SY Aurora by Glen McGuire - FINISHED - 1/500 - BOTTLE

[gjdale]

That’s a very cool base Glen!

[Glen McGuire]

Thank you, Mike!  Hope you and your family had a great Christmas!

 

Thank you, Grant!

Edited December 30, 2021 by Glen McGuire

[Glen McGuire]

Thanks, Keith.  I'm still not sure what I'm going to do with the stovepipe, the engine room, and the vent pipes.  That deck looks awful busy in the pictures.  And now my son told me I must have smoke coming out of the stovepipe.  I thanked him for adding more complexity to something that's probably already over my head! 

 

But I've gotta get the hull built before I start worrying too much about the deck fittings.

[BANYAN]

An interesting subject for your SIB Glen, and a very unique display base in the form of the sledge (very nicely executed BTW).

 

I look forward to seeing your build at such a small scale.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Glen McGuire]

Mawson’s book “The Home of the Blizzard” has some good information about the Aurora including a nice cross-section and deck plan below.  It also has an interesting description of why they chose a wooden vessel rather than a steel one.  

 

“The construction of wood imparts a certain elasticity which is of great advantage in easing the shock of impacts with floating ice.  The ordinary steel ship would be ripped on its first contact with the ice.  Another device to obviate the shock and assist in foraging through the pack-ice is to have a cut-away bow.  Thus, instead of presenting to the ice a vertical face, which would immediately arrest the ship and possible cause damage on account of the sudden stress of the blow, a sloping, over-hanging bow is adopted.  This arrangement enables the bow to rise over the impediment, with a gradual slackening of speed.  The immense weight put upon the ice crushes it and the ship settles down, moving ahead and gathering speed to meet the next obstacle.”

“The hull was made of stout oak planks, sheathed with greenheart and lined with fir.  The bow, fashioned on cut-away lines, was a mass of solid wood, armoured with steel plates.  The heavy side frames were braced and stiffened by two tiers of horizontal oak beams.”

For my Aurora, I’m using laminated strips of basswood rather than oak, greenheart, and fir!  I’m also using coffee stirrers for bulwarks.  
 

[Glen McGuire]

The deck has 3 levels – a tall forecastle, a lower main deck, and an extended, medium height deck in the stern.  The stern deck seems too long to call it a poop deck so I’m not sure what the proper name for it would be.  I also added the bowsprit and knee and then sanded everything down.
 

[Glen McGuire]

Time for the deck fittings.  First up is the anchors.  For the Morgan ship last time, I made anchors by filing down leftover photo-etch sprues.  They came out ok I guess, but I wanted to try and do better this time.  

 

I thought music wire would be good for anchors at this size.  Unfortunately, that requires soldering and I’ve never been good at it.  The only thing I’ve really tried to solder before were copper wires to fix electronic things and those always came out ugly.  So, I’ve been taking some soldering classes at Youtube U.   

The music wire is the smallest diameter I could find at Hobby Lobby - .015”.  The challenge was holding the tiny pieces in the exact position while applying the solder.  I ended up finding yet another use for duct tape as you can see in the first pic.       
 

[Keith Black]

 Glen, great micro detail work. I'm always whining and moaning about trying to make items at 1:120 scale while folks like yourself working at even smaller scales make it look easy, hats off. 

[BANYAN]

Impressive work at that scale.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Glen McGuire]

Thank you, Keith and Pat.  The worst part was that I kept dropping the little parts of the anchor on the floor and then I could not find them.  I can't tell you how much time I wasted searching!  I finally ended up dragging a magnet over the floor each time I dropped a piece to find it.  😵   

[Keith Black]

Egads, the dreaded tweezer releaser, I hate when that happens!

[Glen McGuire]

On 1/4/2022 at 7:09 PM, Keith Black said:

the dreaded tweezer releaser

Another term added to my ship building vocabulary!

 

Completed the deck fittings.  Left to right:  companion way #1, vent pipes, wheel #1 (small eye bolt), bollards (heads of brass nails), sky lights, engine room with yellow vent pipes and smokestack, chart room, wheel #2, small winch, stairs to chart room, main hatch, galley, whale boats with supports and davits, fore hatch, companion way #2, large winch, stairs to forecastle, forecastle hatch, more vent pipes, capstan (leftover belay pin from CSS Alabama kit), and anchors.

 

[Glen McGuire]

And, all the fittings in place.  My deck is pretty crowded but apparently nothing like the real Aurora when it left Australia loaded with all the gear for the expedition.  That included 38 dogs, radio masts, timbers and boards to build shelters, an airplane-tractor contraption, sledges, food, fuel and other misc equipment.  

 

As the ship left port, Mawson commented, “The piles of loose gear presented an indescribable scene of chaos.  The deck was so encumbered that only at rare times was it visible.”

 

That's actually a pretty good description of my kitchen table when I'm working on one of these ships.

[Keith Black]

 Look at all those little bitty pieces parts in post # 42 and in place in post # 43. Fantastic job, Glen. 

[gjdale]

Wow - just Wow!

[Glen McGuire]

It was a dreary weather weekend in Austin so that meant plenty of time to work on the ship.  Trying to figure out what to do next, I decided on the masts.  I’m using wooden handles from long q-tips which are a bit thicker than regular toothpicks.  I had 3 leftover tiny eyebolts from the Amati Hannah kit and used them as anchors for securing the upper end of the lower shrouds just below the tops.

When I did the Morgan last time, I made the mistake of stepping the masts before installing the upper shrouds and ratlines.  Not this time!  Much easier doing it on the bench.  The ratlines are fly fishing thread (Uni-thread 8/0 72D) glued onto the shrouds with Aleene’s fabric glue, then ends clipped close with cuticle clippers.
 

[Glen McGuire]

Next were the foremast yards.  Pretty basic stuff here.  I used 3 toothpicks and put them on the drill-lathe to taper them down to size.

[Glen McGuire]

I’m getting a little out of order here but I keep thinking about how I’m going to do the rails that go around the ship and on top of the chart room.  I think the rails are a distinctive feature and I want to do a decent job on them.  

My soldering iron broke, so while waiting for a new one to arrive (does anyone ever go to the store anymore?) I tried something a bit different.  I’ve got a bunch of leftover .5mm ball bearings that I used for cannonballs on the Hannah.  So I wondered how they would look as posts for the rail.  I did a little test run on the railing around the chart room just gluing them to the thin music wire.  What do you think?  
 

 

 

Edited January 11, 2022 by Glen McGuire

[Glen McGuire]

Next was putting the white line across the hull.  Thread and CA glue a little at a time. 

 

Edited January 11, 2022 by Glen McGuire

[Glen McGuire]

I finished the weekend by playing around with how to satisfy my son’s demand that smoke must be shown rising from the smokestack.  I took a small piece of music wire and painted it white.  Then I pulled some cotton fragments off of a q-tip, glued it to the wire, and stuck the wire inside the smokestack.  It’s just for practice now, but if it can survive the bottle squeeze, it just might look ok.  Or maybe I can somehow drop it in the smokestack after the ship is inside the bottle.  Hmmmm.  TBD.     

Edited January 11, 2022 by Glen McGuire

[Keith Black]

 Glen, she's a little gem. The cotton/smoke needs to be gray, IMHO. 

[Glen McGuire]

You know, Keith, I was wondering about that.  Thanks for the correction!  Now I gotta find some gray cotton somewhere or figure out how to make white cotton gray.  Hmmmm again.

[Ian_Grant]

Ratlines at 1/500!!  My build is 1/150 and I'm wondering what to use for them.....

[Keith Black]

 Glen, you might try gray knitting yarn either wool or cotton. You can also try to color the white cotton that you have with gray chalk. Oh, the balls for tops look OK but the rail is a bit meaty. Do you think you could use seed beads and run line through them? 

 

https://www.shipwreckbeads.com/Beads/seed-beads

[Glen McGuire]

8 hours ago, Keith Black said:

the rail is a bit meaty

Agreed, Keith.  And it will look even meatier when painted white.

 

8 hours ago, Keith Black said:

Do you think you could use seed beads and run line through them? 

That is an interesting idea.  I actually bought the smallest beads I could find when I was building the Morgan thinking I could use them for deadeyes (didn't work out though).  I'm going to play around with them and see how it looks.

 

[Glen McGuire]

9 hours ago, Ian_Grant said:

Ratlines at 1/500!! 

Well, Ian, if I was really good at this stuff I'd be tying knots instead of wimping out and gluing them on!  😵

[Keith Black]

 Glen, my dear wife once did beadwork. I'll have to go through some of the seed/tiny beads of hers that i've appropriated and see if they're smaller than the ones you have pictured. I'll get back to you shortly. 

[Landlubber Mike]

Really nice work Glen, nice job!

 

Railings at this scale, especially in a SIB build, are really tricky.  You can make them to scale, but my guess is that they likely will be so fragile that they won't survive the insertion into the bottle process (the photo etch railings on my 1/350 and 1/700 certainly wouldn't survive the insertion process).  Or you could make them stronger, but likely will be out of scale.  I guess it's a balance.

[Keith Black]

 Glen, this is what I've got. The seed beads measure .08 inches but........I think I've found something much more fitting, tiny etched brass eyelets (OD measures .05) from Cornwall Model Boats in the UK, see the below link. Unfortunately they are currently out of stock and I'm pretty sure they have a minimum order amount. If the etched eyelets would work for you, how many do you need for this build, 10?  I'm down to seeds and stems on the eyelets but I've got loads of the seed beads and would be more than happy to send you as many as you might need. 

 

https://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/cgi-bin/sh000001.pl?WD=etched eyelets&PN=caldercraft83505.html#SID=154

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 16, 2022 by Keith Black

[Glen McGuire]

Keith and Mike, thank you very much for your thoughts and ideas.   

 

Keith - my beads look to be the same size as the ones in your picture, so I'm good there.  Your etched eyelets look like they might be good for the posts that hold up the railing.  How sturdy are they?  Unfortunately, I would need 40-50 of them.

 

Mike - you make a good point about the rail surviving the insertion process.   The rails on your 1/350 and 1/700 ships look perfect, but given my fiasco on the Morgan when I snapped the foremast, I would probably choose something that is sturdier but out of scale rather than risk another break inside the bottle.

I also tried stripping some RJ45 networking cable to get to the small strands of copper wire.  The strands are about the same size as my fly-fishing thread so they are very thin and a pretty good scale.  But they are so flimsy, it’s impossible to get them to hold a straight line like I would need for the rail.  I also tried stripping twisty ties to get at the wire but had the same problem.    

So back to Mike’s point, I may have to balance scale vs durability.