HMS Badger by Meriadoc Brandybuck - WAK - 1:100 - CARD - serenely taking in sails

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

Hello,

Do you ever see a painting of a ship and become struck with the magic, serenity, or majesty of the scene and wish to try to create something similar in a model?

 

I had picked up this kit of the Badger from Seahorse, intending to keep it around as a back-burner project with no clear start date in mind. Something to piece together as I mulled over problems on more important projects:

Months before that, I had found floating around the internet a 19th c. painting by one Richard Brydges Beechey of a ship of the line taking in her sails (HMS Asia of Navarino fame- and look at those stu’n’s’ls coming in):

I saw this painting and thought, “wow, that would be a magnificent effect to pull off some hypothetical day when one has room for a giant fully-rigged ship of the line in one’s house and has mastered scale sail manipulation, scale gravity, and patience!”

Then, for better or worse I realized I didn’t have to wait for some hypothetical day and could give it a go with the Badger; it has enough sails with the addition of some royals (likely enough for an ambitious commander to rig up), it’s in the stash, and I need experience so might as well try. And now this is my main project. This is not how this year was supposed to go. 

 

Before going much further, I want to talk about the ship. There is a well-known Jotika kit as well as the fantastic Seahorse paper kit I’m building. Plans and log excerpts from the ship are available in Nelson’s Ships by Peter Goodwin, while background history and even more plans are available in Howard I. Chapelle’s The Search for Speed Under Sail. 

You may have heard this ship introduced as Horatio Nelson’s first command, however that is almost certainly not quite the case, as Chapelle records.  The Badger in the admiralty draft (lines taken June 1777, Portsmouth)-and thus in all the models- was indeed an effective patrol sloop which quite impressed Vice Admiral Gayton on the Caribbean station, but by October she was in a sorry state and he indicated in November correspondence that he would have her replaced with another vessel he had purchased. Young Nelson took command of “Badger” essentially at the start of the new year (‘78) and the logs indicate a refit is taking place at that time. After this point new things are mentioned in the log not mentioned before- royals as well as a spritsail topsail set on multiple occasions. 

 

It is never mentioned in the log, but we can be confident that the ship was replaced and the winter was spent transferring everything useful over to the newly purchased brig, whose name was now Badger, and she simply inherited the log and navy register position of the previous Badger. I think this was a common enough practice in the history of the navy, especially when it had to maintain numbers despite high wear & tear on a foreign station. The takeaway is that we have no idea what young Horatio Nelson’s Badger looked like exactly. But we know in astonishing detail what Lieutenant Everitt’s Badger looked like!

 

Chapelle’s data include spar dimensions from the admiralty draft and a sail plan, which indeed differs from the lovely Seahorse plans. The kit plans generally have spars a bit too long and masts a bit too tall (and the boom is too short and the gaff too long). 
Book vs kit- not to scale:

 

Below is a detailed model shown in Chapelle’s book:

The main mast is to have a spread yard for the foot of the topsail on a rope horse (as opposed to putting the gaff and boom on a separate pole) and an improvised flying main course on a slightly smaller crojack- held in place only by the halyard. 

 

This disparity in spar sizes presented a bit of a dilemma but I’m thinking I will stick with the dimensions from the kit,  as this project is much more about stunsail art than historical accuracy, and the differences are not drastic. (Definitely has nothing to do with the fact that I had already enthusiastically prepared some spars and am too lazy to go back and redo it in this case..)  Furthermore, I’m nervous the visual effect I want to achieve might not work as well with the slightly smaller top-hamper- this entire project being one giant visual experiment after all. 

{Intermission music}🎵

 

So about building the actual ship.

I started sticking the hull together in January. Goes together like a charm. Buy the laser-cut parts. Stick the frame together.  Cover with paper cutouts for stability. Do your longitudinal strakes with gel CA applied only to frame edges.  Final planking with printed paper (but you must edge-paint everything appropriately on the outer layer). Then it was time to do the wales, various deck fittings, and engineer cannons using toothpick shafts, paper layering, wire bands, and a glue drop for the ball.  

 

I dry brushed the guns lightly with dark grey, but forgot to add touchholes…

The kit includes paper wedges to roll cannons with, but I found this concept to be unworkable with either thick or thin paper for 1/100 four-pounders, thus toothpicks were butchered for my guns. 

 

I’ve also been assembling the laser-cut blocks, preparing the masts and larger spars, and starting to think about scrap experiments to try to finesse the clewed-up sails and dangling stunsails. 

I made a rough plan to relate the visual effect of the painting inspiration to the actual ship I’m building with its particular spar anatomy. 

And I’m taking bets as to how long you think this will take to finish

The nice thing is that this time, I don’t have to engineer the entire rig and belaying scheme from guesswork and low-budget research. Seahorse has it all planned; I just need to make a few additions. Those will be:

-Flying royals (needed for visual effect)

-Flying main course (will look nice and it’s even correct) 

-Stunsail inhauls (needed to achieve the dangly stunsails- for some reason these lines are absent from the Seahorse drawings) 

 

Wish me luck!

-Meriadoc

Edited June 30, 2023 by Meriadoc Brandybuck
Forgot a photo

[ccoyle]

Your hull looks fantastic! I edited your title to show WAK as the publisher (though our friend Tomek, aka Seahorse, is indeed the designer), since on the remote chance that someone searches the forum for this kit they are more likely to search for it by that name, and we should also give credit to the publisher.

 

Cheers!

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

34 minutes ago, ccoyle said:

WAK as the publisher

Good thinking! Though, incidentally I was under the impression that the search field doesn’t work for strings of less than four characters.
(Like searching “Fly” used to not turn up any of the HMS Fly logs.)

edit: searching WAK works!

 

-Meriadoc

Edited June 29, 2023 by Meriadoc Brandybuck

[allanyed]

It is so good to see such a well executed card model.   After following Doris' build in years past, and now your build it is great to know card models are an alternative way to create a masterpiece. 

 

What is the material of the sails in the first photo?   

Thanks

Allan

Edited June 29, 2023 by allanyed

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

8 hours ago, allanyed said:

material of the sails

Thank you! I too have admired the legendary skill of Doris and her creations.  She is an inspiration to us all. 
 

The first photo was ripped from the Seahorse website, and is of the original test model. I don’t know the exact fabric used, but it’s got to be soft cotton or linen. If you Google something like “seahorse Badger scratch” you can find the original build logs in English and Polish. 

-Meriadoc

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

A small update. 
 

After much fiddling, I have finished all the principal deck fitting, except for the chimney which is ready to go and some deck cleats I need to double check.
I added scale gravity to the carriage breeching ropes with pva, which worked better than expected. I refuse to do the training tackles (though the kit includes parts for them). You won’t be able to look too closely at the guns anyways with all the stunsails in the way. 

 

Note the highly imperfect rings and badly painted pins (won’t be visible when covered in rope). 

 

Next, I must strop all the deadeyes and get the masts finalized.

Before I get too much further, I will be conducting sail experiments. Tips about modeling loosely clewed-up sails are very welcome. I have several kinds of cloth to compare for scale performance. 
 

-Meriadoc

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

Well, summer has folded into the unreachable regions of spacetime known as the past, and I spent way too much time enjoying a borrowed copy of the new Zelda game- but the Badger has not been forgotten. 
I have completed assembly of the masts and principal spars, almost got the hull completely fitted out, and have been prepping all sorts of blocks and started getting the yards fitted while I dread the chain plate fiddling.  Really, I had hoped to be doing clove hitches by now, but alas, time does not slow. 

Photos:

Above- I had to fashion the trestle trees from bamboo dowels that I planed down; the paper was too flimsy even soaked in CA. Bamboo is a good material for this sort of thing, whereas I am no master craftsman. They look best from a safe distance. 

Above- forecastle timber heads made out of square dowel sanded to rough dimensions, to be proxxoned into their final shape- after I practice a little with the new Proxxon router. 

Above- the deadeye for the rope horse upon which will ride the main topsail spread yard. And ugly pins which will be covered in rope someday hopefully soon. 

Above- stay collars look simple enough but take a lot of time and knots to prepare. Glad to have them ready along with the associated martingale and bobstay deadeyes 

Above- gaff throat halyard block with brail fairlead blocks. I don’t know if that term is correct.

Above- gammoning cleats and my makeshift figurehead. I will have to sit down with some putty and sculpt some sort of scrollwork to make it a bit more convincing. Self-respecting ships of this period almost always had a figurehead, and I thought a little bit of effort would go a long way here. 
 

Well, don’t be shy.  Let me know what you think.  I am hoping to get into running rigging by the end of the year, but I’m wondering about the build order with studding sails and so much scale gravity to work into the sails.
I guess I’ll do fore and aft sails first and then work the foremast course>tpsl>tglnt>ryl and then the mainmast. But do I do stunsails last, or as I go?  I also have to make the boats, and for fun they’ll be in the water setting sail, or something visually interesting. 
 

-Meriadoc

[ccoyle]

49 minutes ago, Meriadoc Brandybuck said:

Let me know what you think.

 

Looks good from here!

[Richard44]

5 hours ago, ccoyle said:

 

Looks good from here!

Agreed!

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

Well, I have much to report. 
 

I ran out of things to do that aren’t rigging-related. Rigging is my favorite part, but I wanted to make sure everything was ready to go so it will go as smoothly as possibly. 
Masts have been finished with all blocks and fittings (except jeers yet) and when all was finished on the hull, they were finally glued in place and await shrouds. 
 

I also experimented with sail manipulation and achieved decent results. Please see below. 
 

Above- lots of subassemblies and two sails I prepared for practice and experimentation. 
 

Above- masthead sheave blocks (going to check that terminology when my dog gets off my lap) for the running lines of the headsails. 

Above- no way to reasonably hang these blocks from the tiny paper-construct fore top, so they are simply attached with a drop of CA. 
 

Above- I decided I needed a saddle for the halyard of the flying main course crojack yard. The regular jeers will hoist the full-diameter main topsail spread yard. 
 

Above- speaking of so many yards on the mainmast, I installed extra cleats and blocks to handle them. The kit doesn’t include jeers or even halyards for the main yard but I decided to use jeers for ease of hoisting. Slings were not quite yet in use at this time, so something robust would be desirable to hold the weight of the yard. 
 

Above- a couple experiments. The cloth course was rigged to a jury setup with all its clews, bunts, and leech lines and hauled up. This looked completely unconvincing but I remembered to try fishing weights, so after wetting the sail I used weights to give the sail scale gravity effects. When it dried I used laundry starch in a spray can a few times to stiffen it before removing the weights. 
There is also a brailed gaff sail and a tissue that I tried “clewed up” around a chopstick. Not bad if I knew what to coat it with for stiffening and longevity. 

 

Above- the result of my sail experiments. I also did a topsail, less tightly hauled up. It was made of a nylon blend fabric that feels nice but isn’t as workable. For one it’s nearly waterproof and thus difficult to soften. I used weights to obtain the curves, and lots of starch to hold it but it’s still pretty pliable since the starch can’t soak in. Acceptable result though for loosely hanging sails.
 

Based on these results, I will use the cloth from the lower sail (a fine lawn if I recall) and a diversity of fishing weights to sculpt each sail on yard with my jury rig mast before final installation on the model. 
 

Above- my little figurehead painted with little head knees installed on each side. Also boomkins to handle the foresail tacks and timber heads made of Proxxonned 2x2mm stock. Also I went ahead and stuck in the boom topping lift so the ship looks that much more believable. 
Now for standing rigging and methodical spar work and sail sculpting. 
Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Meriadoc

 

 

 

Edited November 21, 2023 by Meriadoc Brandybuck
Spelling and clarity

[GrandpaPhil]

Looking good!

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

Well, I hope everyone is doing well. 
I haven’t been; in keeping with the recent theme of nothing going to plan, I ended up sick with pneumonia for about three weeks, stayed a spell in the hospital and finally got out alive. 
 

It’s good to be healthy again. Really good. 
I have lots of unreported progress. So I guess I’ll get to it. 
 

Boats. 
The kit includes two boats, a 16’ cutter and an 18’ launch, though the instructions are a bit unclear or mistaken about how they are to be planked. In any case I proceeded to assemble them, along with a scratch built 25’ longboat for fun since I’ve wanted to try building one for some time.  

Above: test fitting my thwarts in the launch. I added thwarts along with a hastily scratch built windlass. The kit wants you to leave the thwarts out and stack the cutter inside, but that was not the usual British practice. Also I have other plans for the boats. 

Above: cutter taking shape on the right with its clinker planking and my longboat (from Chapman) with its frames finally glued together. 

Above: planking on the launch displaying the hungry horse effect. I found this difficult to avoid with the soft paper employed: in retrospect it would have been best to find more rigid planking even if it was a bit too thick. I can try to stick this side out of sight in the finished model; the other side isn’t as bad. 

Above: added my own washstrakes. Longboat coming along with filler. Needs another go. 

Above: final verdict for the kit boats- I find the launch far too blunt-bowed for 1776. It seems a bit more 19th century. In any case it manages to fit in the narrow space available aboard the little brig. I plan on having it suspended from the main & fore tackles and yard tackles, being swayed out. Though that might prove too ambitious and incompatible with the sailing activities going on. It would be a fun visual effect though.
The cutter ended up a bit too big as the clinker planking had trouble meeting the frames. It looks alright though and will go in the water with a spritsail and jib. You can see the templates I made for those sails below, along with a first batch of sails to make for the ship.  

 

For some reason sailmaking is enjoyable, even though it shouldn’t be. It takes too long. But I got the first batch ready. 
 

Next post, we will talk about the status of the ship itself. 
 

-Happy to be functional again Meriadoc

Edited February 15 by Meriadoc Brandybuck

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

Well back to business. 
 

I started doing shrouds on the foremast, but decided to get the gaff sail all set up before putting the main shrouds in my way. 

The boom, gaff, and sail went on in about a day’s work. I discovered that I forgot to prepare the boom sheets and peak halyard so there was some catching up to do. Also had to get all the lines on the sail- brails, sheet, and inhaul. Bending it to the gaff and mast rings (which were prepared with wire) took a while because all the little ropes get in each other’s way. 
Then illness struck and things took a long pause while I recovered. 
Today, I prepared everything for the final gaff sail sculpting: a jury lift and stay to stabilize the gaff and mainmast because of all the fishing weights to be strung from the sail, and several more weights had to be set up with wire hooks:

See the operation below. In the end the heavier weights are more useful (about 10 grams each or so):

Brail lines are temporarily made fast to the foretop pins for convenience.  The sail is wet by fingers (using a dripper just runs water down the sail) with paper towels below for safety. Weights tend to fall off and threaten to break the tiny pump handles on the quarterdeck. I got lucky.
When the sail dries, I can blast it with starch a few times to get it to retain the shape. With the sheet line pulled a bit, it should look much like the paintings. With that done I can proceed with the main shrouds and complete the standing rigging, and on from there. 
I’m happy with the look so far. Hopefully the rest of the sails go well too. That’s all for now!

Stay healthy!

-Meriadoc

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

A little update. 
 

I managed to get all the rigging for the gaff and boom set. I wanted to get this out of the way before main shrouds got in the way. I don’t think the net tension of the standing rigging will affect these lines much. 

You can see the vangs, topping lifts, sheets, halyards, and even an inhaul-which I’m wondering is even necessary. All lines except brails are belayed and fastened permanently; later I will snip off the excess and turn it into hanks. Not sure how the halyard falls should look. That’s a lot of rope. 

The mainsail brails are still tied off at the foretop as they will eventually terminate at main shrouds cleats. The first set of main shrouds is going on now.

 I made a twisted wire guide to hold the deadeye at the right height, but it always wiggles loose somehow. I have better luck just judging the length by hand and using my four hands and mouth to try to seize the shroud around the deadeye while holding it all in place somehow. I don’t even know how I do it but I have gotten better at it. 

I cannot wait to get the standing rigging on her and start sculpting the rest of my sails.  Anyone think I’ve made a horrible mistake by finalizing the mainsail rigging before the standing rigging?  

Meriadoc

[Landlubber Mike]

i built the Caldercraft Badger years ago and put furled sails on.  Looking forward to seeing yours come along, especially with the full sails.

[GrandpaPhil]

I would not add any more running rigging or sails yet, but the mainsail and mainsail rigging shouldn’t interfere with the standing rigging.

 

You have already built the hard part and done it well.

You’ve got this.

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

59 minutes ago, GrandpaPhil said:

the hard part

Thanks; though I think in this case the hard part will be getting the stuns’ls to hang just right.  When we get there.  Better do some experiments. 

Meriadoc

 

[GrandpaPhil]

Stuns’ls aren’t too bad.  

 

I made them for the first time for my Prince de Neufchatel.

 

Their rigging run can take some adjustments to prevent them from interfering with other sails.

[Meriadoc Brandybuck]

Hello,

An update on standing rigging. 

The first tier of shrouds and stays has been finalized (ratlines going on currently behind the scenes). 
Photos below showing the progress as well as the completed mainsail miniproject. 
 

Below: the messy state of affairs before balancing and finalizing tension, with lanyard excess hanging everywhere. 

 

Below: the mainmast, rope horse, and the snipped ends of all the falls of rope. Coils will be made and stuck onto the pins and cleats later. 

Below: all the excess falls have been labeled to get the right diameter and length into the final coils. 

Below: the brailed-up mainsail, with all its rigging finalized. 

Below: views of the head and bowsprit with the bobstays, martingale stays, and gammoning. 

Below: overall views of the rigging progress. 

That’s about as far as I’ve gotten; today I got on the futtock staves and a decent number of the ratlines.  Maybe another month and I’ll have the standing rigging completed at this rate?

 

-slow but sure Meriadoc