HMS Bounty Launch by EvanKeel - Model Shipways - 1:16

[EvanKeel]

How's it been going, you ask? Great!

 

After shaping the grating and forward thwart to fit nicely in the bow, and then fitting the foremast, the forestep ended up a couple of mm fore of the plans. Hoping this works out later. But it meant that the floorboards had a frame to sit on at the front.

 

Before installing the floorboards, I stained the interior. I half-expected that it'd look terrible and I'd just end up painting but it was surprisingly...okay. 

 

My favorite on-hand stain is called "tobacco" and it usually looks great on hardwood. Unfortunately, it came out darker than I wanted on the bass wood and I went with  another slightly lighter stain I had on hand.

 

Just as well, as an ex-smoker, I always feel guilty using 'tobacco'.

I did expect the cherry to have more contrast for all the trouble bending that infernal wood caused but... whatever.  Looks fine. You can see from the light spots that I repositioned the garboard a fair bit at the start. I have no recollection of this but the glue doesn't lie. It should be mostly hidden.

 

I fitted then stained the floorboards before gluing. I did resort to AC for this since I was too impatient to wet and bend them. No need to paint, though, right???

i was about to start on the gunwales, which, despite my low-rent frame intended to limit hull spread, I discovered were 2-4 mm narrower than the hull at center frame. This is somewhat better than @usedtosail experienced but not ideal. They had method of soaking and bending the gunwales directly on the hull that I'm planning to use. 

 

But the actual next step was priming the hull, etc. I first assembled the stand - no problemo. It fits nicely. I also cleaned up and shaped the rudder.

 

I then primed the outer hull with 2 thin coats and, when dry, meticulously marked the waterline using a high precision apparatus made from masking tape, a pencil and hope.  I then realized that I want to start with the hull paint above the waterline, which I chose as warm white per the instructionss cuz i follow rules. Rather than masking twice, I ended up overlapping the waterline marks I'd so carefully made. So I'll have to mark this again.

I'm still deciding on the other hull colors and waiting on some Jax brass darkener so I'll pick this up again in a few days.

 

[EvanKeel]

Time for an update....I ended up choosing an ochre (that's not the proper name) for the upper hull and a blue grey for the bottom realizing after painting the cream sides and taping for the other two colors that the kit usually has a white bottom and darker sides. I'm going with this though.  It looks good to me.

That green strip in the instructions? I'm still thinking about that....

 

Next was the quarter deck which, oddly, isn't even mentioned in the instructions. It seemed like a good time to do this though.

 

I found usedtosail's build log really helpful here. I fitted the quarter deck frames first, starting with the opposite ends then making sure the middle frames were level with each other and then end ones. Then glued in the center board. Using thin pieces of scrap as spacers, I then glued in the rest of the floorboards. I deliberately left some extra length on the floorboards. Using my cheap Amazon not-really-a-dremel tool, I trimmed off the excess. A coarse sanding board would have worked just as well but taken a bit longer. It fit nicely and looked pretty darn good. I was happy with it.

 

I was confused by the dashed-line rectangle on the quarterdeck in the plans for far too long before realizing that it's probably for the (optional) winch is also shown on the plans. I'm not doing the winch.

I fitted the stern thwart and stern sheets realizing that the thwart risers in the stern were a touch too high too fit both the thwart and sheet under the sheer clamps. I really didn't feel like dealing with that at the time, though. So I finished shaping the thwarts and sheets and stained them. 

 

I'd already glued the breasthooks to the gunwales. So I soaked and bent the gunwales. Again, rather than go by the instructions, I know that these hulls can spread like a juicy rumor and so I relied on usedtosail's log and bent them directly on the hull using toothpicks and elastics. This meant they matched the shape of my hull even if it deviated from the plans.  I did not glue the breasthooks together and used elastics instead.  This allowed some fine tuning later for a good fit.

Next day at the workbench, I shaved down the thwart risers and glued in the 2 stern thwarts and stern sheets (I thought sheets were the lines holding the foot of the sail!). I also stained and glued in the gunwales.

Next up, fitting the remaining thwarts. Guess what! They fit! I even had to shave a bit off #2 and 3. Using those hinky frames to reduce spread after i pulled it off of the mold worked!

 

Before installing the thwarts, I want to make the two mast partners. I have the brass strips, the right dowels to shape around, my Jax brass darkener and the brass pins......the brass pins....hmmm...brass pins.....?

The kit doesn't seem to include brass pins. Did i misplace them? They're in the instructions. It probably wouldn't look right without nailheads. They're not that expensive an item. They'll be used in a couple of other places. But they're not listed on the parts list either. I do not have brass nails. 

I think I want nail heads. My hobby shop might have some. And I think I mushroomed some short brass wire pieces in an earlier model but that didn't go too well.

 

I'm going to call it a night.....

 

 

[allanyed]

Hi Evan,

Beautiful work!!   

 

Do you or does anyone here know if there were actual boats at that time with the single strake of planking inboard at the top of the frames and a cap rail?  I have searched high and low and no contemporary drawing shows this design.  Below are a number of cross sections from RMG and there are gunwales which would give proper support to the tholes on every design rather than the plank and cap rail that the kit includes instead.

 

Again, your model is really well done!!!  

 

Allan

 

 

[iMustBeCrazy]

On 12/29/2023 at 12:12 AM, allanyed said:

I have searched high and low and no contemporary drawing shows this design.

Allan, there's at least one in the Danish Archives, D 870  click on the diskette symbol to open a larger version. But if you mean English, then I can't remember any either.

[EvanKeel]

Sorry for not posting sooner but i have made some progress.

 

I did get some brass brads and used these, first, in the mast partners. I blackened the brass parts using Jax pewter black (since the Jax black wasn't available). 

i guess it turned out okay. I used it full strength and left it in the solution for several minutes. This left a black residue and some of the brass turned copper colored. I realized later that the black residue is a Selenium salt. It was all over my hands. Selenium is not a great metal in terms of toxicity. Ugh!

 

Later, I went to the forums and, of course, all of my struggles had been experienced by many others (except maybe the toxicity worries - oh well, I'llbe more careful in the future). I should have diluted the Jax, exposed it for a shorter time and used at least 2 dips. And worn gloves.  A solvent rinse and a acid rinse (vinegar should work) is also helpful. This is getting a little close to industrial chemistry!

 

I did this for the rudder fittings. But I'm seriously wondering if working with Se like this is worth darkened metal fittings for a model. Maybe paint is the safer route. I do love chemistry tho.

 

I clipped most of the pointy end of the brads off when installing the mast partners since I only really need to see the heads. I then CA glued the stubs into shallow drilled holes. (Shhhhh, don't tell anyone)

 

The bow grate required some trimming to fit but not much. I rough fit the grate and the two thwarts with mast partners and set the rake before gluing the thwarts in.

There was something important I was intending to show with this picture but I can't remember what:

Maybe my lack of a hatch in the floor, which isn't mentioned anywhere except as a dashed outline in the plans? That would have been cool but I'm past that point now.

 

The rest of the thwarts went in after that:

 

On to the rudder! I shaped the gudgeon and pointless tapering the ends using a Drexel. Despite annealing the brass, it used up a lot of grit! Also, you need some brass tube to make these but this isn't included in the kit! Fortunately, I had some from a previous kit but... what the heck? I'm  not too impressed.

 

I CA glued the tube to the brass strips as per my previous model, the lobster smack, but I see most people solder these on. This would be stronger and work better with the cursed blackening process. I might try this next time. 

 

My first attempt at blackening these wasn't a stellar success being splotches and having copper patches.

 

This is when i read through the forums. I tried a second dip with a more dilute solution and a shorter soak with better success.

 

Also, when shaping the rudder, I went by the instructions for the knobby end and it seemed to work okay.

 

 

Trying to attach the tiller to the rudder by hammering a mushroom head onto the end of a brad took several attempts before saying " good enough - hopefully nobody looks too closely". What the heck am I supposed to do here? I don't know!

 

Again. Gudgeons and pintles were CA glued and Brad heads glued into drilled holes.  At least that part looks okay.

 

Masts, spars and sails are next! I'll update soon. 

 

Thanks again for the comments and encouragement!

[EvanKeel]

I'm still catching up with my progress in case you think i had a super-productive 2 days.

 

Masts and spars were next and went fairly well. I'm  used to making masts out of square stock or 2-ply laser cut wood and this was the first time tapering a dowel. I do not, like most people, have a mini lathe. I didn't know mini lathes were a thing until recently. I also didn't  want to have to create buckets (mini buckets) of sawdust samding dowels down to size and so used my mini plane on the dowels much like I would have with square stock. It went well!

 

I tapered the masts and spars and stained them. I also painted the tops of the mast "like the picture". I made cleats out of scrap which was a bit thinner, and hopefully more appropriate, than the 1/16 square stock called for in the instructions. 

 

Sails next! I washed and dried the cloth twice before anything. I tried both tea and coffee with a 5h soak for staining the sail cloth. Both seemed dark and so i tried 30 minutes in tea. Both tea stains seemed a little too orange (orange pekoe???) But the 5h coffee sample looked pretty good in my opinion (ethiopian medium roast - delicious!). So I went with that for the rest of the cloth.

The original cloth is on the left but I'm not sure that the colors in the pics are accurate.  What is these days?

 

After staining and ironing the sailcloth, I traced out the sail pattern from the plans adding enough material for 2 folds on the edges. I then brushed diluted 3:1 clear pvc glue over the cloth to stiffen it. This techniques is from the David Antscherl shipwright series that I just finished. Does anyone else do this?

 

I'm thinking that I might later put shape and or texture into the sails with a spray bottle and strategic hanging.

 

Once dry, I cut out the sails using a knife and straight edge.  I purchased some FrayFix, which i assume is the same as Fray-Check, from our local fabric shop. I was the only guy there. I wasn't clear how this stuff was to be used or even if it was intended only for those not 'hemming' the edges of the sails but I used it as an adhesive to help fold over the edges of the sails. It dried slowly but worked fairly well and remained flexible. 

 

The sails really taxed my nearly nonexistent sewing skills. I'd once used YouTube to learn how to use a sewing machine to make masks at the beginning of covid. Fortunately, soon after, stores began selling them and we could buy a mask for $2 instead of spending 5 hours cursing a machine who's sole purpose seemed to be making large, complicated knots out of spools of thread. 

 

I trudged back down to the fabric store and bought matching thread. They offered me a membership card which I huffily declined.

 

The sewing of the 'hems' and seams went surprisingly well and a minimum number of thread balls were created. My regrets were that 1) I didn't choose a slightly darker thread color so that it would show up better and that 2) my skills (or luck) aren't good enough that I was willing to attempt a second, parallel line for the seams. Why push my luck?

 

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that I added the corner patches (I'm aware there's a proper term for these but it's late) until after sewing the edges. I went back and sewed over these.

 

I then began sewing the boltropes to the edges. Wow! Tedium and pinpricks! Look closely and you'll see actual bloodstains. I think these add character. But the boltrope does look good and is well worth the trouble. While sewing these, I had plenty of time to consider ways to make this task easier. I got nothing. Cheap whisky and a good Playlist helped immensely and I eventually found a rhythm.

 

I wasn't sure how large to make the cringles at the corners so used a toothpick to size them and just made each corner the same size (approximately). These I later tensioned then wound them with thread and fixed with a dab of ac glue.

 

One sail done! One to go! (I'm now rethinking my hope to build the Bluenose next. Surely, those sails are treated differently!)

I'll try to update more frequently but we're getting close to complete! 

[allanyed]

On 3/8/2024 at 1:00 AM, EvanKeel said:

I did get some brass brads and used these, first, in the mast partners. I blackened the brass parts using Jax pewter black (since the Jax black wasn't available). 

Where ever possible I have gone to copper in place of brass.  It is softer, so not applicable for everything, but the beauty is that it can be blackened instantly after being fixed in place with diluted liver of sulfur as this will not stain the wood.   Brush on the LoS then brush some clean water and wipe dry.

 

Allan

[EvanKeel]

Thanks for the tip, Allan.

I'll start looking out for copper brads etc. to add to my supplies