Reale De France by fmodajr - FINISHED - Corel - Scale 1:60

[md1400cs]

Frank,

 

Just catching up - superb updates! Your attention to small details is excellent as well.

 

Regards,

 

[fmodajr]

Thanks for stopping by Michael and for your comments!

[fmodajr]

Hello,

Finally starting work on the model again.

As mentioned in previous posts, my wife and I decided to "downsize" from a large house to a smaller townhouse.

While searching for a townhouse that my wife would be happy with, the only demand that I had was a space for my workshop.

After passing papers in early October, I had to finish sheetrock some of the new workspace and bring in electrical outlets and new lighting.

Then after our old home sold, all the equipment had to be broken down and re-assembled.

 

The work area is a little smaller than my old one, but I am happy with the way it turned out.

 

Sitting area around the hot water heater!

 

Dust collector and bandsaw

 

Equipment in opposite corner

 

My last post showed the work on the yards.

Now Turning my attention to the masts.

 

The Corel plans call for using some of their nice supplied round dowels and then creating an octagon on one end and a square on the other end.

Since I didn't have a rotary table to accomplish this and keeping both ends in alignment, I took a different tack.

I squared up 2 pieces of wood oversize, using the table saw and thickness sander.

Then I was easily able to create the octagon shape on the lower ends of the masts, leaving a 1/4 inch extra stock for additional work

 

The top end of each mast was milled to a square with slots on 2 sides. I left this end and extra 3/4 inch long for lathe work.

 

Then after roughly taking the edges off the middle section, I brought the masts over to my friends workshop and I was able to borrow his larger lathe. A taper had to be formed in the middle section.

 

Made a fixture to hold the square top end onto the tailstock

 

Another larger fixture to hold the bottom end onto the chuck

 

 

Both masts turned with a taper with the smaller diameter near the tailstock

 

Both masts Turned and ready for some more finishing work.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

Frank

 

[Tim Murphy]

Frank, glad to see your up and running in the new house. Can’t wait to see your progress. Hopefully you will finish the model so it can be shown if the Guild has a 

2022 show.

All my best!

 

Tim

[Hubac's Historian]

That is an enviable shop set-up, Frank.  Congrats on this transition in your life.  As always, your work is impeccably clean and progressing nicely.  Glad to see you back.

[md1400cs]

Welcome back Frank, congrats on downsizing - awesome shipyard setup 👏 You hopefully also have nice spaces for your previous builds?

 

Ship looking good as well.

 

Regards,

[fmodajr]

Tim, Hubac and Michael,

 

Thanks you all for your welcome comments.

Go figure, I finally get back into my model and immediately proceed to catch a severe flu, which has kept me in bed all week!

Starting to recover slowly though. Lol!!

 

Thanks again,

Frank

 

[Clark]

17 hours ago, fmodajr said:

Tim, Hubac and Michael,

 

Thanks you all for your welcome comments.

Go figure, I finally get back into my model and immediately proceed to catch a severe flu, which has kept me in bed all week!

Starting to recover slowly though. Lol!!

 

Thanks again,

Frank

 

Hope you get well soon

Clark

[fmodajr]

Hello,

Happy New Year!

 

Continuing work on the main and Fore Mast.

 

I did a trial fit or the masts on the ship. The foremast is pitched forward a small amount (about 4 to 5 deg.) from the vertical, while the mainmast is perpendicular to the waterline.

 

Also did a test fit from aft to bow. The Foremast is to the left of the mainmast, but parallel to each other.

 

Milled out the slots for the sheaves near the mast tops

 

Stained the masts, using the same light oak I have been using on the deck planks. I purposely used the same Eastern White Pine for making the masts as I did for the deck planks, so that the staining would match.

 

 

Inserted the sheaves

 

 

Made the Kevel bits out of walnut and fastened to the masts

 

 

Pre-rigging the Foremast Shrouds. Did the same for the Main Mast

 

Lashing of the Shrouds

 

A while back, while visiting the excellent log of the Reale de France by Safemaster, Michael D. was kind enough to show me how he attached the zig zag garland to the lashing. Mine did not come out as nice as his!! Mainmast shown.

 

 

Attaching the Flag Staffs to both masts.

 

I will keep working on the masts and start to pre-rig the yards.

I have decided to make the sails and have them furled to the yards, before attaching everything to the masts.

 

Thanks for stopping by,

 

Frank

 

[Tim Murphy]

Frank, great shots of the new shop! Hope your ship will be ready for the Guild show at the Museum this coming April. I am convinced that this model would be the hit of the show!
Best of luck!

Tim

 

[kirill4]

 Dear Frank ,

Your model Looks Great!!!

All The Best!!!

Kirill

[fmodajr]

14 hours ago, Tim Murphy said:

Frank, great shots of the new shop! Hope your ship will be ready for the Guild show at the Museum this coming April. I am convinced that this model would be the hit of the show!
Best of luck!

Tim

 

Hi Tim,

Good to hear from you! I hope all is well.

The model will not be ready for this years show, but should be for next year.

Too many other things going on. I.E. a few planned fishing trips, wedding on the West Coast etc. Lol!

I am hoping to have the model done by fall, then have to build the stand and case.

Hopefully we can all have are meetings in person again this year, so I can bring the model in to the club.

Best,

Frank

[fmodajr]

6 hours ago, kirill4 said:

 Dear Frank ,

Your model Looks Great!!!

All The Best!!!

Kirill

Thanks Kirill. Appreciated! 

Thanks for stopping by for a look!

Frank 

[Clark]

The masts look really good, especially the zig zag garland. I'm looking forward to seeing your sails.
Clark

[72Nova]

Hi Frank,

I think you did great job on the garland, a tricky phase for sure and for the rest of your model....just jaw dropping👍. I hope to return working on mine soon, been working on my full size model, 72 Nova.

 

Michael D.

[fmodajr]

18 hours ago, safemaster said:

Hi Frank,

I think you did great job on the garland, a tricky phase for sure and for the rest of your model....just jaw dropping👍. I hope to return working on mine soon, been working on my full size model, 72 Nova.

 

Michael D.

Thank you Michael!

I keep going back to your Reale log for hints and assistance!

I will have to google "72 Nova" to see what you're working on!

Thanks,

Frank

[72Nova]

It's my muscle car I've owned for 37 years Frank, unrelated to ship modeling..😉

 

Michael D.

[fmodajr]

Hello,

 

Having been making some more progress on the model.

 

Attached the flag pendent to the foremast and Mainmast. Hanging Loosely now. Will add some white glue to the lines and add some weight to stiffen the lines at a later point.

 

Finally glued the Foremast and Mainmast to the Ship. As mentioned before, the foremast is tipped forward at a slight angle.

 

 

Foremast and Mainmast attached

 

As mentioned in the previous post, I decided to make some new sails and have them furled to the yards. Before attaching the sails, I added some of the lines that are to be fixed to the yards at this point. Figured it would be easier now instead of after the sails are installed.

 

Halyard lines added here

 

Lines with Toggles attached on lower end of main yard

 

Lines added to lower end of Fore yard

 

Flag pendents added to tops of Fore yard and Main yard

 

 

Picked up some more of the same dyes I used for my Vasa build a while back.

I will use these for dyeing my sail cloth

 

I have finished dyeing the sails and making them.

I took plenty of photos of my process and will start to post them soon.

 

Thanks again for stopping by!

Frank

 

 

 

[BobG]

Great work, Frank! This is certainly going to be a showpiece!

[Tim Murphy]

Frank the Masting looks great. Your making great progress on Her. She will be quite impressive when done.

Any thoughts about sending some info to Dave Morton. The Broadside could use this unique type of ship. I have never seen any article on any Mediterranean type ship.
All my best 

Tim

 

[G. Delacroix]

Hello,

 

Congratulations for all your work. 
I just wanted to point out that the yards of the galleys are not square but round. Making them square is technically useless and implies using bigger wood, thus wasting money for an identical result.

 

GD

[fmodajr]

Bob and Tim:

 

Bob, thanks for the kind comments! Appreciated!

 

Tim, Thank you also.

I spoke to Dave Morton a couple of months ago and sent him some photos and write up. He made the decision to wait until I am finished with the model and then present it in the Broadside. So we both decided to wait. Also, lol, he doesn't like my camera skills and wants me to get the model to a professional photographer here in town for final photos. Discouraging that the club can't start meeting in person again. The model is starting to get tougher and tougher to transport. Would have loved to bring it in to the club before the Masting and installation of the yards.

Oh well!!

[fmodajr]

11 hours ago, G. Delacroix said:

Hello,

 

Congratulations for all your work. 
I just wanted to point out that the yards of the galleys are not square but round. Making them square is technically useless and implies using bigger wood, thus wasting money for an identical result.

 

GD

Gerard,

Great to have you visit and thank you for your comments. When I read your post, I ran downstairs and pulled out your plans. Sure enough, on your plan page 23, you show the yards being round with flats milled for the pieces to meet. I don't know how I missed this a few months ago! I also went and looked at my Italian Sciabecco that I made, back in 2007, and sure enough, the yards were round with flats milled at the meeting spots. Oh well! I have the sails all furled and attached at this point, so I will not go back and and tear everything apart. The Corel rigging plan also seems to have some weird end points to the rigging lines, so I will try to pay more attention to your rigging sheet.

Thanks again for pointing the error out to me.

Appreciated!

Frank

[fmodajr]

Hello,

 

Decided not to use the kit supplied sails, but to make my own.  (The kit supplied sails were too thick and bulky for me)

At the Fabric store, I picked up a length of thin dense weave Muslin as my cloth of choice.

 

First step was to mix in a pan, 8 cups of hot tap water, 8 teaspoons of Kosher Salt (Told that this would help the dye spread evenly on the cloth.)

1 Teaspoon or the RIT Tan dye and 1 Teaspoon of the RIT Taupe dye.

Mixed this up in a 2 gallon pot and then added another 8 cups of almost boiling hot water.

(Don't remember where I got these instructions, but they worked well on my Vasa build  )

 

Mixture In Pot

 

First wet the entire cloth and wring out so cloth will dye evenly.

 

 

Then loosely bunched up the cloth and added to the dye bath, stirring cloth, for about 60 seconds

 

 

Removed cloth from bath, and unfolded into flat sheet to let hang dry overnight

(Han Solo checking out my cloth, hopefully meeting his approval!!)

 

 

 

While cloth was drying, I placed some construction paper over the plans and drew out the sail. 

As shown in the next photo, I had to keep the length the same as the plan, so it would fit correctly on the yards.

However, I took out about half of the distance from the yard end to the end point (See photo). I did this so when the sail is furled on the yard, there would not be too much material. In hindsight I could of made it even smaller.

Later, I will take a photo of the finished sails over the plans, so the amount of material taken off can be seen.

 

 

Took the construction paper and set it behind some tracing paper. Re-traced the sail lines onto the tracing paper adding a 1/4 inch all around for later adding in a double fold along the edges of the sail.

 

(Main Sail)

 

(Fore Sail)

 

Cutout a section of the dyed cloth and pinned the tracing paper to the cloth, making sure, as best as possible, that the direction of the grain in the fabric aligned in the same direction as where the stitching lines will go.

(Trusting my wife's instructions on this step!)

 

 

Sail cloth cutout to same shapes as the tracing paper

 

 

Now ready to pull out the sewing machine and have my wife give me a refresher course.

Last time I used the machine, was a few years back, making the sails for the Vasa.

 

Thanks for visiting,

Frank

 

 

[allanyed]

Hi Frank,

Good for you making your own sails!  Maybe something to consider for the future if too late for this project...... the thread count of muslin is typically about 150 per inch compared to  cloth that would be to scale which would be closer to 1200 to 1500 per inch which is hard to come by.    The tissue paper, like silkspan is actually better to use than any cloth at your scale.    There are a number of posts here at MSW and the $8 sailing making booklet by David Antscherl that will help you yield realistic sails which is impossible with cloth and sewing at 1:60.   

Allan

 

 

[fmodajr]

Thanks Allen for your comments!

Appreciated!

I've seen posts for sailmaking with silkspan. I've never tried it, but should learn. 

Thanks for the tip on the booklet by D. Antscheri, also.

 

Frank

[72Nova]

Great start on the sails👍. I share the same thoughts as Allen as the fabric being overscale and that may be the case if you were setting them up under full sail, but since they will be furled I think they will look good.

 

Michael D.

[fmodajr]

5 hours ago, safemaster said:

Great start on the sails👍. I share the same thoughts as Allen as the fabric being overscale and that may be the case if you were setting them up under full sail, but since they will be furled I think they will look good.

 

Michael D.

Thanks Michael,

 

Working on some photos to post next week of the stitching and furling. Hopefully it will look good. As explained above, I did remove more than half of what a full sail would have looked like, reducing the amount of fabric in the furl! Thanks for chiming in!

Best,

Frank

[Tim Murphy]

Frank, looks like your making good progress. I do think that Silk Span is a very good material to use for sails. Have you seen Tom Laurie’s “You Tube videos “. He does one on silk span sails. It’s very good an informative on making the sails.

All my best
Tim

[md1400cs]

Frank,

 

Just catching up - your rigging work looks excellent, and making sails is a great upgrade as well. Your current build, especially of such a complex 

ship is really raising the bar. 

 

Regards,