HM Cutter Cheerful 1806 by Blue Ensign - FINISHED - Syren Ship Model Company - 1:48 scale

[Blue Ensign]

Thank you Dave,

 

Personally I like the look of natural Boxwood, harkens back to those wonderful  contemporary models of the 18th Century.

I do intend to varnish it which tends to darken the wood a little but I do favour the look of the black wale against the pale hull.

 

The only thing I'm not too sure about is the Holly I bought for the decking, I'm now thinking it may be too white for my taste, and may require a little tweaking, or even replacing with Boxwood.

 

I'm some way off from that decision tho' 

 

B.E.

[alde]

Your Cheerful looks great. I agree about the boxwood planking being left natural. It’s a nice look for a ship like this. As far as the decks goes the beech might be too light but wouldn’t some contrast with the hull look better?

Edited April 20, 2018 by alde

[Rustyj]

Holly can deepen a bit when a varnish is applied. I believe it will darken some with time too. Might want to do a small test piece. 

[alde]

18 minutes ago, Rustyj said:

Holly can deepen a bit when a varnish is applied. I believe it will darken some with time too. Might want to do a small test piece. 

A test comparison would be interesting to see. I’m not familiar with beech and just how light it is.

[Blue Ensign]

Thanks Al and Rusty, I'm some way off decking so  exposing a Holly strip to the air with and without varnish is a good idea.

ps. you make reference to Beech Al, which naturally has a more brownish tone and more pronounced grain pattern; it has its uses, it is quite flexible in strip form, but it is not a wood I would use for decking.

 

B.E.

[davyboy]

Hi BE,have you considered using Birch for your deck planking? It is also a light coloured wood but not as white as Holly,I used it on my model and am happy with the result.

 

Dave 

[Seventynet]

I just finished deck planking my Cheerful with yellow cedar. I really like it. It is the best application for this wood in my opinion.

regards,

ian

Edited April 21, 2018 by Seventynet

[Blue Ensign]

Thanks Dave and Ian, I'll check out those options.

 

Post 26

Completing the first belt.

As I progress with strakes seven and eight, there seems to be quite a sweep down in the tapering from B/h H to the stem, with more acute edge bending required.

8196

I also have to get more inventive with my clamping methods.

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It helps to have a range of clamping devices to hand.

The planks are glued progressively along the hull starting at the bow ensuring the first three or four bulkhead points are well glued before moving on.

Using a high quality pva glue there is sufficient 'grab' after around 20 minutes to move on.

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I use this period to start preparing the strakes for the other side.

8285

The last strake goes in.

8296

8309

8306

8304

8310

8314

8311

8315

So after eight days at the work bench the belt is completed.

 

Needs a good sanding and scraping, but I'll leave that until the hull planking is fully completed. The Wales and the Port linings have also suffered during the process but that was to be expected.

 

Taking a short break now before I return to tackle the Square Tuck - what joy.

 

B.E

 

26/04 /2018

 

 

[aviaamator]

Something's wrong with the transom boards, they're gone...

[Blue Ensign]

1 hour ago, aviaamator said:

Something's wrong with the transom boards, they're gone...

Don't know what you're talking about, the Transom is planked, the counter is planked, framing the Square Tuck is up next.

 

B.E.

[aviaamator]

Photo # 8309 I don't see the boards, they should be installed prior to the sheathing Board.

2 hours ago, Blue Ensign said:

 

 

[Blue Ensign]

4 minutes ago, aviaamator said:

Photo # 8309 I don't see the boards, they should be installed prior to the sheathing Board.

 

Don't know about that, I'm following Chuck's example and at this stage he suggests fitting the framing followed by the vertical planking.

 

B.E.

[aviaamator]

Here are two versions of the plating, one correct, the other-no. You can choose...

[Blue Ensign]

That's not how Cheerful, a cutter of 1806 was designed, so the arrangements you show above have no relevance to my build.

 

B.E.

[Chuck]

Dont plank cheerful like that....very different square tuck.   Mine follows the original draft to the letter....you are doing a great job on her so far.

 

Here is the square tuck from cheerful's original draft for the external planking.  Cant get anymore correct than this!!!

 

[aviaamator]

Chuck, thank you! Now everything is clear! Then it should look like this:

[Gahm]

Your planking looks REALLY good, BE! Watching this I would love to do a planking job myself right now . . . but I am stuck with hammocks 

 

Thomas

[Blue Ensign]

Thank you Chuck for your confirmation and support. 

Cheers Thomas, my planking is not as good as I would have wished, particularly when I look at Chuck's version as photo'd above.

Planking is not my favourite part of a build and if it turns out as well as on your Syren I will be a happy man. I would happily swap you for a bit of later stage detailing work. 

 

B.E.

Edited April 27, 2018 by Blue Ensign

[Martin W]

Hi BE -- Over the past 6 months, I've come to prefer the headaches of planking to the tooth-grinding migraines of the head structure. 

[Blue Ensign]

I have to admit you've got a point Martin, Head-works and also Stern galleries are tricky little beasts; fortunately On Cheerful there is neither, but there is the mystery of the Square Tuck which may well  involve a spot of tooth sucking and grinding, we'll see. 

 

B.E.

[Landlubber Mike]

Coming along great BE.  I have a square tuck on my La Renommee too which I'm scratching my head on.  Looks like the Cheerful is slightly different than typical, and you have clear plans that show you what you need to do at least.  The framing on it will look really sharp when you figure it out!

[Blue Ensign]

I do hope so Mike

 

B.E.

[Old Collingwood]

Hey   you are doing a great job  - nothing wrong with your planking.

 

OC.

[davyboy]

Hi BE,there's nowt wrong with your planking,much better than some I've seen   With regard to the square tuck it's pretty straight forward really,I just took the outer shapes from the plans and went from there. I had to have a couple of goes making the tiny outer planks however,fiddly little things. As you bought the kit likely the shapes are provided. I have made and am still making everything on my model excluding the windlass,didn't have a mill or table saw when I ordered the plans and it 3 years ago.

 

Have fun,

 

Dave   

[Blue Ensign]

Cheers OC and Dave

How time flies, I see it has been over a month since I last  attended to Cheerful.

Post 27 (27/05/2018)

The mysteries of the Square Tuck

This involves some intricate framing below the counter, and a job I approached with some apprehension. This may have contributed to my lack of eagerness to return to the workshop.

I basically followed Chuck's instructions but I used some 3mm thick boxwood to form the frames.

Fitting the centre strip and the upper sections along the counter edge is the easier bit; the testy part is the shaped frame that follows the line of the hull and butts against the other two strips.

Having glued the first sections in place my approach was to form a template part out of card to form the basic shape before committing to the real stuff.

9548

Several tweaks of the card template were made before I committed the pattern to a 1.5mm thick piece of boxwood.

The pattern was then transferred to the 3mm stuff.

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For the planking inside the frames I decided to infill with a piece of 1.5mm Boxwood sheet before planking so that I could use 3/64" thick strip rather than 1/8" stuff.

As suggested by Chuck the pieces were temporarily glued to the hull for final shaping of the outer edges; the inner edges were then reduced to the 1/8th width before gluing  finally to the hull.

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Not quite sure why but my version took six planks of 3/64" x 7/32" Boxwood strip. rather than 5 planks of 3/16" to fill the void.

I suspect that the aftermost bulkheads were perhaps not faired down sufficiently to reduce the Square Tuck area.

I decided to carry on to completion to see how the overall effect suited my eye.

 

It didn't suit my eye  so off came the lower frames and planking, but I baulked at removing the hull planking to re-visit the aftermost bulkhead.

 

The revised arrangement still took six planks for the infill, the difference being the size of the outer segment between the 3/16th and 7/32" width planks.

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Having trialled both I opted for the (6) 3/16" planks with a slightly larger outer segment.

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This is in a fairly raw state prior to cleaning up.

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Not exactly matching Chuck's exemplary version and I cannot say I'm elated with my Square Tuck effort.

 

As Mr Spock might say, It's a Square Tuck Jim, but not as we know it  

 

At this point I will also add the Stern Post as I prefer to work the  lower planking to it rather than add it afterwards. That said the Stern Post will need some tweaking to get a tight fit from keel to counter.

 

Still we press on.

 

B.E.

04/06/2018

 

 

 

 

[davyboy]

Hi BE,

Nice to see you back working on Cheerful,thought you had gone AWOL  I cheated slightly when planking the square tuck,made the planks 7/32" wide which gave a nice 5 plank fit. When you come to fit the sternpost,to avoid trying to match it to the counter (ruddy nightmare,I couldn't do it to my satisfaction) you could do what I did. You have to cut a hole anyway for the rudderhead so why not carefully extend it fwd and make a full length sternpost. It's shown on the plan anyway next to the 2 part one,pretty sure there should be a big enough piece left from the lasered out part sheet to do this. Anyway,you're the shipwright so up to you,just saying how I did it.  

As usual,keep up the good work.

 

Dave 

[Martin W]

Wow! that does look like a tricky area.  Your eye is obviously sharper than mine, though, because in the end, it looks good to me. 

 

Glad to be reading your posts again, BE!

 

Cheers,

 

Martin

[Blue Ensign]

Cheers Dave, you know I hadn't picked up on the second smaller head piece for the stern post until you mentioned it above. I had managed to get a reasonable fit of the post to the counter so I opted to not hack into the counter planking more than I had to.

 

Thank you Martin, I think it will look ok once fettled, but I still have a small sense of disappointment that I didn't get it closer to the plan.

 

Post 28 

Stern post

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Took a little modifying of clamps to hold the post close to the false keel and liberal use of elastic bands to hold in place until the pva set.

 

9772

With the Stern Post in place I carried on and cut out the  Rudder port, I thought a convenient time whilst the build is still in a raw state.

9777

On with the lower planking band now.

 

B.E.

06/06/2018

 

[Old Collingwood]

Very tidy work.

 

OC.

[Seventynet]

Nice work B.E. I actually miss the hull planking part. It reminds me how much I liked working with boxwood. 

 

Cheers