HMS Bellona 1760 by SJSoane - Scale 1:64 - English 74-gun - as designed

[albert]

Fantastic work.

[Chuck]

That looks just perfect...I am so thrilled all those window inserts worked out.   

 

Chuck

[dvm27]

That's a flawless collaberation between you and Chuck. If you were going for that contemporary ivory look you nailed it!

[Hubac's Historian]

I’m at a loss for words, Mark, but you know how I feel about the project.  Just awesome!

[SJSoane]

druxey, scrubby, Albert, Chuck and Marc, thanks so much for your kind comments. I am feeling so slow on progress these days, even though I am working at it pretty diligently. It really helps keep me going to get these great notes of appreciation from all of you!

 

I cannot sing the praises of Chuck's work enough. Working with exceptionally tight tolerances, his window frames fit like a glove. The filigree work above is going to be an even greater exercise in close tolerances, and I am still working on how to captures these in rabbets strong enough to hold against a surface curved in two directions. I'll post some drawings when I get a little close to a final idea.

 

And I continue to be amazed at the design of the Bellona in all of its detail. Those guys really knew what they were doing!

 

Mark

[SJSoane]

My main goal now is to construct the stern balcony enough to get drawings to Chuck for the fretwork. But before that I have to build a stub deck at the end of the quarterdeck. But before I can do that, I had to build the stern of the upper deck with the rudder cover and benches, since they will be covered up once I install the stub deck above. And before I could build the rudder cover, I needed to mock up the rudder head to ensure it will turn freely in the rudder cover. And on it goes.....

 

So, here is the mocked up rudder head, checking clearances:

And then the rudder cover itself. Note in the first photo, I somehow built it too wide. The second photo below shows the trimmed down version. I had to selectively deconstruct the cover, then slice out the excess, and reassemble. It reminded me of chopping tops for hot rod models when I was a kid!

 

 

I discovered that if the rudder cover top surface stays below the level of the stern lights, there is not enough room under it to ship the rudder. It will have to be removed and then reinstalled after the rudder is in place.

 

So when I built the benches on either side, I made all of this a slide fit so the rudder cover can be taken out later to ship the rudder when I get around to building it.

 

The benches proved to be unexpectedly difficult to build. They had to accommodate different curves at different levels, since this is all sitting on the fore side of a convex upper counter whose curves are different from the upper deck upon which the benches sit. It was a lot of tedious trim and test, trim and test, for several days. But now it is done, ready to be covered up by the quarterdeck stub deck above. At least I could get some sense of the standard of living for the officers. Not bad, sitting on the bench, elbow on the window sill, looking out at the sea through the wall of windows....

 

Mark

 

 

 

[jdbondy]

Wow Mark, that looks great!