ALFRED by schooner - BlueJacket Shipcrafters - 1:96 - Continental Navy Frigate

[schooner]

Deck Framing and Furniture for Quarterdeck

 

 

 

The deck beams and framing are done for the quarterdeck (which really pushes the term quarterdeck since it take up just over half of the ship’s length).

 

 

The deck furniture is also done:

 

 

 

Next up will be installation of the deck furniture and fabricating the margin planks and then it will be time to plank the decks.

[schooner]

Deck Furniture in place

 

All the deck furniture is now in place. A couple of the items are dry-fitted and will be permanently attached one the planking or rigging is done.

 

[MrBlueJacket]

Looking really good, Tim

 

Nic

[schooner]

Thanks Nic, should continue to be a lot of fun  - until the rigging starts

[whitejamest]

Lovely work, it's really coming together! 

[schooner]

Thanks!

[schooner]

Fitting the Margin Planks

 

My planking strips are 3/32” wide. I needed the margin planks to be a little wider and was able to find some 1/8” strip of the same thickness.

 

The curvature at the bow is too severe to edge-bend the strips so I had to cut it out of sheet material. I traced the forward edge of the deck off of the plans on to a piece of paper to serve as a template. I only took it as far aft as the point where the planks will run straight. After a bit of trimming I had an acceptable fit:

 

 

I then traced the outboard curve of the paper onto my sheet material, used a Dremel sanding drum to get a pretty close fit to the traced line and then, kept test firing the wood onto the deck, sanding and filing until the wood had a good fit. Next I set a compass at 3/32” and followed the outside of the curve to set the inside curve and the width of the forward, curved plank:

 

 

 

A scarp joint was cut into the aft end of the forward plank and transferred to the forward edge of the next piece moving aft:

 

 

The margin planks for the main deck are now in place:

 

 

 

[schooner]

Starting the Deck Planking

 

I’ve got the centerline portion done. It’s been a real 2-steps forward, 1 back as I relearn how to do this. It would have been easier to plank the centerline and then add the hatches on  top of it and cut holes for the bitts but it is really hard to clean up sawdust and debris from the gun deck with all the beams in place so I decided to do it this way.

 

 

Next I’ll fill in the bow area back to the 3rd beam and then add 1 or 2 planks along each side.

Edited February 25, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Main Deck planking completed

 

The planking for the main deck is completed - I’ll wait until after it’s done on the quarterdeck before I clean all the saw dust out of the gun deck.

 

 

 

 

Next up will be installing the short vertical bulkhead that divides the main deck from the quarterdeck.

[schooner]

Deck Planking Finished

 

The instructions call for making the vertical bulkhead at the aft end of the main deck from the scribed decking material but I thought that would be a hassle trying to get a good fit at the outboard ends so I used planking strips placed vertically and topped with another strip that covered the ends and served as a flush piece for the quarterdeck planks to but up against.

 

 

The quarterdeck planking went on without any problems and the reveals provide decent visibility down into the gun deck.

[schooner]

Things start to get complicated

 

I thought my next step would be per the sequence laid out in the instructions, i.e. adding the details along the bulwarks working fore to aft, so I thought I would start with the catheads (the davits that the anchors hang from) but I ran into a problem that will take me in a different direction and hopefully not into a rathole.

 

The problem is that the plans only show the catheads on the outboard profile (the side view of the ship) and since the catheads are located where the bow has it’s very bluff curve I could not figure out where they get placed (an overhead view would have solved this problem).

 

After a lot of looking at the instructions, the plans, build logs of contemporary models and the instructions for ModelExpo’s SYREN, which are, hands-down, best set of instructions I have ever seen, I finally figured out that the catheads need to be above the hawse bolster (the holes where the anchor hawsers pass thru the hull), which in turn is part of the whole complicated head railing assembly. (BTW, the SYREN’s instructions are available online , as are the ones for all the ModelExpo kits on their website)

 

After a lot more studying I think I understand how the head rails go together (every set of instructions I looked at said the head railings were the most difficult and complicated part of 18th century ship models) I realized I would have to tackle the head railings  but before I could do that I needed to assemble the bowsprit for 3 reasons: 1) I want to rig the gammoning (a bunch of figure 8’s  that lash the bowsprit to the hull) before adding the railings since it will be very difficult to do it after they are in place  2) I want to ensure that the gammoning is vertical which will depend on the slot in the stem the “hole” in the grating, and the chocks on the bowsprit, and 3) because I need to ensure that the figurehead, which although decorative is a key part of the head rail assembly, is not going to interfere with bowsprit which sits right above it.

 

So bottom line: I’ll be departing from the build sequence in the instructions because of all the interrelationships of the “stuff” around the bow/stem I’m going to try to stay out of my own way and avoid bad language when finding out I should have done step 10 before step 2, so to speak. I’ll try do document each step and also what doesn’t work for those who may decide to try this kit.

 

To get started on the bowsprit I had to do some plastic surgery where it will pass thru the bulwarks. When I added them I left a gap that needed filling at it’s bottom so the bowsprit will sit at the proper angle:

 

 

I tapered the aft end of the bowsprit so it will sit properly (it, of course has not been cut to length yet) I also filled in the gammoning slot which had been cut in the stem early on since I will have to drill out a new one based on where the head rail grating sits. You can slo see a paper template for the the tailboards which I plan on making from scratch so they will be a better fit for my stem that the kit-provided britannia pieces.

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Bowsprit & Jib boom

 

I finished up the bulwark area around the bowsprit by raising the stem to support it and then penciled in the locations for all the “stuff” that goes on the bowsprit. The height of the bowsprit cap is from the plans but I had to go to AOS Essex for the width, about 40% of the height is good:

 

 

The instructions call for tapering the jib boom, which I did. I recommend skipping that step for 2 reasons; the tapering is not noticable on such a small dowel, and more importantly, the tapered end lost its' rigidity - it would have been a huge hassle trying to keep it straight while under tension from multiple directions, assumming it didn't break. I redid it without tapering. Here’s the completed bowsprit and jib boom:

 

 

Here’s the bowsprit dry fitted in place. The paper you can see on the stem below it is a template I’m going to use to scratch the trailboards.

 

Edited November 29, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Starting the Cheeks and Trail Boards

 

The cheeks are large structural assemblies that help strengthen the stem. There are usually 2 parts; one on the stem and one that continues along the bow, on or above the wales. The cheeks on the stem have another layer called the trail boards which usually have some decoration, or at least some moulding.

 

The kit provides a brittania metal piece for the trail boards. It is different than the shape of the tailboards on the plans and from the general shape of my stem area:

 

 

I traced the trail board from the plans, at least as much of it as was shown, the outermost part literally disappears up the figurehead's backside but the general shape can be assumed. I like this shape better so I will go with it:

 

 

Since the cheek under the trail board was supposed to be trimmed to match the shape of the trail board I will effectively be combining them into one piece. I shaped it out of 1/8” stock and glued them on each side of  the stem:

 

 

 

Once in place the stem cheeks should be tapered to that their outboard ends will fit inside the opening on the back of the figurehead. The kit-supplied brittania figurehead was a pleasant surprise. It needed no cleanup at all and the detail is amazing:

 

 

 

The rear opening of the figurehead is well done, the lower half is slightly wider to accommodate the combined widths of the stem and both cheeks and the upper half is slightly narrower where all the rails will fit into (hopefully):

 

 

After tapering the figurehead sits snuggly on the end of the stem, and although I don’t show it here, its’ top is right about 1/8” below the bowsprit, as called for in the plans.

 

Edited April 6, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Finishing the Cheeks and Hawse Bolsters

 

The half of the cheeks that rest on the hull were made of 1/8” thick strip wood the same width as the stem cheeks and the moulding was made from plastic rod. The hawse bolsters were placed at the outboard corners of the head grating:

 

 

 

 

 

After painting and the addition of the figurehead the stem is pretty well set with the exception of the slot for the gammoning, which as can be seen, I’m still in the process of drilling and filing out:

 

 

 

The instructions call for drilling out the hawse holes as one of the last steps in the build which did not make a lot of sense to me since it would have been really hard to clean up all the tear-outs on the inside of the bulwarks with all the rigging in place so I did it now. To help cover up the tear-outs I added interior bolsters which I have seen on other builds from this era. 

 

Edited April 30, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

 

Head Grating, Bowsprit and Gammoning

 

I was going to try to fit all the timbers that support the grating befor installing it but it quickly became obvious that the easiest way for me to do it was to put the grating permanently in position and then fit the timbers individually.

 

Here is the grating in place - the aft edge is even with the main deck and it has an “upslope” as it goes to join the stem. The bowsprit has also been pinned and glued in place so that I can rig the gammoning before the rails and timbers make it harder than it has to be:

 

 

 

The gammoning went on easily although it took me a while to understand what the directions meant by each figure 8 “crossing over” the previous one. When you rig it if you make sure that each loop over the bowsprit is forward of the previous one and that each loop thru the gammoning slot on the stem is aft of the previous one then you will be all set.

 

 

 

Edited April 30, 2021 by schooner

[Thunder]

This is an excellent and inspiring build. Hawse holes in a very unusual place, not in a location i have seen before. usually much closer in to the stem.

[schooner]

Hi Thunder, thanks for the kind words.

I had the same thoughts about the hawse locations, like you I'm used to seeing them closer to the stem and maybe on the deck below. My guess as to why this is setup this way was that ALFRED was built as a merchant ship and converted to a light frigate in a relatively short time. One of the big differences between her and purpose-built warships was that, although the ALFRED had a capstan, it did not go down to the gun deck and was apparently used just to haul the anchor hawser up from the cable tier. To actually raise the anchor a windlass was used (it will be fitted after the mast rigging is done) probably because merchant ships did not have the manpower to operate multi-deck capstans and it must have been a very slooooow way to raise the anchor. When the windlass is fitted it's heads are directly in line aft of the hawse holes, well out board of the the bits so I'm guessing they must have used some type of line stoppers to take the strain while the ship was at anchor. Definitely not the effecient set up on the ships you have modeled.

 

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Bow Rails half done

 

The kit provides some 1/16” x 1/16” britannia strip metal for the bow rails. It is nice stuff to work with in this type of application. It cuts and sands easily and you can easily bend it into almost any shape with no spring back. The only thing you have to watch out for is that it will not stand up to multiple bendings - if I know it will take me several tries to get the right shape I use a piece of brass rod or wire as a template and then bend the britannia to match it.

 

I was playing around with the britannia when it occurred to me that it would work well to make the small timbers that run from the stem to the underside of the bow grating. The timbers are supposed to be concave and making them from wood involves a lot of trial and error but the britannia is exactly the width call for in the plans and it was an easy job to fit all 6:

 

 

 

The next step was to place the lower rails along the outboard sides of the grating, pretty simple since there are no bends. The only problem is on all the period models I’ve seen they usually have some sort of decorative moulding on their outboard face which would be pretty hard to do with only 1/16” to work with. I was going to try it with some thin plastic rod like I used on the cheeks but I found some thin u-shaped channel material (Evergreen Scale Model .060" channel, item # 261) in my plastic stash that fits the outboard edge perfectly. After trying several color combinations of buff, black and gold I settled on buff and black:

 

 

 

I can’t do the upper timbers and rails yet because the upper rail fits against the cathead knee so I will have to put the catheads in first. I also needed to order more britannia strip from BlueJacket since using them on the timbers did not leave enough for the second half.

Edited May 8, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Catheads

 

The catheads were fabricated out of 1/8” square stock.

 

The inner piece had to be notched to fit over the main rail and the waterway.

The top piece has fake sheaves (2 pairs of holes, each pair linked with a “trench” connecting them). Plastic strip was used to make up the exterior sheave that will be used for the cathead stopper cable:

 

 

The knees under the catheads were made from 1/8” sheet. A piece of card stock was used as a template:

 

 

 

 

With these done I can resume work on the headrails.

Edited November 29, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Finishing up the Head Rails

 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, britannia metal does not stand up to multiple bendings so I used a piece of wire to get the shape of the upper rails set:

 

 

I then transferred that shape to the britannia, attached the channel plastic to its outside face and put them in position. The support timbers that run vertically between the rails were easy to make out of britannia strip.

 

 

 

The final details were the netting and the 4 “seats of ease”:

 

 

Edited May 17, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Re-Do on the gilt trim

 

Although I did not mention it in my last post the photos show the gilt trim along the main and fancy rails. The instructions suggested using a paint pen, which I have never used before but I gave it a shot and to my aging eyes I thought it looked pretty darn good … until I saw the photos “blown up” here on the site, which makes my photos more “close-up” than they appear on my computer. Boy, it looked bad!! In retrospect it probably would have worked fine if I had made sure the surfaces were smooth and the edges sharp rather than rounded. Some tape probably would have helped too but at that point I probably would have just used regular paint.

 

So anyway, all that was sanded off and replaced with 1/16” half round strip from BlueJacket (their catalog lists it under “moulding strips”) that were primed and painted off the model. If I had to do it again I probably would have used the “double-bead” strips for the fancy rails for a little contrast. This is a big improvement over my first attempt.

 

 

 

 

 

Next up will be the knight heads and timber heads around the foc’sle.

[schooner]

Knightheads and Timberheads

 

I’ve made very little progress lately because of outside distractions.

 

The next step in the build is to fabricate and install the  main deck pinrails, knight heads and timber heads. They were easy to shape out of the supplied strip wood. Instead of using the plans for their placement I used the belaying diagram in the instruction book which gave a better view of their spacing:

 

 

 

Next up will be the hammock cranes along the lower part of the bulwarks

[schooner]

Hammock Netting and the start of the Quarter Deck Railings

 

Modelling time has been a little hard to come by lately so I have not made much progress. The Hammock netting cranes are made up from PE. The instructions call for connecting them with wire but I found that black thread worked better for me.

 

 

 

The netting was easy to install as long as a piece of white paper was placed behind it while trimming or it would have been a real strain to figure out what I was doing.

 

 

The plans call for making 24 stanchions for the quarterdeck railing but the plans only show 22. I made 24 anyway because I’m going to put 1 extra on each side just forward of the taffrail so as to avoid a 9 ft gap without a stanchion. I made up the 4 pounder guns so that I can figure out how  high to place the rings on the stanchions for the breeching lines.

 

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Quarterdeck and Taff rails

 

The rail stanchions were cut using a “Chopper” from Micro-Mark which gave me more consistent lengths than I can get with a hand saw. The directions call for tapering the 3/32” square stock to 1/16” at their upper ends but it does not say whether that is 1/32 off of one side or 1/64 off of opposite sides. Since trying to taper 1/64 is beyond my interest level I took off 1/32 on the inward faces (its too small to notice so that step can be skipped)

 

 

 

Then instructions state that open railings like this were a common feature on colonial era ships but since the rails were not strong enough to tie off lines to they had to use pin rails so 6 of those have been added

 

 

Here’s the railings in place (left long on the aft end to fit in with the taff rail)

 

 

 

And here is the final product.

 

 

Next up will be the stern davits.

[schooner]

Transom details

 

The stern davits were made out of 2 pieces of strip wood “stepped” above each other so they could pass over the 1/16” lip or edge on the transom piece. Once installed 4 holes where drilled near their outboard ends to simulate sheaves.

 

 

 

I was originally going to leave the stern mounted boat off and show the larger longboat on the main deck but after all the work involved in putting in the deck reveals it didn’t make much sense to cover up half of them with a boat. So I decided to put together the smaller boat - I may still do the larger water and either mount is on the display board or show it suspended from the yard whips as it would be during launch or recovery.

 

The kit provides a britannia hull and 3 pieces of photo etch:

 

 

I decided to add a little detail by using strip plastic for the frames, and raising and thickening the gunwales:

 

 

 

 

The finished boat is shown on the davits, and as you can see I also added the rudder pendants:

 

[schooner]

Final hull details

 

There are 6 4-pounder guns on the quarter deck, made up of 4 britannia metal pieces each. They are really small - the instructions said they were likely moved around where needed. I’m guessing that their small size meant they only needed breeching lines and that their in and outhaul movements could be handled with hand spikes or pry bars. Anyway, they are too small for me to attempt to rig blocks and tackles.

 

I used a simple jig to rig up the breeching lines.

 

 

Here the guns are in place, along with an ammunition scuttle on each side.

 

 

The tiller and it’s “doghouse” have been fitted, along with the ship’s wheel. The kit provides 2 britannia binnacles to be placed in front of the wheel but I’ll leave those off until all the deck rigging associated with the mizzen mast is in place.

 

 

Here’s the steering rigging in place:

 

 

This basically completes all the structural work on the hull except for the gunport lids which I will put on at the end of the build (so I won’t keep knocking them off) and the anchor windlass which goes on the main deck after the rigging is done.

 

Next up will be fabricating the masts and spars.

[schooner]

Lower Masts - Initial Shaping

 

 

This is a new area for me. The kit plans give a good depiction of the finished masts that can be used to get the final dimensions of the various pieces of the masts but the description of how to fabricate them is very general - some on what needs to be done but little on how to do it. I needed more than that so I went looking for some help. The following build logs here on MSW were very helpful with pictures and/or descriptions:

 

• USS Constitution by KHauptfuehrer, starting with post #19
• HMS Snake by Beef Wellington, starting on pg14
• Frigate Essex by Rafine, starting on post #1208
• US Brig Syren by Walrusguy, starting on post #688

 

I also relied on the instruction book for Model Expo’s US Brig SYREN kit (viewable online) which has some very good step by step instructions. If you use the SYREN instructions bear in mind that 1)SYREN did not have a mizzen mast - not a problem since ALFRED’s mizzen is just a simple version of her other masts 2) The SYREN kit is a different scale so disregard any mention of measurements, 3) the SYREN kit provides some laser-cut items that you will have to make from scratch for the ALFRED.

 

I cut the mast dowels to length per the plans. The width of the dowels below deck are an exact match for the mast widths so no tapering is needed, which is good because I already set the mast rakes using the dowels and mast partners and any tapering would throw those off:

 

 

I then tapered the above deck portions of the masts using my poor man’s lathe i.e. the dowel was chucked up in a power drill and sandpaper was used to run back and forth along the spinning dowel until the desired dimensions were achieved.

 

The next step is to square off the upper portion of the masts. I marked the largest square I could fit onto the top of each mast. Where the corner of each square touched the sides of the dowel I penciled a line parallel to the axis, down as far as the squared section would run:

 

 

The initial cuts were made with a sharp exacto knife to get a flat surface on all 4 sides and then a file was used to expand the flat areas until everything was square. The final step in the squaring process was to file chamfered edges into the middle portions of each sharp edge. In this photo the lower mast has been squared and the upper squared and chamfered:

 

 

Next up will be shaping and installing the checks on the fore and main masts (the mizzen doesn’t have them).

Edited December 6, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Lower Masts (cont)

 

The cheeks were fashioned out of strip wood whose width matched the plans:

 

 

They were taped to the masts so that the profiles could be penciled onto the mast - that area was then filed flat so that the cheeks would sit flush on the mast:

 

 

Here are both masts with their cheeks. The cheeks have been sanded to about half of their original thickness and a “fingernail” profile was filed onto their lower ends (I have no idea what purpose that served):

 

 

The bibbs were traced from the plans and cut out from sheet wood. Although the foremast will be almost plumb the main mast does have enough rake to it that in order for the top to be level it will have so sit at a slight angle to the mast. The plans show a prominent joint were the bibbs on the fore and main were assembled so I’ve simulated that by scribing a line on the forward portion of the bibbs.

 

 

The next step was to add the iron bands around the mast using 2 sizes of pinstripe tape:

 

 

Next up will be the addition of some chocks and cleats and then the painting of the upper and bottom areas of each mast.

Edited December 11, 2021 by schooner

[schooner]

Lower Masts - some re-do and then done

 

After looking at the mast bands from my last post I realized something was wrong - I’ve never seen so many bands and of different sizes on any other build log. After looking at the AOTS ESSEX I figured out that I misunderstood what the plans were showing me; what I thought were larger mast bands were actually “wooldings” which are wraps of tarred line that bind things like the cheeks and fish to the masts so I took all the bands off and started over.

 

Here the front “fish” have been added to the fore and main masts (the fish protect the sails from abrading on the mast bands). One detail that I found on the AOTS book was the battens around the tops of the masts where the shrouds will rest. My guess is that they served to keep the shrouds far enough off the mast that air could circulate behind the shrouds and prevent wood rot from setting in. I have by no means checked every contemporary build log here on MSW but the only one I did find that included the mast battens was the one for the prototype build of Vanguard’s HMS SPHINX.

 

 

 

The last step was to spray everything with Testors Dullcoat to cover up the sheen of the pinstripe tape.Here’s the finished masts with the wooldings and addition of chocks on the main and fore masts for the stays and some cleats:

 

 

 

 

Next up will be the mast tops.

Edited December 22, 2021 by schooner

[whitejamest]

Looking very sharp. What material did you use for the wooldings?