Duchess of Kingston 1778 by desalgu - Vanguard Models - 1:64 - Royal Yacht

[desalgu]

I've been painting the decorative stern molding.  Quite a challenge for me.  I need younger eyes and steadier hand.  I'm getting there, but will take another iteration or two doing touchup.

 

I'd be further along, but managed to tip over liquid gold and it went all over work area.  Fortunately none on model or parts, and none on the floor.  It took a while to clean up the mess, but now basement smells like rubbing alcohol.  Reminds me of how hospitals used to smell.

 

[DelF]

Looking great - well done!

 

[DelF]

It may be an optical illusion, but looking back at your penultimate post I’m not sure the left hand window frame is the right way up. The frames should be very slightly wider at the base. All the others look OK but the LH* seems slightly off, at least in the photo. 
 

* LH on the upright ship/RH in the photo

Edited December 8, 2021 by DelF
Clarification

[desalgu]

On 12/8/2021 at 12:42 AM, DelF said:

It may be an optical illusion, but looking back at your penultimate post I’m not sure the left hand window frame is the right way up. The frames should be very slightly wider at the base. All the others look OK but the LH* seems slightly off, at least in the photo. 
 

* LH on the upright ship/RH in the photo

You caught another one, but I caught it first!   You've become "Chief Inspector Derek", LOL!   I really appreciate your comments.  I've been watching your build and am so impressed with your attention to details and all the little extras.  It's something I'll keep working on.

 

When I tried to fit the next PE piece, the one that fits around the windows, it didn't fit.  One window in particular, the one you mentioned, wasn't even close.  So I popped off most of the windows without too much trouble.  I was surprised at how tight the tolerances were between windows and the piece that fits around them.

 

I used that piece as an alignment aid to get the windows positioned better.  Even off the boat, the windows fit very tight in the surrounding piece.  I thought about filing it slightly, but it looked fragile, so I chickened out.  Using it as alignment, I glued windows back in, and then glued the surrounding piece on.  It still didn't fit as good as I'd like, but I decided it was good enough.  

 

Photo shows the two pieces.  Windows are glued, and the surrounding piece is used for alignment.  

[DelF]

That looks great! 

[desalgu]

I glued on the decorative molding piece along with couple of other decorative strips.  Apparently I didn't get the molded piece fitting exactly right.  I probably didn't get it soft enough in the boiling water to form along the stern contours.  I thought I did, but when it came time to glue it on, I needed to clamp it or hold it in place with a little pressure.  I tried tape, and I thought it worked.  But after glue set, there was a small gap.  

 

Since it's painted, I used filler to hide it and smooth transition from the wood stern piece to the resin molding.  I painted the top and side edges gold, and found out how difficult gold paint can be.  The surface has to be real smooth.  I kept after it, but finally got tired of touching up with filler and light sanding, and decided it was good enough.  It seemed like I wasn't improving anything by additional work.

 

At this point, I think the stern is finished, and I'm ready to proceed to other steps.

 

 

[DelF]

Hi David

 

You've made a fine job of that stern - I think it was well worth the effort to fill in that gap and create a smooth cap rail. Your planking also looks particularly beautiful as it runs up into the stern.

 

Before you get on to the bow area you might want to check this potential problem I've described in my log. I can't claim to have spotted it personally - I read about it in Glenn and Rusty's logs - but I thought I'd pass it on in case you hadn't picked it up.

 

Derek

[desalgu]

I remember reading about the problem with the figurehead a couple of months ago, and of course, forgot about it.  So once again, thank you Derek, for reminding me!   I would have fallen into the same trap.  I also broke off the small piece on the prow, but was lucky and didn't lose the piece, so was able to glue it back on and be a more careful.

 

I'm coming to the same conclusion as others on using heat to bend wood.  On strips I dip my finger in water and run it over the wood before applying heat (I've been using travel iron).  I think the same would work for pieces like stern, and I probably don't even need to put a very small amount of water on the wood.  Heat alone does the trick.

 

You're a lot braver than I am experimenting with stern windows!  I just painted the structure inside the stern black. 

 

I've been thinking about what to use to glue all the decorative PE.  The matte finish acrylic was an idea I had, so glad to hear it works.  I couldn't find the same floor wax others used, and when I found what they said replaced it, it was glossy.  I think the matte paint will work great.  I've used it in the past as an overcoat to dull shiny finishes or dull a mixture of shiny and flat finishes.  I used CA on the stern, but the pieces are so hard to handle, that I was thinking something else would work better.

 

I was already attempting to sand laser char from the bow rails (and broke two of them along the grain), so now I'll wait and start fitting and painting the figurehead.  

 

[desalgu]

I've been fighting the figurehead a little bit.  A suggestion for others...the figurehead consists of two pieces that you glue together.  I'd recommend test fitting the main part of the figurehead on the bow before you glue the top piece on.  The top piece is a helmet and plume, and the plume breaks off real easy as I discovered.  I was test fitting the figurehead, and it didn't fit very good.  In the process of handling and filing, I managed to break off the tiny plume.  Fortunately it came off in my hand.

 

A 2nd suggestion is to test fit the figurehead before you paint it.  I tried painting it first, but after handling it a lot during fitting, a lot of paint rubbed off, so I ended up cleaning it off best I could and starting over.  

 

A month or two ago I broke off the thin wood prow and glued it back on.  I thought I got it back in the same location, but must not have, because the figurehead doesn't fit quite right.  I did some filing and got it sliding in ok, but I'll have to fill in some gaps after I glue it in.

 

Here's photo of figurehead with plume broken off.  It's tiny, but I was able to glue it back on ok with CA.  I've done basic painting, and I'm in the endless touchup mode.  Almost done, and I'll include a photo when finished painting.

 

The detail on figurehead is amazing.  Did Chris carve this to make the mold?  or did he do it in CAD software?  I'm impressed either way.  This would be way, way beyond my abilities.

[desalgu]

I decided to drill a small hole in base of figurehead and glue in part of a toothpick to act as a handle while I painted.  It worked real well, so I'd recommend it.   After painting I could clip it in a clothespin and set it on the bench to dry.

 

Here's photo of figurehead after painting.  I went thru quite a few iterations touching up, and finally felt like I wasn't really improving anything.  Closeup photos aways showed a problem of some sort.  Often I fixed one problem and created another.  After getting tired of this, I decided I'd done the best I can.  I have what I think are very small brushes, but needed even smaller ones for the touchup work.  

[desalgu]

Glued the figurehead into the stem.  It fit ok, but there are small gaps I'll have to fill in which you can see in photo.  I'll do this before proceeding with rails and other bow structure.

[BobG]

Really great job of detail painting, David!

[desalgu]

Thanks Bob.  I struggle with the detailed painting and do lots of touchup.

 

I splurged and got an adjustable height "desk" or table for building models.  I'm sure this was fancier than I needed, but was easy to assemble and made in US rather than China.   There are many brands to choose from.  They are made to be used as computer desks, and I've used a smaller one for years.  I thought it would work good for models.  You can never have enough table space.

 

Here's pictures of it lowered and raised.  The lowered will work good for doing masts and rigging.  Probably won't use it much raised all the way, but I'll use it raised up to a comfortable height to work on hull.  Thought you all would be interested.  

 

Hmmm, it won't upload photos this evening.  I'll try again tomorrow.

[desalgu]

I'm still getting error message when I try to upload photos, so I'll wait a few days and try again.

[DelF]

I had the same problem - must be an issue with the server. However I loaded the photos into Photoshop and saved them under different names, with no other changes, and they then uploaded. No idea why, but it worked. 

[desalgu]

Thanks for suggestion Derek.  I use Lightroom and just changed the name, tweaked the cropping slightly, and saved.  Now they both uploaded ok.  Very strange!  

 

So, here's my new adjustable height "computer desk" that I'll use as a work table.  I already have a large hobby room in the basement, but this will allow me to spread out even more.  On Syren when doing rigging I was constantly moving it to a low table, back to a work bench, and then up on a box sitting on a workbench.  With all this moving around every time I worked on it, I'm kind of amazed I didn't drop it or bang it into something.  This table should make it a lot easier.  I'll find out when I start masts and rigging on Duchess.

 

[desalgu]

I've added bow cheek rails, bow v-frames, bow brackets or braces, and hawser bolsters.  Here's couple of pictures showing what bow looks like so far.  No major problems, just a few tweaks fitting the parts.

 

[WalrusGuy]

Beautiful work on the figurehead!

[desalgu]

Thanks Walrusguy! 

 

Here's couple of photos of hull details.  I thought everyone might be interested in how they look on a non-painted hull.  They are small PE pieces that are held in place by nails pushed thru holes in the keel pieces.  Holes lined up perfectly, which is kind of amazing.  I painted them copper as shown in manual, which on my hull, is close to the wood color.

 

You can compare this to others that painted hull white, and to Delf's beautiful boxwood hull left natural.  When I look at his, I want to try working with boxwood! 

 

[DelF]

1 hour ago, desalgu said:

You can compare this to others that painted hull white, and to Delf's beautiful boxwood hull left natural.  When I look at his, I want to try working with boxwood! 

Thanks, but I think yours looks equally good. Take extra care when you fit the upper and lower rails on those V-frames. I found I had to tweak the slots a fair bit to get them to sit correctly.

 

Derek

 

 

[desalgu]

I've been working as time permits.  I did an experiment with the first pieces of decorative PE using CA to glue one and flat clear acrylic to "glue" the other.  As far as I can tell, both glued it on fine and you'd have to get a knife blade or something similar to pop it off.  

 

CA dries quickly, almost too quickly, so you need to get it positioned just right and then it's stuck.  Acrylic takes time to dry, so you have working time, but it doesn't stick until it dries some which takes time.  I decided to use CA for the remaining bow decorations because some of the pieces go on edges with curves, so the piece needs to bend around the contour.  I don't think acrylic would work at all to glue these. 

 

In this photo I've added the cheek rails.

[desalgu]

I added the last rail to the bow structure and finished the bow decorations except for some touchup.  As usual, after taking photos I can see some places I need to either fill in or file and touchup.  I expected this considering I had some difficulties.

 

As Derek pointed out, I had a bit of a struggle getting the upper rails to fit.  The upper cheek rail shown in previous photo goes thru slots in the bow v-frames and I had to fiddle with it quite a bit to get it to fit in there.   But the next rail gave me the most problems.

 

Another upper rail goes from under the catheads to the tip of the bow and lies on the bow v-frames.  The manual has you bevel the v-frames before installing them in preparation for these rails, but you have to guess at how much to bevel (or at least I did).   I had to file a notch in the end of the rail that goes under the cathead to get it to fit in there, and I didn't bevel the v-frames correctly, so it didn't fit very well against them.  I had the same problem on both sides.  You can see in photo I need to fill in a little in some places and file a little off in others.  It shouldn't be that difficult to make it look better.

 

The decorative PE goes everywhere.  The detail in the PE is very impressive and at this scale looks like carvings.  It's hard for me to imagine drawing this up and creating a computer model.  Chris must have infinite patience.

 

On the cathead pieces I wished the PE pieces were slightly smaller.  I messed up a little fitting the cathead support pieces, so the decorative PE barely fit.  I had trouble using CA and positioning the pieces accurately along the various edges.  Tweezers didn't work too well, so used my fingers.  It worked but the pieces are very small to work with, and I had to hope I got them in the right places.

 

Here's a bunch of photos of the bow.  Apologize for lack of depth of field in photos.  I just used phone for snapshots instead of my good camera.  Well, more problems uploading.  I'll change filename and try again.

[desalgu]

I managed to get 3 of 5 photos uploaded, so that will have to do.  It's unclear why some upload fine and others do not.  I just started getting this problem this past week.  

[DelF]

Vanguard make great kits but they still require care and skill to produce such fine results. Have a happy Christmas. 
 

Derek

[desalgu]

The next step is to add gold decorations along the bulwarks.  This went fairly smoothly.  I had to trim the stern pieces slightly, but most PE fit real nice.

 

I used CA, and this time I used odorless CA.  I've been having sinus trouble and thought it might be contributing to it.  I can't tell much difference using either version of CA except the odorless doesn't have the fumes of regular CA, so think I'll stick with it.  FYI, odorless is sold as "foam safe" glue.  "Foam safe" was on the bottle in big letters, and "odorless" was on it in small, hard to see letters. 

 

 

[desalgu]

The side windows are made up of 2 layers.  The first layer are white window frames.  Frames for starboard and port are slightly different, so I had to be careful.

[desalgu]

The 2nd layer is a gold surround.  I had broken off a couple of the little tabs that dangle below windows and glued them back on.  However, I didn't get them glued in quite the right place, so I popped them off and first glued the surround on, and then fit the little tab back in underneath the gold piece.  It worked great, and probably should have done it this way to begin with like Derek.  (He's always thinking a step or two ahead of me, ha!)

 

 

[desalgu]

The gun ports also have a gold surround on them which you can see in the previous picture.  The window and gun port surrounds are aligned with nails or pins going thru predrilled holes.  Other than working with the tiny nails, this makes alignment easy.  This process goes surprisingly quick, which is a huge credit to the designer.  

 

 

[desalgu]

Here's the decorations for the quarter gallery windows.  These were built up with 2 layers of highly detailed PE parts.  I assume this is the duchess's cabin, and the captain slept on deck😄

[desalgu]

I finished up adding PE decorations to the hull, so reached a good point to stop, clean off work area, and take some pictures.

 

Still having trouble uploading some photos.  I cropped some of these to non-standard aspect ratios, so it's unclear if that's a problem.  Looks like uploading changed how I cropped photo.  Might have to edit these again.