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

[vossiewulf]

Another thing I'm guessing on, the height of the bulkheads vary from bow to midships and to stern. Either I have to use three full width planks with stealers bow and stern or four reduced planks with the top one varying quite a bit in width. And should inner bulkhead planking follow deck sheer or rail sheer? And why in God's name would the height of a gunport change from bow to stern? They seem to follow the rail sheer and it's going to change the field of fire of the bow and stern guns.

[Rick01]

My gunwales height doesn't vary across the full length of the ship. Obviously the gunports remain at a constant height above the deck level and (as discussed elsewhere on another build) the ports themselves have the sides perpendicular to the waterline whilst top and bottom are parallel to the deck. I'll try and get a reasonable photo of mine for you and post here later.

 

Rick

[vossiewulf]

I only have one pic at the moment, will go take a couple more. If what you're saying is how it's supposed to be, I have major problems, because the curve followed by the gunports is significantly different than the curve of the deck.

 

This is what I ended up with after straightening the bulkhead top line, all the ports are an equal height from the top of the rail. The ripples looked like deviations from this line.

 

[Rick01]

OK here's mine (excuse the photo quality - not something I'm good at). Height form deck to top of gunwales 12mm, height of planking above gun port 2mm. If the ports are that far out I'd plank the inside from the deck up to get the correct curvature then re-cut the ports as parallelograms measuring 7mm x 7mm approx. Really sounds as if the original laser cut went very wrong!

Hope this makes sense.

 

Rick 

[vossiewulf]

Ok here's mine now from the inside. Height of gunwales at the bow is 14.72mm, midships is 12.8mm.

 

You can see the bow gunport is higher off the deck than the midships ports and they begin to rise again on the stern. The gunwale/bulkhead sheer is more pronounced than that of the deck. The thing is I can't see where it's wrong, once the top line was straightened you see it makes a continuous smooth curve with the gunports following it exactly.

 

Also the tops of the gunwales are now closely matching the tops of the bulkhead tabs, which also makes it look as intended. And another is you saw I made my bow stem piece as a dead copy of the original, and these gunwale strips fit perfectly, that was how I established how much the lower edge was supposed to overhang on the bulkheads for gluing.

 

Can you see where the problem is?

 

[vossiewulf]

And here's a pic from the bow - it looks like the gunwales very intentionally rise toward the bow, and it doesn't look wrong it looks pretty logical. So at the moment it looks like I've done what the kit intended - we know the deck line was also dead on the bulkhead tops so that line is what they intended. But I have gunports that vary in height from the deck, the gunwale sheer line is more pronounced than the deck line, and the gunports follow that line instead of the deck.

 

 

[vossiewulf]

3 hours ago, Rick01 said:

OK here's mine (excuse the photo quality - not something I'm good at). Height form deck to top of gunwales 12mm, height of planking above gun port 2mm. If the ports are that far out I'd plank the inside from the deck up to get the correct curvature then re-cut the ports as parallelograms measuring 7mm x 7mm approx. Really sounds as if the original laser cut went very wrong!

Hope this makes sense.

 

Rick 

 

Thanks for the pics, and it looks very good BTW

 

The only thing is that even looking carefully at your pics I can't see where the difference is. Please look at my pics, maybe you will have better luck. For now I guess I'm going to cut the second rabbets until we figure out what is going on here.

 

And for what it's worth, I'm just using my cell camera even though I have a fancy Olympus, and it's not even particularly new, it's a Samsung S4 since none of the newer ones do anything I need much better. Except for the new Google phone, I read a review on a camera site that said its camera was superior even to the latest Apple cameras, very near full DSLR quality. So I was thinking about getting one.

 

I do know that my cell cam only works well with very bright light, you should be able to tell my task light is never very far out of frame just above the model when shooting. In normal light autofocus is spotty and the pics are noisy, but I can fix the noise pretty easily with a fancy noise-reduction add-on for Photoshop that I have. All I do in Photoshop with these though is crop and save as a lower-quality jpg to retain the high resolution but get under the 2mb barrier.

 

But I am also a fully-qualified graphics guy who long ago worked in the games industry as an artist, I've done 100% of the graphics for my Line of Battle game. So if you need pics fixed I can fix 'em

 

 

 

 

[Rick01]

I agree that the gunwales from the exterior look perfect on your kit - but as you say when looking at the interior view it seems there is a problem. Not sure if it's the photo but the first gun port seems completely square whereas I'd expect the top and bottom to be angled to match the deck. It's almost as if the deck itself doesn't follow the correct line even though it is pretty obviously correctly fitted. Got me puzzled at the moment as I can't find any faults in your construction. Perhaps looking up a recent build of this cutter and asking the builder if they'd be prepared to measure the various areas - gunwale height, gunports above deck etc. may throw some light on this. Like you I can't envisage gunport heights from deck varying and I'd be tempted to mock up a cannon to see how it sits in each of the ports. I'm off to look at my plans now and see if I can see how this may have happened as I'm totally puzzled at the moment!

 

Rick

[vossiewulf]

9 minutes ago, Rick01 said:

I agree that the gunwales from the exterior look perfect on your kit - but as you say when looking at the interior view it seems there is a problem. Not sure if it's the photo but the first gun port seems completely square whereas I'd expect the top and bottom to be angled to match the deck. It's almost as if the deck itself doesn't follow the correct line even though it is pretty obviously correctly fitted. Got me puzzled at the moment as I can't find any faults in your construction. Perhaps looking up a recent build of this cutter and asking the builder if they'd be prepared to measure the various areas - gunwale height, gunports above deck etc. may throw some light on this. Like you I can't envisage gunport heights from deck varying and I'd be tempted to mock up a cannon to see how it sits in each of the ports. I'm off to look at my plans now and see if I can see how this may have happened as I'm totally puzzled at the moment!

 

Rick

 Thanks Rick, unfortunately that's where I am too. I just dropped a note to Amati requesting contact with the designer or someone equally familiar. Will see if they respond.

[Rick01]

I'm looking at other builds and it seems that they have also had a similar problem but ignored it! This one is really "off" as are a couple of others I saw.

 

 

Plans appear to have a similar variance in the gunport height so it must be deliberate and somehow I've "corrected" for this when I fitted the gunwales. I can understand an upwards sweep in the fore section but surely the gunports should follow the deck line !

 

Rick

 

 

[Rick01]

Looking back at my build I think I'd have corrected the problem as I built. The deck was down and then I fitted the gunwales using a PVA glue allowing time for adjustments. I've one of those eyes that spots things that don't "sit" right and so i'd have juggled the strips up and down with small clamps until it looked right then allowed it to set. The kit is generally built by first timers and from what I've seen we've been more critical of the build than many people, so short of raising the deck around 1mm at the prow you may need to leave it. There is a lot going on up there so the only people who will know would be us (and anyone following the log).

 

[Rick01]

Back again - been searching through NMM records looking at cutter plans. Like everything else with cutters, gun ports seem to be variable. The nearest I've found is this http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/86169.html with the two forward ports moving up from the deck line and in fact the first port being quite a bit deeper in to the bargain. Given that it is almost impossible to fight a gun at this station unless it is permanently fully run out I would think they would need extra room to load and clean! So although not aesthetically pleasing it is at least feasible.

 

Rick

[vossiewulf]

Ok i don't know what I did to merit a personal ship construction research service but I'm rating the results at *****, a solid five stars :). The Swift's gunwales are basically exactly what I have including the rises of the gunport sills forward and aft. Problem totally resolved while I was working on rabbets with my new carving tools from Mikhail.

 

 

So I'll have to add this to the pile of ones I owe you

 

[Rick01]

No worries - being retired allows me to play around and do a little research. Keeps my mind active and me out of my wife's hair! By the way - love the new tools. Have you seen Chuck's post on the thread for planking? He's got an illustration of the planking used, he hasn't mentioned the length of the cutter but according to NMM it's 67ft + a few inches so 23ft planks would work pretty well.

 

 

Rick

[vossiewulf]

30 minutes ago, Rick01 said:

No worries - being retired allows me to play around and do a little research. Keeps my mind active and me out of my wife's hair! By the way - love the new tools. Have you seen Chuck's post on the thread for planking? He's got an illustration of the planking used, he hasn't mentioned the length of the cutter but according to NMM it's 67ft + a few inches so 23ft planks would work pretty well.

 

 

Rick

Ok, will look there, and glad I can contribute to your overall health  I will go look at Chuck's post. I mean I assume Chuck is totally accurate about what he's doing, I'd just like to know what the rules and constraints were.

 

The tools are phenomenal. I have many fairly expensive edge tools from traditions all over, US of course and Swedish and German and Japanese, lots of Japanese tools. These are as good as any made anywhere. And he's selling them for about 1/3 what they're worth, you could make a reasonable living buying tools from Mikhail and selling them on Ebay with a 200% markup. 

[vossiewulf]

And after THAT long scenic tour through the outback of gunwale construction I'm back to the original point but I think I've clarified it, the inboard planking should follow the external planking and the rail sheer so we get the top of strakes as gunport sills. And since this is just being painted I shouldn't stress about how many planks I use to do it.

[Rick01]

44 minutes ago, vossiewulf said:

And after THAT long scenic tour through the outback of gunwale construction I'm back to the original point but I think I've clarified it, the inboard planking should follow the external planking and the rail sheer so we get the top of strakes as gunport sills. And since this is just being painted I shouldn't stress about how many planks I use to do it.

Basically "Yes" 

As for exterior hull planking there still seems to be some mystery about minimum lengths but personally I don't see any length shorter than 10ft being used.

 

Rick

[mtaylor]

Jay,

 

Those forward most ports we probably not used as gunports but bridle ports for anchor handling, etc.   That would explain why they were slightly larger and higher off the deck than the gunports.

[Rick01]

Thanks Mark - that does help understand what's going on. I just couldn't see why that would happen.

 

Rick

[vossiewulf]

Thanks Mark. I was also wondering if it was only used when they needed bow chase fire, seems to me some of the frigates I've seen have had part-time chase ports that looked a bit elevated from other ports on that deck.

[mtaylor]

That's true on frigates, 74's, etc.  The problem with cutters is room at the bow.  Looking at most them, I'm not sure a gun could even be moved into position, much less fired.

[vossiewulf]

That's another good point, looking at all the lines belaying up there including sheets that run forward to avoid the huge gaff boom. But also at the same time, exactly what type of ship is going to more often need bow chase fire than a cutter? Seems odd to me that good clear bow chase firing positions wouldn't be a primary requirement for the design.

[vossiewulf]

BTW Rick did you use the kit rigging line? I've picked up lots of lines, like one of everything Chuck sells plus a bunch from a guy in England and I have a good supply of fly-tying thread as I intend to do some very small subjects too. The thing I like about your rigging is that (besides overall looking very clean and well done) it looks much more in scale than most ships, all but the best seem to have excessively heavy rigging everywhere.

 

So at a minimum I'd like to know the sizes you used for the various applications, but that can come later after we've going through the many steps of external planking and wales and decks and things.

[Rick01]

I'll have to check what rigging I've used as there was a mix of kit and left-overs from a previous build. I'll also try and break down the colours and sizes used - to some extent it's a visual thing.

 

Rick

 

[Rick01]

Colours used were black for standing rigging and natural for running rigging - I'd have liked a slightly more tan for running but the darker stuff was to dark for my liking. 

Sizes stepped up - .1mm, .25mm, .5mm, 1.00mm.

 

Mainstay was 1.00mm, the balance was .5mm excepting ratlines which were .1mm. 

Running rigging, mainstay deadeye .5mm, shroud deadeyes .25mm, the balance .1mm

Cannon 1.00mm

All lashings .1mm of the relevant colour

Foot ropes on main spar .5mm ( could have been .1mm in retrospect - these need a very weak solution of pva glue to get them to hang properly).

Anchor cable 1.00mm

 

Mainly Amati as supplied with some Caldercraft - but as it's all out of it's original packaging I can't say which is which.

 

Thanks for the comment about my rigging - it has a few faults but don't we all know the bits that we don't like but that no-one else sees!! 

 

Rick

[vossiewulf]

21 minutes ago, Rick01 said:

Colours used were black for standing rigging and natural for running rigging - I'd have liked a slightly more tan for running but the darker stuff was to dark for my liking. 

Sizes stepped up - .1mm, .25mm, .5mm, 1.00mm.

 

Mainstay was 1.00mm, the balance was .5mm excepting ratlines which were .1mm. 

Running rigging, mainstay deadeye .5mm, shroud deadeyes .25mm, the balance .1mm

Cannon 1.00mm

All lashings .1mm of the relevant colour

Foot ropes on main spar .5mm ( could have been .1mm in retrospect - these need a very weak solution of pva glue to get them to hang properly).

Anchor cable 1.00mm

 

Mainly Amati as supplied with some Caldercraft - but as it's all out of it's original packaging I can't say which is which.

 

Thanks for the comment about my rigging - it has a few faults but don't we all know the bits that we don't like but that no-one else sees!! 

 

Rick

 

Awesome, thanks Rick  Now I have this here for reference, and once we get closer I'll start matching what I have against the needs, and I think Chuck's "natural" hemp color is pretty good, at least the new one that's less green than the original. 

 

I also wanted to get a serving machine, I'm aware of Chuck's plus the Russian guy (I think) who also makes some tools. Are there reviews of these on MSW or elsewhere?

[Rick01]

Can't help on the serving side of things. eyesight and manipulative abilities mean I'm not quite as dexterous as I used to be so I cheated and haven't served anything. I figure that once in a glass case where you can't get to close no-one will know except me (and now anyone reading this thread).

 

Rick

 

[vossiewulf]

On 2/28/2017 at 6:09 PM, Rick01 said:

Can't help on the serving side of things. eyesight and manipulative abilities mean I'm not quite as dexterous as I used to be so I cheated and haven't served anything. I figure that once in a glass case where you can't get to close no-one will know except me (and now anyone reading this thread).

 

Rick

 

In my 20s I did a 1/32 F-4J Phantom with every single knob and switch in both cockpits, my normal eye focal distance was about 3" and I could do that work without any magnifiers. Yeah I can't do that anymore

 

I finished one rabbet, only minor annoyance is that this is one of the places they act like planking has zero thickness. You have the counter bulkhead aligned with rudder post, you plank that surface and now it isn't aligned with the rudder post and your final planking either is going to have a jag in length or you have to cut 1mm away of the rudder post, which I did. It's not easy to cut a perfectly square 1mm piece out of the edge of cocobolo, thank god for Mikhail's new chisels.

 

Then working on inside planking, probably finish that tomorrow. Have been taking longer than was needed since these will be painted, providing good opportunity to experiment with boxwood and having butt joints and for no particular reason other than practice for the future I even cut a fancy scarf between two pieces. I can see why people like boxwood for this as it's hard but not too hard, and can have nice detail and crisp lines. Only downside I see so far is it blows out very easily, going to have to really pay attention to that.

 

Will post some of the pics tomorrow probably.

[Rick01]

16 minutes ago, vossiewulf said:

 

I finished one rabbet, only minor annoyance is that this is one of the places they act like planking has zero thickness.

One of the reasons I use .6mm for final planking. 

 I too remember being able to make items with that sort of detail.

You'll get even more fun when you plank the deck as you'll learn all about joggling when you fit the decking up to the edge. 

 

Rick

[popeye the sailor]

planking came out looking super..........great job on the counter and transom too