Endurance by Tomculb - FINISHED - OcCre - 1:70

[Tomculb]

Briefly following up on the personal note that started my last update, the depth of field problems disappeared within a day or two of posting that comment.  I had cataract surgery on the other eye yesterday afternoon, probably won’t be doing anything on my model today, but expect that today’s issues will gradually disappear as well.  😄

 

I thought this post was going to be about davits for the ship’s boats, but there were several things that needed to be done before tackling that job.

 

A couple of the many Endurance photos available online show the forward pair of davits to be significantly different from the rear ones.  The forward ones are mounted within the bulwarks, while the aft ones are attached to the outside of the hull, similar to what OcCre would have you do with both pairs of davits.

I ordered some 2mm diameter aluminum wire to make the davits (more on this in my next post, about the davits).  The bulwarks are made from 2mm thick plywood; an obvious problem.  I decided that the best solution to that problem was to glue a couple of 2mm (or perhaps 1/16”?) thick strips on the inside of each bulwark, just below the rail cap.  Much easier said than done in the narrow space available, especially for the forward strips. Fortunately the beam holding the aft end of the boats was only dry fit, and I was able to remove it, making a little more room available. After trying too many unsuccessful methods to talk about, what worked was applying a small piece of double sided scotch tape to a finger to which I stuck a strip, applying a bit of glue to the exposed side of the strip, and pressing it blindly into place.  For some reason I had a dentist’s mirror (plastic: probably a toy) where I store tools I never use, and I used that to view and make necessary adjustments. All of this so there would be enough wood available in which to drill holes for the davits.

Before I could install the davits, I needed to glue the boats in place, and before that I needed to rig the lines which lash the boats in place, and before that I needed to glue the planks which run between the deck house and the deck behind it, and before I did any of that, I needed to glue the aforementioned beam in place. And of course I needed to fabricate the davits, but that will be the subject of my next post. My fingers are too big and clumsy to rig the boat lashings with the boats in place, so I did the rigging very loosely, leading the threads through the previously installed eyebolts in the appropriate order, then sliding the boats though the loose loops of thread and into place after carefully placing a dab of glue where each boat’s keel will rest atop the beams.  After the glue dried, I tightened the thread and somehow tied off the end of each thread with a half hitch. Both ends of the thread were knotted to the same eyebolt, on the inside rather than the outboard side of the boat, so as to hide the unsightly knots.

I also found some time to rig a few ratlines.

 

 

 

[SaltyScot]

I am happy to read that your eye issue resolved itself, Tom. Let's hope the after effects of this latest surgery go the same route. I found your sticky tape solution ingenious! That is what a lot of this hobby is about, solving tricky issues like that. Nicely done.

[Tomculb]

A year ago March I made anchor davits from some 1mm aluminum wire that I had lying around.  It was very easy to bend and otherwise work with, and I had no idea where it came from.  Some Google sleuthing revealed that it’s often used in crafts, which led to the realization that this wire was probably something our daughter played with probably more than 25 years ago.

 

That wire was too thin to work for these davits, but I found some 2mm wire online that worked just fine.  At least for these two boats, the davits supplied by OcCre not only don’t work facing inboard, but IMHO they are too large for this scale.

Bending this wire to the desired shape was quite easy.  I found a highlighting pen that made a perfect jig. I then used some blunt nosed pliers to flatten the upper end of each wire and put a hole in each one to attach the tackle to.  The latter proved to be far more difficult than I expected; in part because my mini drill bit set is not very good quality, and in part because flattening the ends probably made the aluminum harder and denser.  The problem I had was creating enough of an indentation so that the drill bit didn’t dance all over the place before finally digging into the aluminum. What finally worked was driving a tiny nail through the metal, and enlarging the hole with an appropriately sized bit.

 

Then I realized that the tackle couldn’t travel in a straight line to a cleat positioned where any crew member could reach it; it would drape against the side of the boat, which just didn’t look right.  So I drilled holes for small eyebolts for the line to pass through. I don’t have, and probably couldn’t reliably handle, blocks small enough to fit the bill.  Next challenge was making cleats for securing the end of the tackle, very much like the wire cleats I attached near the bottom of each mast. The masts of course are significantly larger in diameter than these davits, and they provided a much better gluing target than these davits.  After an hour or two of unsuccessful efforts, I gave up and decided another eyebolt would have to serve as a faux cleat. Next step was to give the assembled davits a bath in denatured alcohol to get any finger grease off of them (I kind of guessed that was a good idea), then painted them with the same Model Shipways “Warm White” paint that I used on everything else that is white on the ship.

Rigging the tackles was pretty straight forward.  As with the anchor tackles, I used photo-etched hooks (left over from my prior build) to attach the tackles to the eyebolts previously installed in each boat. Those hooks are all but invisible in the photos below. Tying off the running end of each tackle was pretty straightforward as well.  Far more challenging was hanging a rope coil on each eyebolt rather than on a cleat; it took quite a bit of effort for something that is almost not visible. A dab of white paint on the top of each davit hides the thread used to tie the upper blocks to the davits.

[SaltyScot]

Tom, you did a fantastic job with those davits! They look great, truly. When the time comes, I am so going to steal your idea!! Nice work indeed.

[Tomculb]

Thanks for the kind remarks Mark.  I had some fun putting the boats and davits together.

 

 

About a year ago, I installed railings on deck, using realistic looking brass stanchions I ordered online from somewhere instead of the flat photo-etched ones supplied by OcCre. I Installed the railing that runs around the stern as instructed by OcCre (the railing topped by a cable), and later remembered a photo of the ship which shows a wooden cap atop the railing.  Ever since then I have thought about a do over to make my model better match the real thing, but that thought was always accompanied by another thought . . . I’ll approach the issue another day.  Well, another day has arrived.

 

 

Once I decided that the do over was in fact doable, I photo-copied the aft deck plan included in OcCre’s instructions, then cut out the rail, intending to use that as a template, to make sure the fit was right and for cutting out the rail from a sheet of 3/32” basswood I had. The paper was too flimsy to use for checking the fit, so I used it to cut a template from something thicker (an old file folder). I then cut out the rail using an Xacto knife. The result was a little asymmetrical, but I was hopeful that wouldn’t show. Laying it on top of the stanchions allayed my fears in that regard, but I discovered it was a couple of millimeters too narrow at the open end of the horseshoe. Fortunately  it could be pulled to the appropriate width without stressing the wood much at all.

The point of no return came when I clipped off the tops of each of the stanchions. That took some courage, but I grit my teeth, held my breath, and did it.

To stretch the rail cap to the desired width, I drilled holes in each end and slipped them over the stanchions.  Getting holes precisely drilled for all the other stanchions was going to be a challenge, so instead I tried leaving a drop of CA on top of each of the remaining stanchions and simply laid the rail cap on top of the rest of them.  That worked better than I expected. I’m sure it’s a little fragile, but that’s true of most of any ship model. Unfortunately the rail cap is a bit too thick (I later found a 1/16” sheet that would have been better), but over all I’m pretty happy with the result.

Finally, I have now glued the dog kennels in place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tomculb]

A month since my last post, and the only thing I have accomplished is building one of the two remaining ship’s boats. Ah, the joys of summer. 

As I mentioned in previous posts, these boats are larger than the ones I have already installed.  Additionally they have a transom, while the others are double ended.  The plans I have posted previously show none of them to be double ended and all to be about the same size. 

 

There is a mistake in OcCre’s instructions.  The instructions show a piece (S47) butting up against the end of the keel (S50), while in actuality, that piece butts up against the transom at the upper end and the false keel at the other end.  The aft end of the keel needs to be rounded or tapered to flow seamlessly into the false keel and piece S47.

      

For me, the biggest challenge was shaping the sharp angle where the upper part of the hull, along the transom, meets the lower part, along the keel; a challenge mostly due to the small size of the boat. As is usually the case when I’m planking, things looked downright ugly before sanding and filling. 🙂

[SaltyScot]

On 8/7/2025 at 3:29 PM, Tomculb said:

Ah, the joys of summer. 

 

I am with you on that one, Tom!

[Tomculb]

I don’t think I have seen any photos of the aft ship’s boats showing them anything other than hanging out over the water.  In the photo below, it appears that the davits are not high enough to lift the boats over the railing and onto the deck. And once the dog kennels were added, there would be no room for the boats on deck.

I made the davits the same way I made the forward boat davits, bending 2mm aluminum wire around a marker pen.  This time I had to make fittings (or straps?) to wrap around the davits, attaching them to the sides of the hull.  For this I used 1mm aluminum wire, the same material I used in making the anchor davits many months ago.  After giving it some thought, I made the “legs” of these straps of unequal length, figuring I would insert the longer leg into its hole in the hull, then bend the fitting a minute amount as needed to get the other leg in its hole. Easier than trying to fit two legs into their holes simultaneously.

In rigging the two tackles, I cut the thread too short; it would take quite a bit of rope to lower the boat into the water.  I had too little thread to make a realistically robust rope coil, and I found it very difficult to coil what thread I had left to work with.  In retrospect, I should have made separate rope coils from separate pieces of thread and fashioned something to hang them from, as I did with every other rope coil on the ship.  As can be seen in the photo below, I had particular difficulty with the coil on the left.  The saving grace is that these meager attempts won’t be all that noticeable in the overall scheme of things. And I’ve been giving some thought to a do-over, but haven’t quite gotten there yet.

Now, I need to build the other boat and its davits.  And finish the ratlines and some standing rigging on the mizzen mast. Who knows, maybe my next post will have “Finished” appended to the topic title.  If so, it will likely be well into the fall before it’s posted.

 

[Tomculb]

Six or seven weeks have gone by since my last post, and all I have accomplished in the meantime is building the one remaining ship’s boat and building and installing davits for it to hang from. Some great travel and nice autumn weather have kept me outdoors and away from the shipyard. 

 

As I did with the forward pair of boats, the lower block of the tackle is attached to the eyebolt in the boat’s hull with a hook; obviously that block would not likely be tied to the eyebolt as OcCre would have you do it.  This time I cut the line in that tackle long enough so that I could make a rope coil to hang from the davit. The coils look a lot better than what I did on the opposite side, where I will do a do over.

The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter, but still a number of things left to do.  🙂

 

[SaltyScot]

19 hours ago, Tomculb said:

The light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter, but still a number of things left to do.

 

Make a list, Tom. Never a bad thing for us older folk  

[Tomculb]

A few small things since my last post . . .

 

Finished the mizzen ratlines, including those on the futtock shrouds . . .

Added aft two pair of mizzen shrouds . . .

Did a do-over of the port aft ship’s boat aft lanyard coil.  Decided to leave well enough with the forward one of those coils.

Some time ago I glued a couple of OcCre supplied bollards to the aft deck (in addition to the two already on the anchor deck).  OcCre would also have you place bollards at the fore and aft corners on either side of the lower deck, which raised an issue in my mind.  Bollards like that are usually used for docking and perhaps towing lines only, not standing or running rigging.  But such docking lines would be led directly from the bollard to the dock, not up and over the bulwarks as would be necessary as placed by OcCre.  Which made me realize that dock lines would best run through scuppers, whose main purpose was to drain water off that lower deck.  But neither OcCre, nor any of the plans I have seen for Endurance, show such scuppers.  Were there some sort of internal drain pipes to drain water? Scuppers would be more efficient and more common, in my view, but what do I know? Had I thought about it at the time I probably would have drilled or carved some scuppers along the bottom of the bulwarks, but it’s too late now.  In any event, I chose not to install bollards on that lower deck.

[Tomculb]

One thing I forgot to mention. The most recent issue (Autumn ‘25) of the Nautical Research Journal has an article by Dick Ritchie entitled “The Twelve Rules of Successful Model Building”. While I think most of the article would be a must-read for beginners (and many of the rest of us), I take issue with his Rule 6, when he says “Identify and fix mistakes before moving forward.” Sometimes subsequent building will render a later fix too difficult or impossible, but if that is not the case, I usually wait for another day to fix mistakes.  The reason is that if I do the fix right away, my mind is at least half occupied wondering why I was so stupid as to make the mistake. If I wait a while (sometimes a long while), my mind is completely dedicated to the fix.  I mention this because at least a year ago I snagged one of my anchors on something, dislodging the cathead from the deck and pulling out one of the eye rings used to lash the anchor to it. A few days ago I finally got around to doing the fix.  It was difficult given all the rigging and fixtures which surround it, but it was doable since my mind was in the right place.

 

I didn’t take a before picture . . . only after.

One more task and I'll be finished!  😄

[SaltyScot]

On 10/24/2025 at 7:31 PM, Tomculb said:

I take issue with his Rule 6, when he says “Identify and fix mistakes before moving forward.” Sometimes subsequent building will render a later fix too difficult or impossible, but if that is not the case, I usually wait for another day to fix mistakes.  The reason is that if I do the fix right away, my mind is at least half occupied wondering why I was so stupid as to make the mistake. If I wait a while (sometimes a long while), my mind is completely dedicated to the fix.

 

I could not agree with you more, Tom. Well put sir.

[Tomculb]

The final task I have been working on is installing the OcCre supplied flag onto my ship. That flag comes as one piece, to be folded in half so that you end up with a flag showing on both sides. After reading a few posts on these forums about making flat flags look much more realistic, I experimented with a flag (cut into two flags) I had left over from a prior build, also intended to be folded in half.  I coated the back side of the experimental flags with diluted white school glue (what I use on knotted rigging), lay a piece of thread down the middle as its halyard, and folded the flag in half and let it dry overnight.  Once dry, I found I could bend it around a small dowel and I could unbend it and try again if I didn’t quite get the look I was hoping for. So I got up the courage to try this with the Endurance flag. The halyard stayed loose despite the glue, but with the help of some of my tiny clothespins, I hung the flag from the block I had tied to the end of the mizzen gaff months ago. 

 

 

Even before trying to give it some curls and furls, I wasn’t too happy with the result.  To my eye, it looked too big and too bright. I calculated that the real thing would be 12' by 5.5’. On the model, it would be the first thing an observer’s eyes would be attracted to. 

Also, the flags I experimented with were made of somewhat different material from the OcCre/Endurance flag.  Unlike the first material I worked with, when I tried to fold and curl the Endurance flag, it didn’t want to stay that way, and the two sides of the flag began to separate.  

After digging through lots of photos of the real thing, I found one showing Endurance leaving Buenos Aires with a flag which looks noticeably smaller.  It was also dark, not mostly white.  That led me to inquire of Professor Google, who informed me as follows.  The white ensign supplied by OcCre was/is for British naval vessels.  British commercial ships display the red ensign, three quarters of which is red, not white. 

 

Endurance wasn’t a naval vessel, so its flag should be the red ensign. If any of our knowledgeable British friends (or others) on these boards know otherwise, please let me know.

Bottom line, I decided to abandon the flag.   

 

My final, finished post will come along shortly.

[SaltyScot]

It has been quite a journey, Tom. I look forward to using your blog as a "guide" for my Endurance build.

[KennyH78]

Tom, she is a very fine model that you have completed.  It was a pleasure to follow along with you on your journey.  Your log will be a valuable resource for me to use when I finally get around to build this kit.

[clearway]

well done 

 

Keith

[Tomculb]

I can now say that after more than 2½ years, my Endurance build is finished.  And it has been a wonderful journey.  

 

This is my first build with considerable kit-bashing. Doing a lot of research, especially Frank Hurley photos of the ship posted various places online, and then incorporating what I found into the build, was fun and rewarding. I also enjoyed and benefited from others' build logs, but at the same time I was a bit disappointed that so many that were underway when I started (at least a dozen or so) had disappeared unfinished by the time I finished. 

 

I think Chris Coyle’s @ccoyle review of the kit matches my sentiments pretty precisely, when he says “The new OcCre Endurance is not what one would call a great kit, but it is by no means a bad kit either. OcCre has economized here and there . . .”.  The many modifications I made along the way are described in my log, and there are many more things I could have done but didn’t.  Among the latter would be planking the insides of the bulwarks, using better blocks and line from the likes of Vanguard and Syren, and building ships boats that looked more like Endurance’s boats and not so much like OcCre’s. The one thing I did do for which there is no historical justification was to break up the two rows of dog kennels. I’m a little doubtful as to whether that was the right decision, but I’m not losing any sleep over it.

 

I have two kits awaiting my attention: the NRG’s half hull project, and Vanguard’s Grecian.  I would like to develop the skills which the NRG kit would hopefully provide me, but Grecian would be a lot more interesting and fun, so I’m almost certain that will be next.  It is the first time I have selected a kit manufacturer,  then decided on the specific model I wanted to build. I’m thinking it unlikely that I will be doing a build log since there are already quite a few excellent complete ones for both kits. I don’t know that I’d have anything to add to what is already out there. On the other hand, I had that concern about doing a log for Endurance, and now I’m glad I did it. 

 

Finally, here are some photos (some better focused than others) . . . 

 

 

[Desertanimal]

Congratulations on completing her! Beautiful work!!

 Chris

[KennyH78]

Congrats on finishing the model!  As I said before, she looks great and I can only hope to build one that looks half as good as yours.