HMS Terror by Keith S - OcCre - scale 1:75 - as she (dis)appeared on her final mission 1845 - first wooden ship build

[Keith S]

7 minutes ago, clearway said:

wish i had clicked with that before gluing mine on Keith- nevermind🤪 just work round it! For future reference i was checking the masting and when doing the mizzen mast dont use the top - barque rigged vessels only had the cross and trestle trees with no platform.

 

Keith

 

I've seen the finished models online with and without the correct measurement- it doesn't make much difference, you'd never notice it really. I only noticed it because I was concerned about how the catheads carry through the bulwarks and noticed they were at a different height on some peoples' models.

 

Thanks for the intel on the mizzen top. I had actually thought that was an unusually small mast to carry a full fighting-top. 

 

 

[clearway]

no problem- she did have one when she carried a square sail on the mizzen but it has been bugging me since i first looked through the destructions- just give me a shout when you are ready for that bit🙂.

 

Keith

[Geowolf]

hi Keith S,

Ahh ok i understand the size is correct, the position has been altered slightly, ok i'll check it when y make this stage,

about Paints thanks a lot for your pictures, i like the english ochre! i'm using a chocolate colour for inside parts, i'm not sure is good (it's similar to the colour used at manual), but it's done 😅

 

About black & White color, i want a worn finish like the pictures at occre web page, leaving small parts of the hull with less Paint; this is the final result in my mind, we'll see the end hahaha.

 

The relationship with your wife is very beatiful, discussing the colors and finish for your ship! my girfriend only says the ships must to be burned and all floor is dirty…

 

Sorry one more question: in my kit i only have the printed A3 with photos (9 slides more or less), but not blueprints at real scale,... in my old Constructo kit i've this blueprints and it's very useful for me, please can you confirm if they're included in the kit or not? if yes i'll contact OCCRE, they're located in Mataró (very close to Barcelona) and maybe they can send it by mail,..

 

keep pushing your Terror!!!  😄👍 

[Keith S]

4 hours ago, Geowolf said:

Sorry one more question: in my kit i only have the printed A3 with photos (9 slides more or less), but not blueprints at real scale,... in my old Constructo kit i've this blueprints and it's very useful for me, please can you confirm if they're included in the kit or not? if yes i'll contact OCCRE, they're located in Mataró (very close to Barcelona) and maybe they can send it by mail,..

 

 

In my kit there was the photos, a view of the deck from above in 1:1 scale, and some rigging diagrams. There was another booklet containing a materials list and some instructions. There were no blueprints.

 

The blueprints I have been using are a copy of the real ones, which I ordered from the British National Maritime Museum. On their website, they offer a service with which you can choose a document from their collection and they will copy and print it for you. They have a few blueprints of "Terror", but you have to be aware that "Terror" was very modified from her original version that no complete blueprints exist of exactly how she looked at the end. However, some of them are very close. The best resource you can use is this blog by a Canadian archaeologist: http://buildingterror.blogspot.com

 

This blog was created by a model builder named Matthew Betts, who is building a large 1:48 scale of Terror. He has done all the research and he has drawn new blueprints of how the ship looked in 1845, which you can look at on his blog. His research is what Occre used to make their model, and also he helped design the full-sized models used on the television programme called "The Terror". 

 

I hope this helps! Your work so far looks very tidy, and the brown colour you have used looks fine! 

[Keith S]

Faced with myriad equally unimportant detailing tasks, I decided to rig the steering lines from the wheel to the tiller. I still need to make the cover over the rudder head. I'm trying to leave the masts alone until I get the book I ordered about rigging and masting. 
 

The kit instructions do not include these, but I attached two blocks to the deck under the wheel assembly, which act as fairleads and keep the the cable from fouling itself around the drum. Surprisingly, this all actually works and the rudder will move when the wheel is turned. However, there is a lot of friction because of course the little blocks aren't proper ones with sheaves in them. I put six turns of the cable around the drum, because I seem to recall reading somewhere this was the minimum standard. I'm a tiny bit disappointed with how it looks because I made little beckets on the outboard blocks to terminate the lines, but when I applied a drop of glue to secure them, it took on the appearance of a blob rather than the carefully tied little knots I thought I was doing. It's too small a thing to be bothered fixing though, and probably wouldn't turn out any different a second time anyway. It's an interesting detail.

 

[clearway]

looks about right Keith as people had to get past them- below is a shot from an old book on ship modelling showing various steering set ups across the ages:-

 

ships at the time of terror were sort of a cross between diagram F and H

Keith

[Geowolf]

On 6/1/2020 at 2:53 PM, Keith S said:

 

In my kit there was the photos, a view of the deck from above in 1:1 scale, and some rigging diagrams. There was another booklet containing a materials list and some instructions. There were no blueprints.

 

The blueprints I have been using are a copy of the real ones, which I ordered from the British National Maritime Museum. On their website, they offer a service with which you can choose a document from their collection and they will copy and print it for you. They have a few blueprints of "Terror", but you have to be aware that "Terror" was very modified from her original version that no complete blueprints exist of exactly how she looked at the end. However, some of them are very close. The best resource you can use is this blog by a Canadian archaeologist: http://buildingterror.blogspot.com

 

This blog was created by a model builder named Matthew Betts, who is building a large 1:48 scale of Terror. He has done all the research and he has drawn new blueprints of how the ship looked in 1845, which you can look at on his blog. His research is what Occre used to make their model, and also he helped design the full-sized models used on the television programme called "The Terror". 

 

I hope this helps! Your work so far looks very tidy, and the brown colour you have used looks fine! 

ok thaks a lot, i think i have the same info in the kit, a bit short for me, sure i'll ask you for some questions 😅, the blog you indicated sure it's very interesting i'll see it

your last photo with wheel details is wonderful, your Terror is going pretty nice!! i love your atttention to the details, sure you must to be proud of your vessel

the mine is a bit stopped at this moment, between my job and my bike i have no time... maybe weekend i'll have more time take it & to upload some photos, im painting the small boats at this moment, testing paints.

 

thanks again and regards,

 

F.

[clearway]

hello keith if you go to matthew kassebaum's hms victory log there is a link posted by mtaylor regarding making furled sails.😉

 

Keith

[Keith S]

Is it the one using silkspan, latex paint, and water? That's what I was keen to try. I saw a guy do it on his model Terror when I did a search online for "Terror Model" once.

[clearway]

nope don't think so he is using a different technique which looks better.

 

Keith

[Keith S]

I'll have to check it out then. I bought some silkspan already for sails.

 

Here is the technique I was considering: https://youtu.be/g_m_VWzk4w8

 

[clearway]

the link on matthews victory log is for a demo on this site but looks cool either way- on the MSW link he actually reduces the sail area to make life easier- mines going to be full sail methinks after watching that😁

 

Keith

[Keith S]

3 hours ago, clearway said:

the link on matthews victory log is for a demo on this site but looks cool either way- on the MSW link he actually reduces the sail area to make life easier- mines going to be full sail methinks after watching that😁

 

Keith

I haven't totally made up my mind. The reason I wanted to do sails furled is because of the steam-engine. It's my impression that the funnel and propeller on Erebus and Terror would have spent most of the time stowed- there is evidence the funnel was removeable and it's a certainty the propeller was. I was hoping to depict the ship in some kind of intermediate state. 

 

"Down funnel; up sail"!

 

[clearway]

i know how you feel- always the same when leaving the instructions well behind- do i go this way or that way🤔-  and terror would most likely have had a jackstay on top of the yards for the square sails with the sail attached to it- not hanging from the bottom of the yards which was earlier practice🤨.

 

Keith

[Keith S]

10 hours ago, clearway said:

i know how you feel- always the same when leaving the instructions well behind- do i go this way or that way🤔-  and terror would most likely have had a jackstay on top of the yards for the square sails with the sail attached to it- not hanging from the bottom of the yards which was earlier practice🤨.

 

Keith

 

I suspect you're right. Period drawings of the Erebus & Terror seem to depict the furled sails ABOVE the yards.

 

Pictures from the television programme show them BELOW the yards, but they also show the yards at an incorrect height, I think. 

 

I will bend my sails to the jackstays. A sketch of Terror on George Back's expedition clearly shows the sails the way you've described. Seems tidier to do it that way anyway. 

 

Here's a screen shot from the T.V. show, which I think is incorrect, and a sketch done from the period, which I believe is accurate, especially given what you say about ships from that time-frame. One would expect the expedition ships to have had the most modern rigging. Even their bells had "1845" stamped on them. I think a lot of these old sketches were drawn using a "camera lucida" so they can be quite accurate even though they are hand-drawn.

[clearway]

yep Keith the sketch is more accurate- the t.v. show would be more accurate for ships of nelsons time! i will use wire eyes and a length od brass wire for the jack stay- watch out occre have a lot of rigging leading wrong way! - lees masting and rigging will show you how, or just ask if in doubt😁

 

Keith

[Keith S]

It think I'm going to take a bit of a break from building this kit. For one thing, it's now Summer and that season only lasts a couple of months here in the subarctic. 

 

For another, I feel like I need to step away from the model because I've become a bit neurotic about it. I have become very particular about the accuracy of the model, and I've learned a lot about the real ship. I've just received all this crap in the post, and it's proper-sized masts, proper-sized belaying pins, proper-sized blocks, all of which will require a lot of work to remove from the model and replace with the correct ones.

 

The block and tackle I built to tie down the boat turns out to look very over-scale, and in fact a 5mm block, which is what size they seem to be in the kit, would be about 15 inches in real life, which is pretty big for little tie-downs. Also the rings on deck they've used to tie down the boats in the kit are not there for that purpose on the real ship. I believe that line of rings along the deck on either side are for tying little "snubbers" to the anchor chain. 

 

I have two more Master Korabel and one Model Shipways boat to build to replace the metal ones

 

The holes the masts are stepped in will need to be enlarged on the fore and main, 

 

All the pin-rails and fife-rails will need to be pulled off and re-made for the smaller pins

 

AND it seems the book I ordered on rigging has been lost by Canada Post, seemingly.

 

Altogether, it looks like doing a proper job on this kit is going to stretch into years of fiddly building. I intend to finish her, but right now I need to step away and re-align my expectations. If anyone is planning on building this kit, I think it's a fine little model for what it is, maybe a beginner's boat, but if you are looking at the "Victory" by Billings, or one of the little Revenue-cutter kits that seem popular on this website, and you think your "Terror" would look nice with THAT level of detail, you're going to be scratch-building everything from the deck up.

 

I'm beginning to feel a bit exhausted by it, and a bit frustrated by the nature of the research that went into the production of this kit. Between the missing parts, oversized hardware, undersized masts, wrong assumptions, and shortcuts, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to work out what measurements to trust and what not to trust. How do we REALLY know how TALL the masts were? They got the diameter wrong. What else don't we know? How much more research will be required to find out? When I first started this model, I thought it would be easy to simply build it like it says on the tin, with a couple of minor corrections from Mr. Betts' research. Well it turns out this is more like scratch- building a model ship, and I'm starting to understand why there aren't very many scratch-built Erebuses and Terrors: It's because it's a "Master's Thesis" level of rooting around (in the British AND Australian sense of the word) and squinting through a magnifying glass at some dockyard matey's scrawly 19th-century handwriting on a shipyard draught to find out anything like the mast heights or the hardware installed or how many boats there were, or what colour the captain's hanky was...&c.

 

 

Sorry this turning into a bit of a rant.

 

I'm still going to finish it, but I'm going to go outside now and work on my real boat, and this will give the various other Keiths who are also working on this model a chance to catch up.

 

I think maybe spending several years getting it right, and only working on it on rainy days, is better than spending only one or two years trying to finish it "on schedule" which is meaningless for a hobby anyway.

[clearway]

Hi Keith- sorry to hear about the lost book- if you need any info in the future just ask(when i get to it there is a standard ratio they used for lengths of masts/ yards- a little "modellers licence" is allowed though😉. Taking a break from her is a good idea if it is doing your nut in- there's gaps of 6-12 months where i havn't touched victory, and i still have to finish a scratch built dredger i started in 1998! 

 

Out of curiosity what type of craft are you building as i grew up around boats being the son of a fisherman and was hopping over bulwarks and anchor chains about as soon as i could walk.

 

take care 

 

Keith

[Keith S]

Hi Keith, I'm just doing a bit of spring maintenance on my little "Weekender" which is a small amateur-built from American plans with a flat bottom and hard chines rather like a decked-over dory. She has a four-sided mainsail with a gaff and a small foresail. I've modified it from the original design with a deeper fin-type keel, like a fixed centre-board. It was designed to be easy to build and easy to sail and isn't a very impressive boat really but I've had her for 18 years now and I like her well enough. I've stuck an old "Neptune" 1.7hp motor, built in the 1940s, on it for a bit of fun. Right now I'm just scraping and varnishing in preparation for the summer.

 

These boats are roundly disparaged by fans of "proper" wooden boats, but I've always had a lot of fun with her. I stay out of deep water (usually) and just poke around the islands near shore.

 

I'm probably not going to wait too long before working on Terror again. I just received a lot of the extra details I ordered at once, and NOT the book about rigging, and was feeling a bit snowed-under. 

[clearway]

good to hear Keith , your soul sounded in a dark place there for a while.

Not a bad little boat and nice seeing a sailboat gaff rigged as opposed to the run of the mill triangular sails you see .

 

Keith

[Keith S]

Wow, well after all my melodramatic whingeing yesterday, I actually found myself in the basement today looking at the dowels I ordered to replace the spars on mini-Terror. 

 

Right then! It turns out the model LOOKS much better with the proper-sized masts. I've replaced the bowsprit, fore, and main. The main is 8mm and the fore&sprit are 6mm. The mizzen is the same 5mm dowel that was provided in the kit. 

 

I addition, I took some needle files to the rather chunky-looking spider band and put proper-sized belaying pins in it. 

 

What a difference. The model is transformed with these improvements. I guess I never realized how much I hated my home-made over-sized spider band. Now the aft skylight looks much more like the real thing. 

 

[clearway]

yep spider band looks a lot better keith- i think occre have the heights of the masts about right but dont fasten anything to them until you have squared the tops and added the bands etc.

 

Keith

[Geowolf]

Keith S, your ship looks great, and under the sunlight the colors are perfect! the details are awesome!

Good work, i want to see it finished!

 

F.

[Keith S]

12 hours ago, clearway said:

yep spider band looks a lot better keith- i think occre have the heights of the masts about right but dont fasten anything to them until you have squared the tops and added the bands etc.

 

Keith

Thanks guys for your encouragement. The spider band is just friction- fit on there for now. I'm planning on trying to yellow it a bit with a felt pen and then varnishing it, which hopefully will make it look bronze. 
 

As for squaring the tops- I this is especially necessary now, not just for appearance, but because the kit's fittings won't fit the larger diameter spars unless I do. It would be a lot easier to know what to do if the post-office hadn't lost my book. 

[clearway]

all sailing ships had the tops of the masts squared at the tops where they doubled- i make the top including crosstrees and trestletrees then trim the top of the mast , first with a knife then fine tune till the top is a nice fit- you will need to carry the flat down the sides for the cheeks and the two pieces of flat timber that run so far down each side- it shows some of what i did earlier in my victory log- also see below which shows varios styles of top through the ages.

 

 

i think terrors will be like the top one fig D

 

Keith

 

 

[Keith S]

Most excellent and much appreciated Keith-thanks! I am in the midst of tracking down my rigging book. I am not going to let Canada Post get away with losing my stuff. It was sent from an American bookstore, and they used Federal Express, with a tracking number and the whole thing, but it handed over to the Post Office at the border and disappeared into thin air. I have documentation from the American side proving FedEx did their job. Now it's on to Canada Post. I hate them. Worst part of being Canadian. Other than the weather.

[NovaStorm]

Keith you are doing a fantastic job. You bashed it way beyond the kit.  More please!

[clearway]

No problem Keith- we are experiencing massive delays with the u.k. postal system because they can't cram the staff into the sorting office due to "social distancing/ safe space rules" at the moment so are having to work with 30% of the staff doing 100% of the work. except for the mizzen build the masts as occre describe but with the squared tops to the masts and i will most likely scratch new tops as the ones in the kit are too small due to having 2mm wide rim added- i will make them to the different shape and add a finer rim on top so deadeyes are at the edge- will do the mizzen as fore and main but with just the crosstrees and trestle trees. i will also be scratching the trees for the top mast as i dont like using ply for them (same with mizzen) probably out of walnut or basswood as they will be painted white.

 

Keith

[Keith S]

The reason I'm worried about the book is that so far Canada Post has been doing quite well; everything else has arrived surprisingly early. 

 

I don't like ply either. There are a lot of ply parts around the bow, such as the bulwark tops and the wooden fairleads on either side of the bowsprit. As I get better at building, I become more fussy about my early work, which leads to a lot of tearing-off and re-do-ing. I have resolved to leave the bulwark tops alone however as this would be a level of tearing off that would be pretty heartbreaking.

 

Speaking of which I am in the process of tearing off all the fife-rails and pin racks, because the holes in the previous ones are so big, the 5mm belaying-pins fall right through them. I've done the more difficult ones: the main-mast fife-rail was the worst because I had to rip off the pump shaft supports, re-make a new pair, and reinstall with the new fife-rail. The foremast ones are an integral part of the windlass assembly, so in this case I cut little plugs out of the old pins, used them to fill the holes, and painted over them. I think it looks quite good. Among other things there is now more room for tweezers between the pins, whereas before they were crammed into place with no room between them. 

 

In 1/75 scale, the belaying pins provided in the kit would be the size of a man's leg in real life, so this is worth doing. Here are some pictures. One must bear in mind that in 1/75 scale, where a grain of dust is the size of a snowball, there are going to be a lot of imperfections that aren't visible to the naked eye. It would be very impolite to press uour eyeball this close to a person's model in real life.

 

This doesn't seem like a huge step forward, but I am now fairly confident that my model comes close to the real ship in terms of location and number of belaying-pins. 

 

 

[clearway]

😁good idea about reducing the hole size- them new belaying pins look a lot more realistic, and as we know from the wreck shot the belaying pins are a brass alloy - still freaks me out because they look like they have only been underwater a week or so! 

 

Keith