HM Cutter Lady Nelson by KingDavid - Amati/Victory Models - 1/64

[KingDavid]

So finally i made up my mind and publish here my first ship blog of the HM cutter Lady Nelson By Victory/Amati

i purchased this kit from cornwallmodelboats.com back in 2016 started to work only around January 2018 for a couple of months

then stopped and came back to it a year later, and now i am finally getting closed to the finishing line (almost)

so what i've decided to do, is uploading here kind of "retrospective blog" to get more involved in this wonderful forum

and just maybe help other members with their kits!

 

So here we go- first photo just the starting point, i won't repeat the unboxing again, but sharing here a few insigths:

1.This kit in my mind is wonderfully desgined by the one and only chris watton, and i truely think  for the over all quality it is very well worth the price! 

2. However i found it to difficult for the absolut beginner. 

3. this kit bigest flaw is probably in the nonexsitent instructions and its rather scetchy drowings.

4. the fittings and second planking are outstanding, but for some of the parts a kind of wood which is rather crumbling and not realy solid is used.

5. i felt as i moved forward that the amont of some of the fittings is very limited i.e second planking, many o the fitting,AMATI please be more generous!

6. no sail plan! , i think a sail plan that could help modelers make sails on their on, could add a lot more to this kit!

 

ok so here is the first photo taken in 1/2018 upon opening:

 

To be continued soon, David

 

i decided finally to add a few more photos that i found, showing the content of the box-or: the "unboxing"

 

David

 

 

 

 

[GrandpaPhil]

Welcome!  Looking forward to seeing progress.

 

You can probably take a look at other cutters, on the forum, and adapt a sail plan (most Royal Navy vessels were pretty standardized), if you wanted to.

Edited March 25, 2020 by GrandpaPhil

[tkay11]

I got my sail plan from Steel’s Elements and Practice of Rigging, along with Marquardt’s book on 18th Century Rigs and Rigging so that I could understand the structure and making of the various sails. The Steel is available at low cost from Cambridge University Press and Marquardt can often be found on eBay. You can see the results for my Sherbourne (a very similar cutter to Lady Nelson) on page 8 of my build log under the title 'Making Sails'.

Tony

[KingDavid]

Hello fellow modelers,

Please excuse me for my disappearance, i just noticed that it's been awhole  month since i last posted, i was really distructed by the covid-19 events and the difficult circumstances that followed,  

Hoping things are getting a little better now, i decided to resume my blog, i will upload a sequence of photos i made during the built starting in 1/2018, at that point i since this ws my first built,  i started following the plans/drowings but soon discovered vossiewulf wonderful lady nelson blog and started to watch closely on every step and move that he made and really help me out during the early stages of this built. so one of my decisions right after fairing the bulkheads was to fill the gaps between them with balsa wood. i chose to do that because of three main reasons: 1. to discover the boat shape and lines. 2. to add some wheight to the model, (i think its an important point) 3. and most of all, to help out with the next stage, the planking which i really feared from.. 

I must say that even though it took about a month of work i really enjoyed solving this puzzle which resulted in something much closer to a ship then just a frame. what i didn't like so much though, is using the balsa wood...

yes i know it's cheap and easy to find, but it has the tendency to crumble and it creats too much saw dst..next time i will try a different type of wood for this mission.

 

Anyway here are some photo from back then showing the process

 

To be continued (soon)

 

David

 

 

P.S.Thank both Toni and Phil for your reccomandations regarding the sail plan, i will definitely check this information.

 

[KingDavid]

Hello all,

so right after completing the somewhat complicated work in curving,  sculpting and ultimatley fitting each balsa block (it turned out to be really a guessing game in order to find the real curves and lines) i was dissapointed to find that i wraped the keel sometime through the built..i discovered it when i tried put the false deck and i noticed that it is somewhat off...it wasn't too bad though, so i choped just a little bit of the dent that suppose to be inserted and hold the bow section of the true keel and just guled it in place, thinking my problems are over i put it aside to cure . conclusion: always use a metal square or something similar to make sure every bulkhead or filling is 100% square, i relayed on measurment and my eyes, tried to make sure im doing fine, but had to double check....

here are some more photos from that stage.

 

 

David

[KingDavid]

Before attaching the false deck into place i left an opening, a well underneath the main hatch, i saw this practice in several posts and decided that a more authentic appearence rather then just the usual blocked one. when i glued the false deck i made sure to follow the shear and the various curves.. 

at that stage eventhough i mostly followed the instructions i noticed that some modelers prefare to leave the attachment of the true keel to a later stage, say after the planking, to avoid demage, i couldn't see a way out of it, since the upper bulwarks are suppose to be inserted and fixed into the slot on the bow area, so i glued the true keel into its place , followed by glueing the upper bulwarks. i bent them by immersing them in hot water and then fixed them in a pre-made dummy, basically a set of nails that i nailed into a flat piece of wood. it did work well enough. but as soon as it dried and released both bulwarks for test fitting, i noticed to my horror that the starboard side is uneven and somewhat longer, has a longer curve compared with the portside. this came as a bit of a bad surprise but was probably a result of the slight bending/wrapping of the keel....this wasn't good at all but i didn't give up- (i learned over time the a modeler needs to be resourceful at all times) i decided to cut a small piece of the plywood some 2 mm and inserted it to the slot in the bow section, and the glue the bulwarks from either side, making sure that the gun ports are parallel and aligned or else...

couldn't find  photos of the correction that i made, but believe me its there...

 

David

[KingDavid]

Hello again

Excuse me again for the sudden intervals-sign of the times

I would like to post now the rest of my build log. as you can see on my last photo i arrived to a the point where i managed to glue the gun port strips in place and well aligned as well as as theinner counter frams that eventually are supposed to be atached to the transom. but right there i encountered a problem that repeats itself in this model-something is wrong with the size and shape of the inner counter frames, and they are shorter then they should be. so i then realised that its maybe better to leave to a later stage than to cause some damage and soon after i decided to leave it as is.

i didnt continue because i felt that a lot more experience and tools and much more time will be needed all of which i didn't have ( had to get back to real work) , so i just put it aside in a small box. but eventually i returned again in early 1/2019 and picked it up from where i stopped, and move to the part many of us fear of: the planking. this was a  very bumpy ride let me tell you. i'm just not really gifted (or so i felt) to coplete this task. okay so i looked through many of the lady nelson shipbuild logs here on MSN but none was really the step-by-step that i needed. so finally i found such a build log on AMATI's FB page done by Leon from modelers shipyar now free of charge to everyone. he gives a kind of set of buildlog, and imo the best part of his log is the basic instruction of how to do the planking , the mathematical basis, that give some sense to this process

btw, the wood provided for the first planking (lime i think) is very easy to work with, really ideal

so here are a few photos from that stage which took a while, few weeks or more to complete.

 

[KingDavid]

I felt a real sense of pride when i managed to finish the first planking, it is a kind of wood which surrenders easily, but as can be easily seen in the photos, there were still many gaps and some problems which i decided to solve with some filler stucco which proved to be a really good one. i sanded the hull felt really good, the future looked bright ahead- until i started the next phase-the second planking and things started to get more difficult. now that the first planking or the 'skin' was in place according to Mr Leon from modelers shipyard each plank is tapered at the pint where the bow starts to become round so bending/tapering is more according to what you see. 

The wood used for the second planking is of a very high quality, but it is much harder and thicker than the one for the first layer. it was a real struggle to find a way to shape it and bend it. i strated with the upper bulwark so it was more straight-forward, but below that line i had to find a way to taper,bend and glue this thing the best that i could. for bending i soaked each strip after tapering it in hot water, then clamped it to the upper bulwark and let it dry.  then, i glued the tip of each plan to the right place in the bow with CA glue and then took a flat iron, rubbed the plank again with hot water, and then pressed it against the bow section where there is a kind of concave part then once the plank got the right shape i glued it to place. you can imagin how though it was, some planks resisted more but most of the problem was with the kind of glue that i used, it was to runny and dripped all over the place and caused many problems. ! so complicated it was, im surprised i didn't lose my mind and my sanity altogather. another HUGE problem was when i discovered that i didn't leave any room at the bow for the second planking which caused the entire layer to portrude and hide the front keel and caused it to look very ugly.

this took like a couple of months to complete. 

oh well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger...it was a very interesting phase which i'm glad i managed somehow to overcome...

here are few photos from the second planking, wish i took some more..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2020 by KingDavid