Cutty Sark by Kevin-the-lubber - Revell - 1:96 - PLASTIC

[Kevin-the-lubber]

It sunk in because I’ll be using that wire for the railings but, in its normal state, it’s very soft and ductile and I could foresee many happy hours trying to tease it into a ‘perfect’ shape. After twisting it’s surprising stiff and I guess with enough practice (and nothing better to do!) I imagine you can tailor that to your needs. Digging very deep into memories of my apprenticeship, it’s all about changing the crystalline structure. I can see me begging for unused Victory wire sooner or later!

[Hubac's Historian]

The winch looks spectacular!

[shipman]

Hi Kevin.

What sort of wire were you using?

Copper is very soft, but if you put a decent length, one end in in a vice and give a firm tug on the other end using pliers you will feel it stretch. Not only will that give a straight piece of wire, it will also be 'harder'. Give it a try.

[Bill97]

Pretty impressive my friend!

[Bill Morrison]

On 3/12/2022 at 2:30 PM, Kevin-the-lubber said:

Alabama Bill, I think the Kearsage is quite similar to the Alabama isn’t it? I’ll need to have a look at your log when I’m ready to start on that (could be years!).

Kevin,

 

They are similar only on a glance.  Kearsarge has a much larger armament.  Her masts are almost vertical while Alabama's are raked aft. Alabama is 20 feet longer.  Their deck arrangement is very different.  Kearsarge was built in the USA while Alabama was built in Liverpool, UK.

 

Unfortunately, Revell used many of the same parts to manufacture both ships.  The USS Kearsarge is a well-detailed version of that ship as she appeared in 1874, well after the US Civil War.  The CSS Alabama kit does not represent the real ship at all.  Revell chose to simply use the Kearsarge's hull, the same cannons as in their Kearsarge kit.  They cannot be used in a model of the Alabama.

 

In my Alabama Model, I modified the hull, drilled out all the hull openings as the appeared on Alabama, scratch-built a correct deck, and layout, used the Cottage Industry after-market armament correct for Alabama, and scratch-built the correct deck furniture.  The model is now roughly 98% accurate.  I have the Kearsarge waiting in the wings.

 

Unfortunately, Revell had this tendency to create an excellent kit, then rebox it as something else with ever-so-slight modifications.  They manufactured the excellent USS Kearsarge, then reboxed it as Alabama. They manufactured the outstanding Cutty Sark, then reboxed it to Thermopylae and Pedro Nunes.  Their USS Constitution was reboxed as the USS United States with the addition of a Roundhouse aft and a fictional second level to the quarter galleries and an equally fictional transom.  Their excellent smaller sailing ships carried on with this practice.

 

But, I have discovered the fun that I can have trying to modify them and detail them according to their real designs. It can be challenging.

 

Bill

[Kevin-the-lubber]

2 hours ago, shipman said:

What sort of wire were you using?

It’s probably mild steel, but at the low grade end of things. As luck would have it I threw away miles of copper wire and old armoured cable that I replaced when I built my office a couple of years back, which would have come in handy now. I’ll have to think of a new project to generate some more 😀

[Kevin-the-lubber]

18 minutes ago, Bill Morrison said:

The USS Kearsarge is a well-detailed version of that ship as she appeared in 1874, well after the US Civil War.

Bill, lucky for me then that the Kearsage was the base model. I had a good look at it when it arrived and will look forward to working on that, probably late this year or early next year. It sounds like you are doing to the Alabama what I’m doing to the Cutty Sark. I’ll almost certainly do something similar to the Kearsage as I dislike the split deck and now have a reasonable method for making my own. The model is quite similar in approach to the CS - illogical divisions, positive grain and so on, but for all that, what looks like a very unusual, interesting ship to make. I also quite like that there aren’t dozens of build logs for it; it’ll be good to have to figure it out myself.

 

On a different tack, my second CS arrived last week, what’s interesting is how much more flex there is in that newer pressing. Less flash as well. I don’t know what I’ll do with it though. Possibly just keep it for a rainy day. I’d like to have a go at the very beautiful Glory of the Seas but make that entirely myself, mostly via 3D printing. But that too is for another day.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

Marc, Ian, thanks. This was surprisingly quick, easy and fun to make. And I’m pleased to have now got a couple of items properly finished! I look at the production rate of others on the forum and just don’t know how they do it.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

Glazed portholes this evening, and a first go at a more true-to-life binnacle. This one is too big, 20% smaller is about right and awaiting painting. Re' the portholes, for every one in the cabin there are 5 pinged around my workshop, never to be seen again. But I made loads of spares.

 

 

 

[Hubac's Historian]

Fabulous!  The teak has that really nice sun-bleached effect.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

Marc, I spent a bit of time doing colour tests; in fact the best result for a near teak effect was a sand colour primer, raw sienna base, burnt sienna wash and peat ink, but this really clashed with the deck so I skipped the burnt sienna. I’ll settle for this, especially as I don’t yet have the skill to do it better.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

I've more or less finished the deck furniture work now, just little bits and bobs to do before I stow it all away while I work on the hull pinrails (rough versions of which are at the top of the photo below). Photos will follow once I've finished varnishing etc. Meanwhile and just for completeness I thought I'd share a picture of what I did to strengthen the deck, explain why, and see if critique produces better ideas for next time, as I'm already thinking forwards to something similar for the Kearsage.

 

This is the deck upside down. The planked side of the deck is made up of four FDM-printed sections and a small resin-printed section for the bowsprit area, that skin-coloured bit in the photo. The planked deck sections are only 1.3mm thick, which means they are very, very bendy and flexible. I chose FDM because I could print these section dead flat, to get a better finish, get dead square joints and introduce the deck curve through bracing. The white base in the photo is 0.5mm styrene card. This is joined to the planked sections using double-sided tape. The reason for two layers is that it enabled me to butt-join the planked sections dead flat and dead true. I found glue-ing was too difficult: too little glue and the planks would lift at the joints; too much and the glue would get squeezed out, harden and spoil the joint. DS tape over this amount of surface area seems to work just fine.

 

However, that still left me with a very floppy, easily distorted deck which wouldn't have had the rigidity to hold the masts true. With hindsight, I should have committed to making new masts and had them connect to the keel, rather than maintain the short socket method favoured by Revell. Nevertheless, the brown frame in the photo is FDM printed and, being 5mm thick, has quite a bit of rigidity. The deck curve is designed in to the top of this frame. This is made and glued as three sections due to printer size limits. The middle section interlocks so that it doesn't rely entirely on glue for strength. I resin-printed the mast sockets and braced these further by glue-ing additional FDM printed bars to the sides of the sockets and framework.

 

All told this has created a fairly solid deck, with just enough give in it to flex to the fore-to-aft curve of the hull and, most importantly, the masts are held firm and true. Not shown here, but I've boxed in the three hold areas to pretty it up when looking from the top; though not yet settled on whether to fill these with cargo or leave them as a faux deck, or even cover them up with gratings.

 

I certainly wouldn't claim this as a great method, just one that got around the limitations of 3D printing to give a fairly decent, low cost end result. 

 

On to the pinrails and railings now; I'm expecting this to be tricky to get right.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Kevin-the-lubber

[Kevin-the-lubber]

The light this morning is so beautiful that I took a quick break from gardening to grab a picture of the quarterdeck mid-way through final assembly; I still need to finish the water buckets (making wire handles), and trim the pins to length, little jobs that I'm doing when I've had enough of potting, weeding and planting. I'm happy enough with this so far - I'm learning a lot, which is the point, and will do some things differently on the next kit, but as I'm not obsessing over every small error on this one I'm accepting that this is as good as I can do at this point in time i.e. the stanchions don't look nearly as wonky in the flesh but nevertheless aren't perfectly upright! I expected these and the railing to be a nightmare but in the event they were fairly straightforward. I made a little former for the wire rail to get the shape and exact length and the only tricky part has been trying to avoid losing detail through painting. 

 

[shipman]

Nice rendition of those rails, Kevin.

Looking at photo's of the ship pre and post fire incarnations a Greenwich, these rails weren't fitted, though they were when last afloat as a cadet training ship.

Curious.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

I took a good look at the quarterdeck cabin roof while visiting a couple of months ago and you can see where the edge planks  have been patched. They are also shown, in this format, on Campbell plan. Ultimately though I just liked them, there’s not much detail on the model and, for me, they add interest. (Plus they were quite satisfying to make!).

[Ian_Grant]

Kevin, your woodwork looks great!  Awesome painting.....

[Kevin-the-lubber]

Thanks Ian, I got close to what I was aiming for on the bigger bits but less so on the small items, where for me anyway it’s much harder to get a wood effect.

[Hubac's Historian]

Super stuff, Kevin - it all looks as good as the real thing!

[Kevin-the-lubber]

A question: is anyone following able to explain the workings of the booby hatch? Is it supposed to be a small sliding cover that would be slid back to allow access down a ladder into the hold? I've seen various interpretations.

 

[shipman]

Which is the 'booby hatch'?

[Kevin-the-lubber]

It’s the hatch in front of the mizzen mast. It’s no longer present on the ship, that space has been re-used for the visitor stairs and I haven’t been able to find any decent pictures of the real thing.

[shipman]

Does this help? No idea where these photo's came from, but were taken before the fire. It would seem there were two such 'booby hatches at that time, one forward, the other aft, and probably identical.

(I would be delighted to give credit to whoever took these images)

[shipman]

My guess is the hatches above were put there after the original 1950's restoration to aid public access.

 

One note: originally there was only one central ladder to the foc'cil (sp?). The run of the anchor chains would seem to dictate that.

 

I've said it before, but the location of that forward hatch still is a mystery to me as the chains would quickly rip the hatch coming apart.

It has been suggested when the chain was taken over the winch it would have been somehow elevated over the hatch, which to me seems very unlikely.

[LeoM]

I did some research In Longridge' Cutty Sark and found below explanation, see picture

Booby hatch Longridge.pdf

Edited April 18, 2022 by LeoM

[shipman]

Hi Leo, the forward hatch can be seen just in front of the first photo's 'booby hatch'.

It would seem when Longridge examined the ship (when she was still afloat of the south coast) that smaller hatch had been decked over.

 

As can be seen, that smaller hatch has its own cover, similar in style to the other two. Again, I suspect all three hatch covers were erected for the benefit of the visiting public as part of the 1950's re-fit.

[shipman]

Doh!

Me again.

 

Page 164 of Longridge (book 1) has a line drawing of the 'booby hatch'.

 

Page 135 (book 2) has a photograph showing a very different (to the model) image of the area immediately aft of the (what was then) the straight edge of the back of the forecastle including the central ladder.

The 'scuttle' for the crew access below can be seen just forward of the ladder.

Notice also the balustrades, which are similar to those at the break of the poop.

Aft of the ladder is the forward hatch with a boarded cover. It's possible a similar cover was originally over what we are calling the aft 'booby hatch'.

 

Enough boobies for one day.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

Thanks both, I think that gives me enough to work on. I don’t have Longridge but his description is in keeping with Campbell so I’ll go with that.

 

Shipman, you may well be right that the elegant entrances were added later but the one just aft of the windlass is shown on Campbell and, as I’m going to have a look at remaking the foredeck and windlass using Campbell’s drawings, I might add that hatch too, just because it’s a pretty feature. The remake of the foredeck is driven by dissatisfaction with the revell-based windlass. The real thing is a very imposing bit of machinery whereas the revell part is somewhat innocuous. However, making it more dimensionally accurate means changing the profile of the foredeck to accommodate the larger girth of the windlass.

 

I’m as perplexed as everyone about the chains routing over the hatch. Even with them draped over the forward winch, I’d still expect the hatch to suffer constant damage at either end of the anchoring process, when there’s slack in the chain. Plus this is heavy stuff. I’d guess manhandling that onto the chain gear every time you want to anchor meant lifting 100lbs or more of dead weight. Or maybe they just left it draped over the gear? That doesn’t seem terribly plausible, I’d think you’d want everything held firmly in place when out at sea.

[Kevin-the-lubber]

Shipman, what are the titles of each of those books? ‘The ship and the model’ is readily available, though pricey.

[shipman]

Hello again Kevin.

 

'The ship and the model' was originally published in two volumes, combined into one edition in 1975.

The combined edition reprints both books together. Referring to books 1 & 2 avoids confusion with pagination as these weren't altered.

 

I don't have the original volumes to hand, but I'm sure they have separate plans and diagrams inserted into pockets inside the back covers; not a feature of the reprint edition.

 

I'm lucky to have both versions. By constantly watching ebay it's possible to get either at reasonable prices.

As is so often the case, when you want something, it isn't available or costs too much.

 

Over the last few years I've managed to assemble quite a library of most of of the books deemed essential on this forum at reasonable cost, with the exception of the well known books from France. I wish!

[shipman]

Oh, while I'm at it.....

 

I had the pleasure of examining Longridges model at the Science Museum model ship collection, now sadly CLOSED! At the time I didn't carry a camera.

 

I've run exhaustive searches online, yet have found only one poor photo of that model.

So at the moment at least, the only photo's available are the ones in the book.

 

The model must be in storage, possibly at Chatham. If someone has the resources, I understand the museum will grant access (upon request) to most objects in their posetion and allow one to photograph them. I'm in no position to do that, but someone would do us a great service and do just that!