PHOENIX 1787 by ccoyle - Master Korabel - 1/72 - Russian brigantine of the Black Sea Fleet

[ccoyle]

14 minutes ago, rlwhitt said:

Do you know if they used actual orange tinted paint, or perhaps orange shellac?

 

No clue.

[ccoyle]

Soak, bend, glue, clamp, wait, repeat.

 

[ccoyle]

I've added eight planks (four per side) since the Saturday photo. It's not exciting stuff, so I probably will not post another photo until the first layer is done.

[ccoyle]

First planking all done. I have some filling and sanding to do now.

 

[ccoyle]

All filled and sanded.

 

[ccoyle]

I should note for those that hate spiling, like me, that only the last plank on each side required any shaping. All of the planking is laser-cut and pre-spiled, but it's understood that every model will be slightly different in terms of fit and coverage, so the last plank needs to be shaped to fill the last bit of remaining space. I had to remove ~1/3 of the last planks to get them to fit.

[yvesvidal]

Oh, a model not made of paper !!! That is a paradigm shift 🙂

 

Great progress so far and beautiful construction.

Yves

[ccoyle]

The next step was to fit the glazing for the stern and quarter gallery windows. A slight bit of sanding was needed to get the pieces to fit, but not much. The clear plastic is covered on both sides with a protective film, which of course has to be removed from the back side before the pieces are glued in. You can see that on one stern window I accidentally removed the film from the wrong side -- that piece is now temporarily protected by a piece of cellophane tape. The quarter gallery panes are also painted black on their inboard sides, since otherwise one can see right into the model's internal hull structure.

 

 

The next step is somewhat lengthy and not very exciting -- the inner bulwarks must be built up from multiple pieces of strip wood and pre-cut filler pieces. Again, I'll post pics of that after I'm done.

 

Cheers!

[mtbediz]

Great work.

[ccoyle]

Well, turns out that adding the strip wood didn't take much time at all, especially after it dawned on me that many of the spaces between bulkhead extensions were the same width, which allowed for some mass production of filler pieces. Anyways, that part's all done now.

 

 

Next it gets a little trickier. There are laser-cut plywood pieces to fill the remaining gaps, but of course the inboard sides of those pieces must match the curvature of the bulkhead extensions. The instructions suggest removing some wood before adding the pieces, but that struck me as a dicey proposition. I decided to try a couple of test pieces by gluing them in and then carving them down with a chisel. That seemed to work well enough.

 

 

When those are done, I'll do the final shaping with some sandpaper.

 

[Cathead]

As a former Russian major, I have a soft spot for relevant history. Never done a MK kit but they've always struck me as well-made. 

 

If you want to keep your card credentials, you can always do paper sails!

[ccoyle]

Gun ports cut out.

 

[ccoyle]

Inner bulwarks sanded to shape. On to lining gun ports.

 

[Ab Hoving]

Nice work. 

I have a question and I hope you are not insulted by me asking if you ever built from scratch? With the talent you so clearly show I would be inclined to say that you must be able to do amazing things without pre-built kits. It will open a new dimension for you (I think, but who am I?).

[ccoyle]

4 hours ago, Ab Hoving said:

I have a question and I hope you are not insulted by me asking if you ever built from scratch?

 

Thank you for the nice compliment, Ab. I would like to try some scratch projects at some point in the future, but the ones I have in mind would be card models of smallcraft, not like most of what we see being built by our membership. I'm particularly interested in the boats designed by Philip Bolger; in fact, I have already built a simple model of a Bolger sailing pirogue. As for wood, though, I am one of those builders who enjoys the straightforward process of putting things together, like a puzzle, and not so much interested in all of the various tasks that a scratch builder in wood must engage in. This is why I particularly like the MK kits -- they appeal to my kind of builder. This might be my last wooden kit -- I no longer have any shop space in my garage, and the amount of sawdust and shavings even this sort of kit produces reminds me of why I stick mainly to card these days.

 

Cheers!

 

P.S. Here's a shot of my pirogue.

 

[Ab Hoving]

Well, in that case: (here come the commercials) wait for my new book, containing several tutorials for scratch build paper models, like for instance this one:

Prepared frames and hull sheathing, rigging details, etc. A perfect model to enter the field of freedom! :-))

Soon to be on the market.

Ab

 

Edited February 9 by Ab Hoving

[ccoyle]

Gun ports lined. This completes the basic hull structure. I'm thinking this is a good point to take a break from this build and whip out a card model. That has always been my plan for this build -- to intersperse it with other projects so as to not burn out on it. Fear not -- it's not gonna take 17 years, like some other unnamed project did!

 

[Theodosius]

Beautiful build!

[ccoyle]

I think I have more or less settled on this color scheme for Phoenix:

 

 

While I was at the local Hobby Lobby to get some fresh CA glue, I decided to shop for paint for trim work. I wanted to go for the yellow ochre + red ochre look seen in the photo, and I think I may have lucked out. These two colors are a pretty close match to what I was looking for:

 

 

In fact, they are a better match than can be seen in the photo, because no matter how much fiddling I did with the camera settings on my phone, I couldn't get the image colors to match the real-life colors (imagine everything with a redder tone, if you can).

 

Anyways, I really must wrap up my Hurricane build and get back to this one.

[ccoyle]

Okay, with the Hurricane now occupying a space of honor on the shelf, it's back to Phoenix! Following the instructions, we next darken the openings for the gratings. Exciting stuff, right?

 

 

Then it's time to start applying finish planking. Yay! The process starts at the stern. Before I started gluing anything, I cut out the relevant parts and did some dry fitting. That's when I noticed that the sternpost fascia pieces are not wide enough to cover the width of the post.

 

 

I went back and read through the instructions again. Sure enough, it looks like I overlooked some tapering that needs to be done. I will check some build logs to confirm this, but I'm pretty sure I have some more chisel & sandpaper work in my immediate future.

 

Cheers!

[ccoyle]

Sanding done (mostly) and stern veneers applied. You can tell from the photo that some additional minor sanding and filling will be needed to achieve the final stern shape.

 

[ccoyle]

Got the two long pieces of veneer on the upper hull attached.

 

 

 

Because these pieces are so wide, they are terribly unforgiving of any error in hull fairing, and that point is made apparent toward the bow. Here you can see that the natural curve of the veneer creates some small pockets where too much material was removed during the hull fairing process.

 

 

You can't simply smash these down, because that will cause the veneers to buckle. Nor can you simply ignore them, because doing so will cause the wales (the next belt of planking) to sit too low relative to the upper veneers. Nope, I'm gonna have to add some material in those areas to raise the surface slightly and allow the wales to sit level with the upper hull veneers. An unwelcome task, but necessary.

 

In the meantime, I may be hitting the pause button yet again on this build, for reasons I'll discuss in a separate topic. 😮 Don't worry -- nothing bad!

[Ronald-V]

Larger veneer pieces are looking nice and cool, but aren't the most easy pieces in a kit. That's what I discovered in my build of the Sphinx. There is a learning curve with these kind of woods...at least for me  

 

But love your progress! It looks nice  

Edited May 8 by mugje

[Thukydides]

The model is looking good Chris.