USS Kearsarge by gak1965 - BlueJacket Shipcrafters - 1:96

[Nirvana]

George, I just finished reading your build log with interest.

Looking good and you have overcome small difficulties very well.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Rick310]

It’s coming along nicely!

Rick

[gak1965]

On 5/18/2024 at 11:11 AM, Rick310 said:

It’s coming along nicely!

Rick

 

On 5/16/2024 at 12:34 AM, Nirvana said:

George, I just finished reading your build log with interest.

Looking good and you have overcome small difficulties very well.

Keep up the good work!

 

Thanks Rick and Per!

 

I haven't had a ton of time to work on this lately, or look into MSW for that matter. However, the basic hull shape is pretty much done. I put in the lower part of the stem and the false keel, sanded, primed, and sanded, and I think it is ready for the next steps. I also painted the inner bulwarks white, I prefer to paint as I go rather than doing a lot of complicated masking, so we'll see how that goes. Here is what she looks like now:

 

 

Anyway, next step is to cut out the gun and sally ports. I was looking for the best way to transfer the locations, and thought I would use the deck on the plans (and will) but I was slightly annoyed to see that the plans are slightly smaller than the actual deck piece. If you look at the photo below, I've aligned the stack, and as you move forward and aft, everything on the plans is closer to the center than the rastered markings. Bottom line is that I'm going to need to locate the cuts, correcting for the size difference, and be attuned to potential problems when I build out the hammock rail boxes. Reminding myself that this is an 'Admiral' level kit.

 

 

Thanks for looking in!

 

George

 

[MrBlueJacket]

Unfortunately, copying is subject to dimensional errors due to paper humidity content, ambient temperature, etc.

 

Nic

[gak1965]

Hello all. I've been running around dealing with a bunch of things (including some work on RRS Discovery and have just recently gotten some time to work on the Kearsarge. I've opened out the gunports as can be seen in the photos below. For the large ones, I used a razor saw to cut the vertical slices and then clamped a metal straight edge to where the bottom cut needed to be, and opened it out with a reinforced cutting blade from my dremel, which worked well. The smaller gunports were done similarly, vertical edges defined by razor saw, and used the cutting wheel to open it out, but more or less treating it like an abrasive. Everything then squared up with sandpaper. I think, on the whole it went well.

 

Ship as a whole (Discovery in the background) awaiting wood for the second planking.

 

 

And two close ups.

 

 

 

However, I could use some assistance from anyone who's built this before (or maybe @MrBlueJacket because I am confused at this point.

 

There are two points of confusion. The simpler one first. The instructions say to put the gunport frames in, making sure that they are flush on the outside of the hull. As you can see from the upper and middle photo where I have one of the frames dry-fitted, the frame is wider than the bullwarks. My natural inclination would be to glue in place, sand the inside so that it is flush with the inner bulwark as well, gap fill with a bit of putty. However, the following sketch is provided for one of the next steps. In it we see the frame jutting into the ship over the bulwarks, trimmed (?) as shown. The instructions don't mention the trim, although they a later photo suggests that they do need to be trimmed down to the edge of the inner bulwarks. Any thoughts welcome.

 

 

The more complicated question relates to this instruction in the booklet:

 

"Remove the pivot gun (LK28C) and sally port (LK28D) hammock net ends from the carrier sheet. Remove 1/32" from the forward end of each pivot gun port cutout and glue a pivot gun hammock net end (LK28C) in place. Using the large gun port lid (LK64) as a guide trim the aft end of the cutout to its length plus 1/32".  DRY FIT a pivot gun hammock net end to the aft end of the cutout and adjust as necessary until the large gun port lid fits tightly between the two ends, then glue them in place. Set the lid aside."

 

"Remove 1/32" from both ends of the sally port openings and glue the sally port hammock net ends (LK28D) in place (PHOTO 10")" 

 

Okay, so here is the problem. There are 8 pieces labelled LK28C that look like the parts in photo 10 below. When I look at the plans, they say to use LK28D (which frankly doesn't make sense). Earlier, the instructions indicated that I needed to cut out the sally port openings in the same way as the gun ports, however, nothing on the plan is labelled as a sally port; the closet thing is the port by the accommodation ladder (PEK11 in the diagram). The entry is defined by two ends of the hammock nets marked with parts LK28E. I have no part LK28E, and the part list doesn't list it either. There are 8 part LKE28D (the sally port hammock net ends) but only 2 sally ports, and bottom of what I think are the sally ports is the top of the bulwark, so no need to cut anything out of the bulwarks.

 

 

 

 

So. My interpretation of what I should do is:

1. Make the small gun port frames flush on both the inside and outside of the bulwarks.
2. Use the 8 LK28C parts to frame up the large, pivot gun ports, and prepare them for the hammock netting.
3. Conclude that the marked LK28D parts on the plan is a misprint and use the LK28C parts as above.
4. Use the LK28D parts for the two sally ports in place of the parts marked LK28E on the plans, and hold off doing anything for now, because they would just wind up sitting there.

Anyways, thanks for looking in and the likes. I'd love folks opinion on the plan above.

 

Regards,

George

 

Edited July 7 by gak1965

[gak1965]

Well, a bit of an update. If you look carefully at the photos in my previous entry, you will notice that somehow I managed to put the aftmost gunport in the wrong place. It's way too far aft - I apparently misread the marks that I put on the bulwarks that indicated where it was supposed to go. 100% my goof.

 

 

So, repairs commenced. I cut out a bit of wood, fitted it to the gap:

 

 

Sanded to match the curves of the bulwarks:

 

 

Rinse and repeat on the other side:

 

 

Once the paint the hammock nets are in place, you'll never know it was there. Annoying, but completely on me.

 

I've since cut the correct gunports, and mounted the 10 gunport frames. Thank goodness for having 10 to fill 8 slots, as two of them were destroyed sanding them down to the thickness of the bulwarks. The trick is to leave cut the center piece, but leave it in the frame as you sand. Put the pressure on the frame as much as possible so you don't have to sand down a solid piece of wood, but it keeps the pressure off the relatively delicate piece of wood that is the frame. As you might have guessed, the answer to my question above was to sand the frames to the thickness of the bulwarks, and I've pretty much concluded that the parts are just mislabelled as I mentioned. So, next step will be to add the frames for the large pivot guns, and then I think it's time to start cutting the slots for the channels and building gunport nettings. 

 

 

Thanks for looking in everyone!

 

Regards,

George

 

Edited July 16 by gak1965

[Rick310]

Looking good George!

Rick

[gak1965]

A bit of an update. The next steps were to cut the slots for the channels/pinrails and to install the sheaves aft of the final gunport, both of which are completed.

 

 

 

In theory, the next step would be to put the deck down, and then installing the waterways. Unfortunately, if you do that, you wind up having to mask the entire deck during the painting process, which strikes me as odd. As a result, I decided that I would build the hammock nets and finish the basic hull and get all of the hull painting done before installing the main deck. Step 1 is to build the hammock netting, starting with the stern and moving forward.

 

Based on the instructions and photos of the ship, the netting should be flush with the outer hull and extend slightly over the bulwarks on the inner side. The nominal interior width is 3/16 inches with 2 1/64 inch sidewalls for a total width of 7/32. In practice, the spacers/end pieces are slightly less than 3/16 so in every case I've needed to narrow the 3/16 wide bottom pieces to some degree or another. The instructions are clear that the rear nets in particular are vertical, and do not follow the flow of the bulwark outward. Progress so far as in the pictures below:

 

 

In the picture below, you can see the sheave on the port side, and the slot on the starboard side for the aft channel/pinrail under the hammock netting between the gunports.

 

 

I have to say that the ship (not the model, but the actual ship) seems strangely designed to me. The nominal height from the deck to the top of the hammock netting is about 6 feet, with the bottom opening of the gunport about 2 feet off the deck. That means that the bulwark height is only about 4 feet, with another 2 feet (1/4 inch at scale) of hammock netting. The bulwarks would have extensions of the ship's frames and two layers of planking to protect the crew, the hammock netting only has some thin planks and the bundled hammocks, which means that no one is particularly well protected. I would also note that the gunport frames extend above the bulwarks, without anything akin to a covering board or equivalent to provide additional strength. Perhaps the conclusion was that the guns of the day were so powerful there really wasn't meaningful protection to be offered (indeed using chain armor was key to the Kearsarge's success), but still, it feels kinda odd to me.

 

Anyway, I'll be making these things for a little while, and will also put in the sally port ends before turning to the rest of the hull.

 

Regards,

George

 

[dcicero]

Can't speak authoritatively on the reason for the bulwark height, but there's probably a good bit of psychological value in being able to get down behind something, regardless of its actual ability to provide protection.

 

 

As you say, it was the chain armor that made the difference when Kearsarge battled Alabama.

 

 

Dan