Le Coureur 1776 by captain_hook - CAF - Scale 1:48

[captain_hook]

Just one note: Until now I have used only kit-supplied parts and stuff. Well, I tried but as mentioned before I got into heavy trouble while using the kit supplied precut-planking. So from here on I‘ll do some kit-bashing where needed. I will comment all changes and show the kit-supplied parts but might use different wood and fittings as substitute.

[yvesvidal]

Way to go Captain Hook !!!

 

Yves

[JeffT]

You can do it!

[mtaylor]

23 hours ago, captain_hook said:

Just one note: Until now I have used only kit-supplied parts and stuff. Well, I tried but as mentioned before I got into heavy trouble while using the kit supplied precut-planking. So from here on I‘ll do some kit-bashing where needed. I will comment all changes and show the kit-supplied parts but might use different wood and fittings as substitute.

This is not uncommon with kits.   Bashing them with better wood, better parts seems to be pretty normal.

[captain_hook]

The barrels are mini-kits sold separately. They are made of a center plywood piece planked with two layers of cherry veneer. These barrels take quite a long time to build because every barrel needs 24 veneer parts to complete. The center plywood piece is assembled first and a piece of cherry veneer with some laser engraving is glued at top and bottom. 
 

 

Then the first layer of planking is glued on the center piece. There are only 24 pieces supplied so be careful while you bend them. I selected the best ones for the outer layer and used the rest for the inner layer.

 

 

Then I gave the first layer a good sanding.  Be careful - these layers are only .5 mm thick and are easily damaged. After that I glued the second layer - one part at once - and used several rubber bands to fix the part until glue had dried. As I made all barrels at once this took several hours to complete. 
 

 

I gave the second layer another good sanding and applied some WOP, now they have to dry first. I will attach the iron belts in the next day, these are made of photoetched brass parts that have to be soldered to shape. A snapshot of all barrels - my crew prefer old bordeaux, keeps good mood. 
 

 

Stay save. 

 

 

 

[yvesvidal]

Beautiful job on the barrels. Yes, that is a lot of work but these details are important.

By the way, I am glad to see that you are back working on The Coureur !!

 

Yves

[Marcus.K.]

They are in fact very nice !

 

But - maybe I am too impatient and you already plan to do them - or - maybe it´s because I just don´t know enough about old barrels and their technique is differing from barrels I know - ..

.. but wouldn´t you need some hoops on those barrles to keep them tight?

[captain_hook]

On 8/9/2021 at 10:05 AM, Marcus.K. said:

They are in fact very nice !

 

But - maybe I am too impatient and you already plan to do them - or - maybe it´s because I just don´t know enough about old barrels and their technique is differing from barrels I know - ..

.. but wouldn´t you need some hoops on those barrles to keep them tight?

Iron bands? No, not needed. My barrels are held together by cosmic energy. 

[captain_hook]

Sorry Marcus, just kidding. These iron bands were more time consuming than the barrels itself. There are 5 bands per barrel supplied as photoetched parts. Each band has an overlap of about 2-3 mm, so I used a needle file to reduce the thickness of these overlap about 50% (and also on the other end - opposing side) and soldered these ends together with soft solder - over 50 pieces. Blackened all parts with my favorite blackening chemical (from Krick) and painted the little soldering spots with some black acrylic (they won‘t be seen anyway because all soldering spots are at the bottom of the barrel). 
 

 

The bands are slightly smaller than the diameter needed, so pushed the bands about 1 mm into their final position.
 

 

I made 10 barrels altogether but not sure if I will use all of them because they might block your view while viewing into the side of the ship. 
 

 

Now I can‘t go further because I have to wait for the ordered wood first. Stay save. 
 

Andreas

 

[Trussben]

Nice Barrels.

[yvesvidal]

Beautiful barrels !! Will you fill them up with some red wine?

 

Yves

[captain_hook]

1 hour ago, yvesvidal said:

Beautiful barrels !! Will you fill them up with some red wine?

 

Yves

Thank you Yves, that is a nice idea. Bordeaux would keep the captain and crew pretty much unimpressed when the Alert is coming for them. 

[BobG]

Fantastic work on the barrels. They are beautiful!

[captain_hook]

Thank you Bob. They are all time-consuming little mini-kits.

[Marcus.K.]

Cosmic energy. Now I know whats missing on my side!!!

🤣

 

They are indeed very very nice! Wonderful, very cool appearance!!!

 

A bit I doubt, that there would be a hoop in the center position in those barrels. Don' t you fear that a slight contact on them would possibly move them into a position beside the center and since that would be a bit smaller in diameter the hoop would come loose?

Edited August 12, 2021 by Marcus.K.

[captain_hook]

Marcus,  you‘re right. In fact, most barrels hat either 4 or 6 iron bands to fix all wooden parts in place. I visited an old medieval church some day ago and the wine barrels show either 4 or 6 band, none had 5 bands attached. 
 

 

 

But if I question all construction details and try to correct all mistakes (and there are several ones in the kit), I will end up better building one from scratch. I think I have to accept that it is a kit-build model with simplified construction methods and details shown that are rather aesthetically pleasing than historically correct, although I try to make it as accurate as possible.

 

But the barrels will barely be seen and nothing is fixed or glued yet - I may remove the  enter one or leave it as it is. And the bands have a snug fit, you need some force now to move the bands out of position. 
 

 

[mtaylor]

Andreas, there's really nothing wrong with "fixing" errors.  Bashing kits and even scratch builds is one of the things we all do.  So far, looks great from here.  

[captain_hook]

BTW I solved the little box problem. I removed the downsides from the already build-up boxes and used them as upper panels for the remaining six boxes. 
 

 

 Now all small boxes have upper sides with engraved laser pattern but downsides without one (but who cares about the bottom?). So if you ordered the barrels and boxes add-on, please check the parts first and if you encounter mirrored parts this might be a solution.
 

 

Stay save. 
 

Andreas

[Chuck Seiler]

On 8/1/2021 at 11:24 AM, captain_hook said:

I will put this build on hold as my enthusiasm has almost completely disappeared.

    I echo what others have said...it is a shame that you have lost interest since the model looks pretty good so far and you have made great progress.    Sometimes taking a break from a model is the right thing to do, but be careful.  If you put it on hold too long, you may not want to or be able to get back into it.  I speak from experience.

[captain_hook]

My replacement cherry

wood has finally arrived, now I can start planking the inside.
 

 

But before I do that I will replace the supplied lasercut box covers with stripewood as they don’t fit the boxes. For the bigger boxes I use 3mm x 0.8 mm and 2mm x 0.8mm cherry stripes. Finishing just one of them needs 24 pieces and I have 4 bigger ones and 12 smaller ones left to do … ahhwww, why do all these side projects have to be so time-consuming? Well, here is a picture of the finished one with WOP just applied. 

 

 

Stay save, 

 

Andreas

 

[captain_hook]

I have done all the bigger boxes, the smaller ones comes next. The WOP gives the wood a deep red / brownish colour.
 

 

 

Stay save.

Andreas

[captain_hook]

And the twelve smaller ones as well. They are covered with 1,5 x 0.8 mm and 2,0 x 0.8 mm cherry stripes as substitute for the supplied laser-cut parts. The applied WOP still has to dry.
 

 

For a size comparison there is also a picture with a larger box and another with a 1-cent coin.

 

 

 

After finishing these side projects I can now continue to work on the hull.

 

Stay tuned and save.

 

Andreas

 

 

Edited September 12, 2021 by captain_hook

[Tobias]

12 hours ago, captain_hook said:

Und die zwölf kleineren auch. Sie sind mit 1,5 x 0,8 mm und 2,0 x 0,8 mm Kirschstreifen als Ersatz für die mitgelieferten lasergeschnittenen Teile belegt. Das aufgetragene WOP muss noch trocknen.
 

 

Zum Größenvergleich gibt es auch ein Bild mit einer größeren Box und ein weiteres mit einer 1-Cent-Münze.

 

 

 

Nach Abschluss dieser Nebenprojekte kann ich nun weiter am Rumpf arbeiten.

 

Bleiben Sie dran und sparen Sie.

 

Andreas

 

 

Hello Andreas, very nice work, I am also currently building the Le Coureur from CAF, but as far as your clean work is concerned, I am miles away.

 

 

[Tobias]

59 minutes ago, Tobias said:

Hallo Andreas, sehr schöne Arbeit, ich baue auch gerade den Le Coureur von CAF, aber was deine saubere Arbeit angeht, bin ich meilenweit entfernt.

 

 

[captain_hook]

Sorry guys, I took a break from ship-modeling - much longer than expected. I was and I am still a little concerned about the things going on in Eastern Europe and all the things that might happen in the future so I thought it would be best to spend more time with my family. And my self-employment kept me busy as well. Although I passed my model about a hundred times continuing the build was not on my mind all the time. Guess I had to wait for my mojo to return ..

[captain_hook]

Anyway, planking the inner ship is where I stopped the build. I use 2mm x 4,5mm cherry stripes for the thick stuff that runs along the joints of the lower and middle futtocks. The planking is then done with 1,2mm x 3,5mm cherry stripes. Not as clean and nicely grained as boxwood or pear but will do. For that I use just an usual planking pattern I found in my „Historical Ship Models“ book by Mondfeld as it won‘t be seen later because the area below the thick stuff will be covered with interior. It is just for practice and recovering my knowledge, might take about the next week to finish this task …

[captain_hook]

Thank you guys for the likes. I‘m making slow progress towards the false keel and have already reached it on the bow. Some fishing was used there to get a smooth planking run. Will try to complete the port section tomorrow.

 

 

 

The starboard side will be a mirrored version of the port side and I hope this will speed up the planking. Stay tuned .. 

 

.

Edited October 4, 2022 by captain_hook

[captain_hook]

Unfortunately I have completely forgotten how time-consuming it is to plank a ship, took me far more time than expected (it always does!). If I tell my wife that I will be finished in two hours, it will take four in the end. Anyway I finished the port side, will start with starboard on Saturday. Here are some snapshots. To simulate chaulking a soft pencil was used on all sides of the planks but I guess it is barely noticeable until some WOP will be applied. You can see the kit-supplied precut planking strips on the upper right corner in the first picture for reference. 
 

 

Closeup at the bow ..

 

 

at the middle ..

 

 

and the stern as well.

 

 

The starboard side will have a mirrored port-side layout. I won’t bother anyone with partially planked update photos, instead I will post some new pictures when the other side is done. For today‘s work I have earned a reward - which will be watching yesterday’s episode of SW: Andor 🙂 

 

Stay tuned ..

 

 

Edited October 7, 2022 by captain_hook

[captain_hook]

Almost done with the second side. Most of this area will be covered later, so I rushed through this a little. The area above the thick stuff will be planked after that and I have to figure out first how to do this to match the plans from CAF. And there are two large open areas without inner planking on port and starboard, this will enable the viewer to look inside the ship later if I decide to leave the outer planking off in that area as well.

 

 

Hope to finish that task tomorrow. Stay tuned ..

[captain_hook]

Finally finished planking both areas below the thick stuff. The plans by Boudriot & Berti show another thick planks beside the false keel but I decided to use regular planks instead to ensure good fit for the mast heel. Too much change of the intended kit’s design in this early stage will probably cause the need for more adjustments in future building steps - no kit bashing, just small adjustments where needed. I will now draw my layout for the planking above the thick stuff with Corel Draw.

 

 

 

Stay tuned ..

Edited October 13, 2022 by captain_hook