HM Cutter Cheerful by PRS - Syren Ship Models - 1/48 Finished

[BobG]

I just found your build. Great work and gorgeous planking! It's absolutely amazing how much you've gotten done in just 5 weeks too!

[PRS]

Thanks Bob.

 

Just read through your Medway build and it looks awesome! I like the rigging you did on it for sure.

 

Yes I do spend a lot of time on my hobby. Usually a couple hours or so a night and then weekends. I need an outlet as my job is pretty stressful and I am not one to just sit and watch TV after work.

 

This week I am on a much needed vacation so I am sleeping in and relaxing while I build. One thing I like to do is listen to podcasts while I build and have found a lot of interesting stuff out there. I might try some audible books but I do read for an hour every night so this might spoil my reading time.

[glbarlow]

I like the use of the nail file.  You knocked out those trim pieces easily.

[Freezing Parrot]

Very impressive planking! It may take me a while, but I'll get there eventually. 😊

[PRS]

I have been doing the tree nailing and found a good way to fill them. When I first started I was using a piece of wood to fill each hole and then scraping with an xacto blade. This was putting dents in the wood as well as taking a long time to fill the holes.

 

I am using a water based wood filler and this is the easy way to do it.

 

Put a glob of the filler on your cutting mat. You are using a cutting mat aren't you? The put a couple drops of water on the filler and use your grubby finger to mix it up.

 

The take your wife's credit card and scoop up all the filler and use that as a spatula to work the thinned filler into the holes.

 

The take a piece of paper towel and wet that and wipe off the filler from the planks. This works real good since the filler doesn't stick to the poly finish very well. Since you are not scraping the filler off there are no blade marks left behind.

 

Here is what it looks like after wiping it down and before the final sanding.

 

 

[BobG]

On 7/8/2021 at 7:11 AM, PRS said:

Just read through your Medway build and it looks awesome! I like the rigging you did on it for sure.

Thanks very much, Paul. The Medway was a big step up for me. I'm afraid I've become an armchair modeler simply following quite a few other builders' logs. I have too many passions and I've been immersed in guitar and cycling lately. I'll be back in the shipyard at some point soon I hope. I do miss it.

[PRS]

After 3000 plus tree nails I am finished the hull and moving on to the trim pieces.

 

I think it was worth all the drilling and I do need to put a couple more coats of poly on the hull and see a couple spots that need some sanding.

I find that sanding the poly surface really clogs up the sandpaper.

[Chuck]

Looks good.  Bet you are glad thats finished.  Be careful with the poly.  You dont want a shiny hull.  Wipe it off immediately so you dont get any shiny spots.  I would sand the entire hull lightly and reapply.  Wiping off any excess so you dont get any hint of a shiny spot.

[PRS]

13 minutes ago, Chuck said:

Looks good.  Bet you are glad thats finished.  Be careful with the poly.  You dont want a shiny hull.  Wipe it off immediately so you dont get any shiny spots.  I would sand the entire hull lightly and reapply.  Wiping off any excess so you dont get any hint of a shiny spot.

Thanks for the advice. 

 

I will do that. I like the poly finish and need to sand the whole hull again and will start with some 320 grit and then go up to 800 grit for a nice smooth finish.

[PRS]

I wanted to get the molding trim pieces on before sanding the hull.

 

I sanded the area where the poly finish was to help the PVA stick and did have some issues as the glue I am using (Lepage wood glue) sets up really fast when you use a minimal amount so it was almost dry when I placed the pieces.

 

I used my small jar of 50/50 mix of PVA and water and with a small brush used that to seep glue between the molding and the trim. Then wiped the excess off with a qtip dipped in water.

[Freezing Parrot]

It's amazing what a difference the little details make! This is looking great!

[PRS]

Spent a few hours resanding the hull to get rid of some scratch marks.

Used 320 and all the way up to 600 grit.

The wiped on the poly and polished it off so as not to leave it on to gloss over as per Chuck's recommendation.

Looks a lot better.

Thanks Chuck

[Chuck]

Beautiful.....much much better.....I see a lot of folks who leave the WOP on the hull after applying it way too thick and it glosses over.  Its not supposed to form a hard shell coating.  Once wiping it on, use another lint-free cloth to wipe it off.  It will seep into the wood and you will basically buff the surface free of the wet shiny stuff.  This will leave a nice consistent surface quality showing the beauty of the wood without any gloss at all.

 

Chuck

[PRS]

Time for the false deck.

I glued some 1/16 strips around in spots to use as a guide.

 

The with the dremel and a sanding drum carefully filled my room with dust. Used a flat xacto blade to act as a chisel near the bottom and the blade really does not work too well for this as the ply takes the edge off real quick. I need to get some proper wood chisels.

 

To fair out the sides I drew up and printed some curved sanding blocks.

 

Then hated to cut out the pattern from the nice plans but I bit the bullet and did it. I tried to use the green masking tape and although it does work for getting the sides right it doesn't stick too well. 

Laid the pattern out on some drawing paper and taped it down with clear tape and cut out the false deck from 1/16 boxwood. I found anxacto knife cust through it just as good as a scroll saw.

 

I used two pieces for the false deck choosing to go front and rear piece (bow or stern) and it glued on and conformed to the curves pretty easily since the PVA I am using sets pretty fast.

 

Now it is on to bending and planking the inner hull pieces.

 

The more I do the more fun this is.

[PRS]

Completed the first planking on the inner hull and sanded down to 600 grit.

 

I have everything thinned down to less that 5/32 and it was a fun step to do. Did I say before I like sanding?

 

Before I put the 1/32 planking below the gun ports it was time to frame them from the pieces I painted a while ago. Yes this is different than the instructions but it was easier in my mind to do it this way.

It took maybe more time but it wasn't too hard to do while listening to Extraterrestrial podcast series.

 

While waiting for glue to harden I have been working on the stern port covers and have them fitted but just taped in place for now. BUT all my stuff I ordered from Chuck just came in today so I have a bunch of small kits to put together.

 

[BobG]

Beautiful work. She's going to be a stunning model when you're finished!

[PRS]

Sanded down the inner gun port sills to make it look pretty.

\

 

Then added the spriketing planks out of 1/32 yellow cedar and sanded it all down pretty thin.

 

 

All ready for painting the inner planking. This is going to take a lot of masking as I will airbrush the red paint.

 

Here is how the gun ports look from the outside. If I were to do this again I might have sanded down the 1/32 wood down a bit more to make it a little thinner but I like the looks of it even though it may not be to scale.

 

 

Will need to touch up the black paint on the wales as I have scuffed off some of it with handling. Acrylic paint is not very durable so you have to be careful with it. I also used white primer underneath it and should have used black primer which I have.

 

Next up will be a lot of masking and I do have a little trick for the gun port holes which I will show you next.

[Nunnehi (Don)]

Paul,

 

That’s very nicely done, beautiful work! I think Cheerful will have to be my next project. 
 

Don

[PRS]

Thanks for the comments and likes.

 

Here is how I mask off the gun ports. Take a piece of foam and tape it to the outside. It will form into the hole and mask it pretty well. This is what the aircraft modelers do for their cockpits.

 

After masking out everything I sprayed 3 coats of the red and didn't use primer this time and it covered well.

 

[druxey]

Very nicely done, Paul. I take it that the tornado missed you?

[PRS]

9 minutes ago, druxey said:

Very nicely done, Paul. I take it that the tornado missed you?

Yes I live in the north end of Barrie and we didn't have any hard weather here. Thanks for the concern.

[BobG]

22 minutes ago, PRS said:

Here is how I mask off the gun ports. Take a piece of foam and tape it to the outside. It will form into the hole and mask it pretty well. This is what the aircraft modelers do for their cockpits.

Great idea. Thanks for the tip!

[drjeckl]

Paul, great looking Cheerful.  Been following you through your quick build of the LN (my first build), and I wanted to see what you would do with a model a couple of levels above the LN.  My sense is that you have been modeling before, maybe in a different form, and you just wanted to try out wooden ships.  And I've picked up some techniques from your log, including the masking of the gun ports with packing foam.  Nice idea.  Questions:  what is the thickness of that foam? 1/2 inch or higher?  And do you have a source, or is just what you have saved from incoming packages?

 

Can't wait to see how your Cheerful turns out!

 

[PRS]

2 hours ago, drjeckl said:

Paul, great looking Cheerful.  Been following you through your quick build of the LN (my first build), and I wanted to see what you would do with a model a couple of levels above the LN.  My sense is that you have been modeling before, maybe in a different form, and you just wanted to try out wooden ships.  And I've picked up some techniques from your log, including the masking of the gun ports with packing foam.  Nice idea.  Questions:  what is the thickness of that foam? 1/2 inch or higher?  And do you have a source, or is just what you have saved from incoming packages?

 

Can't wait to see how your Cheerful turns out!

 

Yes I have done a lot of R/C aircraft in the years and also some military modeling. Here is a shot of the Sherman Victory Kiss model I did before I switched to ships.

 

And here is a Slow Poke I built from a kit. It is electric powered and had a dummy 3d printed engine.

 

 

The foam is about 1/4 inch thick and just what I had on hand.

[PRS]

So getting back to the build I made the hawse plates. Only had to adjust the bottomg of the templates about 1/32 to fit good on mine.

 

In order to sand down the cap rail to the hull and not mess up the paint job I cut up some strips of masking tape and the placed them so I could sand to the tape. This works well as you can see when you get to the tape and not gouge out the hull by mistakes.

 

 

I decided to paint the cap rail by brush and mixed the paint 50-50 paint to thinner and it came out real well with 3 thin coats.

 

 

 

Since the mini kits came in I made the hinges up for the rear gun port doors. Not following the instructions I glued the plates before painting.

 

 

Then I roughed up the tubing with 600 grit paper and cut them out as the instructions say. And I didn't even loose one of the brass tubing pieces even though they were really small.

 

 

Glued them onto the hinge plates and then cut the plates to size.

 

Now my luck ran out when trying to place the hatches in place as I probably lost more of the L shaped pieces than I care to count but once I focused my eyes and calmed my nerves I got them put in place. Such little detail sure makes a difference. (wow that pic is out of focus)

 

 

I also made up the eyelets for the outside and inside of the hatches.

 

Just a few paint touch ups and the have to make the holes for the hawse plates. I want to check everything over before I start on the deck planking and you can see I am using a towel to as not to scratch up the paint any more.

[PRS]

Here is how I did the hawse plate holes.

 

I first made a starter hole with a tapered diamond bit in the Dremel and realized there would be no way to make the hole round with that.

I measured what the hole should be and the front boom is 5/16.

I have a 1/4 round file and although it was course I gently ran in back and forth so as not to take too much at once and chip everything and kepr light pressure.

 

I made the hole nice and round and used a 5/16 drill bit to make sure it fit and was lined up properly.

 

For the smaller holes I chucked a round needle file in the drill and ran it reversed so as not to grab hold and this made the holes easy to do.

 

Here is what everything looks like so far and am ready to move on to deck planking.

[PRS]

So scarf joints...

 

I tried drawing and cutting about 6 of them and was having a lot of trouble getting them to look good so I did a search and found this drawing which shows how they are made.

 

So what I am doing is from 1/4 inch width making the joint 1 1/8 inch long and the 1/5 w measurement I am doing 1/4w so that dimension is 1/16 of an inch. I draw the two 1/16 inch lines on both sides and then connect them across and then draw the center line at 9/16.

 

Drawing them out and cutting from measurements was easier for my mind to get around them and here is the first result. I did darken the joint with a pencil so I could see how they would look.

 

I hope that makes sense to you all and now I am ready to start cutting and fitting the margin planks out of 1/16 boxwood. I did try to bend some 1/4 wide yellow cedar but it really didn't look good and I will need to make the ones at the bow from the boxwood so I will do the whole margin planks in boxwood. 

 

Will be lots of careful cutting involved and I might need to fins a new podcast series to binge on.

[Chuck]

Really nice progress.  She looks fantastic.

[glbarlow]

I enjoyed making those after I sorted out how, looks like you found the way that works for you. 

[PRS]

22 hours ago, Chuck said:

Really nice progress.  She looks fantastic.

Thanks Chuck.

19 hours ago, glbarlow said:

I enjoyed making those after I sorted out how, looks like you found the way that works for you. 

Yes it looks like it will be a slow thing to do but will make a difference on how it looks.