Allege d'Arles by kentyler - WAK - CARD

[Tony Hunt]

That's looking fantastic Ken!

[kentyler]

glued down the hatches... used watercolor to paint the upper edges of the frame around them... from the pdf of the Ancre ship I added 6 tie downs, 3 on either side

used a colored pencil to blacken the edges of the piece across the front that forms the back of the 4 pieces that contain the mast

 

ring bolts formed around the end of a mechanical pencil and then cut off and bent over.. there is enough resistence when you push them in the holes that have been drilled for them that there is no need of glue

[kentyler]

so on to the braces in the bow

the critical pieces where the 2 knees that are each side of the front hatch

so i put them on

had to make them 3 times... i have much better luck on thick pieces these days laminating them of a couple of thinner pieces
built them on a copy of the front deck and when they were glued and painted cut them of to mount on the ship

[kentyler]

more braces in the bows, next i think is the elaborate frame on both sides of the bowsprit

[kentyler]

been a while... have to catch up
I built the complex deck structures at the bow on a spare piece of card, and once they were glued cut them off and glued them in place on the deck

[kentyler]

the bracing on both sides of the bow was interesting... some pieces were made of bamboo instead of card, so i folded up the card pieces and painted

my biggest problem what the there was no way to register the exact location pieces should be glued on at. I ended up gluing the piece that goes crosswise on the bow first, and then gluing on the 2 long rails that go from the sides out to the bow, and then gluing the smaller crossbars relative to those
I added the 6 knights heads... rather than the square posts the paper parts supplied i carved them from wood with (sort of) spheres on top (i had to use walnut, as they were to small for bamboo to support the carving) they had a distressing tendency to go shooting off the desk at the slightest touch...never to be seen again

[kentyler]

I've decided to use wire for the rigging... which i normally do. But this time i found colored wire (black for standing rigging, gold for running) as painting it (as i have done in the past) would be to clumsy at this scale. 32 ga and 28 guage will still be overscale...but fine enough to look alright i think

the problem will be how to fasten it to the sails

[kentyler]

making cleats... 2 sides of card, with a center pin of bamboo...i need to be able to put a little tension on them to set up the rigging and just elmers glue flat on the deck doesn't cut it

[kentyler]

[kentyler]

so i am making up the blocks out of paper... the cleats for the decks i tried several things, and eventually ended up carving them from the wood of an old ruler...so to get 9 cleats i suspect i made at least double that many..lost on the floor, the ends breaking off... i carved them and doused them with superglue to try and strengthen them a little...and then just pushed them into holes drill in the deck...no need for glue...the rigging will be black and "yellow" jewelry wire... i'm trying the harold hann trick of having the rigging be pre colored and not having to paint it. the gold wire i'm using could be thought to be "manila" if you're charitable.

[kentyler]

Second time around the cleats for the deck came out much better. I drilled holes in the mast to fasten the three that go there. I have the ring bolts in the deck, now we need to finish the mast and sails, as i try to build as much of the rigging as possible before i fasten the masts into the deck...

[kentyler]

[KrisWood]

Hi @kentyler,

 

It's been a long time since we last talked! I'm glad to see you're still working miracles in paper, and will follow this thread with great interest.

 

Did you by chance keep photos of your gunboat Philadelphia? I found this thread by searching for that one while trying to help a friend with a paper ship modeling project.

 

Anyway, I hope you are well, and keep up the excellent work!

[kentyler]

going to keep working on this while I build the Kogge Van Bremen

Putting the reef points in the sail

i use wire for rope

you can tie a knot in the wire for one side...but for the life of me i cannot tie the knot on the other and have it be tight against the sail.

so i am tieing the knot in another piece of wire.. i will have to superglue this false knot against the sail and then trim the ends

[kentyler]

Back after a big gap. Built the capstan...which is just a little past my ability to see... Decided to try "pinning" parts, so a small bamboo pin was used up the center... bars are also bamboo. Since I am painting everything it gives me some freedom. I prefer to roll parts like the center of the capstan rather than to form the cylinders by gluing a paper part in a circle. You can see how i extended the kit part to be longer...and then rolled it into the right sized barrel.

 

A couple of the bollards got knocked off in the interim, one was found...i'm adding a "pin" to it, a new one had to be carved from walnut, so i made the pin an integral part of it

[kentyler]

daily changes.

I gave up on the paper block at the mast top with 2 sheeves in it and built it out of wood. instead of trying to make it as small as needed i used some oversized pieces of bamboo and after they glue had dried i trimmed it to size. i did add faceplates from the paper parts to get the appearance of the "slots"

There are wooden blocks on the mast with 4 pulleys in in them, but the size was too small for me to cut the 4 slots, so i just cut one slot across the top and all 4 lines will go through that. i think it will give the right illusion.

I did get some more reference material.

The good news is i now know everything i need to know about the rigging, and all its details.

The bad news is...

[kentyler]

So, taking the bull by the horns...we start on the rigging 

i mated an old hand drill with the minature drill holder to make something to use to twist the rope

i tried 2 strand and 3 strand...

i've decided i like the antique white...i've never found a way of doing the running rigging unbleached that satisfied me...maybe this will work out

so i started with the big 4 sheave blocks at the base of the mast

they are way to small for me to think of actually inserting the pulleys, but my "fake" slot seems to have worked

so i guess have to commit and starting gluing things

i'm never quite sure i'm doing the rigging in an order that won't trap me in the end

my ambition is to someday build a model where the masts can be taken down and then rerigged like a real ship

[kentyler]

another day in rigging land

After all my worries I ended putting the bottom block on upside down  its a sign of age that i no am no longer willing to remove it and rebuild the whole thing "correctly"

Going to have to wait until I can get all the rigging on the main mast, and hang the sail as well, i think, before i dare glue the mast in

So I'm back to working on the reef points...they drive me crazy

I can tie a little knot on one side...but not successfully on the other

That stumped me for a long time

Then i realized it didn't actually have to be a knot, it just sort of had to look like one

so now i make a couple of tight coils and sort of mash them together into a blob on the off side...sort of looks like a knot

[manic8479]

Your attention to detail is amazing.  great build so far

[kentyler]

on to some of the hard bits

since my wire "rope" tends to come unravelled so easily when making loops or knots, i tried twisting some to the white up a little harder.

i found these great little battery powered led lights..bright and helpful to old eyes, but they tended to fall forwards (often onto the model) so i glued some card extensions onto their bases.

The sail has 3 eylets attached to its edge, I started by first bending them to shape....but then it proved impossible to attach them to the bolt rope. So I had to start with a longer piece and loop it through from each side, and then tighten it up. Nice thing about wire is that often you can do things like this without having to get out the krazy glue, the ends just fold back over the bolt rope, get clipped off and we're ready to go.

I finally finished all the pesky little reef points and was able to trim them to a common length.

Next we have to see about lacing the sail to it's long, long yard.

 

 

 

[kentyler]

poco a poco

i decided, for cosmetic reasons, to use the same holes the edge bolt lacing used to fasten the sail to the mast

even so, i had to open them up a little with a bamboo awl before i could thread a new line through them

Edited September 20, 2021 by kentyler

[KrisWood]

Looking great! She reminds me a lot of La Diligente.

[kentyler]

Hi Kris, long time.

 

[kentyler]

now for some fiddly bits

card blocks at this scale are painful

i thread them on a wire to keep track of them

cut something of a slot by starting with a knife cut and then using the corner of a square file

this is rigging that is not indicated on the model plans, it comes from the Ancre plans

[kentyler]

in which i come up with a clever idea

cursing and making more blocks

the paper is just a little on the soft side and the blocks are too small to hold and do anything with

then the lightbulb went off

i flattened down some soft wood (chopstick)

cut a slot (that will eventually be the hole in the block)

and glued the sides of the block on either side

and it worked, the blocks are easy to cut off and they are "hard" enough

to try and trim down the ends so they don't look so square