HM Cutter Cheerful 1806 by glbarlow - FINISHED - 1:48

[glbarlow]

Not wasting anytime I moved on to the stern. Every stern on every model has been an adventure for me. I’m not trying not to over- optimize and going very slowly. Chucks instructions are easy and clear. Well, the words are easy and clear, but the work isn’t simple and nothing like any kit I’ve ever done - can you say scratch build…

Chuck provides a set of stern frames as part of the starter kit wonderfully and precisely cut in boxwood. The fun part of these is that apparently boxwood likes a suntan, the laser char though light in color was not at all easy to remove, especially as I’m trying hard not to take too much off. My approach was to skin each frame by frame (not taking to much) before they are installed on the ship. So sand and sand and sand I did for each of the 12 stern frames.

From the one on the right to the one on the left I finally got them all done with the skin gone from my forefinger.

Then its gluing Z and its three ZZ friends to port and starboard, most of these will be faired off but you have to start off right to get it right.

Next its creating my version of Rusty’s pencil lead marking jig to identify the line to fair. That’s the easy part. Next is the semi-panicked step of grinding it down to near that line with my Dremel tool with sanding drums. Go slow Glenn..don’t go to near the line Glenn...don’t drop it Glenn…

After managing not to do any of those things its back to sanding to shape up the combined four Z and ZZ frames making up the outer stern (it is not done yet in the photo).

After adding the interior X and Y frames I finally reach a new point of the build. From here on I really want to just do everything once if that’s ok.

 

Next up stern ports and the start of the square tuck. I finally get to see what one of those are. So far I know it starts with a triangle so ….

[Rustyj]

Ouch! Sorry to hear about the battle damage your first hull received. I'm so glad you reordered and are back in business. Great job on the winch by the way!

[glbarlow]

42 minutes ago, Rustyj said:

back in business

Thanks Rusty, it was nice to see something new today. I've spent the evening looking at your log and others sorting out how to get those stern ports lined up, that's tomorrow's fun.

[Ryland Craze]

I thought I was seeing double in the picture of the two hulls.  I could not "like" that post.  Removing the laser char has never been a favorite chore of my builds.  Your Cheerful is back on track nicely and I look forward to seeing more progress.

[glbarlow]

3 minutes ago, Ryland Craze said:

I could not "like" that post. 

Yeah, it took me a while to be able to post it, I had to get past where I’d been stopped before I could do it, not to mention some passing of time;-/ 

 

Yes, laser char is never fun but for some reason the little bit on those boxwood fames was much harder than removing it from the hull Or the stem and keel pieces. I don’t what the deal is with them.

[DelF]

Oh no! I feel your pain. I'm just glad you've been able to get back beyond the point when disaster struck on the first hull.

 

Btw, your fairing looks very smooth - I'd like to learn more about the marking jig. Can you point me to any info on the forum?

 

Thanks

 

Derek

[glbarlow]

5 hours ago, DelF said:

the marking jig.

Thanks for the reply, I’ve never had this happen in all my previous models. It was traumatic. 

 

The fairing took three days, both times, with this single planked ship It’s critical to have a smooth run plus the ports sills also have to be be faired to the hull. 

 

The marking jig is nothing but a piece of board with pencil lead glued/taped to the end.  I ran the board along the hull frames to mark the run of the planks onto the stern frames to establish the starting point for fairing them. It was Rusty’s clever way to mark this line. 

[DelF]

Simple but clever. Thanks Glenn and Rusty.

[garthog]

Glad to see you’re back on track - although maybe, if you repair the first one, you can build a scratch-built fleet!  Seriously, the shaping you did on the stern looks perfect.

 

garthog

[glbarlow]

39 minutes ago, garthog said:

you can build a scratch-built fleet!

My son wants me to cover the first one, add a little ballast and float it in the fountain - I told him to be my guest.:-D

 

[Thistle17]

I too am building Cheerful. As I rate myself higher than a "newbie", but by no  means a professional, there is so much to learn and do that is relatively intracate on this model it bears proceeding with a good deal of respect even though it is a kit of a higher level with quality components. I am detailing out the deck fittings at this point. It might be of use to you to know that the decking I found harder than the hull planking. I think one of its characteristics is that there is no denying its quality assessment as it stares at you. Also beware the widlass is tricky. About 60 parts of small dimensions where tolerance build up becomes a large factor. The good news is that once you reach this level of the build it gets even more satisfying.

Joe

[glbarlow]

Thanks for the input, its good to know there's another builder out there, especially one ahead of me.  I used the time between starts on my 1st and 2nd hull to complete the winch and have a post on it you may find useful. It was fun to put together I thought, but you're correct, we have to do it right to make it work. It's an amazing design by @Chuck no matter how you look at it.  It looks great finished.

[DelF]

On 6/4/2020 at 8:06 PM, glbarlow said:

 I used the time between starts on my 1st and 2nd hull to complete the wench

I hope that's a typo! Or are you secretly into a different sort of model building 🤪??

[glbarlow]

41 minutes ago, DelF said:

I hope that's a typo!

It's a different sort of something 😄

Definitely a typo - auto-correct just drives me nuts.

 

[glbarlow]

Short log for a lot of work. As noted by @Chuck instructions and multiple Cheerful logs this part, seemingly simple, takes a lot of “fiddling” as my English friends say. I’ll be honest and say while I finished with 2 sills and 2 lintels, more than 4 were used in the making of this stern.

Cutting out the stern pattern from a copy of the plans is the first step to get a feel and mark where they go. But that in itself isn’t enough.

I modified my port shaper for these smaller ports, its a great jig to both get the size right, keep the port squared, and with the help of various levels to get the sill parallel with the waterline (matching to another level not shown here setting at midship positioned bow to stern). And for those taking notes, the level was straight when I wasn't posing it for photos. 

Definitely an opportunity to demonstrate patience and taking the time to get it right. I almost settled at one point with one slightly off but quickly said no I’m not doing that.

 

Though still a bit more fairing to do, including the top of the frames, but that comes later.  In the end I got there, a little smarter than when I started.

[MEDDO]

Definitely great progress here.  I only hope I can do as well when I start up my Cheerful 

[JpR62]

You did very well. Thank you for sharing your methods. It will be of great help 😀

[glbarlow]

Completing the square tuck is the final step of building the ships skeleton. I was glad to learn the plan template as I cut it out from a sheet of 1/32 cedar fit with just a few adjustments. So far everything is standing up to being where it;s supposed to be.

The next step is planking the wales by first marking where then go. I started with the reference lines and then smoothed out the curve until it looked right.  I found that if something looked wavy I could just remove the nail at that point having placed ones to either side of it. Definitely don’t want a nail in every frame to allow it to flow. I took my time until I felt good about it then did the other side.

 

I love it when a plan comes together. Having done all that, I thought lets just check the distance between each port and the wales agains the plans. I used my millimeter ruler and I wasn’t just close, I was right on the distance - on both sides.  How the hell did that happen.  I have to attribute it to the design, I don’t think I’m near that good.

After painting the gun ports I started on the wales. I’ve never done a single planked ship before, really hoping I can get the planking tight enough so it doesn’t look like a sieve. I sort of wish the wood was long enough to have a single run for this lower layer of the wales, but I might as well get used to running short planks. I’ll be doing a lot of that from here on in. It took several hours to get one side done.

 

The small 1/16rh piece marks the lower edge of the ports and the distance to plank between that and the wales. I came pretty close to the goal of leaving a 1/64th rabbit above the piece - I never really thought about how small 1/64th is.  I used a piece of my batten, coincidently 1/64th thick as a bit of a tool to measure.

 

I’ve lightly sanded the stem and keel. I’ll put on another coat of wipe on poly later, no need at this point. I'm starting to think of posting smaller photos, these high quality large photos show too much 😕

 

Almost every step something I haven’t done before, it’s an adventure. Hoping it looks like it’s suppose to look…

[DelF]

4 hours ago, glbarlow said:

Hoping it looks like it’s suppose to look…

It's looking great! I see Admiral Cochrane is supervising construction from the windowsill - I'm sure he approves.

 

Derek

[glbarlow]

5 hours ago, DelF said:

Admiral Cochrane is supervising

Yes, the admiral is always checking my work. He’s a little guy at 1:64th and thinks this 1:48 seems way too big for him. 😂

[glbarlow]

It’s starting to look like a ship. Every single plank takes time.

The good news is the time on the fairing was well spent. I’ve only lightly sanded so far, I’m going to wait until everything above the wales is complete for doing any serious sanding.

 

It’s going to take a really long time to finish above the wales. Not only maintaining the 1/64th rabbit on the sides of the ports, but also cutting the proper angles of each plank between the ports. Slow and careful.

 

Having finished the run below the ports on both sides I decided to give myself a little reward for the day by planking up the sheer at the stern. Right now there are two 1/16th strips in that run flush with the other planks. Later I’ll cut a fashion strip above both those, no idea how but I’ll figure it out then I guess.

 

So back to cutting properly angled lengths of planks in very precise lengths, 64 of them to be exact, well 60 more since I did that stern second to day.  I won’t complain about kit gunport patterns ever again.

 

I'm hoping this is how its supposed to look...

[JpR62]

Nice work !

Do not rush, take your time and carefully execute each step are really the golden rules and we can see the results here. Superb!

[DelF]

Very neat work!

[MEDDO]

Looking great it is really starting to come together

[Chuck]

I agree...really nice progress.  Everything is looking ship shape!!!

[glbarlow]

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate it. This model is a challenge for me, but it's a joy to watch as it comes together.

 

[Bossman]

Very nice Glenn. I have the Cheerful up next and will be watching your build closely. 

[glbarlow]

I’ve finished Starboard above the wales. It’s very slow going measuring out each of the 4 planks (one just 1/16th, the others 5/32) between the ports to keep the 1/64th rabbet. I've only done preliminary sanding I don't need to go to far on that as yet.

I wish I could impart some sage wisdom on cutting these, but its just grinding it out with careful measure and cutting. More finely and carefully than I’ve ever had to do on any kit. I finally determined the best way for me is using my Veritas mini- chisels to cut the planks on carefully measured and marked lines using the sides as the ports to mark the angle from the in-board side.

 

I will have to build up the sill on port 3 by 1/64th. I have a plan, but it will keep until I thin out the bulwarks and before I put in the false deck, so a while from now. I’ve already tried it, it works. Still it’s pretty amazing to me with all that it took with aligning port sills and wales to the frame to get here that I was that close to being right. Once again I attribute it to the design, Chuck's great monograph, and some peaceful patience on my part (something I’m that good at). In case you missed it earlier, the green gaffer tape (a photographers best friend, it leaves no residue and is thicker than blue painters tape) is to protect the keel while the ship is in the Amati keel holder for working angles.

 

Wondering if I should I apply a coat of wipe-on poly to this completed side above the wales, or wait until later.  I’ve already lightly sanded parts of the stem and keel and plan to re-apply poly there after I’ve completed the above wales planking and stern before starting on planking below the wales. Any thoughts on the timing of the poly? I will be sanding it more later, just don’t want to over-sand at this point. This single planking stuff can cause some anxiety knowing what I see now is what I’ll always see…
 

Now on to port side…

[Rustyj]

Looks great Glenn. A coat of poly now is what I normally do. 

[VTHokiEE]

Nice work so far! Hopefully I didn't miss this from earlier, but is the planking pattern laid out in the plans?