Polaris by ibozev - FINISHED - OcCre - 1:50

[Cpt. Jack]

Thanks for the tips! I'll be sure to check out Mastini's book and those youtube videos and see which books seem like the best fit for me. 

     Good luck with the renovation! I am also going to have to wait to start my second ship until I have moved out of my relatively small urban apartment in May 2023 (assuming I have finished Polaris by then!). I don't have any outdoor space or a workshop, so operations like sanding and painting can get tricky.

     For better or worse, I already ordered my next ship: HMS Flirt by Vangaurd Models. I couldn't help myself. The reviews and build logs are all so stunning! But I am also reading the book "Endurance" by Alfred Lansing (great read, highly recommend), and that has me considering OcCre's Endurance as a potentially good middle step. I think it will depend a lot on how my Polaris turns out.

[ibozev]

The Christmas side projects just arrived and it's time to finally organize my tools! 😁 Thanks to OcCre for the fast delivery and great customer service!

 

[ChuckP]

On 12/15/2021 at 1:02 PM, ibozev said:

Hello everyone and greetings from Bulgaria! 🙂

 

    I'm really happy to be part of this huge community and for me will be a pleasure to share with you my first ever build log. Actually, I am a total beginner in this new hobby and I don't now anything about ships terminology and building techniques. In the past I've solved a lot of jigsaw puzzles (one of my other hobbies), LEGO and UGears kits, but I think it's time for something more difficult and time consuming. This new journey will be very challenging, but also interesting for me. Surely I will learn many new things and hope this won't be my first and last ship model.

    But enough talking about me, let's go to the actual build log:

    Initially I was decided to buy something huge and more difficult, with many sails and ropes, but after several days of research I found this great forum and read a few of the beginner topics. Now I am supper happy that I didn't make such a stupid mistake to buy an impossible (for me) ship model kit. So I chose the OcCre's beginner kit - Polaris. As I mentioned I am a total beginner, that's why I ordered bunch of tools with the kit (hope that's almost everything I need for the build).

 

    After I've sorted all of the wooden parts and I've started assembling the bulkheads to the false keel. One thing that I noticed during sanding, is that the false keel is a little bend. Maybe this won't be noticeable after the deck is mounted?

    For this reason I used two big clamps to keep the false keel straight when gluing the bulkheads:
 

    To keep the bulkheads in 90 degrees angle I used small metal plates (I saw this technique in another Polaris log). I could say this method was very helpful, because it wasn't necessary to hold each part with hands till the glue is completely dry:

    And this is the final result, again you can see the slight bend of the false keel:

 

    Next will be the decking. I plan to start it in the coming days. Unfortunately I don't have enough time to build after work and most of the progress will be done during weekends. But anyway, it's more important to me to build it well, rather than fast. 🙂

 

[ibozev]

    Hello and Merry Christmas to you all! Well, I didn't succeed to finish my Polaris in a year, but as I said in my very first post: "better good than fast". 🙂

    In the past weeks I spent a lot of time for research about the sails making and I'm surprised how difficult is to make accurate and authentic sails and how much different opinions about that exists. If I had bought my Polaris kit without the sails, I wouldn't buy them at all - they are soooo much unrealistic and out of scale (like most of the manufactured sails). For sure my next ship will be without sails or with furled scratch made sails, but for this one I will try to give my best to make the sails as good as possible with the materials and tools I have.

    Tomorrow I will post the result after the first step of sails preparation - the aging. I think they turned out pretty well, for sure better than before.

    Meanwhile I've completed my new workspace and finally everything is clean and packed in one place. I highly recommend OcCre's workbench and the other wooden modules, for me they are very practical and convenient.

[James G]

I’ll take happiness over haste when it comes to the end product in this hobby any day. Sure enjoying following your journey here!

[ibozev]

Sails preparation - aging.

 

    As a said in my previous post, the OcCre's Polaris sails are really awful, but because I already bought them I decided to use them anyway. For this purpose I've read as much as possible (almost every topic in MSW with a keyword "sails" 😄) and decided which techniques and methods could be helpful for my build to make the sails as good as possible. Here I will link some of the most helpful and informative topics, that I think would be useful to other guys also:

1. How Realistic Can One Make Sails? - nice thread with many external links to other good resources and discussions. Gives the overall idea of what the sails should look like and how to handle different issues.
2. A method for making panelled sails using paper by @Cathead - wonderful and very descriptive tutorial on how to make really accurate paper sails. If I hadn't  already bought the cloth sails I would have used this method to make the sails from bond paper.
3. Making Sails for Ship Models from Silkspan by Tom Lauria - video series in 3 parts on how to make furled silkspan sails.
4. Sewing sails for ship models in scale 1/2''-1ft. by @shipphotographer.com - last but not least, the amazing video tutorial in 3 parts by Olha Batchvarov on how to make cloth sails from scratch. My personal opinion is that these were the most authentic sails with the best explained making techniques I could found.

    Enough talking, lets get back to the workbench. This is how the sails looked when I bought them:

    And this is how they look now:

    As I said, my idea was to use as much as possible the materials I already have, so for the coloring I decided to use only the OcCre's dyes. First - diluted Pine dye in a 1:1 ratio with water. With a normal painting brush I painted all the sails on both sides, but before that put them on a paper towel. Then hang them somewhere and wait till they are completely dry:

    I forgot the mention that I ironed the sails twice - first before coloring and second after the drying phase. Still not pretty sure if there should be any wrinkles when I install them on the model or not? Which is better and more authentic or it doesn't matter?

    After the sails were completely dry I painted all the seams with a Pine dye, but this time concentrated NOT diluted. The idea was to make them darker and more noticeable than the panels (on the upper image the seams are already painted):

    In fact, you can stop here if the result is good enough for you. But I decided to give my artistry a chance and experiment with something more. With the Walnut dye (not diluted) I tried to make random small splashes on the canvas, just to make it look dirtier. Dip the brush into the paint and shake it on my index finger. Repeat as many times as you like and the result should be something like this (as it is a messy job so be prepared for this step):

    And this is the final result for this step of the sails preparation after complete drying and ironing:

    In the next step I will try to make the bolt rope and all of the cringles. Most probably I will make reef points on the fore- and main sail (or only on the main, because there is no boom for the foresail). So because of that I will have to prepare in advance at least 4 more cringles. 

    Enough for the current post, it has become too long anyway. The bolt rope step I will try to explain in my next post (hopefully in the upcoming days).

 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by ibozev

[Cathead]

I'm glad you found that thread useful! Nice job on the color of those sails.

[ibozev]

Sails preparation - bolt ropes.

 

    Hi all and Happy New Year! The sails work continues with the installation of the bolt ropes. First of all I wanted to remove the fuzz from the edges of the sails by using a tiny layer of CA - just a touch with the needle. You can see the difference on the image below - the left edge is already prepared and it looks cleaner than the right edge:

    For the bolt ropes I decided to glue them with a diluted PVA and not to sew them. For sure the right way is to sew the bolt rope on the cloth, just like in this post, but for my Polaris I think the 0.15mm raw thread will look out of scale with the 0.50mm brown bolt rope. Also I am pretty sure this will be almost an impossible task. Probably a bolt rope with bigger diameter will do the job, but in my case, the threads are just too small.

    I applied the glue on the port side of the sails, as closer to the edge as possible and put the bolt rope on it. On each corner I left some rope for the cringles:

    Here is the moment to say, that I tough this would be an easy job. Well it wasn't. The bolt rope wrinkled too much on some places and extra PVA was needed after some time. For sure this step could have been done better, but still I'm satisfied with the result. Finally when the glue dried completely I made seizing around the cringles:

    As you can see on the last image, I left extra cringles on the main sail for two reef bands, but will explain this step in detail in my next post. This is how the sails look after the bolt ropes were installed:

 

Edited January 11, 2023 by ibozev

[ibozev]

Sails preparation - reefing lines

 

    I decided to make two reef bands just on the mainsail, because in this kit the foresail doesn't have boom. And I think, that in reality, a sail with reefing lines without a boom couldn't exist.

    I made a research what should be the width of the intervals between each reef band and how many reefing points should be made on each band. I found somewhere that the reef bands should be made intervals of 12% of the sail's luff length - in my case around 2.4cm. I decided to not follow this rule strictly and made the lower band 3.5cm from the foot and the second band - 2.5cm from the lower band (6cm from the foot). In these two bands I punched a hole at each seam - 15 reefing points total. The length of the reefing lines I calculated "by eye" - 2cm each (for both bands).

    For the reefing lines I used OcCre's 0.15mm raw thread. I cut a line with length around 10cm and made a double overhand knot somewhere in the middle. Than with a needle pass the thread through the reefing point on the other side:

    On the other side first I removed the needle and then tied another double overhand knot as close to the cloth as possible. Then on each side I cut the excess thread by placing the line over a metal ruler and cut exactly on the 2cm. Before that I put a drop of CA on the place where I want to cut, just to make the line stiff and easier to cut with a knife. With this method all of the reefing lines should have the exact same length on both sides.

   When everything was ready I decided to straighten a bit the reefing lines with a diluted PVA. I've put a thin piece of scrap wood between the cloth and the reefing lines and then straighten them with a brush and glue:

    After repeating this step for each band on both sides of the sail, this was the final result (port and starboard sides):

Edited January 11, 2023 by ibozev

[ccoyle]

On 1/5/2023 at 4:57 PM, ibozev said:

For the bolt ropes I decided to use glue it with a diluted PVA and not to sew them. For sure the right way is to sew the bolt rope on the cloth, just like in this post, but for my Polaris I think the 0.15mm raw thread will look out of scale with the 0.50mm brown bolt rope.

 

Good decision. I have always opted out of sewing of any kind on my sails for exactly this reason. Correctly scaled stitches are simply impossible to replicate at the scale modelers work in (though I do not think they necessarily look bad if a modeler decides to include them). With care, it is even possible to glue the bolt ropes directly to the edges of a sail, as you can see in the accompanying image.

 

 

You are approaching the finish line on this one!

[ibozev]

Thanks for your comment, Chris! Yes, the one that you sent looks fantastic and a lot better than mine. For the next model I will try to do a better job with the bolt ropes, maybe will need to be more patient and concentrated on this step.

Edited January 13, 2023 by ibozev

[ibozev]

Quick update after two weeks away from the workbench.

 

    The last step before installing the sails is to prepare all of the needed running lines and to bend the sails to the gaffs. I used a halyard hitch knot to reeve all of the lines needed for jibs heads and tacks and all clew cringles. On the fore- and mainsail I didn't install other running rigging.

    The same knot I used also to install the lines for both throat halyards and main sheets:

    One advice here is to install those lines before attaching the blocks to the spars, it would be much easier. Well I didn't consider that when I built the masts and did it the hard way.

    I bend the sails to the gaffs using a single raw line with square knots in both ends. At this moment the vangs and peak halyards were also installed to the gaffs:

    And the last thing that I made before attaching the sails were to install the sails rings (don't know the actual nautical term) around the masts and on the forestay. Again, I should have done this before the standing rigging...

    And this is the final look of all sails (I decided to not fill them with air and leave them as they are at the moment:

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by ibozev

[ibozev]

    Well, it was a productive weekend and I have a lot to share. To keep the posts not too long, I will split them into several updates.

 

    After the sails were fully prepared it was time to install them and the first in the row was the jib. I clipped the halyard and tack line temporary, just to fix the sail. Then sewed all of the small rings, which I already attached to the forestay, using a simple overhand knots. I decided to sew all of the sail rings to the cloth, rather than pushing them through the sails as per the instructions. The distance between each ring was measured in advance and holes for the needle were also made.

    After securing the jib to the forestay, the halyard and tack line could be permanently reeved. I made a mistake here to reeve the jib sheet now, because it was very tricky to install the lines for the fore and main sails later. The better sequence probably could be to reeve all of the sheets at the end, when all sails are installed. This is how the other jib lines look installed:

    As you can see for the halyards I used a standard whipping, which in reality couldn't happen. But since there are a lot of factual mistakes in this kit, for me the visual appearance is more important .

    For the sheet lines I decided to make something interesting, which I haven't done before, but I've seen on other ships. Don't know the actual term and if it's appropriate for my Polaris, but it looks pretty good:

    The flying jib was installed after that in the same sequence as the jib.

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by ibozev

[ibozev]

    Next in the queue was the foresail. Here the rigging sequence I followed was as follow: throat halyard, gaff parrel, luff lacing, peak halyard, vang, clew line. My advice is not to glue the halyards until the luff is completely laced to the mast rings.

    All of the mast rings were again sewed, not pushed through the canvas. Well, that was a tricky and time consuming job, but the end result was pretty good:

    The clew line became better than the other two, maybe because the line was a little longer.

    For the mainsail the rigging sequence were: throat halyard, gaff parrel, luff lacing, peak halyard, topping lift, sheets, vang, clew line. Actually I rigged the vang before the sheets, but probably the vice versa variant would be better, I think.

    For me, the main sheets don't look very realistic and this is one of the many mistakes of the kit - there are no cleats or belaying pins for all of the rigging lines.

 

    As you can see on the above (and bottom) image, the boom is not perpendicular to the mainsail foot and this is a mistake I noticed later when the sail was fully mounted.

    With that being said, the only things left to do are the flag and the rope coils. So I can say that the end of this journey is near 🙂

 

Edited February 11, 2023 by ibozev

[ibozev]

    This post will be more like an improvised tutorial on making rope coils (hanks). I've read some info about coils making, watched couple of videos too, but all of the materials were about the lines belayed on the the belaying pins - something that doesn't exist in Polaris... My idea was to make something different, that I could hang on the masts cleats. So these are the steps I used:

 

1. First make an ellipsis jig with the desired length and shape. Then tape the starting end 'A' and make 4 or 5 rotations counter clockwise around the pins with the other end 'B'.

2. Then carefully transfer the shape to the other jig. I would say that the previous step can be skipped and use only the second jig. My initial idea for the first jig was to keep the shape somehow, in order to have rounded, not sharp ends of the coil.

3. Now make a bight with 'A', tape it again and fixed it on one of the side pins just for convenience.

4. Now begins the fun part. Take the 'B' end and reeve it counter clockwise over A's bight and below the whole coil.

5. Repeat step 4 couple of times, it is important to make every next loop towards 'C'.

6. When you are satisfied with the number of repetitions, reeve 'B' through A's loop and pull both ends.

7. A dot of CA on the backside and cut the excess.

8*. Brush the coil with diluted PVA (I decided not to do this step, but probably it will give a nice finish look).

 

    This is the final look of the coil, attached to the cleat:

Edited February 11, 2023 by ibozev

[ibozev]

And here we are, after 14 months my Polaris is finally finished!

 

    I certainly kept my promise from the very first post of this log, that I will make it slowly 😅. Hopefully I fulfilled at least a little the other, more important, part of my promise: "to do it well"!

    I want to special thank for all of the comments, likes and support through this wonderful journey! I started as a total beginner without any nautical knowledge and ended with a finished model and a lot of information and lessons learn. 

    For sure this won't be my last model and most probably my next build will start next year at the earliest. Till then I will try to read some books about rigging, make a display case and better photos of the finished model (the last one will happen soon).

-----

P.S. Now I can finally back to one of my other hobbies and celebrate it properly! Cheers!

Edited February 11, 2023 by ibozev

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  Very nice work on Polaris !

[GP-SAV]

She's a beauty!  Congrats on the completion.

[ccoyle]

Very handsomely done! Congratulations!

[BobG]

Wonderful work, Ilia!

[Cpt. Jack]

Wow! Congratulations on completion of your Polaris! It turned out beautifully. Amazing craftmanship. Additionally, this build log will be such an excellent guide for so many people in the future, myself included! Really looking forward to seeing your future work as well. 

[Cathead]

That's a wonderful model. Nicely balances clean workmanship with artistic attractiveness. I hope you have a proud place to display it.

[ibozev]

Thank you for all the likes and comments!

An album with high quality images is already uploaded in my Profile section. This was also my first attempt to shoot with something different than a phone. 😅

Edited February 12, 2023 by ibozev

[DonBMichigan]

That's a very nice model, and a wonderful build log! Every step in the build and the log was well done. 

[ibozev]

Hi everyone and Happy New 2024 Year!

 

It's a pleasure for me to have something new to share with you! A small, but important milestone for me - one of my Polaris photos was uploaded by OcCre on their website and is now part of the official model images! You can check them here.

[chadwijm6]

Congratulations, that is very cool. I'm not surprised it is a great finished product that yo made. I have bought the Polaris and will start it soon, will be my first wooden ship build, your build log has been very informative and I'm sure will be incredibly helpful. I can see a job offer from Occre for you in the future!!