HMS Terror by Broden - OcCre - 1:75

[broden]

The shipyard is open. The kit arrived today. In my new member post I suggested that Canada Post might be slow. They were fine, USPS took 13 days from L.A. to the border.

There was some damage in shipping. The false keel was crunched at the stern. Pictures and fix below and the parts box let all the little eyelets and rings circulate through the box and the shrink wrap. Just about every length of brass bar was bent or crimped.

 

I am ready to go and I'm sure I'll have lots of questions.

 

Broden

[clearway]

Welcome to the "little terror" club as keith s calls them. ouch someone didn't like the parcel! luckily the part that snapped isn't critical as there are more formers that fasten into the last frame on the stern

 

Keith

[broden]

Things seem to be moving quickly on the build. All the frames are mounted on the false keel. A couple had noticeable bows in the frames but not enough to prevent the under deck from fitting properly. The fitting of the under deck went much better when it was turned over. It did not look any different but it certainly was. Being a bit contrary, I did not like the instructions on planking the deck with the long strips down the center. I'm sure it would be faster, but I'm not doing this built for fast, so I'm cutting individual boards for the center strip and will high light them with a "B" pencil when finished. I will do the herring board design for the remainder of the deck. Any suggestions for colour of the decking. One of the British Navy's standard make work projects  was to almost daily holly stone the decks. I suspect the new wood appearance went away very quickly. All suggestion accepted and looked forward to.

 

DB

 

 

[Keith S]

I have no way to prove or disprove this, but my thinking about the colour of the decks was the opposite of yours. In many historical novels (fictional so take it with a grain of salt also) the holystones made the deck "snowy white". Also the "Wikipedia" entry on holystoning describes it as a procedure to whiten the deck. I think daily holystoning would have kept the deck looking new. Based on this, I decided not to darken or stain the deck on mine. 

 

HOWEVER.  "Holystoning" in the mid-1800s was beginning to be regarded as a useless "make-work" project for the crews, (like "scrubbing plasma conduits" on Star Trek). I also feel that on an exploration ship bashing her way through ice-floes in below-freezing temperatures, the lads probably all had much more important duties than scrubbing the decks with flat rocks to make them white. I very much doubt a lot of "holystoning" was going on. On the other hand she was a Royal Navy ship and I'm sure she was kept clean to the extent possible. 

 

What's happened to my model is that she started off with nice clean decks, but has been getting slightly grubby and scuffed from all the handling during the building process, which has given it the appearance of worn cleanliness. I'm going to leave it like that. 
 

 

 

 

 

[clearway]

Holystoning was used to smooth the decks to rid it of splinters as the crews on earlier vessels were actually barefoot so it was a safety practice to avoid splinters. However we are talking royal navy here so "swabbing the decks" would most likely have been carried out until they were in the icefields i would have thought so a little light weathering maybe but don't go over the top. As an aside i am not sure if the royal navy did this but a lot of wooden fishing vessels used to use linseed oil on the decks to preserve the wood which was done every year until costs curtailed the practice in the 1970's (in the west cumbrian fishing fleet anyways)

 

Keith

[broden]

Thanks for the insight. I will probably do a light wash of mostly white with a touch of gray to tone down the wood a bit. Even modern ships with teak or oak decks very quickly get a weathered look.

So I started the herring bone decking and figured how to produce the approximately 190 boards to cover the rest of the deck. Basically I used dividers to set the length, mark the angle with a small angle set then cut the whole strip at once. I got fooled with a couple of strips that were just a little wider 6 mm instead of 5 mm. I do not know if I screwed up some thing else by cutting that strip up. I guess I'll find out.

[clearway]

if wanting to fit scale width masts like me and keith s (7mm diameter fore mast and bowsprit, 8mm diameter main and mizzen at 6mm) then now is the time to make the holes in the deck and hull wider, mizzen is o.k. as kit states 6mm for all three.

 

Keith

[broden]

Thanks for the tip on mast diameters. I do not think I have MM drill bits, but I have the fractional equivalents. Worst case I have a lathe so trimming the dowels and shaping them will not be a problem.

 

I figured out how I screwed up the deck planking. A close review of the instructions revealed that the center planks should be part A-21 described as 0,6x5x400, Qty 10, herringbone planking as A-22 described as 0,6x5x47, qty 75.  In my kit I have many strips of 0.5x5x600 and maybe 5 strips of 0.5x6x600. So my deck has 5 center runs of 0.5x5x60 planking and herring bone layout of the same width and thickness.

 

By the way it looks fine to my eye.

 

I'm sure these variants were included to confuse old north American woodworkers, who are sure that if God wanted us to use the metric system there would have been 10 disciples.  

 

DB

 

[clearway]

occre are based in spain so they have always been metric, u,k, has been metric since 1970 but feet and inches are still used all the time! If it looks good just leave it as you are the admiral. in this scale 4mm = 12inches or thereabouts so 6mm = 18" which is hell of a width of plank in full size!

[Keith S]

The real ship had much narrower planks than the kit, anyway. So really you've made your model look better by making this "mistake". Well done.

 

[broden]

I have the deck almost where I want it. A bit more sanding and outlining of the planks then finishing. I am waiting on delivery of some "B" lead for mechanical pencil to do the lining of the deck planks.

 

I took a look at the kit instruction for planking then did the usual searches on google and YouTube for planking methods. The OcCre kit's method of planking the first layer up to frame A2and ending there is not typical. It looks reasonable in the plans, but I am curious, is it a good idea or will not running the planks right to the bow cause problems later on?

Anyway, I started fairing the frames, which seems to be a rather long bit of sanding. I am using a planking board to sight the fairing lines and hope I'm doing it right. It seems that matching the sides maybe my issue. I'll get there.

[clearway]

it will be easier doing it occres way, i added another frame in the bows and planked fully but the plating will cover it all. the only thing i would recommend is staggering the frames the planks end on as they arn't long enough to plank the hull, even missing the bow section!

 

Keith

[broden]

Thanks for the help. I suspect the kit has changed. The first  and second layer of planks supplied are much longer than the model. I will just lay them full length tapering and filling as necessary. 

 

I got the deck finished with the deck boards defined a quick coat of shellac then a light wash of very diluted acrylic white to tone done the colour. I then  installed the deck along with the transome and bulwarks. I picked up a mahogany stain at the big box store and am using that for all the deck furniture as I go along. It seems to look pretty good on the bits I have done so far. The bulwarks were my first attempt at bending ply wood it worked out OK, but I had to use pins to keep it in place. It is on and I did not bust it.

 

I think I've finished both sides of the first sheet of instructions.

 

Cheers

 

DB

[clearway]

looks good so far- maybe occre have heard us all complaining on here and given themselves a kick up the backside! - it is common to use the pins to hold stuff in place til the glue dries though, i had to do the same.

 

Keith

[ObviousNewbie]

Looking great Broden 🙂 I staggered as much as possible, but more for sturdiness than aesthetics, as the first planking wil lbe covered anyway. I worked first top down for the top planks, as they're all pretty straightforward. Then I moved to the garboard and worked my way up, meeting in the middle. If you ant, there's more info on my build log (link in the sig below), but as this was my first build, I recommend you check other logs as well.

 

Good luck!

[broden]

Thank you for your comments, ObviousNewbie. It is great to have people pay attention to each other's builds.

I watched the YouTube videos on planking. I carefully measured the frames, used a spreadsheet to calculate the amount of taper at each frame. Then I consider the planking rules, only taper the top of the planks stealers are OK at the stern , but not on the bow and planned how I was going to plank.

Then I watched the OcCre build video and saw what that guy was doing in astonishment. He was slapping on planks, putting in slivers all over the place and then sanding the hell out of the whole hull.

I had to rethink what I was doing and why. It is the first layer of planks nobody will ever see it again even myself.

So what is the real objective. Cover the frames is such a way to ensure the shape of the hull is plane and fair as a basis for the finish layer of planks.

Use the first layer for mistakes and make sure I avoid them on the finish planks. OK pressure off.

The instruction sheets deal with the pins by filing them off with a large file. Tried that on first 4 planks. It would work if every plank was perfect, not if there is any sanding to be done. The remaining pin shafts destroy the sandpaper. So once the glue is dry pull out the pins.

Enough rant. I am really enjoying building this hull. I have 11 planks on each side of the hull and it is going well once I stopped worrying about being technically perfect. More pictures when planking finished.

Cheers

 

DB 

[Keith S]

I did the same thing as you, I did all kinds of research on the planking techniques used on full-size ships, and tried to use the techniques I learned on my "little Terror". You are correct, the first layer of planks are just there to give the hull its basic shape. Whatever you do here, all you're really doing is giving it some "flesh" to be sanded into the correct shape. The second layer of paper-thin planking is intended to be the representation of the real ship's planking. This is where I tried to copy some of the planking techniques I read about.

 

I only had limited success, and I believe that it's not possible to do a perfect job of it on this model. I did taper my strakes, and it made a better job than you see in the "youtube" video. I did use drop-strakes, and stealers, but it was difficult and I'm sure it's not anywhere close to scale.

 

The reason for this is the thin wood they give you for planking. A strake, or plank, on a ship's hull is a complex shape. It's made from a plank of wood that is wider than the finished plank, because it is curved. The planks in the kit are very narrow and if you try to carve them into the curvature required, you don't have enough wood. This results in there being many more "stealers" or little wedges of wood, all over the model than there would be on the real ship. If you look at Matthew Betts' blog post on his large model of Terror, you will see that he only ended up using one or two drop-strakes and stealers for his entire model. This is because he started off with nice wide planks, that he painstakingly carved himself. 

 

I drew a picture to illustrate my point (In this case a "garboard strake") And also a picture of the ship's boat with a plank ready to be installed. 

 

 

But don't worry! There are many compromises in model-building, and the planking of this hull is one of them. This is a relatively small-scale model at 1:75 and on the finished hull it is not particularly noticeable whether or not the planking is perfect. And also, as we've said before, the main area on the hull that is affected by planking errors is the bow, which on this ship is completely hidden by the iron plating because she's an icebreaker! 

 

Here are a couple of pictures of my model, one showing the wood strakes, which was my best effort at making them look nice with tapering and what-have-you. The other shows exactly how much of this is visible with the armour plating installed: NONE!

 

 

In conclusion: Relax; do your best; and then, cover it all up with metal plates!

 

Keith

[Geowolf]

19 hours ago, broden said:

Thank you for your comments, ObviousNewbie. It is great to have people pay attention to each other's builds.

I watched the YouTube videos on planking. I carefully measured the frames, used a spreadsheet to calculate the amount of taper at each frame. Then I consider the planking rules, only taper the top of the planks stealers are OK at the stern , but not on the bow and planned how I was going to plank.

Then I watched the OcCre build video and saw what that guy was doing in astonishment. He was slapping on planks, putting in slivers all over the place and then sanding the hell out of the whole hull.

I had to rethink what I was doing and why. It is the first layer of planks nobody will ever see it again even myself.

So what is the real objective. Cover the frames is such a way to ensure the shape of the hull is plane and fair as a basis for the finish layer of planks.

Use the first layer for mistakes and make sure I avoid them on the finish planks. OK pressure off.

The instruction sheets deal with the pins by filing them off with a large file. Tried that on first 4 planks. It would work if every plank was perfect, not if there is any sanding to be done. The remaining pin shafts destroy the sandpaper. So once the glue is dry pull out the pins.

Enough rant. I am really enjoying building this hull. I have 11 planks on each side of the hull and it is going well once I stopped worrying about being technically perfect. More pictures when planking finished.

Cheers

 

DB 

hi Broden, some tips about my own experience 😊

 

the first plank layer is a bit "heavy" when you are fixing and cutting the first planks, but with a few time you'll be confortable with it. Your objective is cover all the hull, try not leave gaps between the planks, and use the pins without care! the second layer will cover all pins marks, and the pins are the best way to fix in the correct place the plank. You can leave in water the planks but when dry, they will leave gaps; try instead an electric solder and move the dry planks with medium force above the solder. If the planks are "burned" no problem, you will sand all hull later (and the curves are for the internal side of the hull...).

 

I didn't make planking drawing at the time because the second layer will cover anything. For me, the most important in the first layer is to keep smooth lines and not force the planks, they must to be located naturally on the ribs; if any plank is raised with the adjacent, you'll need to sanding it to the same level two planks, and if the difference if big, you can make a "depression" with later problems in second layer (as i experienced in my model). Think in this cases that maybe the position of the plank it's not good

 

when you curve a plank and with the very large planks in the kit, you can curve at 5 or 10cm from one side (more easy than make the curve at the end of the plank) and cut the spare plank, because the wood is so large for cover all the model.

 

You can retire the pins later (they destroy any sandpaper) so you need to use the glue to fix the planks. If you don't want to use glue with each plank each time or it's a bit dirty, fix with the pins two or three planks and later use glue inside the hull between the ribs and the planks (all planks at the same time), whitout care about glue (a lot of glue). Of course you can make it only for lower & upper planks, not at the center of the hull

 

sorry for my "indian sioux" english and be happy with your model!! 😄

 

one shot of my hull almost finished today, be sure your model will be at least as this one 👍

 

 

 

   

[Geowolf]

1 hour ago, Keith S said:

I did the same thing as you, I did all kinds of research on the planking techniques used on full-size ships, and tried to use the techniques I learned on my "little Terror". You are correct, the first layer of planks are just there to give the hull its basic shape. Whatever you do here, all you're really doing is giving it some "flesh" to be sanded into the correct shape. The second layer of paper-thin planking is intended to be the representation of the real ship's planking. This is where I tried to copy some of the planking techniques I read about.

 

I only had limited success, and I believe that it's not possible to do a perfect job of it on this model. I did taper my strakes, and it made a better job than you see in the "youtube" video. I did use drop-strakes, and stealers, but it was difficult and I'm sure it's not anywhere close to scale.

 

The reason for this is the thin wood they give you for planking. A strake, or plank, on a ship's hull is a complex shape. It's made from a plank of wood that is wider than the finished plank, because it is curved. The planks in the kit are very narrow and if you try to carve them into the curvature required, you don't have enough wood. This results in there being many more "stealers" or little wedges of wood, all over the model than there would be on the real ship. If you look at Matthew Betts' blog post on his large model of Terror, you will see that he only ended up using one or two drop-strakes and stealers for his entire model. This is because he started off with nice wide planks, that he painstakingly carved himself. 

 

I drew a picture to illustrate my point (In this case a "garboard strake") And also a picture of the ship's boat with a plank ready to be installed. 

 

 

But don't worry! There are many compromises in model-building, and the planking of this hull is one of them. This is a relatively small-scale model at 1:75 and on the finished hull it is not particularly noticeable whether or not the planking is perfect. And also, as we've said before, the main area on the hull that is affected by planking errors is the bow, which on this ship is completely hidden by the iron plating because she's an icebreaker! 

 

Here are a couple of pictures of my model, one showing the wood strakes, which was my best effort at making them look nice with tapering and what-have-you. The other shows exactly how much of this is visible with the armour plating installed: NONE!

 

 

In conclusion: Relax; do your best; and then, cover it all up with metal plates!

 

Keith

oooh i love the Keith model!! and the bow is awesome, you've make the pins marks in the metal plates!! 😭

do you think about black painting the bow, or you will leave it as the picture? i'm thinking to paint the metal tiles but later use the sandpaper in the border of the tiles, or imitating the marks of ice,...  

[Keith S]

9 minutes ago, Geowolf said:

oooh i love the Keith model!! and the bow is awesome, you've make the pins marks in the metal plates!! 😭

do you think about black painting the bow, or you will leave it as the picture? i'm thinking to paint the metal tiles but later use the sandpaper in the border of the tiles, or imitating the marks of ice,...  

 

Yes, the plates are painted black now. You can see my model on my thread here. https://modelshipworld.com/topic/23561-hms-terror-by-keith-s-occre-scale-175-as-she-disappeared-on-her-final-mission-1845-first-wooden-ship-build/?tab=comments#comment-693930

 

I haven't worked on her for a while because summer is very short here in Canada. There will be plenty of time to build models in the winter!

 

 

 

[clearway]

it all gets easier with practice guys honest.

 

Keith

[Geowolf]

On 9/4/2020 at 8:26 PM, Keith S said:

 

Yes, the plates are painted black now. You can see my model on my thread here. https://modelshipworld.com/topic/23561-hms-terror-by-keith-s-occre-scale-175-as-she-disappeared-on-her-final-mission-1845-first-wooden-ship-build/?tab=comments#comment-693930

 

I haven't worked on her for a while because summer is very short here in Canada. There will be plenty of time to build models in the winter!

 

 

 

ahh ok it's true i don't remember it, i've seen your photos (i need to remember the two cms for the ice bumpers),

 

take advantage of the summer! and your real vessel, nice model! sure in winter you'll have a lot of afternoons to retake the Terror.

here in Barcelona we have good weather all time (the thermometer not fall under 0ºC), but the sunlight hours are fewer in winter, so i'm taking my ebike all time i can 😊

 

regards and take care,

[Geowolf]

hehehe i'm seeing the hand drawing of Keith S, with my first model my brain exploded trying to curve a simple straight piece of wood in a "three-dimensional figure" with three or four curves in all directions 🤣  

[broden]

Hi from His Majesty's dockyard Lasalle.

The first layer of planks are done. No gaps, a couple of dips that a generous helping of wood filler resolved. I have laid on the second layer planks for the gunwales and discovered how fragile those strips of, what looks like mahogany really are. They chip and crack way too easily. So the issue of using wood filler came up. The brand I am using does take stain well, but it still looks like there is wood filler there. The pictures below show my test bits. The mahogany stain lets the wood filler show through, but the black stain really covers everything up. I was surprised how black that stain is. Still considering leaving the hull unstained or going with the black and white colours.

I put on the stem post and the keel to make sure the planking was tight to the structure. I do not know if that will come back to bite me later or not. It seemed to be the right time to put them on.

The pictures are the first layer of planks almost complete. The test strips with wood filler on all for strips.

[Geowolf]

hi broden,

 

good planking well done! the sanding are leaving it as smooth as needed... The second plank for me was a big problem, you know the planks are too thiin, i'm not very satisfied with it, but the black paint will cover all... Also i'm seeing your paint choice, i really like the brown one but maybe you'll see the wood filler under it.. and two layers of brown and one layer of black??

 

I'm using chalk paint, first of all i need to varnish all the hull and the chalk paint above it will leave their characteristic pattern; maybe it'll be good choice or an impressive error, i don't know at this moment hehehe. My progress is very low i expect to make the paint job in two weeks

 

regards and take care!

 

[broden]

Thanks, Geowolf and all the other builders of HMS Terror. I am reading all the builds and am very impressed with the care and detail that you are all putting into this great little ship. I am a newbie and everything I see and read helps. Again thanks

 

Well I did the second layer of planking. The picture is of one side with a coat of mahogany stain applied.  If you look closely you will see where I got into trouble. The thin strips do not bend well. Actually they do bend, but they are so thin that they leave a split on a curve. There was a judicious use of wood filler where the lines of planks have gaps between planks. the worst bits are in the bow. Fortunately there will be the reinforcement iron plates there to hide most of the really ugly fixes.

On my next build, and there will be a next build, I will not try to use continuous planks on the second planking but use 25 foot long planks to scale as was done on the original ships.

 

Now it is on to the bolster "rub strip" where there is a correction from 15mm to 20mm for the location as pointed out in Keith's build.

 

DB

[broden]

By the way my decision is made. I will be staining the hull black and the rub strip white.

 

DB

[Geowolf]

hi Broden, 

 

i'm seeing your pictures and i like it a lot! the planks are fine finished, no gaps and the "belly" is well finished too, very clean the wood, well done! i know the problem is in the bow as myself, it's tricky to fix the planks with the glue and avoid the raises, i have not enough fingers hahaha. I used with the last planks a mask tape (i'm not sure if it's the correct word i'll put a photo),

 

i think we're making a good job for our first kits 😊

 

i'm making the ice protections, not very difficult. I've protected the thin second plank layer with tape and i can sanding the ice protector with no care, with the Dremel or the sand block; a lot of wood must to be removed!

 

A picture of the tape and a wood block to pressure strong the planks to the hull, you can use to fix one side of the plank and then it's more easy to fix the rest of the plank with glue. I started fixing it at the bow and follow to the other side of the hull, pressing the plank with the wood block.

 

regards and good work,

 

[broden]

Hi Geowolf,

 

Your finish planking looks pretty good as well. My next step will be the same as yours.

 

I had a close look at the kit deck boats and I was not impressed with the cast metal ones, so I spent more money and got the Master Korabel launch kits. They are at 1/72 which I felt was close enough to 1/75 to be usable. They are a serious challenge. The parts are very tiny and there are lots of them. Each small boat will present many hours of careful work. When I started the Terror build I expected it to take a long time maybe the full winter, which here in Montreal can last from November to April. The second wave of Covid is rising here, so home time will very likely be available.

Here are some pictures of the kits at a very early stage.

 

Stay well.

 

DB

[Geowolf]

hi Broden good afternoon,

 

your deck boats are veeery nice, i love it! i'll search it, you're correct the supplied boats are very bad (well, not complicated, according to the kit level..), thanks for the addition. At this moment i'm varnishing the model, prior to apply the black/white final pattern. The wood looks so gooood! 😊

 

here in Barcelona the weather are nice all year, but my job is from 8:00AM to 18:00PM and later i must to make additional IT courses... so my model will not be finished to next summer, with luck! be careful with the covid i think we'll be stuck with it until next summer 😔😔

 

best regards,