Revenge by FingerSticker - Shipyard - 1/96 - CARD

[FingerSticker]

Good afternoon, all.

 

Today I will be presenting my latest build project, The Revenge, a cardmodel from Shipyard, a Polish publisher of card ship model kits.

 

 

I chose this ship because I like it, having built it as an Airfix plastic model many moons ago, it's looking great and I never built a Shipyard model before. BUT most importantly, because I think it will be great fun building it. Fun always comes first for me. 

 

For those who aren't familiar with the Revenge and her history, I will first give a short introduction to the ship.

 

The Revenge was built by Master Shipbuilder Mathew Baker as race-built galleon. Race-building has little to do with speed as the name might suggest. Race-building was an English 'translation' of razee and linked to the terms: razing to the ground and razor. A razeed ship had a number of decks removed, normally from the fore- and after-castle to make the ship handle better and be more manoeuvrable.

 

The Revenge was relatively small at 43 m length and 440 tons burthen, especially when compared with the then built Spanish galleons who were built big for extra cargo capacity, but still carried four masts and up to 46 guns, 20 on the gundecks and 26 on the weatherdecks.

 

Having been built in 1577, the Revenge participated in many actions, like the raid on Cadiz in 1587, the battle of Gravelines (1588), the Frobisher Expedition (1590) and in the battle of Flores (1591), where the ship was captured by a Spanish fleet of 53 vessels, after 15 hours of constant action and repulsing numerous boarding attempts. Her Master, Richard Grenville, died of battle wounds two days after the capture onboard the Spanish flagship. The Spanish didn't get to use her much because on route back to Spain, the already heavily damaged ship was caught in a storm off the Azores, and sank, together with a number of victorious Spanish ships.

 

I guess it's not the best ending for a proud vessel, but at least Lord Tennyson wrote a poem about her and her last battle. So she'll be remembered.

 

The model is supplied in A3 format, and has twelve pages of printed parts, 7 pages of drawings and templates and a laser cut set of frames and keel.

 

Oh, and a rather short set of building instructions.

 

 

I guess a picture paints a thousand words.

 

Below I'll add some photo's from the part pages.

 

I must admit, I am mightily impressed (and utterly terrified) by the large number of parts and sub-parts that will have to be cut out, stuck to thicker board, edge-painted and stuck together. Yep, I definitely have my work cut out for me.

 

Luckily the start will be easy, on account that the frames and keel have been pre-cut (4 sheets in total).

 

 

So it's gonna be a quick start, and then a grind. And a grind. And a grind.

 

But first let me introduce you to my set of tools.

 

 

A crafty knife, an unruly ruler, some nippers and tuckers, some files and sanding equipment, some paint (enamel), an awl, to score the parts with and four types of glue (only showing two), namely rubber cement for large sections because it allows for some movement after sticking and will not distort card, a small bottle of PVA for the small detail parts (which are most of them anyway) which will dry up almost invisibly, a can of spray mount, for sticking the card sheets onto thicker cardboard and a bottle of superglue for card stiffening and other uses. Both superglue and spray mount are on order, as are three thicknesses of card, 0.5, 0.75 and 1.0 mm thick.

 

I will try to keep this build 'pure', i.e. use only card or paper, unless I have to use something else, like threads for the rigging. So no metal barrels, no wooden dowels for masts, nothing like that. Just paper, card and glue. And me.

 

Interested? I know I am!

 

I'll start by 'releasing' the frames and keels and start the construction with them

 

But more about that later.

 

Heffulovelievenin!

 

Till laterzzz!

 

Adrie.

 

 

Edited November 15, 2018 by FingerSticker
Extra pictures removed

[ccoyle]

Love me some Shipyard kit! Haven't built one myself, but I know that they are considered top-shelf products.

 

Wishing you every success on this project!

[FingerSticker]

Thanks, Chris.

 

So far it's been all good. I hope it stays that way.

 

And Richmond, I have seen your log. Thanks for the link even though your post seems to have disappeared now (??). I hope that Shipyard and Cornwall Model Boats come to your rescue soon.

 

For me, as said, it's all been good.

 

I've removed all frames and keels from the 4 sheets of pre-cut parts and dry-assembled them.

The fit was good, which I tested by running my finger along the edge of the decks and checking for alignment with the frames. It all fitted quite snugly! However, I did notice that there were still a number of slots left on frames 4, 5, 6, 9 11 and 13, however. Wondering if I had received all the pre-cut parts, I checked the framework assembly drawing.

 

It seems that there is more decking to assemble, but they are supplied on thin paper, which is 0.10 mm thick. The drawing also states that they have to be laminated to 1 mm card and the horizontal slots in the frames are about 1.08 mm wide, so the missing parts have been found!

Unfortunately it means I have to wait for the cardboard that is on order to arrive, which will be Monday or Tuesday, together with the card mount that is to arrive around the same time. Also you can see my 'system' for making sure I know what to do with each part. I cross the number of with pencil once I cut out the part, and will cross the number out with a marker once the parts are glued in place. That should allow me to work out which parts are still to be added as well as check what thickness they are to be.

 

I did have a scratch-the-head moment, though, when I noticed that the assembly drawing also wants me to laminate the frames with 1 mm card! I decided to disregard that requirement as the pre-cut parts are already 1 mm thick and the slots in the frames and keel are about the same size. Since it is quite normal to laminate the structural parts with 1 mm card in other kits, I assume that these requirements are linked to a time when the company did not supply pre-cut pieces and supplied the builder with 0.1 mm paper thick drawings to laminate.

 

Of course, time will tell whether I did the right thing, but it makes sense to me. Especially since I had two beers yesterday to celebrate the Dutch national football team beating the French team 2-0 and beers does tend to ...uhhh... lubricate my thoughts.

 

Just like the false keels, frames 5 and 10 have been supplied as doubles. I can understand that you want the keel to be quite strong so you would like a 2 mm thick keel, but frames 5 and 10 came from a sheet that was only 0.5 mm thick,

so combined they won't be different from the other frames so not really sure why they did that.

 

Did you spot the wormy grey strings on the photo on the right? That's another reason why I like rubber glue. If some of it is pressed out during the combining, you simply rub it off with your fingers to create these strings. Then a little tap of the card on the table and

hey presto, the strings are gone and the glue is removed!

 

Anyway, all that was left on the pre-cut sheets were some formers, which look like they are to support the decks and the frame-ends.

 

So, what's next?

 

Glueing of course! And a rethink of how I am going to track my progress because I just worked out the crossing out with pencil and marker is not going to be enough since the diagram only shows the left hand of the model and there is nothing to note down what has been done and what needs to be done on the other side. I'll come up with something, I'm sure.

 

I tested the remainders of the pre-cut card for resistance against PVA glue by placing a big drop of glue on it and letting it dry.

I am pleased to see that the card underneath the drop hasn't changed at all so PVA will be good to use on the skeleton. Why PVA glue? because it takes less time to dry and it shrinks during drying. The problem with rubber cement is that as soon as it comes out of the tube, the solvents start to evaporate making the glue stringy and less effective as a glue. As long as you don't wait too long, like half an hour or so, that won't happen with PVA.

 

So I'll be using PVA for the structure. But that will be for another day!

 

See you all laterzzzz and happy modelling!

 

Adrie

 

 

Edited November 17, 2018 by FingerSticker
Extra pictures removed

[nancysqueaks]

Hi Adrie, you will find the 'instructions' refer to the non-laser cut frames, they are correct at 1mm.

 

A really nice start, regards,  Nick

[druxey]

The usual way to use rubber cement is to coat both surfaces to be glued, allow the solvent to dry, then press the parts together like contact cement. Until you press firmly, there is wiggle room to adjust.  A piece of crepe rubber works just as well as your finger!

 

A word of caution: after some years the rubber deteriorates and turns the card brown as well as loses adhesiveness. 

[Richmond]

ADRIE,

 

Apolgies, I decided later not to contaminate your log with my comment, as it didn't seem relevant to your build. Just a couple of comments if I may.

 

What is rubber cement? Can you you show me a picture which shows manufacturer and name of the product as things sometimes get different names in different countries.  I tend to use PVA for everything, I am not a fan of the spray adhesives but the majority of card modellers seem to use it, each to their own I suppose.

 

Even with the laser cut skeleton the kits still come with the original paper forms so I think you have done the right thing.

 

Yes, the formers are deck supports.

 

There were small upstands on my bulkheads which act as guides for the first decking layer, these are very weak and you may get into difficulty when placing your first layer of decking and destroy them. I wicked all these with thin CA from Zap.

 

It is not clear from the instructions whether the thicknesses are final thickness or card thickness, it will be interesting to see what you find as you progress your build.

 

Another note is that the photographs on my instructions are actually for the 1/72 laser cut model and not the actual 1/96 which is very confusing, I don't think there is a laser cut version for the Revenge so it may not be an issue for you. Also some parts don't have assembly instructions at all, which I found strange.

 

The Wolf is on hold firstly because I await some Maginvisors to arrive from the US as everything is so small and secondly as I am a bit depressed with the time it is taking for Cornwall to resolve the missing instruction pages and laser cut hearts.

 

Look forward to seeing more.

 

RICHMOND

 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2018 by Richmond

[FingerSticker]

Many thanks for the confirmation, Nick. Means I'm still on the right track!

 

Thank you for the info about rubber glue, Druxey. Especially about the latter part. I'll be reviewing the use of rubber cement. Mind you, as it tends to go on large surfaces, i.e. the structure so most would be away from prying eyes, but it wouldn't be good if my model came apart after a couple of years. I think I'll stick with the fingers, though. I don't think a name of CrepeRubberSticker works as well as mine.🤣 

 

I know from own experience that dealing with Polish companies can be a pain, especially when asking questions or complaining. Not all can read and write English and translations from English to Polish and v.v. can be problematic. That shouldn't apply to Cornwall Boats, though. But it may well be that those laser cut parts come from Poland as well. I still hope it gets sorted soon, though.

 

As for rubber glue, there are a number on the market and one I checked sells in Australia too. That is UHU (can I mention company names on here?), All Purpose Adhesive, which comes in a yellow tube. But other brands are no doubt available. I know that in the Netherlands and Belgium all purpose glue is sold under the name Velpon All Glue, so I expect other brands will be available in other countries as well. It can be used as contact glue, as Druxey said, but I tend to use it like that to repair a cracked piece of chine, for instance. For thin porous materials like paper, I just use it as it is, i.e. put some glue on a part, press it where it needs to go and wait for the glue to set.

 

I did notice a mistake with the kit though, although I would call it minor. I noticed that a couple of frames were in mirror image! For instance, frame 14 (which would be XIV), was lasered as VIX! Below is a picture of another frame, X. It was a bit confusing but once I sussed out what was wrong, I continued.

 

 

Unfortunately Richmond's warning about the loosening deck supports came too late. I had finished the build log and then returned to do some more glueing, which was in fact the glueing of the said supports to the frames ...

 

 

... and then some of the frames to the keel. I had done 4, then let those dry with the side former partly in place to keep the frames perpendicular, then took off the former and glued four more, put back the former and let the glue dry.  

 

At that time I chanced a glance at the computer and saw your warning. Oops!

 

I decided to continue the adding of the frames and then afterwards use a toothpick to deposit some relative thick superglue to the undersides of the supports, where they lay against the frames. I hope that will be enough to hold them in place. Well, there's only one way to find out if that was enough, and that is by continuing!

 

Once all frames were in place and dried, I glued in side formers B and C on the left side first. I applied some PVA to the flat edges of the formers and then along the 'paths' where the sides would fit in the slots on the frames. This was made a LOT easier by Shipyard displaying where the formers and frames should end up.

 

 

I must admit, I quite like their thinking!

 

Anyway, all pre-cut formers were glued in place, first on the left side,

 

 

and then the right side.

 

I'll let it dry like that until tomorrow, as I ran out of parts to glue.

That will give me time to work on the hopefully ultimate way to ensure that all parts 'easily found', are glued in the right order and are on the right thickness of card, namely a spreadsheet.

 

This will show at a glance on which sheet each part can be found, what it is, what the laminating and total thicknesses are and any comments i can come up with. It's probably gonna change but for now I have plenty of entries to add!

 

Till laterzzzzz!

 

Adrie.

 

P.S. Richmond, this is my little helper to see things straight. You're not the only one needing it!!!

Edited November 19, 2018 by FingerSticker
forgot some text

[FingerSticker]

Good evening, all.

 

I thought it was time for a bit of colour! Having glued all the pre-cut parts, and boy, have they made life easy, I started laminating the next parts to be added. Shipyards wants us to work in numerical order, so start with part 1, then part 2, etc. But before that there are the structural parts mentioned with letters. Some of them were already done as they came as pre-cuts so I used my spreadsheet to locate all lettered parts and cut them out. I also started on cutting out the first of the numbered parts, since they would all go onto 1 mm card and I had sufficient parts laminated to last me a while.

 

Since there was still a question about whether laminating would give the right thicknesses, especially considering the fact that some of the parts were on paper and others on thin card, I decided to forego the correct sequence and try out a part that was originally on card of 0.16 mm thickness. Part No 1, the Captain's Cabin Floor was chosen.

 

Shipyard also recommended to cut along the  wood slats on pieces with wood on them to give a better effect, i.e. make them more 3D. Since I didn't like to sound of cutting, which could easily go too deep, I took my awl and decided to score the card with the awl, twice along the black lines with the awl held at about 30 degrees to make a nice round depression and then once with the awl at about 60 degrees, to get a score in the middle of the depression. It worked! It worked quite nicely in fact. I can see a clear demarcation now between the 'slats'. Unfortunately photographing it is a completely different matter.

 

 

It didn't take me more than a couple of minutes to do the deck so I'll do this on all other wood as well. I am sorry that it isn't really visible for you, but you'll have to trust me on this.

 

I also looked at where the deck was going and noticed that all decks are curved. That created a little bit of bother when I tried to insert the tabs on the deck into the slots of the former. I could get the front end curved by basically forcing the deck into the slots but the back end was still flat. So I used the biggest diameter that I could find to pre-curve the deck on.

And the result?

 

Luffly!

 

Treated this way, I could quite easily slot the deck into the frame. And since this was the thickest a part could be, it confirmed that if you laminate the part onto the prescribed thickness, the end part will fit perfectly! Well, thickness-wise anyway. Success!

 

I took the deck out again and started on the small gun-decks that are scattered around the ship. I cut them out, letter by letter, curved them as I did the deck and then tried to slide them into the corresponding positions. Which didn't go too well. A size issue? When I investigated the piece, I noticed that the part had a ridge at the underside where the card had been cut. Two small strokes with a file on the bottom of the tab removed the offending ridge and gave it a minute bevel, which slid into the corresponding frame slots without a glitch. Bit of glue on the tab and the edges of the deck and in they went!

 

I did this with all the gun decks and added frame N (stern part with 4 windows) before I glued down Deck 1, my first COLOURED piece!

I also cut out frame O which will go on top of the cabin deck but I will not glue that until I have some more contact points there.

 

For now, the scores are:

Yes, I added a colour code to my spreadsheet to show the different states of parts. White means they are still on the sheet, yellow means they have been laminated onto card, red means they have been cut out and green means that they have been glued on.

 

That should keep track of everything, I would think.

 

But that's all for now. Have a luffly evening, all!

 

Adrie.

 

[Richmond]

ADRIE

 

I hope I haven't confused things, but it was those tiny projections that stick up at the top of each side of each of the bulkheads and to which the first layer of decking is meant to fit in around which I wicked with CA, I haven't wicked or used CA anywhere else - yet!.  I never even glued my skeleton other than in a few places as I was concerned that I didn't want to lock it in until I started test fitting my first layer of hull planking.

 

Love the idea with the curving of the piece, I was struggling with this on my build during dry fitting

 

I think you are on the right track with the awl in lieu of cutting - I believe Dan Vad made a similar suggestion on my log but his comment I thought was specifically regarding the hull planking I hadn't though about it for the deck planking - the extra detail you went into seemed a great idea.

 

My Carson Magnivisors Pro arrived from the US and they appear to be top quality and come with 4 sets of lenses all different magnification plus an LED light - I believe them to be very reasonably priced - I purchased them through Amazon and they are much better than the knock offs you get in any hobby or electronics shop. So hopefully I can make some small progress this weekend but I really need to concentrate on finishing my Mauretania which thankfully not as detailed..

 

I also did up a spreadsheet - it seems to go on forever and took me ages as I put so much detail into cross referencing to assembly pages amongst other things. I think the spreadsheet of parts is becoming standard for card modelers as you will note from other card modelers on the site. Great idea  with the highlighting.

 

Anyway this great and informative log continues with so much detail and so many tips - you are really paving the way for me - I hope I can rise to the challenge - look forward to further installments

 

RICHMOND

[FingerSticker]

Hi Richmond and all!

 

many thanks for your kind words. I hope I can continue the trend. And apologies about the misunderstanding!

 

Things are definitely heating up, building wise. But first off, I mast apologise to you all.

 

I hope not too many spotted my mistake. Having just explained to all what the colour codes meant, and showing the spreadsheet, eagle-eyed viewers might have picked up on part O, that I described as not having glued on until I had more contact point and what colour is it in the spreadsheet? Yep, green, i.e. glued down.

 

Here is the updated version of the spreadsheet.

A minor mistake, perhaps, but small mistakes can lead to big problems!

 

Anyway, it looks like a lot is done, right?

 

Uhhhh, no.

This is the second sheet and I only added parts up to number 40 so far with the last number on the sheets 309!! So I'm afraid we'll be here for a while.

 

So onwards then! No rest for the wicked and so on.

 

Uhhhh, or perhaps not. Well, not yet.

 

Because I suddenly had this question popping into my head.

 

Why, oh why.....

Why, oh why, is part 2, the wooden deck coloured and part 3, the deck to the front of it, isn't???

 

And then it hit me. It's coloured because it will be visible after construction! And deck 3 won't! I quickly confirmed it with the deck that was going on top of that section and indeed! There were gratings placed on the deck that would be open and thus what was underneath would be visible. Deck 3 wouldn't be under the gratings section so wouldn't be visible. But if that was the case, what about the frames immediately before and behind deck 2? Real ships don't have frames so they shouldn't be visible on the model either. And what about those gundeck sections that I glued in  previously? In real ships gundecks ran all along the ship, not just a section placed here and there.

 

I did a few searches on ship card building project on MSW and looked at the first few age-of-sailing ships and they all had blackened internals. Which makes sense. if the light isn't great and you're looking inside a blackened room, your not going to see anything. Ok, you're not going to see anything that should be there but you're also not seeing things that are there and shouldn't be there. So, I guess that would be the best thing. Not perfect, but then again I do NOT want to build a perfect model. As soon as I build the prefect model, I might never enjoy building another model again because it might not be as perfect as the perfect model. So a little bit 'wonky' is ok by my standards as long as the next model will be a little bit less 'wonky'.

 

That works for me. I hope it does for you too!

So all sections that have gunports ... black! I also included the section under the Captain's Cabin deck since that has window holes and I will install those windows opened up with a bit of acetate behind it.

 

Once the black paint was drying I worked on the deck, scoring the slats as before and pre-curving it on the jar as before. I had to trim a little bit off the deck to make it fit snugly and then, with a little bit of glue, in it went!

 

The one section that I didn't turn black what the place where the helm-stock was going to be placed which I painted as close to the deck brown as I could. When I did so, I noticed that there was quite a bit of a gap between the two deck halves. I filed that down and filled the hole with PVA. Since that shrinks whilst drying, I will probably have to add some more PVA in a couple of goes but once it is filled, I will retouch it with paint and show you the difference.

In the meantime I continued with the next part number, which was 4, or 4l to be precise. (4l for 4 lewa, which is left in Polish, the other side is p, for prawa / right). 4l is the front left side bottom gun port part.

The next part was 5l, which is the front left side top gun port part.

Can anyone spot the problem?

 

And on this cliffhanger I will leave you for the night, because it is getting late, my eyes are getting tired and my mizzus wants me to go to bed.

 

So toodlepips to you all. Till laterzzzzz!

 

Adrie.

[Richmond]

ADRIE

 

Another great update.

 

Firstly did you know there was another Revenge build on the site and secondly were you aware of the schedule of all builds (with links) that Dan Vad maintains  - I am sure you'll be pleased to know that your build is now showing up in the schedule

Everything printed in black should be left alone i.e. not cut out as it would never be seen as it will be covered by a solid piece. Anyway that is what I would have assumed for my build.

 

How are you matching your paints for touch ups ? did you know that the Rensesans paints that were available through Shipyard are now available through another Polish outlet - I can send you the link if you are interested. I was going to try some Derwent water colour pencils that I purchased - however they may have to go on carefully to prevent the moisture distortion of the card - I will have to experiment - a lot of people use colour markers.

 

There are a few Shipyard builds on the site that have scratched internal fixtures and fittings - also if you get a chance you may want to look at some of Doris' scratch builds (not as small as the 1/96) but unbelievable all the same - apart from everything else I love looking at her cabins and the associated furniture and fixings. Catapower's build are another great resource on this site for Shipyard builds - he also has a external site which is very interesting - again I can send you the link if you are interested.

 

And of course don't forget Google I bet there will be a few German card model forums that will have Revenge builds.

 

Looking forward to the next installment and how you are going to tackle some of the smaller 'internal' cut outs windows etc.

 

RICHMOND

[FingerSticker]

Good afternoon, all!

 

Thanks, Richmond, for your continued stream of useful information my way!

 

If you refer to Jan's model, then yes, I did see that and am still amazed by the apparent ease with which he creates those great looking models. But to be honest I have never been big on viewing other people's model building if they are the same model as mine. The reason for that is quite selfish, I guess. I just LOVE how a model can throw you a curve-ball, so that you have to do some serious thinking on how to solve that particular problem. I can tell you, it feels great when you are stumped then work out yourself how to solve it. So far (knock on wood, oh blast, my model is card, not wood. OK, I'll knock my head then) I have almost always found a way out of a self inflicted or model created issue. As I did so far on this luffly lady.

 

Of course, there is always a risk that there is an issue that would have been easier to solve if I had known about it first and had taken some precautions. But then it wouldn't be my model anymore, just a copy of someone else's. And of course there is an equal chance that the model that you are building simply just will not work, no matter what you do. But at least it will be because I couldn't get it to work and I will 'calmly' nod my head and admit that I have been beaten.

 

BUT (BIG BUT COMING!) BUT from what I have seen so far that will not happen with this luffly lady! I am mightily impressed with the accuracy and looks of this model. I think it was Chris who mentioned that Shipyard had a good name with regards to the quality of their kits? It would be well deserved, as I can tell from the drawings, cardboard quality and notes from them. There are mistakes, I will admit. In fact I found several so far, but most of them are quite minor, with only one leading me to a "F....., what do I do now!!!!!????"

 

But if that is the worst mistake Shipyard can throw at me then I can truly declare that I have never had a more peaceful and relaxing build than this luffly lady!

 

I hope you will all be able to attest to that, following this build log!

 

Oh, yeah, painting. I have never got good use out of colour markers nor do I use acrylics for touch ups or edge painting. Humbrol has a quite wide of range of enamel paints and so far I have always found one that was close enough to be used, provided that the damage area is small enough. It is amazing with how much colour difference you can get away with if the area is minor and as long as the difference between original and touch up paint is not too big. Free tip, don't EVER use black to edge paint a white surface!!! 😆😂😋.

 

Dan, I humbly bow deeply to the amazing bloke who has found a little spot where my luffly lady can rest her luffly little bottom, secure in the knowledge that peeping Toms from all over the world can, uhhhhh, peep in?

 

Oh yeah, mistakes, right?

 

Remember the last picture from yesterday? What was wrong? The top one is an exact copy of the bottom one, where you would really need a mirror imaged part. So in fact they got the l and p (left and right) mixed up.

Here is the offending top left part transferred to the right hand side. Perfect! So, easily solved. Instead of cutting out the l part for the top rails, just cut out the p part of the same number to replace it.

 

So having solved this little conundrum I continued happily with cutting out the gun port posts to fit on the glued in horizontals.

 

When ......

 

The uprights were a smidgen too large, pushing the horizontals away from each other! I tried the second set of posts and they seemed to fit reasonably at first but once glued in gave the same issue, if slightly less! Oh, b...... .

 

What about the third set then?

 

Way too short and the angle was all wrong, leaving a big triangular opening at the bottom! This was the Oh f..... moment. What to do next????

 

Since I had already cut out the second pot (stupid, I know), what could I think off that I could do with a post that was way too short and the wrong shape? Well, for one, put it back seemed to be a good idea so I put a little drop of glue on the bottom edge of the post and put it back in the sheet.

 

Once the glue had dried, I guestimated how much extra material the post should have and cut the extra at the bottom of the part. Then taking it out again I offered it up to the model.

 

 

Better, even though the guestimate was still off. But good enough to continue, I reckon. Especially since the outside cladding (skin) will cover a multitude of sins. So I'll leave that for the moment and review it once the first planking layer is on. It did mean though that from that moment on, I had to cut out each post, offer it up and see if I needed to glue it back and add some more material or take off a smidgen more. All doable but a lot more work.

 

I then did the rest of the horizontals on the left hand side and started the arduous task of individual post-fixing.

 

 

That's what I would class as a proper curve-ball. But I think I whacked it out of the park, never the less! Hah!

 

Oh yeah, where was that hole again?

I LUV it when a plan comes together!

 

And here's the latest state of play.

Tomorrow I'll start on doing the gun ports on the right hand side. We'll see how long that it going to take. 

 

Toodlepips!

 

Adrie.

 

Edited November 23, 2018 by FingerSticker
Removed erroneous picture

[FingerSticker]

Good evening all!!!

 

A little update is due and a question for for you as well.

 

First the update.

I continued the gun frames on the right hand side. The horizontals went in without a glitch,

Then a few deep breaths and time for the vertical posts.

One by one, cut, check in place, cut, check in place, take out, check in place and glue. Sets one and two just a little trimming required. The third one, undersize again! Put on glue, put back in place and cut a lot bigger.

The fit was then ok, not brilliant but definitely better than yesterday. So step by step I went along the ship.

 

Definitely looking better but good enough? Possibly, possibly not. The only way to know if to line them up with the first planking layer and see if they really fit with that. They might not, because:

 

On the left hand side, perfectly in line with the cover piece, the card that is to show the red inside when looking through the deck above. But about 1 mm too low on the right hand side. The problem may be with the cover piece or a combination of them both, of course, but i can start to see why Jan didn't want to use the rails and attached the gun position frames directly to the back of the upper planking cards. It might turn out to still be passable, though, or so I hope. But we will find that out later.

 

For now we have finished all the pieces that I laminated.

Next stop, dem gunzzz! (Actually dem gun carriagezzzzzz)!

I have already decided that I will laminate the gun carriage pieces onto 0.5 mm card, which will double up to 1 mm when I glue top and bottom together. Well, that is the plan that I am going to try out with the first set of parts. There are 18 gun carriages no 25 and 4 no 26 to do and since you will see a gun barrel at most, even if it goes horrible wrong with one set, I should still be able to use it just to attach a barrel to.

 

But here is the question that I want to ask you. I noticed that the parts as printed are brown-ish rather than red. And I saw Jan paint his carriages mid brown as well. But what about the stories that on Elizabethan ships both internal sides, bulwarks and gun carriages were all painted red? Is that a myth? Or did that depend on something else? I heard a lot of stories doing the rounds about the red colour. One story said that it was to reduce the psychological impact on the gun crew if their partner got blown to smithereens on the grounds that their blood wouldn't show up on the sides and guns. (Hmmmmmm). Another story goes that the red colour below decks was an invention by Hollywood producers because it would make scenes with the ships guns look more threatening. (Again, hmmmmmmmm).

 

So what's the real story? And do I need to touch up with brown or repaint in red?

 

Please, please, please, please, who has a proper answer to share?

 

Adrie.

 

 

Edited November 24, 2018 by FingerSticker
Extra picture removed, removed spelling mistake

[FingerSticker]

Good evening all!

 

A quick update on what has been done today. A lot, and not a lot, strangely enough. But more about that later. As mentioned, today would be the start of the construction of the gun carriages, specifically the carriages that are to be placed onto the gun deck before the weatherdecks are put in place. The middle sized one was trialled first to see if laminating the pieces onto 0.5 mm card would be workable.

 

So one set was cut out and laminated to a 0.5 mm sheet.

Then the parts were cut out with a no 11 blade and deposited into the collection tray.

Other pieces, that needed additional laminating, were cut out and glued back onto the card.

For the wheels I used a stab-technique. I found that to work quite well and better than the more traditional cutting technique. To stab you keep the knife vertical and only with the tip you make small stabs around the circular object going along the edge of the circle.

As long as you keep the knife perfectly vertical, you'll get quite a good finish. It doesn't help, though, that the card is 1 mm thick which will require multiple stabs at the same position, going round one way, then go round again the other way and then finally go round again the first way. All this cutting in nearly the same position can make part of the wheel go 'flat'.

The bottom two circles I did first and are cut roughest because I haven't done the stab for ages. But slowly I got back in the groove and the last wheel was almost perfect.

 

If there is a problem with this construction then it would be that the design is ludicrously complicated. As you can see above, you need 17 separate parts to make one gun carriage. And since you are going to need 18 middle sized carriages and 4 large carriages, each made up of 17 parts ...... it's gonna take a while. It took me the better part of the day to do the trial one, which once you get settled will speed up a bit but still we are talking one or two carriages a night.

 

Oh yeah, as you can imagine, the stabbing puts a lot of stress onto the tip of the blade. So much so, that you can expect plenty of tips to break off. I am going to trail a different shape of blade, purely for the stabbing and see if that holds up better against the strain.

But once all cutting was done, it was time to start glueing the parts together, like top and bottom plate, two pieces of sides each side and the wedge block for the breech of the barrel.

After drying these were cleaned up with the tip of a knife and then combined to create the carriage.

 

 

Not too shabby!

 

But as you can see, the part still needs a final painting coat. I'm still not clear about whether to go with brown as overall colour or red. I'm leaning more towards the red, to be honest, because I saw an article online about the ship internals, which stated:

 

 

"Red was the predominant color in the interior coloring. Red lead, an oxide, was suspended in varnish to achieve the color  of this paint. It was thinned with turpentine. The  blacks w'ere lampblack, Stockholm tars, pitch, or a  mixture of unknown colorings of heavy metals suspended in an evaporating vehicle, usually varnish  based.

The interior gunwales of warships were painted red in the mistaken idea that it would not show the  color of the blood of the crew shed in battle. The idea  of such color camouflage was extended even to the  gun carriage. This idea pxevailed in warship coloring until well into the mid-1800s."

 

I still think the whole concept is ludicrous so I would welcome it if one of our members can tell us why it should OR should not be red.

 

Until then, I am going to laminate the remaining 17 sets to the card and make a start on the cutting.

 

Have a lovely evening and see you all latezzzz!

 

Adrie.

[FingerSticker]

Evening, all!

 

First off, thanks to all those who have thumbed me. Much appreciated!!!!

 

I thought it best to do a quick overview of where I am.

My guestimate of doing two carriages per day has been rather accurate.

 

After two and a half nights, I have completed 5 carriages so far. (Plus most of the sixth cut out). With 17 more to go I reckon it will be another nine days (barring any time required for chores and house repairs, etcetera). It doesn't really help that my better part is currently in her sickbed nursing a rather persistent cold and someone needs to look after her.

 

It also doesn't help that when cutting parts out of the cardboard the cardboard delaminates.

Not a biggie, because they can be recombined with a drop of PVA but it does slow you down a bit.

 

Oh, and my apologies but I was planning on presenting a red carriage. Unfortunately when I opened the tin of red paint, it contained a rather dark red brownish paint. I must have used the half empty tin to mix up some paint for the below the waterline hull of a WW 2 cruiser. The cruiser didn't make it over here but apparently the paint did! 🙄

 

So we'll be waiting for a new tin of paint to arrive.

 

Well, that's about it, really.

 

Have a good evening, all!

 

Laterzzzz!

 

Adrie.

[FingerSticker]

Hi all!

 

Ron, thanks for the thumbs up. Much appreciated!

 

So I thought it was time for a little update.

 

First update:

The first red carriage! I used a single layer of humbrol red, to allow the print on the parts to still shine through. Not too bad looking even though the refining of the cutting could have been a little better. But where the carriages will end up, you won't see much of this so I'm happy with the results.

 

And with two carriages a day, I now have 12 completed with one only requiring the wheels to be glued on.

And I now have enough to:

 

Only 5 more medium carriages to do and 4 larger ones.

 

Oh, and I have been a bad boy. Mostly because the mizzus kept nagging me to get the sails and masts and yards sets from Shipyard. Somehow I get the sneaking suspicion that she does not trust me the get them right without 'cheating'. Anyway. to maintain the peace in our household, I ordered a set of each from the Shipyard site yesterday. I tried the freehobbies site before that was listed in Richmond's build log for the Wolf but was a bit shocked to learn that they would charge me 50 dollars for P&P.

Shipyard charged me 50 Zloty, which is about 11 quid in postage. Seeing that. when I get something from Ebay, postage will easily be 5 to 8 quid and since this comes from Poland, I reckon 11 quid is not too bad. I was pleasantly surprised to get an email this morning that about 10 hours after ordering, they had already organised the shipping!

I don't know what the feeling is from the people here about ordering from Shipyard directly (or officially Vessel - Shipyard) but so far I can not fault them and I'll keep you all updated on the status of these.

.

I have also been thinking of changing the planning a bit. I think it would be good to cut out the first layer decking top pieces next since they hold the positions of the gun openings and I will use them to check whether the previously added gun post positions are correct. If not then I will remove the offending gun posts and add them to the back of the planking card. At least it should give me the right position to glue down the gun carriages.

 

But that will be roughly 5 days away from now.

 

So with four wheels to glue down, Till laterzzzz, all!

 

Adrie.

[Richmond]

Adrie

 

Frame that email

 

I have found shipping from Poland to Australia to be cost prohibitive, much cheaper, for me, to order from Cornwall, their PP was extremely reasonable, no more than 5GBP, if I remember correctly.

 

Checking my atlas  I found Poland to be nearer to Australia then the UK, so go figure.

 

Cornwall sell everything (masts, sails, blocks) but not the rope, which only seems to available direct from Shipyard, however, luckily for me, there are a lot of alternatives for rope on the market.

 

The gun carriages look great.

 

Richmond

[FingerSticker]

Hi all!

 

Again my thanks for the thumbs!

 

It's locked away in a safe place, Richmond! Even better, I got a declaration from the Polish Post that they had received the package and that it is now waiting in the hub in Komorniki, waiting for the next part of the trip.

 

As for posting charges to Ozzieland being higher when Australia is closer by I reckon the rowboats they need to get the package across are driving the costs up. For Britain they probably need just the one boat with crew where as for Australia ........... you do the maths. 😁

Mind you, I will hold judgement until I find out just how quick (slow) the British rowboat is.

 

Anyway it was a good couple of days at my end. 

 

Tara.....

 

18 gun carriages present and accounted for!

 

That's dem done, right?

 

Uhh, wrong. Upon inspection of the assembly drawing ...

I suddenly noticed that the carriages are supposed to have a little bit sticking out, probably to move the wedge block in and out. I checked that against some images on the internet and indeed they are there!

In fact they show up for all carriages on the assembly drawings.

 

I guestimate that they are about 0.5 mm thick and a couple of mm long. I can do that. I have 0.5 mm brass rod. So all I need to do is to drill a 0.5 mm hole in the middle wedge block component, insert a bit of brass, superglue it and presto!

 

I love it when I come up with a plan! 0.5 mm drill .. CHECK! 0.5 mm brass rod .. CHECK! Hand drill holder ... Uhhhhh, I had one. I know for a fact that I had one. So where is it??!! Ahhh, that might have been in the box that was left in the old house because the movers apparently didn't have enough space in the van and which the house cleaners consequently threw away.

 

Ok, three deep breaths ...... ok, three more deep breaths ......it's a conspiracy, I tell yah!

 

It's ok. Everything is ok. Everything is wonderful. Right? Uhhh, yeah, if you say so.

 

Anyway, they aren't that expensive and Ebay is always willing.

 

I STILL have a plan, though! And that plan will work! Just not yet.

 

Mind you, in the meantime I still have four more carriages to do, i.e. the larger ones.

 

And here is the first one.

 

 

And now we all wait. Breath in ..... breath out ..... breath in ..... breath out .....

 

'S_not working! I need a stiff drink!

 

Until laterzzzzzz.

 

Adrie.

[FingerSticker]

Good evenin_all!

 

And a very hearty welcome to Cap'n Steve, who has joined us!

 

Be welcome, lad and my deepest regrets that I won't be using thy prosaic style. I hath not been trained that well in Ye Olde Speak.

 

Anywayzzzz,

 

I decided to have a little break from the carriage construction as I am still waiting for the arrival of the hand drill. Instead I thought I'd better make sure the gun port positions were all okay since them carriagezzz will be glued down as soon as I can stick a little pin in their backsides!

 

So I cut out the first planking 'layers' that had the gunports on them .....

... then offered them up to the model and marked with a pencil where the holes in the card are. The results are that some of them are good ....

and some were bad. VERY bad, in fact .....

A bit disappointing, to be honest, but nothing that can't be fixed. Taking a leave out of Jan's book, I intend to snip out all those little blighters and replace them with a 2 mm wide strip of 1 mm thick cardboard which is going to be glued to the back of the sides, like ...

After glueing and drying I will then paint them rosy red and none will be the wiser.

 

Zzzzz'a good plan, no?

 

HOWEVER, I noticed two more issues / potential issues. For one when I placed the card down on the model I noticed that a 1 mm thick frame doesn't give much attachment points for a strip of card that is going to overlap half a mill each side. In fact, it is a royal pain in the behind especially if the dimensions of the side is not 100% spot on. I am currently debating if I want to do a vertical strip of about 1 cm wide paper or card along all the frames to supply more sticking area or whether I want to use 5 mm horizontal strips running along all frames to glue the side onto.

 

The gun position closest to the bow only give me a width of 1 mm to play with, which would make option A tricky. Also glueing a number of strips along all frames would also 'arrest' the position of the frames with regards to the other frames so I'll probably go with option B unless someone can tell me why that would be a bad, bad, bad idea.

 

The other issue has all to do with size.

 

Remember the last carriage that I presented yesterday? It is visibly bigger than the 18 done before. And when I tried to place that carriage in one of its spots ..... 

... it got stuck! Not only did it get stuck in that small section, the carriage was pointing away from the hole marks on the horizontals.

The problem is that the Revenge needs a big carriage there because it is supposed to have a big canon there to be used as a sort-of chaser gun.

 

Since I don't want to change the gun layout, just because I can't sort out a problem (i.e. replace the carriage with a smaller carriage and hope that A nobody will notice (which I will every time I look at it) AND B that the big canon will still fit in the smaller and lower down carriage).

Then I suddenly thought ... hang on, If I'm gonna snip away the offending gun port frames, why not snip a little more and remove the (black) back wall of that section as well! It would only be the top of the frame that I remove, the rest below the gun deck will be left in place. Then with a bit of additional black paint, surely nobody would notice that? And it should allow me to 'swing' the carriage around to at least point in the right direction!

 

The only drawback I can see at the moment is that the deck above it would lose a locating position but it would still have 4 locators from the other frames.

 

Again, can anybody point out the flaw in my thinking? Please?

 

Please send your answers on a postcard to 'The Blue Peter Syndicate', Postbox 76543210, Ingeland.

 

I thank you for your kind attention and will return tomorrow to the glorious glueing of the gun port posts that will now fit!

 

Till laterzzz!

 

Adrie.

[FingerSticker]

Good evenin_all!

 

As always, thanks for the thumbs, they are much appreciated.

 

Today's report is mostly about repairing.

 

But first I wish to present to you the new arrival at my address.

 

Tara .....

 

And with the hand drill and a 0.5 mm drill I was able to 'pin the carriage', i.e. drill a small hole in the wedge block, cut off a little piece of 0.5 mm brass rod, superglue it into the drilled hole, wait for it to dry, drop a drop of PVA onto the rod, wait for that to dry then paint it all red, like>

 

The drop of PVA is to 'thicken up' the end of the brass rod to make it look less like a thin rod and more like a grip shaped for a hand. I've done two of these for now since I will use them in the places where someone might possible see the back of the gun carriages, i.e. on the already installed deck 2, depending on how many gratings I will install on the deck above it. I was thinking of leaving most of them open but will see how the gratings come out and how it will look with them installed or left out.

 

All the other carriages on the gun decks will not be 'pinned' as you can't possibly see the back of them, once in place. The ones on the weather decks will be so amended, though and I am looking at the appropriate drawings to see if I can add some ropes and tackles on the ones in full sight. probably not, as it may be too fiddly for my fingers, but I am keeping an open mind here.

 

Anywayzzzz,

 

The repairs now.

 

I cut out the remaining openings in the upper first planking parts since I didn't fancy doing that after I had glued the gun port frames onto the back of the pieces and cut 9 mm lengths off the 2 mm wide strip of 1 mm cardboard as shown previously. I cut out 4 per position, align them along the edge of the holes and glued them down with PVA. Once they were all glued down and the glue had dried, I then started painting the frame posts red with the humbrol enamel and let that dry.

Yes, I know that there is another layer of planking going to go on top of the white card but I still didn't want too big a mess with the red paint and if you carefully brush if from the back, you get an almost spotless effect at the front of the card.

 

Then it was time to start snipping off the supplied gun port frames and try out the planking layer in their place.

It looking good! The next stage is to cut away the top of the second frame on the above left photo But before I do that, I want to strengthen the remainder of that frame, which I did by using some of the 2 mm strip that I used before and gluing them under the gun deck like so.

 

Hopefully that will be enough keep it all together when I start ripping out the top section. But for now I will let the glue dry thoroughly and start work on the white planking cards for the right hand side.

 

Oh, and Richmond, I am sooo sorry. Apparently the British rowers cheated and took a plane from Warsaw to Heathrow, meaning that I had some more new arrivals.

 

Quality is looking good again, which makes me happy and the mizzus is happy that I listened to her and did as she said. So we're all happy here now!

 

And on that bombshell ......

 

See you all laterzzzzz.

 

Adrie.

[FingerSticker]

Good evening, all!

 

I guess it is time for a little update.

 

But before that a genuine thank you to those who have reacted to my posts. It is , ezz oalwaizzz, mucho appreciado.

 

But enough of showing off my (non-existant) language skills and let's have some piccies.

 

First I continued the removal of the frame posts.

But because I removed those strips I also had to glue down the internal ship walls in the mid section, as they used the strips to 'lean' against.

And then it was snip - snip with my faithful cutter to remove the front side wall.

And now the big carriage can swing about unhindered. Just a little lick of additional paint ....

... and you can't really tell that the wall had been there in the first place!

 

Now that the repair was done, I could (finally) continue with the remaining three gun carriages of which I am finishing the last one tonight!

 

YAY!

 

I know there were 'only' 22 to do at this stage but with 17 parts to cut out for each, then glue 6 back on the card and cut them out again, it was really 23 parts for each carriage. My 'favourites' were the 4 sides of the carriage. But they're now all done (apart from 2 wheels and a lick of paint so we can move on to the next part, which is the front section of the main deck.

Two layers, each laminated onto 0.5 mm card to be cut out, glued on top of each other and scored like I did the lower deck part 2. But because this deck is 'out in the open' I decided to follow Chris and Dan (amongst others) and sprayed to top section with matt varnish for additional protection and a matt finish.

 

Of course I can't glue the deck on yet. I'll have to glue down the carriages first for which I will use PVA first and then, after drying, I will secure it with thick-ish superglue. The problem with most paints and glues is that painting weakens the glue bond, and since there is an enamel pint on the rim of the wheels of the carriages and I do NOT want those carriages to come loose when I try to install the gun barrels on them, so I will secure the bond with a touch on superglue. Just in case, you know?

 

And that will be tomorrow's task.

 

Just one thing to mention. You remember that I ordered the sail set from Shipyard online and that they arrived pretty quickly? I used the same website model minus vessel dot com to find a current email address for them and used that to ask a question about the sails. I asked the question on the 7th and received a response on the 10th. And it was a very nice response too! Wielkie dzięki, Marta, if you happen to look in!

 

Annnnyyyyyyywayzzzz, that was about it, so for now, a lovely evenin_all!

 

Adrie

Edited December 11, 2018 by FingerSticker

[FingerSticker]

Evenin_all!

 

First off, many, many thanks for the likes from you all!

 

But it's been a while since my last update so let's get cracking, shall we?

 

I continued with the gun carriages for the gun deck. Using the recently enhanced planking sides as templates the carriages were placed in the correct

position, or as close to it as possible, with quite a bit of PVA glue stuck to their wheels.

Once the PVA glue set, I then transferred a couple of drips of thick-ish superglue around the wheels to ensure they won't come loose in a hurry. Whilst that was drying, I cut out the front parts of the main deck and glued them together using spray mount. The assembly was then scored with my trusty awl to bring the planks out and curved over the big jar.

I then placed it on the model and noticed that I did not need to trim anything, it was fitting that good. So a few beads of PVA along the edges of the frames and in it went.

 

The other decks were laminated on 0.5 mm card again.

 

And then I had a brain-freeze. I could try and cover it up as a wicked plan to sort out this problem (which I didn't have) but at the end of the day, it was a bit (a bit???) of stupidity on my part. You see, in the above picture you can see the brown shapes on the right and top of the picture? They are covers for the frames that are sticking out. And they were to go onto the frames as is. NOT laminated to a 0.5 mm card! Then something else went wrong, namely that one of the cover pieces somehow got splashed.

 

You can see how the ink on the right hand side became mottled. I don't know how or when this happened and at first I thought that it might be okay as the a-pieces are supposed to go on the inside of the frames so would be less visible.

 

I was pondering if my stupidity required fixing but whilst thinking about it and how best to sort it, I continued with the main decks. After scoring of the planks the top and bottom pieces were dry fitted. Or at least i tried to dry-fit them but they were too long. Taking the hole for the mast in the middle section as datum point and measuring the distances with a caliper, I worked out that the middle deck needed 0.4 mm cut off of the back of it and another 0.7 mm off the front.

I decided to cut the top piece first and once I got that fitting snugly, I would glue the top to the bottom piece and use the top as a template to cut off the oversize bits off the bottom piece too. This way I wouldn't risk alignment issues between the two pieces.

 

You can just about see the oversize section on the right hand side. But once that was cut to size after glueing together, I curved the deck and slid it into place. Still fitting well so a few beads of glue on the frames and down it went!

The aft section of the deck was done as described above and again it needed a little clearance. But it still went down well in the end.

During all this I decided that i was going to repair my stupidity. But since I didn't have an A3 all in one printer I didn't do a start copy of all sheets. Instead it would have to be almost piece by piece. For a trial I colour copied the middle section of the deck (just because that was lying around at the time). The result was ... hmmmmm.

The real piece is on the right and the scanned copy (apart from having shadow issues) was a lot lighter!

Yet the wall coverings ....

A lot, lot better and in fact good enough to use. What's the difference between the deck piece and the walls? No idea. But then, the printer is a bog standard all in one printer so I never expected it to need to do things like this. So I started the repair with the thus copied piece, which had the openings cut out, the planks scored and then a little sliver needed to be taken off it to fit well.

I was going to do the same with the other wall sections when .....

I noticed that not only does the printer not know light from dark, it also scans incomplete as I found out when I was about to score the second piece. So another scan needed on 220 g card.

Better this time. Good enough to use. I decided from a aesthetics point of view to 'repair' the mottled wall as well. I did this by simply scan-printing the front wall section onto normal paper, cut that out and glued it on top of the mottled section.

Can you tell the difference? I know I can't. But both sides have now been done.

which leave me with one question. Where should I place the following part?

The part marked 31b doesn't show on the assembly drawing and the width is wider than the bottom width of part 31a. I asked Shipyard for guidance and hope I will get that before I have to glue down the fore deck. Otherwise I might just.... uhhh .... feed it to the carpet monster?

 

Anywayz, that's all I have done so far. Next in line are two more wall coverings and then the Captain's quarters dividing walls.

Part 33 has some of those pesky windows so I will trial out how to open them up. I am thinking of putting a blob of superglue on the back of the windows to stiffen the card, let it dry and then use a new blade to punch out the black window bits. I would normally then glue some acetate behind the windows but as the wall it goes onto is a blind wall, I will need to think of something else. But more about that later.

 

Have a good evening!!

 

Adrie.

[FingerSticker]

Good evenin_all!

 

Not as much to update you all as I had hoped, but progress was made, never the less.

 

I'll start with the original plan, i.e. put a few blobs of thin CA onto the back of the card ....

... let that dry and then start cutting out the black window bits.

Result? Not that good, to be honest. In fact it looks pretty horrendous. The bits that remain are all marked and the cutting is way too uneven. I reckon that it might be that the CA was still too thick so it won't penetrate the card but lay on the back of it, making clean cutting difficult without actually protecting the front of the card.

Regardless of the root cause, I did not think that this was a viable solution, especially considering the number of windows I would have to do.

 

So it was back to the drawing board. I decided that I needed a replacement for the window frames. But if I make a frame out of brass or plastic rod, then it would show two layers with one diagonal layers placed on top of the other diagonal layer and even with a thickness of a 0.5 mm rod, it would be quite visible. And look horrendous again.

 

If only I could find frame material that was a lot thinner, say 0.1 mm? Say, the thickness of uhhh thread? Like ...

A jig was quickly constructed from a piece of balsa and some pins. I first marked the balsa with the framelines, each 1 mm apart and started the 'rigging' with a grey coloured thread (grey as the lead that would hold the separate windowglass pieces) and then slid a piece of acetate underneath the rigged thread and applied a mix of water and PVA (50/50) with a small brush. Once the first 'glueing' had dried, I repeated that two more times.

 

Then the 'construct' was cut loose ...

and glued to the back of a trial piece which had the complete window removed.

So far it was looking a lot better and definitely all do-able. So I 'loaded' the jig again after making some adjustments to the pins ...

... and decided that what was looking good could look even better.

I applied some clearfix to the back of the window with a toothpick and let that dry. The clearfix formed a layer between the threads, resembling the window panes.

 

And that is where I currently am at, waiting for the loaded jig to dry, so I can repeat the glueing two more times but this time I will use it on the proper piece.

 

Then reload the jig, etc, etc, etc.

 

And that all for a section that will be as good as invisible once the decks are all in place. But at least I have something now that - A will look better than the untreated pieces and B - is definitely repeatable to do.

 

So I is very heppy now.

 

Till the next time!

 

 

[FingerSticker]

Good afternoon all.

 

With the festive season upon us, I thought it best to update you all on the progress so far, possibly until the new year. That all depends on how much (little) time I will get during the break to work on her 'Loveliness'.

 

But first, Chris, Ron, Phil and Richmond. Thank You for your continued persistence in giving me the 'thumbs'. 😄 As always, it is much appreciated!

 

But time'zz a waistin, so letzz get on with it!

 

Using the method from the previous update, I started transferring the technological breakthrough to the actual piece.

You can see the effect of the handiwork when shown against a light background and a dark background and with a dark background it is quite similar to the printed window on the right apart from it looking a lot better! So dark backgrounds it is, then!

The second window was treated the same way and the wall was installed.

The next wall was a simple score and cut out job and quickly installed.

Perhaps a bit too quick, because the previous picture showed how that wall seemed to be bumped up on the right hand side when compared with the left hand side. This was, OF COURSE, only noticed AFTER the glue had dried.

The photo shows that the right hand side is not in contact with the floor anymore. I guess careless handling  when the glue was still wet was the cause, or it may be that the curve of the floor was more on the right hand side. I don't think it is a big problem though. That section only hold the whipstaff/kolderstok assembly and the above deck will have a little enclosure over it to keep the helm operator/stuurman from getting wet so most of that wall will be hidden. I will have to cut the top of the card down, though, so it is inline with the frame to allow the deck to lie flat. Still, it was something I should have noticed earlier, though.

 

The last wall was the one for the Captain's quarters and contained two windows, one like we have seen before and a round one. The normal window on the left would be treated as before and for the round one I had a plan. A simple 3.5 mm brass ring glued on top of it and a clearfix-ed window at the back.

 

There was only one slight problem. My stack of brass bits was in a previously mentioned box, which was previously left behind by the movers when we moved house, and subsequently thrown out by the following cleaning people. So a new set of rings was ordered from Ebay, which may arrive on Thursday next week or in the beginning of the New Year. Apparently there is a festive holiday period coming our way!!

Since the wall section was only for the internal wall, I decided to go ahead and install that for the moment. If the deck above it is already laid down before the rings arrive, I will just add the ring to the outside of the wall. Should still look good enough, especially because the view of the internal section will be restricted.

 

So I used clearfix to make me a window and then added the other window as before.

 

That 'windowing' sure gets a lot easier the more you do it!!! I had to cut off a little of the bottom of the section for it to fit in with the openings in the frame, but nothing major.

 

Then all what was left to do is to install the internal walls, which fitted quite well.

And that is where I got to so far.

 

Thank you for your kind attention,

 

 

AND ...

 

from 'Ur_Who_Shall_Be_Obeyed_At_All_Times' and me,

Till the next time!!!!!

 

Adrie.

 

Edited December 22, 2018 by FingerSticker
Extra pictures removed

[kirill4]

Dear Adrie,

I watch your building with great interest !!!

I like this type of ships ...presently I'm busy with almost similiar " galleon" project as well...it is plastic kit ,and spanish galleon ...

  but nevertheless always with big interest followed by any buildings of galleons ...

for inspiration, here I collected many pictures with galleons in a good resolution, a very good help when you need to find some historically accurate details for your own model ... https://www.segelschiffsmodellbau.com/t5753f763-galleons-pictures-spanish-dutch-english-begining-of-century-famous-dutch-artists.html

Wish you all the best! Merry Christmas and new year !!!

Kirill

[Richmond]

Adrie

 

nice update, wishing you a merry Christmas and a HPNY.

 

Richmond

 

[FingerSticker]

S novym godom, s novym schastyem, Kirill!

 

Many thanks for looking in and and even more thanks for the site. I am sure to be needing a bit more detail info at later stages.

 

And thank you, Richmond. It is a great help knowing that someone close by (when compared to the distance between our Earth and the sun 😋) Is keeping you on the straight and narrow!

 

And also a hearty welcome to Rudolph!

 

I thought it was time for an update. seeing that you otherwise might have to wait until the next year (doesn't that sound far away?). So without further ado, let's get cracking!

 

Which is the whip stock, a contraption that started to be used at the time of the building of this lady and which allows the helmsman to keep an eye on the sails as he was swinging the rudder about. It consists of a simple base ...

which is glued into place on the aft section of the main deck ...

and the actual whip stock. which I constructed of 1 mm brass rod, which was then painted and glued into the base with some superglue.

Having done that, it was finally time to lay down some planking. The planking is done in two stages, first an underlay of white card pieces, then followed by a laminated layer of coloured card strips. Because the frames are only 1 mm thick and there is every chance that during the construction some parts are a little bit out of alignment, I thought it best to use card strips, running along the frames, to give the planking pieces something to adhere to if the frame was out of whack.

I used the thinnest card I could find and cut it into 5 mm wide strips which were then glued to the frames.. Then it was time to cut out the first planking piece and shape it with the fingers to roughly the right shape.

Then a little glue and in it went. The fit was surprisingly good, even if I had to reduce the length of the bottom tab because it interfered with the bottom horizontal former. I was going to show you a photograph of it in place, but unfortunately all photo's taken during that session seem to have disappeared from the memory card.

 

Sorry about that. I can pick up the story line at the beginning of the third day of planking. By that time, I had finished the left hand side, realised that even a 0.2 mm card is still showing up after glueing down the separate planking pieces and thus decided to switch to 80 gram paper strips for the right hand side.

 

So I started the third day with this situation:

and had to do four more strips like this, cut , take a little snip out of the bottom tab to clear the frames and making scoring from the back a lot easier and pre-shaping the piece to roughly the right shape.

And that was really all. Using rubber glue gave me a window of several minutes for me to be able to rectify the position of the pieces to just the right spot before pressing it down.  I didn't have any particularly nasty occurrences, nothing really went wrong. It all went quite smoothly.

There is still a lot of work to do, though. Even though it is looking quite good, it isn't perfect so will need some filling and sanding to get a super finish. But since it is all card, I don't think that would be possible without first toughening the hull. I don't particularly want to use PVA because I don't want to wet the card in case it may distort and rubber glue would not 'sink' into the card therefor would not strengthen in. And the surface is way too big for superglue.

But then I remembered the balsa planes that I constructed when I was a little nippier. You had a framework of balsa strips and pieces onto which you glued pieces of tissue paper. Those pieces were then smeared in with dope and after drying the shrunken dope had pulled all the tissue taut and made it hard enough to use as a drum.

So I ordered myself some dope but whereas I remembered the heavy stinking cellulose compound they nowadays have a water-based version, which apparently doesn't stink and is much better for the environment. Not having used that stuff before though, it is going to be an interesting time.

 

BUT, before that, there was a remaining matter of finishing off the planking. The results above were for the bottom planking bits. The upper bits are bigger pieces that are supposed to slot in the positions created by the lower pieces. A bit like a jigsaw.

 

Only three pieces. How difficult can it be to get three measly shapes in the right position, eh? Truth be told, I had already glued in the first sections at the front after I had done the first six bottom pieces. And they turned out alright, so no sweat, right?

Hmmmm. where I first thought that the shape of the created hull was ok, after glueing down the upper sections, I am not that sure anymore. There seems to be several alignment issues and where I used the door hole in the aft section to align it to the deck and I followed the left open positions by the bottom pieces, the fact that there is clear gap between the aft and the middle section shows that life isn't that simple.

 

Which is good in a sense, because now I have to do some more thinking. I only glued down the left pieces and then didn't glue the front of the front section so there is still some movement possible. In itself it shouldn't be a big problem, because there will be thick layers of card deposited to the inside and the outside of the bulwarks and it should be relatively easy to cut out new openings for windows and doors in the planking pieces if need be but how can I work out whether they are in need of trimming?

 

I decided to take a step back and use the fore mentioned inner bulwarks pieces

to determine how well the sides fit.

 

So that's where we are currently at. I am waiting for the glue to dry on the inside bulwarks so I can cut them out and use them as a sort-of template to check the fit of the left upper planking pieces and to use them when glueing down the right hand pieces too.

 

When that is done I will slobber a 'large' amount of dope on the planking cards to toughen them up, then start filling the holes and nooks and crannies and whatnots and then remove most of the filler until we are all happy.

 

Well, it's a plan. A silly but good plan, perhaps, but still just a plan, never the less.

 

How will it turn out?

 

Only the New Year will know!

 

Have a great New Year's feast, ALL!!

Edited December 30, 2018 by FingerSticker
corrected errors

[amateur]

Gelukkig nieuwjaar!!

 

jan

[Richmond]

2 hours ago, FingerSticker said:

So I ordered myself some dope but whereas I remembered the heavy stinking cellulose compound they nowadays have a water-based version, which apparently doesn't stink and is much better for the environment. Not having used that stuff before though, it is going to be an interesting time.

Is the new water based version this product? 

 

 

I think I have the heavy stinking cellulose

 

 

Edited December 30, 2018 by Richmond

[FingerSticker]

It is, Richmond!

 

You must be psychic!!! 

 

😆