Duchess of Kingston by Delf - FINISHED - Vanguard Models - 1:64 - Boxwood version

[DelF]

5 hours ago, DaveBaxt said:

Just like to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year and looking forward to seeing more of your progress next year.

Thanks Dave, and the same to you and yours. I look forward to seeing your Endeavour coming on in the new year.

 

Derek

[DelF]

Many thanks for the kind words B.E.

 

1 hour ago, Blue Ensign said:

The only downside of looking at your log is that it cost me money, another three items of interest to follow up including those wonderful looking chisels.

Having spent the last several years gaining inspiration and ideas from your build logs from Pegasus on, I think it's only fair that I should pass some ideas/cost your way! The chisels are indeed great, but to use them to best effect you really need the honing guide from Richard Kell, a toolmaker from Northumberland. Here's a link to a recent discussion on the subject, with a link to Richard's website.

 

Have a very happy* Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

 

Derek

 

* I think I was the one that confused Glenn on the happy/merry point; I always get it wrong!

 

 

[desalgu]

I can only echo what others have written, beautiful work!  Very impressed with your window glazing technique.  I'll remember it and give it a try sometime.  The gold decorations look super nice against the boxwood hull.  You're teaching me what can be done with this most excellent kit.  

 

Hope you are enjoying the holidays and wish you the best for this next year!     David

 

[DelF]

Thanks David, kind of you to say so. I'm enjoying watching our models progress in tandem.

 

4 hours ago, desalgu said:

 Very impressed with your window glazing technique.  I'll remember it and give it a try sometime.

I just think empty widow frames look wrong - nearly as bad as poorly applied glazing! I've struggled for a while to get it right, but the film I'm using at the moment gives good results if used carefully. My next job is making a replacement for the blasted plume on that figurehead.

 

Best wishes

 

Derek

[DelF]

Mid Deck Bulkhead & Spirketting

 

Now that the last relative has departed and the remains of the turkey are in the freezer, it's time to get back to the shipyard.

 

The mid deck bulkhead was straightforward to assemble, with a couple of minor modifications. I glazed the windows with Fantasy Film as before (care is needed the starboard and port frames are very slightly different). Also, I wasn't keen on the door handles suggested in the model. They looked slightly over scale to me so I substituted round-headed pins to simulate plain knobs:

 

The bulkhead looked a bit gappy, especially where it meets the bulwarks:

 

I cut some narrow strips of boxwood to cover the gaps - 1 X 0.7mm on the sides and 0.7 X 0.7mm along the deck:

A similar very slight but noticeable gap was visible between the main deck and the bulwarks, which I took as an excuse to make some spirketting. I started by bevelling one edge of a spare 0.75 X 5mm boxwood strip. I tried a couple of methods, the first using the Proxxon table router with a 45 degree cutter. As the boxwood was thin and bendy I had to use a couple of pieces of scrap wood to keep the strip tight against the cutter blade:

The second method used a tilting table on the trusty Preac saw:

Both methods worked well, with the saw being slightly easier to set up.

 

 

Then, it was back to the saw with the tilting table removed to cut the bevelled edge off, thereby producing a triangular strip to represent the spirketting:

 

The trick here was to avoid making the spirketting too big. I initially tried making it from a 1mm strip but the result looked  over-scale. The 0.75mm strip covers the gap neatly and looks better, at least to my eye.

 

On to the rudder next.

 

Derek

 

 

 

[DelF]

Rudder

 

Constructing the rudder from the wooden core, boxwood veneers and photoetch parts was straightforward. My only change to the instruction manual was to snip the heads off the pins, otherwise I think they look over-scale for the bolts securing the straps:

Once painted and the pintles fitted, the rudder fitted neatly into the three holes pre-drilled in the stern post:

Fitting the straps to the hull was slightly trickier. Given the shape of the hull and the fact that it had several coats of wipe-on-poly, I felt trying to glue the straps would be a non-starter so I used the following method with pins.

 

First, with the strap laid on the hull with no glue I used a pointed tool to mark the position of the hole nearest the stern, drilled a hole then dry fitted a pin. With that pin in place and the strap at the correct angle, I marked the second hole:

I did all this dry, no glue. I found if I put CA on a pin and tried to push it through a strap, most of the glue would wipe off on the hole. The best method was to insert the two outermost pins first then apply glue to the ends before inserting them in the drilled holes:

Once the pins were in place I snipped them short against the strap with flush cutters, leaving just enough showing to simulate bolt heads. Btw, this shot reminds me I should have beheaded the pins in the fishplate to avoid overscale bolts. Oh well, the port side looks OK.

 

With the outermost pins in place on every strap I drilled through the intervening holes, just deep enough to take a short length of pin held in place with a tiny dab of PVA - any excess PVA being easier to wipe off than CA. Here's the starboard side finished, bar a little touching up:

Here's the port side (if only to illustrate the point about the bolt heads on the fishplate!).

 

Derek

 

 

 

[glbarlow]

Routing table….you have way too many toys😆. The strips to cover gaps and pinning of rudder straps are creative as ever, you always find great ways to solve problems many would just overlook. Nice work!

Edited December 29, 2021 by glbarlow

[Dave_E]

My first visit to your log. You have given micro detail a new definition. You’re photography is outstanding!

[DelF]

5 hours ago, Dave_E said:

You have given micro detail a new definition.

Thanks (I think!). Hopefully not too much detail, but to be honest a lot of it is for selfish reasons. I take so long to build ships that I would forget half of these techniques between models if I didn't write them down. If it helps other people then that's great too.

 

The photos are the best I can do on an ancient iPhone 6SE.

[Dave_E]

Good to know on the phone... that's what I have. I also keep "logs". Without them, I'd be startign all over with all my hobbies every time. 😆

[DelF]

I just got this NMM plan of HMS Sphinx back from the framers and couldn't resist sharing it, even though not directly related to this build. However it's also by Vanguard Models so there is a link.

Happy New Year everyone!

 

Derek

Edited January 4, 2022 by DelF
Typo

[glbarlow]

I love these prints. Happy New Year!

[desalgu]

I love the print also!  And I agree, you have too many "toys" like the router!  

 

I really like the spirketting between deck and bulwarks.  I have been thinking about that on mine to clean up the joint and make it look better, but didn't know if ships normally had something like that, although it sure seemed logical.  You may have inspired me to give it a try, but without the nice tools.

 

I also like the idea of snipping off nail heads, something I never thought of, although I was also thinking the nail heads looked out of scale on both the brackets and rudder.  I left the nail heads on rudder, but used a layer of CA on top of them to mute the effect.  I used similar  method, aligning strap temporarily with tape, drilling first and last holes, and putting in nails to secure.  And then adding remaining nails.  I used CA and found putting nail in dry, and then medium CA on nail head and smearing it around slightly, it would penetrate thru the hole and hold the strap on.  Seemed to work ok.

 

And now I know I need some good flush wire cutters...my plain wire cutters leave too much of the nail.  I always need another tool!   😅

[DelF]

25 minutes ago, desalgu said:

I really like the spirketting between deck and bulwarks.  I have been thinking about that on mine to clean up the joint and make it look better, but didn't know if ships normally had something like that

Thanks David. Ships did indeed have spirketting - I’ll see if I can find an illustration to post later. My flush cutter is by Xuron. I find their tools well made and durable. 

[DelF]

On 1/4/2022 at 6:35 AM, DelF said:

...spirketting - I’ll see if I can find an illustration to post later

Technically I suppose what I called spirketting  was really the waterway, or a combination of spirketting and waterway as this drawing shows.:

 

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by DelF

[DaveBaxt]

On 12/29/2021 at 9:45 AM, DelF said:

Mid Deck Bulkhead & Spirketting

 

Now that the last relative has departed and the remains of the turkey are in the freezer, it's time to get back to the shipyard.

 

The mid deck bulkhead was straightforward to assemble, with a couple of minor modifications. I glazed the windows with Fantasy Film as before (care is needed the starboard and port frames are very slightly different). Also, I wasn't keen on the door handles suggested in the model. They looked slightly over scale to me so I substituted round-headed pins to simulate plain knobs:

 

The bulkhead looked a bit gappy, especially where it meets the bulwarks:

 

I cut some narrow strips of boxwood to cover the gaps - 1 X 0.7mm on the sides and 0.7 X 0.7mm along the deck:

A similar very slight but noticeable gap was visible between the main deck and the bulwarks, which I took as an excuse to make some spirketting. I started by bevelling one edge of a spare 0.75 X 5mm boxwood strip. I tried a couple of methods, the first using the Proxxon table router with a 45 degree cutter. As the boxwood was thin and bendy I had to use a couple of pieces of scrap wood to keep the strip tight against the cutter blade:

The second method used a tilting table on the trusty Preac saw:

Both methods worked well, with the saw being slightly easier to set up.

 

 

Then, it was back to the saw with the tilting table removed to cut the bevelled edge off, thereby producing a triangular strip to represent the spirketting:

 

The trick here was to avoid making the spirketting too big. I initially tried making it from a 1mm strip but the result looked  over-scale. The 0.75mm strip covers the gap neatly and looks better, at least to my eye.

 

On to the rudder next.

 

Derek

 

 

 

Derek . You definately have the hang of using those machine tools and such fine tolerances. Hope you don,t mind but I may have to pick your brains at some time in the future for when I am doing my masts and see what your take on ways to get around that. using your  machine tools. Hope you don,t mind. I won,t bother you too much for now and just let you get on with what is turning out to be a really fine model and what we can all aspire to. Looking forward to seeing your progress and updates. Best regards Dave

[DelF]

Thanks Dave, always happy to help. 

[CiscoH]

That looks 100% better. 

[glbarlow]

9 hours ago, desalgu said:

didn't know if ships normally had something like that,

There is both spriketting and waterways, I have both on Cheerful but I only added spriketting on the smaller Flirt. 

[DelF]

Boarding steps

 

Time in the shipyard is limited just now, as this is the time of year I have to get outside with a chainsaw and loppers to try to keep the jungle (aka my garden) in some semblance of order.

 

So, just one little job to report on. The steps are simple to make, each comprising two small laser cut pieces of 1mm sheet glued together at right angles. However I thought the plain wood looked a bit too plain, especially on such a bling-laden ship, so I painted them black with a gold edge. I also spaced them more evenly than shown on the plans. Getting them parallel to the waterline was slightly tricky, as my eye wanted to follow the lines of decoration along the sheer.

 

  

 

Derek

Edited January 4, 2022 by DelF
Typo

[desalgu]

Thanks for posting drawing of spirketting and waterway.  Syren has the waterway, so I'd seen that before which was why I was thinking of adding it to Duchess.  The drawing makes sense and looks like what I expected.  I'd never heard the term spirketting though.  Looks like it strengthens the joint between deck and frames.

 

 

[bartley]

I believe that the purpose of spirketting was to strengthen the gunwales against the impact of the guns as they are hauled forward.

 

John

[DelF]

Bitts & pieces

 

I enjoy making deck furniture so I stopped following the manual for a while and skipped ahead to make the mast bitts.

 

The mizzen bitts are made from 3mm and 1mm  sheets, laser cut as shown in the manual:

The manual recommends using a round file to clean the laser char from the groove near the top of the bitts, and to repeat the groove on the sides thus making the bitts three dimensional. However I found that I had to file quite deep to get rid of all the char, and the resulting grooves made the top of the bitt look flimsy. I decided to remake the tops, taking the opportunity to make them slightly more decorative. I started by using an angled bit on the Proxxon mill to create a shallow pyramid on a short 3mm square length of boxwood, followed by a ball cutter to make grooves all round:

The tape across the vice in the first shot allowed me to do repeat cuts on all four sides of the four tops (remember them?!). To cut the grooves, I ensured repeatability by lining up the right hand end of the top with the edge of the vice. Here's one top finished:

The next step was to cut the top pieces off just below the groove, slice the corresponding pieces off the original bitts and replace them with the new top pieces:

I intentionally () made the new tops very slightly larger than the originals - by about 0.1mm all round - so that the joins looked like a decorative feature.

 

I shall hold off fixing to the deck for now. The bitts fit through holes in the deck and I would normally pin them for extra security, but in two cases there is nothing under the hole to pin to. I think I can glue a piece of wood under the holes in the deck to provide a surface to pin to, but I'll decide later. 

 

The main mast bitts presented different challenges. The groove round the top was v-shaped and relatively easy to clean up and replicate all round. I didn't think it was worth replacing the tops just to replicate the pyramid on the mizzen bitts (I may change my mind before I fit them!). The laser cut bits have holes to represent sheaves so I used a 0.5mm end mill to make grooves between the holes. I'd normally round the bottoms of the grooves to represent sheaves but they weren't quite wide enough. I don't think it'll show at this scale. Here's my bitt against the originals:

The main issue I had with this bitt is that the groove in which the belaying rail fits is on the side and extends the whole width of the bitt, leaving a visible gap when the rail is fitted as this picture from the manual shows:

 

  

I plugged the gaps with pieces of boxwood but I couldn't get a very good match:

Looking at this photo I might be tempted to remake the bitts from scratch (or make sure they are festooned with rigging to hide the dodgy bits 😁).

 

The gallows went together without any issues. Because they are made in two halves there is a proper stopped slot for the belaying rail. As with the main mast bitts I milled grooves for the sheave holes:

 

One final little job was to make up the housing for the rudder head. Made from 1mm sheet this cleaned up well, although I found I had a lot of sanding to do to remove the machining marks from the surfaces. Fortunately the plank and panel lines are etched deeply enough  to allow this. The only change I made was to the front of the housing, where I felt the join between the sides and front looked a bit crude:

(Yes, I know the paint needs touching up!)

 

I had some spare 2mm boxwood dowel I'd made up for Speedy's spars and I cut a short length in half to cover the front sides of the housing:

 

The roof of the housing is just dry-fitted at this stage.

 

Thanks as always for looking in - likes and comments are much appreciated.

 

Derek

 

[usedtosail]

Very nice upgrades Derek. I will remember these when I get to make these bitts.

[DelF]

Moving to a new rope

 

Although Vanguard supplies good quality rigging line I still prefer to make my own on my Syren Rope Rocket. I think it gives the most realistic results, and gives me more freedom over producing my own colours and sizes of rope. In particular I'm not a fan of pure black standing rigging, much preferring shades of dark brown. Until now I've used Cordonnet cotton thread, dyeing the resulting rope with a variety of acrylic inks. For some time I've considered moving to Gutermann Mara polyester thread, having read Chuck Passaro's persuasive account. I particularly liked the fact that Mara comes in a huge range of shades, some of which make very acceptable standing and running rigging without the need for dyeing. A potential downside was the need to bake the rope in an oven to 'set' it and prevent the ends from unravelling. However I read in an early post from Chuck that he'd also used a hairdryer with good results.

 

I ordered a small quantity to try Mara for myself and was pleased with the results. Here's my first attempt at running rigging - three strands of Mara 70 producing 0.5mm rope. Possibly needs to be laid up a little tighter, but not bad for a first attempt. Incidentally, I used a hot air gun (the sort crafters use, not paint strippers!) for just a few seconds on the finished rope and that was enough to stop any tendency for the rope to unravel:

I've decided to switch to Mara and have just received my order from William Gee, a long-established UK haberdasher:

These thousands of metres will probably be enough to last several lifetimes! I've bought sizes from 120 (fine) to 30 (heavier) and in two shades, #696 for standing, and #854 for running rigging.  I haven't measured the diameters of these different threads, but #120 looks as fine as the nominal 0.1mm thread in the kit. I've tried using it to strop 2mm blocks and it looks good.

 

On to the tiller next.

 

Derek

 

[Matt D]

That’s some nice looking rope, Derek.  After looking at your picture in awe of the amount of thread you have, I was very happy to read that it is a lifetime supply.

[desalgu]

I got a chuckle out of the amount of thread you got, but don't blame you.  You never know when something is no longer available, and there's nothing to match.  I'm impressed with making your own rope.  I've seen the Syren rope maker online and noticed how many people do it, so I've been tempted, but not that tempted yet 😅.   It looks great in the photos and doesn't have the bit of "fuzz" on it like in the kit and other rigging threads I've seen.  What's in the kit is such a huge upgrade from what I've used before, that I'll stick with it for this model.

 

Love the updates to the bits and rudder housing.  I've also thought the front of the rudder housing looked plain, but didn't think to come up with an improvement.  I'm still at the stage where I'm hesitant to make changes.  Amazing how a little change looks so much better.  I'm very impressed with what you can do with your mill.  I'm afraid that might be one more tool to add to a long list!

[glbarlow]

I make my own rope.  I just fill out this form, supply some money and my rope arrives made.  I appreciate the talent, but there are just some things I have no interest doing.  No rope rocket for me.

[DelF]

18 hours ago, Matt D said:

in awe of the amount of thread you have,

10 hours ago, desalgu said:

I got a chuckle out of the amount of thread you got,

In my defence guys, I couldn't find a supplier for small amounts of these more unusual shades. You had to buy 3,000 or 5,000 metres or nothing (or even 10,000 for some sizes). However I've spent a lot of time experimenting with rope making over the years and in that time I tried dozens of different threads and dyes. It'll be a relief from now on to be able to go with just one type of thread and no dyeing. Although the latter was satisfying when I got it right, it was always a struggle to ensure I got the dye recipe consistently right throughout a build. Anyone looking closely at one of my models will probably spot some subtle differences - arguably more realistic as real ships would have had a variety of shades as ropes lightened with age, but I think I'd prefer consistency in a model.

 

8 hours ago, glbarlow said:

I make my own rope.  I just fill out this form, supply some money and my rope arrives made.

Syren makes great rope but distance and cost make that a less attractive option for me. I like being able to produce exactly what I want, when I want. 

 

Derek

[DelF]

10 hours ago, desalgu said:

I'm still at the stage where I'm hesitant to make changes.  Amazing how a little change looks so much better.  I'm very impressed with what you can do with your mill.

Part of the fun for me is seeing how I can enhance the model. I've said it before, but with other manufacturers I've had to depart from the basic model in order to compensate for poor materials, poor design and historical inaccuracies. That is not the case with Vanguard. Well done on the waterways, by the way.

 

I wouldn't be without my mill now - everyone I know who has the mini-mill swears by it (including Professor Glenn😄).  Power tools aren't essential to make great models but they allow people like me with only average skills to achieve much more than we could with hand tools.

 

Derek

Edited January 16, 2022 by DelF