ships, and if I scratchbuild a ship it's also likely to be small. I may get one of those engraver's microscopes with the 10" working distance to facilitate that work if I do go that direction.

If and when you do I'm going to love following your builds!

 

Rick