Smuggler by juhu - FINISHED - BlueJacket Shipcrafters- 1:48

[juhu]

Hello again.

Dory is finished and secured in her cradle on the deck, added chain plates and attached anchors. If did not forget something, I shall consider the hull as done and investigate carefully, what is rigging about and where actually to start with it...

 

 

 

[juhu]

I have been making slow progress on Smuggler for more than a year. It used to be a pleasure and nice refresh after work time and a way how to learn a lot of history and craft techniques. Today though, it is hard to feel the joy. There is a war in neighboring country and I feel somehow ashamed that even with all the unrest in mind, I could still enjoy the hobby in peace while the people there are losing their homes and lives under terrible aggression. Thank you all the visitors of this thread and for all the support I have received from you. But now I would like to dedicate all the likes and thoughts to the brave people and brave country. Just a symbol, I know, but thanks to all who join.

Edited February 27, 2022 by juhu

[gsdpic]

Well said, Juhu.  Even those of us much farther away are saddened and concerned about what is going on there. 

[BobG]

7 hours ago, juhu said:

But now I would like to dedicate all the likes and thoughts to the brave people and brave country. Just a symbol, I know, but thanks to all who join.

 

Thanks for expressing what so many of us in the world are feeling as we continue to watch the heroism and the terrible suffering of people of Ukraine.  

[pwog]

I’m with you on your sentiments concerning Ukraine juhu. It is truly a tragic state of affairs. I’ll never understand why we can’t just live and let live. Although, I live in the U. S. My grandparents immigrated from Kiev, to America. I stand with Ukraine. ❤️

[juhu]

Greetings,

posting some small progress after a while... Moved fore and made bowsprit and dolphin striker. I again opted with the latter one not to use the provided metal casting, but rather tried to make one from some spare wood. Fiddly little piece with all that bolts and rings made me some headache...

 

Both parts dry fitted only. I am a bit hesitating to glue particularly the bowsprit. The glued spreaders making me little bit nervous,  but with the bowsprit I see even more risk of damage. Probably will wait till the masts are attached.

 

 

 

Edited April 4, 2022 by juhu

[juhu]

Just a small addition: moved up to the masts. Topmasts being prepared with the help of lathe (the fore one already done). The bottom section is square-profiled, which makes it a bit tricky for me as a lathe-novice, but doable. I think there will some break in this thread now - will come back once the masts are more complete...

 

[juhu]

Hello,

another update as promised. Some iron and paper work on lower masts...

and finished:

 

Topmasts follow, here the part is soaked and bent to resemble desired shape, simulating the rigging stress

Mast hoops made from Evergreen profiles. I try to avoid the use of plastic as much as possible, but here I could not find anything better. And after some paint and use of weathering pencils, I like the result

 

Completed masts, next will be back with booms...

 

 

Edited May 1, 2022 by juhu

[BobG]

Fantastic work, juju!

[juhu]

Greetings after a while.

I have been working on booms and gaffs and they are considered as finished now. It took me a while. So many fiddly parts and work that I think will not be so visible at the end, just like plane cockpits in scale plastic kits....

And I have to add one big re-do to my list, that also costed me lot of time. I wanted to replace white metal blocks with the wooden parts. I found something so-so reasonable in size, but alas, found too late that simple shape-wise they do not look right. So rip them off, revert back to metal blocks from the kit, painting, weathering etc....  I have never been a fan of pretending something to be a wood, but here I must say that there was no other option and all the blocks from the kit represent the things very good with some paints and pencils on. My fault, not the first one, wish it be the last one?

And some fishing equipment in addition: dip net and boat hook:

 

[juhu]

Another very small step up. I have started to prepare sail cloth by coloring the tissue paper and following the web courses. As always, it looks much easier in the video than it really is, but lets see how it shows.

I am trying to finish as much sub steps as possible before final assembly knowing that once all the masts and booms are placed, my whole work desk will be blocked with the model.

 

[juhu]

Hello

 

working further on sail and elaborating little bit. The previous pic posted was not the right way at the end :-/. The color was too yellowish to my taste and also I could not get the surface smooth enough. So scrapped and took some spray can this time, sticking with white color. The spray creates much better looking surface and thanks to its opacity, the slight color variation does look quite convincing to me.

After several attempts and with the hints from other thread I found here I started to build the jumbo sail from separate evenly cut strips. Tedious but rewarding at the end hopefully.

 

Sail edges strengthened with very thin wire. Shall help with shaping and add some durability I hope.

 

So far quite happy with the result?

 

I came to one open point here though, if you could help, would be grateful. Thanks

 

 

 

 

[allanyed]

Anyone wanting to include sails on their model should look at your log.  These are some of the nicest sails on any build log I have seen.   Anyone looking at the the out of scale cloth sails supplied by most kit makers and yours should convince them to throw out the door mats from the kits and make their own as you have done.  Bravo!

Allan

[juhu]

Thank you Allan for kind words. Although am not sure I deserve them. This project is my first wooden ship build and I still learn a lot. As you see I took many wrong paths and returning back to the right way was sometimes very frustrating.

As for the sails, I made and scrapped two jibs trying to simulate the joins using pencil, but did not like the result. Eventually I took the inspiration from here, which is where the credit shall go for sure:

 

 

I like the look of the sail, although I feel the panel overlap should be even narrower to fit the scale, but here I meet the limits as gluing paper strips together with so little attaching surface is tricky for me and also the final sail shall have some durability. Still it is not that much wide compared to plans, so I hope the final result will be fine.

 

Now the sail is slightly weathered and matt-lacquered, will post pics later when more sails are available.

 

Thank you all for all the support.

 

Edited June 27, 2022 by juhu

[MrBlueJacket]

Regarding the line on the jumbo sail, to me it looks like a reef line, but that is inconsistent with the reef points on the main. It is unlikely but possible that the sail was added onto at some point, which is cheaper than making a whole new sail. Other than that, I don't know.

[juhu]

Thank you for the answer Nic. I think I will make it then somehow - probably leave it in the current state.

In the meantime few more shots from the work in progress:

 

Jib sail is being completed:

Jib Topsail is being glued together:

And main body done, well, actually its first half only:

Ok, I will put the camera aside for a while and will come back once all the sails are done...

 

[CiscoH]

I just read your entire log juhu- masterfully done!  Thank you for posting

[Cathead]

I'm so glad you found my method inspiring and useful! Thanks for crediting it, and nice work.

[juhu]

Greetings,

am back again after a while. Had some accordion to tune and also sail making proved to be quite challenging work with very uncertain results for me. But here they are, done. Thanks to the wired lining and clear lacquer the sails preserve the desired bulged shape quite well. Weathered only very gently to achieve just off-white creamy shade. I guess I will make some ropes now and then carry on rising the masts etc....

 

 

[Cathead]

Those look quite nice!

[juhu]

Hello,

I have started with "upper floors" as promised. Rising the masts was not so difficult, more thoughts I spent on "workflow" for the sails and rigging: This is my first model and I did not want to attach something at the beginning, that would create nasty "accessibility" problem at the end. Will see only later, if something was not forgotten.

Standing rigging was again quite a challenge for me. I have studied various Smuggler's builds and other models too, still was a bit reluctant when it came to a thread thickness. Seems like as many modellers, as many interpretations. Fortunately BlueJacket provides very detailed rigging size table, big kudos for that! However there are only 4 thread sizes for standing rigging included in the kit. I tried to make some reasonable approximation. When needed, used 3rd party threads and also made several ropes using the rope maker. But only when I felt it would make sense: on thicker threads like stays and main shrouds. One head scratching item for me was jumbo stay. It is the thickest part of standing rigging and even when I made it as closely to scale as possible, it looks well, quite prominently let's say. But it matches the plan scale instructions, hopefully the final result will not be too bad and oversized at the end...

 

Edited August 7, 2022 by juhu

[juhu]

Hi all,

thanks for all the likes. (I would rather not mention, that I torn off all the standing rigging, yes, I did it again , I did not like the result, the lines were too thick, self made ropes looking interesting, but I felt the rope structure is not OK for the scale then. Nevertheless, all is now reworked and bowsprit fully rigged with kit supplied threads, happy with the result and proceeding further)

 

I would like now to ask for a help with one tiny technical detail, if you could help how to proceed, would be very helpfull  I posted the full detailed question also here, thinking it may be useful in general. Thank you!

 

 

[allanyed]

4 hours ago, juhu said:

I did not like the result, the lines were too thick, self made ropes looking interesting, but I felt the rope structure is not OK for the scale then

Good call on the rigging Juhu.  Based on the strings versus ropes found in many kits it seems that very few kit makers do much study of the circumference of the rigging lines even though there is a lot of contemporary based information available.  Thank goodness there are after market rope suppliers that offer pretty good ranges of circumferences for standing and running rigging and it is rope, not string, so the junk in the kit can be thrown out or used to darn holes in socks.. 

[juhu]

Hi allanyed,

thanks for encouraging words. But here actually my attempt to make my own ropes was a step aside. Simply said, the result of my own made rope work so far is good to me i.e. for a very thick rope like anchor rope visible on the deck in the pics above. But when I tried to make thinner ropes, I found, that although the structure of such  self made rope is superior to the kit or commercial supply, I felt that it simply does not match to scale and is too prominent. Something like heavy rivets or deep panel lines on some plastic kits - not everything can be scaled down from the original.

So the standing rigging will be either kit supply or 3rd party ropes, but running rigging I replaced fully. The kit supply here was made of white-colored thread that would need to be tanned somehow or would be suitable for a modern yacht maybe.

Still I wonder if I get help with this technical realization query - how shall I run the topsail rigging to have it historically correct or I will do it "somehow" with hope of not being very far from correctness.

 

Edit: Ah, just have got an answer in rigging section, the community here is really great!

Edited August 15, 2022 by juhu

[juhu]

Hello,

just a few quick photos to document current state. With sails being set the access to belaying pins etc. becomes more and more challenging....

 

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by juhu
new pictures

[Mike Collier]

Wow, great job. Your model looks fantastic! I hope that someday my modeling gets as close to your modeling.

[gsdpic]

Looking really nice, and getting close to the end I guess.

 

As for the white running rigging line supplied by Bluejacket, I just used regular brown fabric dye (Rit brand in the US) to dye the line.  It was a little bit of a pain to have this extra step and then wait for the line to dry, but I thought the results were acceptable.    Hmmm, looking at your model, I realize that my standard for "acceptable" may not be as high as yours.   Oh, I see now it looks like you have some running rigging in place so I guess you've already resolved the issue.

 

[juhu]

Hello,

 

Thank you for all the kind words!

 

Another small step forward. All the sails are up there, although not yet fully rigged - must finish some standing rigging work first.

After that I guess only a bunch of details is missing: flags, dory lifts, mackerel booms etc. I have just realized I ran out of single blocks - the kit provides enough when building the ship without the sails, but obviously not enough if all the sails are to be set according to plan. I will try to modify some 3rd party blocks to resemble those from the kit as much as possible.

 

[juhu]

Hello,

another small update. Mackerel pocket booms done and started work on ratlines. Both tasks quite challenging for me, too many rigging obstacles in the way and those ratlines... too many of them even without any other obstacles.

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by juhu

[juhu]

Hi all,

 

The story has come to its end, Smuggler is finished. It has been a long, 2 years run, no doubts also because of my lack of experience. I had done many tiring reworks of my faults, right from the hull start to the rigging end and once the whole kit was literally sitting at the edge of a trash bin. Far from perfect result and with bunch of more or less visible errors, I know, but I admit I am very happy with my first finished wooden ship.

 

Am glad I went on with sails. At least to me, heavy rigged ship like this looks much more dynamic and alive with all the sails set. Sure it added quite a lot of work atop and proved to be quite a temptation just to take easier path with, bare masts and gaffs.  If nothing else, I can sure understand why these ships were so eye-catching from a distance, but also often so deadly to her crews, because of instability under sudden bad weather strikes and heavy seas.

 

Decision to plank her instead of painting is a clear deviation from historical appearance, but I never could convince myself to hide the beauty of the wood under enamel coat.

 

As for the kit, I am no expert builder and can provide only my personal feelings, rather than comprehensive professional review. Using the vocabulary from the world of plastic models, I would rate it as a good short-run kit. It portraits the subject out of the main stream for rather higher price. No fancy laser cut parts or 3D prints. The 1:1 plans are just great and if they do not cover some details, there comes MSW community and Chapelle’s book “The American Fishing Schooners 1825-1935” to help. Metal castings are of various qualities, I tried to replace them with wooden representation where possible, or at least to paint and weather them to a wooden look. Rigging threads: the “black ones” are OK, those white are …too white to my taste. The thing worth to mention is the dory boat sub-kit. This is a true little gem, I was so pleased with it I wanted to order one more but, alas, overseas postage and customs would multiple the purchase costs, so let it be. I wish the kit was provided as it is, only with a classic POB hull construction or at least the bulwarks were designed in that way. Overall I am very happy with my choice: I feel I have learnt a lot, much more than if everything was made of precut and laser ready-to-use cut parts. This is the greatest benefit for me, although I also only now see, how little craftsmanship I own, when compared to all those detailed and beautiful builds here on MSW – level I could probably never achieve.

Overall: I would suggest the kit to a determined first time builder, with some model making experience, one just needs to understand what to expect in the box.

 

Last but not least, I would like to thank for all the support and technical advises I received here on MSW and also to BlueJacket Shipcrafters Inc. for providing a kit of this very fine vessel. And great thanks to my wife. Without her never-ending support and patience I could have never spent so many hours in my workroomJ.

 

I took out my Fuji mirror-less and tried to document the final stage of the project … .