Endurance by theoracle09 - OcCre - 1:70

[clearway]

Coming along Josh- I suspect the lower yard would have been fitted with a yard crane as opposed to how occre have it.

 

Keith

[theoracle09]

Thanks Keith. Do you happen to have any reference for a yard crane? I attempted to google it but didn't find anything definitive.

 

I ordered a bunch of stuff which came in all at one time yesterday so I had a need for a shelf before work continues.

Much better!

[clearway]

You are certainly more organised with your shipyard than me Josh! Reference to the yard crane- also called a truss here you go:-

 

Hope this helps

 

Keith

[Jorez de Saint Nazaire]

Hi josh,

very nice you really upgrade the kit.

Sometime it would be interesting to use a figurine to evaluate the scale.1:70.

Again bravo !

[theoracle09]

On 9/24/2023 at 1:42 AM, clearway said:

Reference to the yard crane- also called a truss here you go:

Thank you! Is this from the book you recommended? Rigging the clipper and ocean liner?

 

On 9/24/2023 at 6:36 AM, Jorez de Saint Nazaire said:

very nice you really upgrade the kit.

Sometime it would be interesting to use a figurine to evaluate the scale.1:70

Thanks François! I have a small strip of wood I have cut to 5' 10" in 1:70 (25.4mm) I've used to check scale. A figure would be helpful as well!

 

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I received the Guterman Mara thread I ordered and made some 0.5mm rope, which I could then use to create the bowsprit foot rope. This is color 696, a very dark brown.

I tied the longer piece first using clove hitches and once I got it to the length it needs to be glued the knots with thin CA. Then an eyebolt (open one, not fully soldered closed) in the end of a clothespin was used to hang in the middle of the rope while I painted on diluted PVA. After 10 mins or so I could remove the clothespin and it held its shape. Then it was just a matter of tying the small piece on, gluing the knots, and cutting.

 

The remaining doors have been finished on the quarterdeck. I also installed "coal hatch covers" similar to how Tom did his with a paper hole punch circle painted grey with a nail stuck into the middle of it to simulate a handle.

And to finish up the doors I measured the aft companionway and built a single door to fit the opening.

I cut it in half using the jeweler's saw, drilled holes for the door knobs (nails that came with the kit) then stained and installed.

A couple of considerations: the doors will move the aft deck ladders outboard from the companionway a few mms. You can see because I've attempted the mizzen railings I have holes in the deck for the stanchions. The supplied brass ladders are now too wide for the aft deck, so I'll be scratch building them out of wood. Depending on how close I can get them to look like the other ladders on the ship I'll either use the brass ladders or make the remaining ladders from wood.

[clearway]

4 hours ago, theoracle09 said:

Thank you! Is this from the book you recommended? Rigging the clipper and ocean liner?

this is from a book about model shipbuilding called 'building and detailing model sailing ships by george e campbell in the u.k. and 'the neophyte shipmodellers jackstay' in the U.S.A.- not sure if it is still in print though. Also check cutty sark logs and charles w morgan logs on here as they had them too along with most mid 19th century ships onwards.

 

Keith

[theoracle09]

9 hours ago, clearway said:

this is from a book about model shipbuilding called 'building and detailing model sailing ships by george e campbell in the u.k. and 'the neophyte shipmodellers jackstay' in the U.S.A.- not sure if it is still in print though. Also check cutty sark logs and charles w morgan logs on here as they had them too along with most mid 19th century ships onwards.

 

Keith

Perfect, I appreciate the recommendations!

 

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Thanks for all the likes and comments. Today was spent working on upgrading the mizzen deck skylight. It took a while to get it where it is, and it could definitely be better but I just built it along the way and ended up with the result. Perhaps if planning was involved, the ply ends would be hidden with the 0.6 thin stuff leftover from decking (which I didn't use anyway.) Here's what the plans call for:

There's a youtube video floating around that shows it at 4:51 in footage of the wreckage. Here's the reference I grabbed:

Indeed it's quite a bit different from what OcCre would have me build. I was thoroughly inspired by Clearway's skylight, so I began figuring it out by cutting the two window pieces in half, so as to use the smaller half as the bottom row of windows.

The base needed reworked to accept the new bottom windows.

After mucking around with ways to build the ends, I decided to just cut the triangle piece off, then the ends of that to give me the top shape. A piece of 2x5 planking fit in the middle nicely. A jeweler's saw was used to cut the window from each piece. The original is on the right.

2x5mm was also used for the seat. 0.6 veneer made the vertical seat back. In this next pic, Somehow the whole assembly became 2mm longer than the top windows. I had to cut 2mm off of everything to accommodate.

After gluing up to the seats I sanded everything and painted the inside white. I also installed the plastic window stuff, after roughing it up with 600g paper. The bottom windows ended up being 4 x 39mm, pretty small to cut and fit under the seats.

The whole thing was stained, carefully, with red mahogany like everything else. It's extra dark and not very red in the next pics because it needs to dry for a day or two. It should have the same finish as the kennels in a couple days.

It's better to tell in the next pic, but I used 0.7mm brass rod (blackened) between the top two windows as a faux hinge.

Overall view of progress so far. The masts and most of the deck structures aren't glued yet. I can also separate the top mast from the lower mast if need be.

Thanks for reading!

[clearway]

excellent behaviour Josh😉.

 

Keith

[theoracle09]

Hi folks. I received the replacement stanchions (take two) and set up a building board. I detailed this with the quarterdeck house (bridge) update. It's hard to tell, but after each 90* angle, the stanchions needed to be countersunk 2mm because the main run is installed into the trim. The remaining get installed into the deck, 2mm below. Had I not accounted for this, the brass rod would be the wrong length and it wouldn't fit.

There's no soldering, even the ends. The paint was airbrushed on, then a coat of matte finish. Left to dry a few hours and installation was an absolute breeze. There's very minimal touch-up which still needs to happen. This method of installation as opposed to soldering it all together works best for me. I suspect the solder I'm using is too high of a temp for the liquid flux I have. It boils before it has a chance to wick the solder places.

I'm really happy with the inboard angle. As mentioned I still need to touch them up.

I was cruising through the manual to make a list of what's left before rigging can be seriously considered. I'll admit, I genuinely forgot there were 4 more boats to build! I know they don't need to be done before rigging, but I found it funny this particular kit has 5 vessels and I forgot about 4 of them.

Starting with the 2 bigger boats setting up the frames went smoothly. The plans have you use 0.6x5 for planking which is brittle and doesn't allow for much tapering. I built in 25% overage into my deck timber order so I grabbed a few strakes of that and find it much easier to shape.

 

Thanks for reading!

[clearway]

I always use superglue on my handrails- nice to see you noticed the inboard lean on the aft railings.

 

Keith

[theoracle09]

On 9/28/2023 at 11:20 AM, clearway said:

I always use superglue on my handrails

 

This is definitely the way. I'm not sure why I was holding myself to soldering them, but that ship has sailed, so to speak.

 

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Small update to show not everything can be rainbows and daisies. I took a few days off from the bench and came back when I received some 1.8 mm walnut sheet. I ordered this specifically to cut out a handrail for the aft deck, as seen in pics. I didn't want to use 0.7mm wire painted white like the bridge and mizzen deck. I traced the aft deck cap from the laser sheet and cut the same pieces using a jeweler's saw. The walnut gets extremely fragile towards the end perpendicular to the grain because it's not ply. Then stained red mahogany.

 

Here's the mistake. I glued 90% of the stuff to the aft deck that needs to be there which left very little room to try and use tracing paper to transfer the stanchion locations. Another issue is pencil lead on red mahogany stain is almost imperceptible once you lay tracing paper over it (heh, who knew?). So keep in mind the marks are not accurate, but somewhat close.

 

I glued (finally learned my lesson!) 0.5mm brass rod through the middle balls and used a cheap engraver to make cups under the hand rail. I didn't want to just glue the rail to the balls. I thought about cutting the top ball off entirely, but decided against because the middle rod won't be in the middle anymore after drilling holes into the rail. Sure, you could butt joint it I suppose, but it'd be awfully delicate for a lot more work to yet be done.

 

Success, it actually worked! I'm surprised at how well thin CA holds, as I couldn't move the brass wire at all. I'm not sure why I thought gluing the hand rail on would negate the pent-up force in the rod from the bend, but here we are. Once I removed it from the jig, the wire promptly went back to straight, causing all stanchions to become unglued. Right on, I'll just re-glue the rail and move on.

 

Well, back to the drawing board! I don't really see a way to solidly fix this, so I'll chalk it up to another railing failure. So, what can be done to avoid this? Well, marking and transferring the stanchion hole locations as soon as those caps were installed would be a good idea. With nothing to get in the way, there's no worry of messing up the transfer. Just don't lose the tracing paper.

 

With all the stuff installed I suppose I have two ways out. I can use the laser sprue to trace the exact shape on to tracing paper and use that, since it'll lay down completely flat. Then drill new holes, etc. I could also install new stanchions in-situ, glue new rod, then remove and paint. I'm leaning towards that, since the CA really holds, but I'll leave it for another session.

 

Thanks for reading!

[clearway]

i am still thinking on best way to make that capping rail- i will most likely use 1.5mm thick plasticard cut to shape then use paint/ washes to make it look "woody".

 

Keith

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  'Bought some walnut veneer at Woodworker's Supply (there are a couple in our area, so I went to one store to SEE what they had on hand).  There was also mahogany and lighter woods in 0.028" thick veneer, sold several pieces per plastic sleeve.  The idea is to make my own "plywood" by stacking 3 or 4 pieces together, varying the grain angle and painting a thinned wood glue between the the layers ... then clamping between boards (or weighing them down good) and allowing to cure.  This will make thin stock much less likely to break.

 

  As for seeing pencil marks on a dark substrate, I use white pencil (comes in other colors) the Admiral uses for marking cloth from patterns prior to cutting.  'Guess its a form of tailor's chalk in  pencil form.

[theoracle09]

Hi folks, it's been a few months since my last update and today the stars finally aligned to make some progress with Endurance. Coming off of the last update I really wanted to fix and finally be done with the aft railings. I removed the stanchions from the rail and ended up needing to recycle a few. I dunked them in acetone for a bit then used a rotary tool to easily remove the paint.

 

This time, I installed the stanchions into the existing holes and started running the 0.7mm brass rail through the middle ball. I'm letting this one go, but had I opened up my log and read my last few updates, I would have reminded myself that the middle rail needed to be 0.5mm, not 0.7mm. I realized this after the fact, and am totally fine with it. With the rail installed I used thin CA to glue it up, then removed it and airbrushed it. Reinstalled, I could size up the walnut cap rail, make some adjustments, and glue it in.

 

Where the two cap rails meet at the aft-most point I'm planning on a rope hank to cover the butt joint. However, there's an eyebolt with a block that's supposed to go into the bottom rail. See here (don't mind the red arrows):

 

Originally I was just going to extend the block from the eyebolt. But after further inspection of her pics there doesn't appear to be a block there at all.

 

It's for the flag, so that'll be a problem for rigging Josh to solve. Since I didn't open my log and I didn't have a plan for what to do next, I decided to tackle the stove pipe coming from the quarter deck house. This isn't in the kit, but is visible even in her wreckage pictures. This time I did open my log, because I remember clearway providing the measurements he used (thank you again!).

 

First was figuring out a rain guard. I selected some rather thin brass sheet and used a paper hole punch to get a perfect circle. This circle ended up being (more or less) exactly to scale against the 4mm brass tube being used.

A rotary tool was used to cut 5mm down the middle, then rotate 90* and cut down again. Hand files cleaned it all up. I decided against attempting to solder them together, so next was blackening.

 

I used some steel wool to clean up both parts. For the tube, this was not enough. I ran it through the process and kept getting spots that wouldn't take the blackening solution. I ended up sanding the entire thing (should have been done first!) in 220, 400, then steel wool. It came out extremely smooth and consistent. I then used a Q-tip to softly buff away the extra crud on the surface and polish it.

 

I was so impressed that I was able to get the splotchiness out of it I drilled a 4mm hole into the deck and inserted the stove pipe. It's the same as clearway's: 35mm above the deck, 5mm slits down from the rain stop. I added 10mm below deck, so mine is 45mm total. I glued it in.

 

THEN I looked back at the reference photos.

The darn thing is half white. In London, it's all white. (Bit hard to see, but it's in front of the main mast.)

Dang. The railings are already glued in to the quarter deck house, so without removing the pipe (it's glued in) painting is out of the question. That's alright with me though, I like the blued metal look. The pic makes it seem warmer than it is, it's a deep dark slightly blue black color.

 

Thanks for stopping in!

[clearway]

Nice work on the stovepipe- I noticed the white look as well after painting mine but luckily i havent glued mine in. To be honest it Zinc  coloured as all the old wooden fishing boats my dad worked on had coal stoves with a silvery/ galvanised stove pipe- oh to get some colour pics!

 

Keith

[Tomculb]

Great work Josh on the cap rail and the stovepipe.  I guess I first saw the latter in @clearway's log and completely forgot about it. Another fun bit of kit-bashing I can look forward to. And Keith, going back to look at your log, I see that you get credit for noticing the windows and curved roof of the aft companionway.

Josh, I feel somewhat embarrassed when this past Thursday on my log I lamented the fact that you were no longer posting on your log anymore, when in fact two days earlier you resumed posting.  I look forward to following you.

 

[theoracle09]

Thanks Keith and Tom! And no worries at all Tom about your post! It's been nice to get back into thinking about the Endurance and working on her again. I don't think it'll be an every day thing as before, but it's always an ebb and flow with progress with these models.

 

Speaking of progress I've completed all of her ladders. The kit supplies a brass PE sheet and many months ago I attempted to solder the two smallest ladders together. It didn't work out (I was later guided towards gluing them, which would have worked much better.) Alas, the two small ladders had entirely too much solder on them to even try to clean up so I scratch built all of them anyway. This took a lot longer than I wanted it to. Next time, I'll build a small jig to make sure the angles are correct, as these leave a little to be desired as far as being square.

With the stern companionway doors open like I've represented them, the stock ladders would have been too wide and ended up well passed the inboard stanchion, so scratch ladders would have needed to be built anyway.

Note: Nothing on the mizzen deck is glued in yet. Things probably aren't in the correct position.

The deck house (formally referred to as the Ritz) on the quarter deck is still not glued in, as I need to add trim to the bottom of it. Although I haven't decided if I'm going to add that trim with the deck house off of the model, or attempt to do it while it's on. Problem for another day.

 

I mention this though because the gangways are not glued in, and will not be glued in until rigging is more or less complete. This was done on purpose because the real ship's gangways were removable. Once she started her journey to the pole that section was entirely decked over anyway. Going back to my original motivation for building this ship, I honed in on the gangways as being a nice detail I've never seen before, which is why I'm representing them. Making them removable (as opposed to Occre having them permanently attached to the roof) not only is more realistic, but makes rigging a breeze. I hope, anyway.

 

Lastly I wanted to leave a picture of my current time spent on this model. For anyone that doesn't know, I track my tasks in an excel sheet so I can definitely say "the decks took this long. The rigging took this long." etc.

Total time spent (so far): 365 hours.

 

Thanks for stopping in!

[theoracle09]

Another update for the day, the quarter deck pin racks are complete. I would've done this a long time ago, but Occre shows two different layouts, so I needed to get the rigging plan mostly finalized. Thankfully @HakeZou still had his excel sheet and shared it, so I have an extremely solid foundation to rig this model. This will be my first full rig, so I'm using it to learn the ropes (heh) and all credit to HakeZou for the changes from the "plans".

 

That being said, there are 4 racks of 5 pins installed. The pins are blackened 8mm brass pins, not the ones that came from the kit.

 

With the racks finally installed I trimmed out the bottom of the deck house and glued it in. The ladders were also glued in after this pic.

In the swing of things now I wanted to tackle the bowsprit. Since every eyebolt on this ship is soldered shut, I needed to attach the chain by bending links. I spent probably 40 minutes on this task before finally just using black thread instead. It looks more or less like a link in a chain, and won't be noticeable in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks for reading!

[clearway]

really coming together Josh- another good reason not to glue the catwalks in between the island deck and the deckhouse is to install the skid beams for the forward ships boats.

 

Keith

[theoracle09]

Good point Keith, but I haven't even considered putting them in. I think I'll have all of the ship's boats outboard, so I wouldn't need to put the skid beams in right?

 

A bit of progress which took a ton of time are the yards for the fore mast. Not much to say about them as they're built to the kit's direction. The upper and lower topsail are complete, with the foresail still needing finished. I'll fashion the wire that goes around the mast once it gets closer to time to putting them on permanently.

The foot rope is 0.5mm brown (guterman 696) made from the rope walk. It was stored on a flat bobbin and wound up which left kinks. I'll be considering a new storage situation, probably just keeping the ropes in circular wraps. Anyway, once they're hanging from the mast I can try hanging some light weight from them to shape them, and using diluted pva to get them to hold shape.

 

The real ship had a roller on the lower topsail, and I decided not to include it so as not to add to the complexity. Next time!

 

Thanks for stopping by!

[HakeZou]

Really beautiful work, Josh! Great to see you back at work on this model!

[theoracle09]

Hi everyone, thanks for the likes and comments. I believe the skylight on top of the quarterdeck house is the last structure that needs scratch built. I've sat down and pondered it several times, but can't come up with something I move forward with. Eventually that'll get built.

 

Something much easier though is the telegraph. It's not part of the kit, but can be seen very briefly in one of the youtube vids. Here are two stills showing it:

 

Not a whole lot to go off of, I did notice the arrow itself could be just about as tall as the guy operating it. In 1:70 that's just over 25mm, so that's the length. It also appears the arrow is about as tall as the galley stove pipe, so I eyeballed something to hold it and stuck a nail through it. Then just glued it to a chest.

 

The angle of this pic isn't very flattering, but I like the detail it adds.

 

Next is finishing the foremast yards, and hopefully figuring out a skylight soon. Thanks for reading!

[iMustBeCrazy]

1 hour ago, theoracle09 said:

but can't come up with something I move forward with

I think this is all I've got. The photo seems to confirm the sketch in that it shows the top glass is very steep (behind the guy's legs on the right).

 

 

[theoracle09]

7 hours ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

I think this is all I've got. The photo seems to confirm the sketch in that it shows the top glass is very steep (behind the guy's legs on the right).

 

 

 

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Craig? The skylight on the mizzen deck is complete and I'm happy with that. I'm referring to the bridge deck, or "deck house" on the quarter deck. It's what I was calling the "Ritz" earlier in this build log. Here's a pic of it:

 

I believe the glass you're seeing behind the man's leg is due to an open window. Check out this post in my log, there's a screen grab of the wreckage video which shows the mizzen skylight really well.

 

 

[clearway]

in thee book south with endurance there is a pic of the carpenter demonstrating the steering indicator (post with arrowy pointy stick on it) so should be among the getty images- make the stick a bit longer abd thinner and it will be about close enough.

 

Keith

[iMustBeCrazy]

1 hour ago, theoracle09 said:

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean, Craig?

Brain fade.

 

2' tall in the middle, 4' x 4' square, 2 windows each side, hinged centre panel in the roof either side. Azimuth compass a couple of feet forward of it (not shown in this pic), binnacle forward of that.

 

 

[theoracle09]

21 hours ago, clearway said:

make the stick a bit longer abd thinner and it will be about close enough.

 

After looking at it the last few days I think you're right. It's glued together (but not to the deck) so I may adjust it, or I'll leave it.

 

21 hours ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

2' tall in the middle, 4' x 4' square, 2 windows each side, hinged centre panel in the roof either side

 

Thanks Craig. That's what I came up with as well. Surprisingly I don't have stock small enough to just build it, and all 4 or 5 attempts I've made have had crooked cuts, not consistently measured, etc. Just doesn't look how I want it lol. One of these days it'll get built.

 

On this topic though I wanted to drop a link to a huge Endurance model I came across yesterday. In doing all my research several months ago when there was great discussion about the placement of this skylight and a hatch I never came across this. Of course, it's a subjective model created by someone (or someones), however, it shows the post-Buenos Aires configuration with the mizzen deck extended to the quarter deck house. Here's the link, click on 3D Tour in the top right. You have a full walk around of the 15' model. Again it's subjective though, because the stern deck is completely incorrect, along with the ratlines, no capstan, no area under the anchor deck, etc.

 

The point is this is the second model I've now found that shows a skylight and a hatch (here's a link to the first one). Where are the builders getting their information from to include them in this way?

 

Back on track I've finished up the yards for the foremast. I'm not happy with the foot ropes being kinked so much, but that was the last of my homemade rope anyway and new batches are going to be stored differently.

I also added some rope to the stern railing to hide the join.

Lastly I've got a question for anyone. The kit would have me install the gaffs using an eyebolt on the masts, and Hakezou mentioned having issues during rigging because of this. With all of the images out there of Endurance, this is the closest I can find that shows the gaff connection.

I don't see any parrels, or jaws for that matter. Here's a pic from Ship Modelling Simplified:

If I added parrels and jaws to the gaffs (minus the crane) would that be unrealistic, or out of period?

[clearway]

1 hour ago, theoracle09 said:

If I added parrels and jaws to the gaffs (minus the crane) would that be unrealistic, or out of period?

it will be a goose neck fitting - there is a band around the mast with eyes on the stern side and a hinged pin on the end of the gaff - Billings do a simplified version in their fittings.

 

Keith

[iMustBeCrazy]

2 hours ago, theoracle09 said:

Endurance model I came across yesterday

A screenshot:

 

34 minutes ago, clearway said:

it will be a goose neck fitting - there is a band around the mast

[Tomculb]

While I am nowhere near as far along as you are Josh, I do find myself looking ahead pretty frequently, and I have the same question you do regarding the connection between the gaffs and the masts.  I too was thinking  of crafting some jaws and parrels, but after Keith's and Craig's input, I don't think I'll do that.

 

Back when I was still working on my last build I came across the Shackleton Museum's large scale Endurance model, and it got me excited about Endurance as my next build.  Imagine, a model of that scale to guide me through my build! But the more research I did, especially Hurley's photos, the less excited I became about the authenticity of that particular model, and I have seldom looked at it since starting this build.

 

Mr. Greenwood's build is an entirely different story.  Imagine how thrilling it would be to have a model you built end up in a museum in a place as central to the history of the ship as South Georgia Island!