Virginia 1819 by nikbud - FINISHED - Artesania Latina - Scale 1/41 - First Wooden Ship Build

[nikbud]

Hi everyone and welcome to my log of Artesania Latina’s kit of the Virginia 1819.

I have wanted to build two ships for a long time; the Bounty as I have always been fascinated by the story, and the Liveship Paragon from the Robin Hobb fantasy novels.

Having no experience in using wood, (my experience is in plastic modelling - aircraft, German WW2 armour, Tamiya's Tirpitz, scifi ships, model railroading, and even some Warhammer figures) I decided to start with a beginners kit to see how well I fared before shelling out for something complicated.

I got the kit from De Agostini as a partwork. As I work on the kitchen table I also purchased the Occre workstation early on in the build.

This kit was started about 3 years ago but I’m a slow builder, especially as I tend not to build in the summer months - so this log is an incentive to be finished by this summer!

The early part of the build was done under the assumption that this was a real boat, however the further into the build I got I soon realised that this is a kit based on “the kind of boat made during the period”,  and is very simplified. I have made a few changes based on trying to get a bit more detail and “accuracy”. I hope I haven’t made too many mistakes……

 

The false keel and bulkheads. Pretty standard fare - the correct alignment made easier by gluing the bulkheads to the false keel and the false deck at the same time.

Balsa wood was used to fill between the bulkheads at the bow and stern. I applied a couple of coats of 50/50 diluted aliphatic carpenters glue to harden the balsa after it had been shaped.

Decking applied, the caulking represented by the use of a black sharpie pen, luckily no bleeding but I think black was too stark so I’d probably use a dark brown next time.

Planking the hull. I used a plank bender (the one that puts indents on the inner face) and pinned while the glue set. By changing the angle of the plank bender to the plank you can get a twist as well as a bend. The pins were pushed in at an angle to push the plank towards its neighbour. Filler was applied where needed and the bulwarks attached. These were thin enough to bend easily, again pinned while the glue set.

The hull was then sanded down and the keel, stern post and cutwater? added.

[nikbud]

Up next was the outer planking; starting with the bulwarks, both inside and outside. This was straightforward as little bending and no trimming was needed, just some clamping as the glue dried. The upper mahogany plank was next again without trimming. I knew that any small gap would be hidden by the wale strips.

The garboard plank was fitted ensuring that it did not curve up the stem, I overdid this a bit.

 The rest of the outer planking was completed working top to bottom on alternate sides with the useful aid of the Articles database on this site.

 I roughly trimmed each plank, soaked it, dry fitted, sanded a bit more, resoaked it, bent using an iron, dryfitted again and kept soaking, bending and trimming until I had the fit I was after. I wanted to plank the hull without any drop planks or steelers so I took my time - about an hour for each plank.

The planks were stuck down using CA only, time will tell if this will cause any future problems. Only the lower edge was trimmed. After each plank was stuck on I ran a sharp HB pencil along the lower edge to have a dark background in case of any gaps.

After a light sanding I applied a couple of coats of Danish Oil. After these pics  (sorry about the quality of some of them - most were taken on my phone) were taken I also used some 3600+ grit micromesh to get a polished surface.

The picture of the two planks shows the shape required for the last plank fitted, the plank above the garboard plank.

[kmart]

Nikbud,   

Welcome.   Your off to a great start.   Your planking turned out beautiful.   Even more Impressive considering its your first wood build.  

I'll pull up a chair and follow your build. 

Ken

  

[SardonicMeow]

Welcome, Nikbud.  I'm nearing the end of my own build of this same model.  Yours is looking great.

[nikbud]

Thanks for the comments and likes guys. One thing I forgot to mention was that at the beginning of the build I decided that the port side would be the display side. This meant that I could put a plank on the starboard side first and so gain experience and confidence before doing the same on the display side.

So at this point of the build I was about about a year in - told you I was slow……

 As many other builders of this kit I noticed that the stern and rudder (that I had made according to the plans) didn’t match up. My initial solution was to add a strip to the stern plank, recently I remade the rudder and it now fits much better. The pintles and gudgeons were made from the kit components using mostly brute force and ignorance and CA’d to the rudder. I also remade the tiller out of wood.

The rubbing strakes (wales??) and the deck stringers were  added next. These are 2x3 and 4x3 applewood strips respectively. I was worried they would break with the sharp bend required at the bow. To achieve this I took a tip from someone on this site (thanks to whoever you are) and soaked the strips well then wrapped them up in soaking wet paper towels and microwaved them. They were clamped while still hot and then glued when dry. The instructions called for the wales to be pinned to the hull but I didn’t like the look of the kit supplied pins so they were omitted.

The anchor bitts and the knightheads? didn’t look very crisp in the kit supplied metal so these were remade out of wood.

I eventually decided to show the trenails on the deck and used a very sharp 4B pencil. They were drawn freehand but I do wish now that I had used some sort of template.

[russ]

Very nice build so far. Your planking came out well. Your decision to remake the bitts in wood is a good choice. That will probably not be the last time you make your own piece to replace something in the kit. 

 

Russ

[nikbud]

Thanks Russ. It definitely isn't the last "bitt" to be replaced in this build.....

[SardonicMeow]

The geometry of the rudder / stern post / transom is definitely a flaw of this kit.  Every build log I've read mentions having trouble with them.

 

In your rudder picture I notice that you added a rake the to aft-most railing stanchion instead of leaving it vertical.  It's a nice touch.

 

[nikbud]

10 minutes ago, SardonicMeow said:

In your rudder picture I notice that you added a rake the to aft-most railing stanchion instead of leaving it vertical.

Thanks, (but sshhh, you're not supposed to notice that - I haven't got to that bit yet lol)

 

I rightly or wrongly assumed that the rail stanchions were extensions of the boats frames, so I guessed that the sternmost frame would be angled to shape the stern.

[russ]

The stanchions could be either part of the hull frames or installed alongside the hull frames. In the case of the stern frame, though, the stanchion would be mounted at an angle to continue the rake of the stern frame in either case. Yours looks fine. 

 

Russ

Edited January 23, 2018 by russ

[nikbud]

Thanks for that info Russ, its helped with something I did later on in the build.

My next job was to build the companionway, with the help of lego minifigure bases to achieve a good right angle. As SardonicMeow and others have noted the roof for the companionway is too thick to easily follow the required curve so I used a thin sheet - from a plywood novelty sign that had been left out in the garden and the ply’s had separated. By the way I have gotten used to the Admiral shaking her head and walking away when I gleefully say “See, told you that would come in useful!).  The roof was planked with some outer hull planking and the sides were planked in leftover deck planking.

At this point in the build I was still just blindly following the plans so the cargo hatch, bowsprit masthead (riding bitts??), carronade “chassis” and helmsmans’ supports were assembled according to the instructions - with the addition of a wooden scratchbuilt Quion.

The carronade itself was hand painted using Warhammers Chaos Black. Had it been the nice bronze carronade as shown in the instructions I would have left it alone, but alas it was like the other metal fittings, a dirty grey metal.

The rail stanchions were cut using a jig made from lego minifigure bases CA’d to a piece of glass from an old kitchen extractor hood. Yup the Admiral shook her head at that one too. Oh, and if you want a hard surface for modelling on then the glass from an old oven door is perfect….

A point on the bowsprit masthead/riding bitts; the plans show that the slopey parts (the knees) facing the stern, however I received the Wolfram zu Mondfeld book Historic Ship Models for xmas which states the knees are on the bow side of the uprights. Of course I only found this out after the assembly had been pinned and glued to the deck……

Please tune in next time for the carronade rigging, with some help from J R Hartley…..

[nikbud]

So next up was the carronade rigging. Thanks to the build logs on here I purchased a fly tying vice and some small clamps and some beeswax for the thread. My first efforts were poor, not only due to my inexperience but the thread supplied by AL is terrible. And I probably used too much beeswax. I ended up getting better thread from CMB.

 

 

 

This is my jig for making rope coils, it didnt turn out too bad but I later scrapped the jig and coil and remade them.

 

 

This brass piece allows you to put a pin through the holes and through the hole in the tag on the bottom of the carronade barrel. But the gun wobbles and looks like it is pointing to high up. later on in the build I removed the brass piece ,rested the gun tag on the wood where the brass piece sat and fitted two small wooden blocks either side of the tag. The gun sits lower, doesn’t wobble and the wooden blocks are pretty much hidden by the rigging.

And that's where the build stalled for a while. I had started looking ahead at the rigging, and as others have noted there are no instructions at all. Just "look at the pictures". Unfortunately this requires a good knowledge of rigging, and I hadn't got a scoobys. Eventually with the help of Biddlecombe's Art of Rigging and Lennarth Peterssons Rigging Fore and Aft Craft and a lot of giyf searches I managed to draw out a rigging plan, not as neat as Trufo posted on here tho...

I was also getting a bit disheartened by the kit itself, I had come to realise that this was a (very) simplistic version of "the type of boat, that might have sailed, in this sort of area, around this kind of time".

Oh and I needed a lathe....

 

#.url

Edited January 27, 2018 by nikbud

[nikbud]

When I returned to the shipyard the first things I built were Chucks’ Servomatic and a lathe.

 

The servomatic is a fantastic piece of kit. Care has to be taken in its construction;  the lower left cog on mine was not glued 100% straight so there is a slight wobble when it is used - note this is my error, not one of design. I also added a couple of balsa dowels to the left side to avoid any kinks in the served line. The brown thread was pulled as tight as I could manage, after being stretched for a day or so. I also covered the completed line in 50/50 pva and let it dry before moving on to the next section. I am extremely pleased with the machine and the output from it.

The lathe….

 

It works pretty well although the drill I used has a hammer action which has stuck on. I will have to get a new drill before the next build. The upright on the right hand side is removable and I have several with different diameter holes. Its not perfect but good enough.

The first thing I made on the lathe was the ships pump. The black bands were made from heat shrink material used in electrics.

 

New barrels were turned after I binned the kit ones. The heat shrink stuff was used for the bands. A sturdy base was made for the barrels and they were tied down.

 Note for the daft like me; do research before completing sub assemblies - water barrels should have six bands not four……

 I also turned the uprights for a fife rail. I really didn’t like the idea of the ring of eyebolts around the base of the mast as shown in the instructions. It just looked too messy and not “authentic”.

 After the fife rail was fixed to the deck..

 

I decided that it forced the companionway too far aft, and there still wasn’t going to be enough pins for what I needed, so a pin rails were devised..

I had to “dig” out the deck planks that had been drilled for the fife rail and replace them, after a couple of coats of Danish oil they will blend in….

 

The companionway was also improved with the addition of trim around the lower edge and the doors given a crosspiece infilled with a thin sheet of wood and two round head pins for handles. A piece of balsa was glued on the inside so that the chimney sat in a hole drilled in the balsa to stop any wobble.

 

Next. Channels and scuppers....

 

[SardonicMeow]

Nice modifications.  I spent many hours yesterday struggling to run thread through the eyebolts on the deck, so your idea of adding fife rails / pin rails is definitely an improvement.

 

Also, I'm in full agreement with your comment earlier about this kit.  It feels less like a real ship and more like an abstraction of a ship.

 

[nikbud]

Thanks SardinicMeow, I like the look of your sails, the kit one’s are really poor aren’t they.

I spent a couple of fun afternoons on the makeshift lathe turning the masts, gaffs, boom and bowsprit. I used fine grade sandpaper and a couple of needle files to make grooves where I would be attaching blocks etc. The bowsprit was attached as per the plans. A small pin rail was glued on the inside of the rail at the bow for the downhaul of the forestaysail.

 

The channels and chain plates;

I had read other logs where it had been noted that the kit supplied channels place the deadeyes too close to the rail so I made some that were a few mm wider. I cut 3 slots for the chain plates and used a strip of the hull planking to cover the edge.  The chain plates were made from some pins from the Admirals bead making supplies. These came with an eye already in one end. I wish now that I had used some good brass rod as this would have been stiffer and avoided problems later….  

 

The scuppers;

I really wanted to show scuppers on the side of the boat so I drilled 2 holes forward of the mainmast channels and 3 holes aft. I had read somewhere on the net - can't remember where - that these types of boats when in the water sat so that the keel was slightly "stern down", this meant that scuppers are now at the lowest point of the curved deck.

More by luck than judgement the top of the wales matched the level of the deck so by drilling slowly alternately from the outside and inside I got the holes to line up. I inserted some brass tubing into the holes. I would have rather had a more rectangular shape to the scuppers but I didn’t think that I could do this neatly enough with the deck stringers on the inside of the bulwarks (parts no. 23) in the way. I now wished that I had omitted these stringers, I don’t really like the look of them.  One thing this build has shown me is that I need to put more forward thinking into my builds.

 

The sails,

I wanted to make my own sails, partly because the kit sails are wonky with loose threads and partly because I wanted to see what I was able to accomplish. After trying several fabrics  I found that handkerchiefs soaked in very weak coffee for about 15 min gave me the look I was after.  I used some “iron-on” hemming stuff to stick the hem down. The seams were hand sown (I’m definitely going to invest in a sewing machine!) and the bolt rope was glued on with reinforcements and ?clews? sown in at the corners. And yes the bolt rope is on the port side but the hem is on the wrong side - it looked a lot neater that way.

 

Around this time I also made the gaff and boom saddles out of wood rather than using the kit metal ones. The threads shown on the gaff here were to attach the sail but were later removed.

Thanks for looking, Cheers!!

[nikbud]

(I think I meant cringles when I said clews above, I’m still not sure about all the terminology……)

At this point in the build I started to take inspiration from Zu Mondfeld’s book….

The kit mast partners were made from ply so I decided to cover them in the heat shrink stuff I used earlier. The wooden ring in the pic will be a pin rail around the main mast.

The parrral trucks in the kit were large and misshapen so I used some of the admirals beads. Initially I drilled the holes for the parral thread from top to bottom on the saddles as on the kit parts, but the assembly didn’t fit right on the mast so I filled these holes and drilled in from the side. For those interested the beads are ”Frost Transparent Mink Size11/0 Rocailles”. They look like worn wood on the boat.

Again thanks to Zu Mondfeld I decided to attach the foresail, mainsail and topsail to the masts with these beads. I will attach the sails to the gaffs with robands.

Threading each of the 23 beads on each loop……

As you will see later it probably would have been better if I had used different sized beads for the gaffs and the sails, but its too late now.

 

For the bowsprit rigging I wanted it to look busier and more realistic so, again from Zu mondfeld, I added a couple of deadeyes; I think it looks appropriately busy and “ship-like”.

The anchors were attached to the deck using thin brass strips pinned to the deck. I wish now that I had also wrapped some thin line around the anchors as seen on others builds here, but alas its too late. The anchor chain was tied to the anchor with an anchor knot, looped over the rail, back through the hawse hole, wrapped around the anchor bitts and the end glued to the riding bitts. A coil was made for each anchor and hung over the riding bitts. The chain/coils were soaked in 50/50 PVA and put into position before completely dry. I used a brush loaded with the same mixture and pushed the thread until it looked appropriately “heavy”, The odd dab of Aliphatic glue here and there helped hold it all in position.

The gammoning was made from a served piece of the anchor thread wrapped around the bowsprit and the ends simply glued on the non-display side.

Carry-on building!

[nikbud]

So next up was the carronade to deck rigging.

 I had put off doing this as I was unsure how to do it and make it look neat and tidy - I didn’t like the idea of the messy coils shown in the instructions. I did have a jig for making coils that I had used earlier, but using it meant that I would have had to make the coils off the boat and hidden the join somehow - I wanted one continuous line.

 I toyed with several ideas, even thinking of leaving the rigging off but making a couple of lockers to store the rigging. Unfortunately the deck was going to be crowded enough anyway and I would need some way of holding the carronade so it wouldn’t move under heavy seas - my experience with trying to make brass latches to hold the anchors showed my skills weren’t up to any metalwork required.

Whilst looking for ideas I came across a way of making my own eyebolts. I used brass picture hanging wire;

 

After trying various ways to make coils I came up with a simple jig, so simple I made four;

 

Essentially each jig is a short piece of dowel, slightly wider that the size of the coil, with a piece of acetate CA’d on top with a hole drilled in the centre into which a piece of brass rod fits. The line is rigged from the eyebolt on the carronade, through the block, back to the eyebolt and tied. The line that is then left is soaked in 50/50 PVA and the end poked into the hole in the jig. The brass rod is inserted into the hole to hold the line in place, another piece of acetate is placed over the top and then the brass rod is slowly twirled making the coil. I did a couple of dummy runs to work out the required length of line.

(The clamps seen above are holding the rail/stanchions  back on after I was a bit hamfisted and broke them)

When dry the coils were glued to the deck and all the lines were soaked with 50/50 PVA and with a wet brush poked and prodded to get them to look like they had some weight. I am pleased with how tidy it looks.

Cheers!

Paul

[nikbud]

With the exception of the pump and the carronade shot, the deck fittings were now complete.

The masts, gaffs, sails and rigging them all together came next….

I decided to do as much as possible off the boat, only glueing the masts in place once I was sure I had completed everything.

As a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the completed foremast;

 

The blocks were rigged on the mast and gaff first. The throat halyard block on the gaff was rigged to a piece of wire with an eyebolt on the end - the same as used for the deadeyes and chainplates - this wire went through the saddle and the triple brail block was rigged to an eyebolt formed on the other end of the wire. The Vangs were made from thin line served and spliced around the gaff - as you can see somehow my measurements were way of and one side is longer than the other. Maybe I should have spliced the line to the gaff and then rigged the blocks on… The black bands on the saddle were made from the trusted heat shrink.

The sail was attached to the mast and then attached to the gaff with simplified robands. It was very fiddly but I think it looks pretty ok. The brails were added by simply threading through the sail next to the boltrope, around the boltrope and back through the same hole and then through the blocks.

A closeup before the brails had been added;

 

Reef points were made by tying a knot in the thread, threading it through the sail and tying a knot on the other side. the points were the soaked on 50/50 PVA and when dry cut to length. I should have made a reef band but instead opted for diamond shaped reinforcements glued to the back of the sail. In hindsight a reef band would have looked better….

 

The foremast was glued into the deck ready for the stays and jib sail, and that’s when I started swearing……

[nikbud]

Once the foremast was glued on I started on the Forestay and the stay for the jib sail. The loop on the stays that went over the foremast was made off the boat;

 

The stays were the attached to the foremast and rigged to the bowsprit, using clamps and heamostats to keep everything taught. Sorry, but no pics of this but it was the same system I used for the shrouds which I’ll come to later.

Once the stays were rigged, the forestaysail/jib was attached, and that’s when the salty language occurred. Somehow in making the sail I had made it too big, this meant that there was no room for the block at the head of the sail. So instead of the uphaul halyard routing from the block on the mast, through the block on the sail, back through the mast block and down to the belaying pin; the line now routes from the mast block, through the loop formed with the boltrope at the head of the sail and then through the mast block. It was either that or remake the sail.

 

I didn’t include a downhaul from the head, just from the tack.

 

Instead of using the oversized rings supplied In the kit I decided to attach the sail to the stay with, as Zu Mondfeld put it; “lacing with running rope”

 

Next came the shrouds for the foremast. The two foremost shrouds were made from one line for each side, made off the boat as I did for the forestays. The aft shroud was made from one line from port to starboard with an eye spliced in the centre;

 

As many build logs on here have shown, I made a little jig from scrap wood to hold the deadeyes as they were rigged to the shrouds.

 

Small pins were inserted through the lower deadeyes and the holes in the bottom of the jig, and the shrouds rigged with the aid of various clamps. As with all my rigging I have used the “loop and wrapping” method. I have found it’s much neater if I wrap towards the loop and keep the wrapping end taut as I pass it through the loop, I keep the wrapping end taut until the loop is closed up to the wrapping and then release the wrapping end. If I put my thumb and forefinger over the wrapping I can feel the loop being pulled under the wrapping. I stop before the loop is pulled completely through and then cover the wrapping in 50/50 PVA. Only when it is dry I cut the loose ends.

 

 

 

 

Next up the lanyards, and more swearing….

 

Cheers

Paul

[nikbud]

Rigging the deadeye lanyards started well. I was worried about keeping the deadeyes from rotating whilst they were being rigged, but I found that once rigged with tension they stayed with the single hole at the top. I was conscious of keeping good tension in the shrouds to avoid any slackness after the running rigging had been applied and all went well until the fourth deadeye. My poor choice of chainplate became evident when the soft wire stretched….

 

I had to cut the edging from the channel to replace the chainplate..

 

The completed fix…

 

(You can see in these photos that I added a couple of knees to the pin rails made earlier)

I am not completely  happy with the result of the fix, and that the aft upper deadeye is higher because I didn’t want to apply too much tension and cause the same problem. I think at some point I will either use some stiff brass wire, or some aftermarket chainplates and replace the whole lot. For now I’m going to leave it as it is.

 

All of the standing rigging was turned in a figure of eight around the belaying pins, twice, with a dab of aliphatic glue applied around the back of the top of the pin. I had wanted to continue to make the coil without having to cut the line and make the coil off the boat, and I managed to do this for the foremost coil on the starboard side. However it was such a faff that I realised that I would have to make the rest off the boat. I made this jig to do that…

 

However, obviously, I can only make one at a time, and I found that the top of the loop was too wide. So after a few attempts I came up with the following jig…

 

The jig consists of two removable vertical pins (cocktail sticks) the short pin (SP) at the back and the long pin(LP) at the front, a glued horizontal pin (HP) made from 2mm dowel, and a dressmakers pin (DP)

The DP is clamped horizontally against the two vertical pins, one end of the line is clamped at the back of the jig. The line is then pulled forward around the LP and back towards the SP. Before the line reaches the SP the line is held by one finger and then wound around the DP and the HP four or five times and then through a hole in the base and taped securely. I then put a dab of aliphatic glue in the top of the coils and remove the DP. Keeping tension on the loop around the LP, I remove the LP, and place the loop over the SP touching the dab of glue.  I then pull the clamped end of the line to close the loop around the SP. The top of the coil is then soaked in 50/50 PVA and left to dry. By only gluing the top of the coil I found that the lower half of the coil looks more natural. As with most things its all a lot easier to do that to explain!

The production line…

 

How they look on the boat…..

 

Remember how I said that I’d made the forestaysail to big? Yup I made the same mistake with the foresail aswell. So I have had to simplify the rigging of the clew? to the horse.

 

So that’s the bow pretty much completed, now to do it all again for the mainmast…..

 

Cheers,

Paul.

Edited February 22, 2018 by nikbud

[nikbud]

Thanks for the comments Wallace.

I just checked the data on my photos and confirmed to myself that just the outer planking took 2 months of work. I was determined not to glue anything in place until I was perfectly happy with the fit and look. I was constantly re-measuring, sanding and dry-fitting, as I said I averaged about a plank an hour.

[nikbud]

Mark, Thanks, it certainly helps to have an obsessive personality!

 

This is the penultimate update before I get to where I am now, the race is on to see whether I can update this log quicker than I can finish the boat!

The mainmast, topmast, gaff and boom had all previously been turned on the makeshift lathe.

The mainmast was rigged with blocks for the peak halyard, throat halyard and boom topping lift, and the topmast “foot” was glued in place.

The topmast was rigged with a block for the topsail uphaul.

The gaff was rigged with blocks for the peak halyard, throat halyard, vangs, brails and an extra block on the underside of the saddle for the topsail outhaul. A hole was also drilled at the end of the gaff for the topsail outhaul to pass through.

The boom was rigged with a block for the preventer stay. I didn’t follow the plans but searched the web for what I thought may be appropriate, it will mean making a horse for the inner transom; (I think that this may be more appropriate on a much smaller boat, but it gave me something extra to make without using too many blocks which I was quickly running out of - several of the blocks had broken early on in the build when I was rigging the Carronade, a result of hamfisted drilling!)

 

The boom was also rigged with the topping lift lines. A hole was drilled in the end for the mainsail outhaul to pass through and then I made some eyebolts and positioned them off-centre on the underside to pass by the preventer block.

 

I also drew a plan for the rigging on the pin rail around the mainmast.

 

The mainsail was attached to the gaff with simplified robands just as I did for the foremast. Brails and reef points were then added. As I said with the foresail, I wish I had made a reef band rather than the diamond reinforcements, but I didn’t want the mainsail to look different to the foresail.

 

At this point the rigging was “doing my fruit in”, so for a change I decided to make a display stand. Many thanks to SardonicMeow for the idea!

The port side completed;

And they are all at 45 degrees!  I am proud of myself haha;

 

Happy Building!

[nikbud]

At last I can bring this log up to date.  After the distraction of starting the stand build, I returned to the boat.

First up was rigging the lines on the topsail.

 

And then attaching the topsail to the topmast. I decided that the system I used to attach the fore and main sails to the masts wouldn’t look right, the beads would look too out of scale. So I used some large “jump rings”, again from the Admirals kitbox.

I’m still not convinced as to whether I should change the rings for beads on the topsail or make larger rings and change the beads on the fore and main sails. The rationale at the moment is that as “new” technologies and practices came along that they may well have been incorporated piece-meal onto boats until they became “normal” practice.

 

Unfortunately I had already rigged the required blocks onto the main mast so the shrouds had to be rigged directly onto the mast.

Rigging the first shroud;

Rigging the spliced shroud:

 

So that was all that I could do off the boat. The next thing I needed to do was work out where to fix the “boom stop ring” to the mast. And because I was eager to get an idea of how the boat would look I dryfitted the main and top mast:

But that’s where work has stopped, having spent the last two weeks in bed with flu. I’m hoping to get the tabletop shipyard up and running sometime next week. The first job will be to glue the aforementioned stop ring and start in rigging the shrouds/deadeyes/lanyards.

Thanks for looking and happy building.

[nikbud]

Hope you get well soon, Mark, at least you got your vacation in first!

Thanks for the kind words, I'm pretty chuffed with how she looks so far. I can't wait to get her finished. If you need any clarification or close ups on what I've done just let me know.

Hope we both get back to building soon!

 

Cheers

Paul

[nikbud]

So, after having a long summer break I have at last returned to the tabletop shipyard;

First job was to fix the mainmast,

and then rig the deadeyes/lanyards.

I didn’t like the method shown in the plans for the boom rigging so I made a horse and rigged up a boom preventer stay - I think that’s what its called, with a rope coil. It’s probably not prototypical for a boat of this size but I think it looks the part.

And then rigged the mainmast stay on the boat.

The appropriate lines were rigged onto the pinrail on the mainmast. All three lines from each corner of the topsail and the two lines from the tack and clew of the mainsail. I coated each line in aliphatic glue and then put a figure-of-eight over the pin and held the line in place until the glue dried. The excess was then cut off to allow the rope coil to be hung over the pin.

All the other lines were belayed to the pin rails in the same way;

 

I made 17 rope coils on the coil jig, plus a few spares - which I needed….

 They took a bit of arranging on the boat but look effective, as long as you don’t loo too close….

If you look close enough you will see that two of the starboard chainplates have opened up. For the moment I’m going to leave them as they are - I need to source a different material, maybe brass, and redo the whole lot…..

 

I have really enjoyed returning to the shipyard, the only downside is that the end of this build is in sight!

Thanks for looking.

[nikbud]

The final;

The last steps have been completed;

The nameplate on the stern of the boat; (needs repositioning to cover the holes drilled for the horse)

The nameplate had already been fixed to the stand - both nameplates came with the kit;

I read on here a while ago about how to make fenders, so I thought I would add some to the boat. I wrapped some coarse rigging line around a shaped dowell. I cant remember the author of the article on here but whoever you are a huge thanks!

The fenders rigged up (I had always thought that these were called bouys)

And fixed onto the boats rail with a Fishermans Bend (Anchor Bend), although my knots book informs me that it is not actually a Bend but a Hitch.

The completed Boat;

I have taken more pics which I will add tomorrow along with my thoughts and conclusions on this build.

Cheers

Paul

[nikbud]

Hello all, and thanks for the comments and likes throughout this log.

As promised here are the pictures of the finished model.

This has been a fun build, even though it has taken three years!

This kit is an interesting introduction to wooden ship building, especially for someone who is used to step by step plastic models. It is a real shame that this is a kit of a “boat that might have been” rather that a real boat. Having said that it allowed me to do a bit of kit-bashing. I have made some really obvious schoolboy errors, like the stitching on the sails and the use of poor materials in the chainplates. The kit instructions are poor when it comes to the rigging so I had to learn rigging from scratch - not easy when it seems like a foreign language.

However, I’m glad I chose this kit as my first, I have learnt a lot about ships and shipbuilding and will stand me in good stead when building my next model, and eventually my ambition of building the Bounty.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this log, and please, if you have any criticism let me know - its all a learning experience.

Cheers

Paul

 

[Stevinne]

Very nice. Congratulations.

 

[nikbud]

Thanks for the kind words Stevinne, I am pleased with how it turned out for my first attempt. I now have to start building the display case.........

[Tjalle58]

I am speachless. This is your first build and you are allready a pro. Wow!!

I have started with modelling 6 months ago but I am not even close to your skills.

I will put this model on top of my wishlist now that I have such a detailed log to follow

Congrats to a excellent build..