San Francisco by SiriusVoyager - FINISHED - Artesania Latina - 1:50 - Cross-Section

[SiriusVoyager]

As I have spent more time working on the guns, I came to the realization that I should have followed my instinct and not installed the decks first.  I cannot figure out a good way to properly install the guns on the gun deck.  At least not without making a mess of CA glue.  I was quite frustrated about it and decided that it wasn't worth the time, effort and frustration it would cause me so I am going to simply leave the guns off of the gun deck and have the guns ports closed.  I may try placing them later but for now, I don't see a good way to do it.  In the mean time, I will work on the guns for the weather deck.  The instructions come in two parts.  The first part had written descriptions.  The second part is essentially only photos with no explanations.  For the guns, it simply shows where they go, not how it is intended to mount them.

 

 

The resolution isn't good enough to tell how the rigging is supposed to be attached to the bulwarks.  I didn't want to use CA glue as it looks terrible, so I drilled small holes and bent the eyelets around to hold themselves into place. 

 

 

The instructions call for drilling the eyelets into the side of the gun mounts.  I decided to simply glue them to the bottoms as it will look the same and won't be seen.  I also added a small piece of wood to make it easier to glue the gun to the deck.

 

 

I made my inhaul tackle a too long and now it conflicts with the capstan.

 

 

I redid the inhaul tackle so it would fit a little better, but it still gets into the way of the capstan footing.

 

 

The tackle is attached to an eyelet with the stem bent under the deck to hold it in place.

 

 

Holes drilled for the rings to attach the outhaul tackle and breech lines.

 

 

This is actually the second gun installed, but it is the one with more documentation.

 

 

First gun installed.  The inhaul tackle is longer, but not in the way of anything.

 

 

 

Edited August 18 by SiriusVoyager

[ChuckCHS]

Eric

Great work on your SF cross section. Hope I can do as well.

Just received this kit from Amozan. It has an CD included in the package. Is the CD the instructions?

 

ChuckCHS

[SiriusVoyager]

8 hours ago, ChuckCHS said:

Eric

Great work on your SF cross section. Hope I can do as well.

Just received this kit from Amozan. It has an CD included in the package. Is the CD the instructions?

 

ChuckCHS

 

Thanks Chuck,  I hope you do better than I.  Definitely don't follow the order of the instructions and otherwise just take your time.  Do everything deck by deck since placing everything, especially the guns, will be much easier.  The CD has the instructions in PDF and JPG format.  There are also a couple of videos showing how to make mast parts.  I downloaded the instructions from the AL website and saved them to my phone so that I don't have to have my computer right there all of the time.

[SiriusVoyager]

I have decided that I cannot have a gun deck with no guns, so I will get them in, one way or another.  More on that below.

 

Making the hatch grating was tricky.  It would have been nice if the pieces fit together perfectly, but the notches aren't quite wide enough.  I tried using a metal file, but it was breaking the 'teeth' too often.  Fortunately the kit supplies many extra pieces.  I eventually found that flossing the 'teeth' with a piece of sand paper folder over twice was wide enough to work.  It still wasn't sanding quite evenly, but I was able to get it together.  Making one grating should be enough for both decks after some trimming.

 

 

 

I cut the opening for the ladder to slightly different dimensions than in the instructions because I am going to make the ladder face forwards and have a steeper slope.

 

 

Now for the gun deck.  Using every ounce of patience I could muster, long tweezers, gravity and that blasted CA glue, I was able to finagle 3 of the guns into place so far.  The two guns more in the middle were really the tricky ones.  The one on the end wasn't so bad, so once I get the fourth gun rigged, it should go in pretty easily.

 

 

[ChuckCHS]

But your build is looking great. I especially like the colors on the lower 2 decks.

Yes.... I learned very quickly to populate deck by deck! It was hard to continue building the model and stoping to work on the little details. But it pays off in the end.

 

ChuckCHS     👍

[ChuckCHS]

Eric.....Well, what a surprise! The CD is in a language I don't understand. I guess I'm flying in the dark without lights.  LOL... I'll be following your build very closely. The Conny experience will help along with your log and the CD pictures  will hopefully get me thru. Maybe a while before I start as other projects are on going.

 

ChuckCHS

[SiriusVoyager]

1 hour ago, ChuckCHS said:

Eric.....Well, what a surprise! The CD is in a language I don't understand. I guess I'm flying in the dark without lights.  LOL... I'll be following your build very closely. The Conny experience will help along with your log and the CD pictures  will hopefully get me thru. Maybe a while before I start as other projects are on going.

 

ChuckCHS

Almost all of the info you need is really in the photos. You can download English instructions Here

[SiriusVoyager]

All eight guns are now installed.   The trickiest part was getting the guns to stay in place.  On the one side of the weather deck I added a small piece of wood under guns that wouldn't be visible.  On the other sides I simply glued them to the bulwarks with PVA.  On the gun deck I glued one wheel to the deck and the gun to the bulkhead.  I used the dreaded CA there.  For the rings to attach the breech line and tackle I used two methods.  On the weather deck I drilled holes and bent the stems to hold the rings in place.  On the gun deck, I glued the rings to the deck and bulkheads.

 

 

 

I also made a few sacks of supplies for decorations.  To add some randomness I made them with different numbers of ropes wrapped around them, but I think I will go back and make them more uniform after seeing the photos here.

 

[MikkiC]

This look great and like it's fun. Not sure how I missed this until now.....

[SiriusVoyager]

4 hours ago, MikkiC said:

This look great and like it's fun. Not sure how I missed this until now.....

 

Thanks!  There are fun aspects with this kit but as I work on it, I realize there is also a lot to be desired with it.  It was relatively inexpensive though and it is serving its purpose.

[SiriusVoyager]

Working on more decorations.  Mostly painting barrels.  I started out trying to freehand paint it hoping I could keep the brush on the raised edges of the barrels.  That didn't work well.  So I went to masking.  It was better, but trying to mask around a curved and tapered barrel still left a few areas where paint made it into small gaps.  Finally I decided, why not just make bands.  I took an index card, painted part of it black, and cut off strips for bands.  This was much easier but then I noticed that the side of the strip is still white after putting them on the first barrel.  Once the edges were painted it looked fairly good.

 

 

 

 

The above photo you can see on the left where I tried to free hand on top and paint with tape on bottom.  Using tape is definitely better.  In the center you can tell the edges of the bands are white.  On the right is the barrel with the bands painted on the edges.  I like how that turned out and I think it took less time than trying to add and remove masking tape for every band.

 

All barrels finished

 

 

 

I also added more ties to the supply bundles.

 

 

[ChuckCHS]

Great job on the barrel and the sacks of whatever

 

Chuck

[SiriusVoyager]

Bundles of spare rope are also now competed.  I simply wrapped the coiled thread around a dowel and two pieces of tie thread.  I then tied them while still on the dowel.  This made making them pretty quick and easy.  After sliding them off I added a little diluted PVA to hold everything together.  I also assembled the bilge pump, of which the parts were painted earlier.  At this point I could start putting the furniture in the ship.  I also added the gun port hatches on the gun deck.  A little touch up painting was required but nothing major. 

 

 

 

Edited September 2 by SiriusVoyager

[SiriusVoyager]

For the ladders, I didn't want to install them the way they are shown in the instructions.  The slope is nowhere near realistic, even for normal stairs.  To make them more steep, and to face for and aft, I decided that they will extend from the opening in the grating to just clearing the grating below.  I used some trigonometry (who says you will never use math) and figured out the angle which was almost 65 degrees.  My miter box has an angle of 65.7 degrees, which I figured would give me a pretty good angle.  The first ladder I eyeballed the steps to try and make them parallel to the deck.  For the second ladder I made a wedge at 65.7 degrees to hold the steps.  I also measured the ladder railing by simply holding it up to the deck below.

 

 

 

 

It is apparent which ladder used the wedge in the photo below.

 

 

I also started laying the base for the second capstan.

 

Edited September 5 by SiriusVoyager

[SiriusVoyager]

The second capstan is now installed.  I basically made it the same way as the upper capstan but with the added shaft atop.

 

Next is making the buckets for the shot.  This again required either painting the iron bands on or making them from an index card.  The bands on the buckets were much more pronounced which would have likely required me to sand them down had I made the bands out of card.  Because of how pronounced they were, it was much easier to tape them off and paint them compared to the barrels.  One bucket had a drilling error, but it was serviceable and won't be visible when placed in the middle of the gun deck.  I used CA glue to hold the shot in place, then lightly painted them to make them look more like iron.

 

 

 

 

 

I believe that all that is left now is the mast and rigging.  I started working on the crows nest.  Part of the frame required quite a bit of resizing to fit  properly but was otherwise straight forward.  One of my frustrations with this kit is that any removal of char in the notches causes the fittings to be loose (except for the grating which was very tight even with char removed).  It would be nice if char removal was taken into account when sizing the laser cut pieces.

 

[SiriusVoyager]

I shaped all of the mast pieces and yards so I could stain them in one sitting.  The smallest yard called for using a dowel that is the same dimensions as the dowel used in making the capstans.  Without realizing it, I cut off pieces for the capstan from each of the dowels.  This meant that both dowels were too short for the yard.  By a chance of pure dumb luck, one of the dowels was just long enough to be the full length of the yard minus one of the carved out ends.  For that one, I glued a carved out piece on to the end.  For the rest of the yards, I used a blade to cut into the dowel by rolling it under the blade.

 

 

I then carved out pieces of the dowel using a hobby knife.

 

 

I repeated this process until it was roughly the size and shape needed, then sanded it smooth.

 

 

 

All of the masts and spars shaped and ready to be stained.

 

 

The taper is only very slight and almost not noticeable, however they do match the dimensions listed in the instructions.

 

 

[ForbiddenShrimp]

Looking really good so far!

[MikkiC]

The masts and spars....not up there with my favorite things to do. 

 

They look good

[SiriusVoyager]

21 hours ago, ForbiddenShrimp said:

Looking really good so far!

 

2 hours ago, MikkiC said:

The masts and spars....not up there with my favorite things to do. 

 

They look good

 

 

Thanks!

[SiriusVoyager]

Stained the masts and yards.  I was hoping to assemble the masts but they weren't quite dry so I will get to that in the morning.  I am not thrilled that the stain is splotchy and uneven.  I'm not exactly sure what I can do about that.

 

[ccoyle]

18 minutes ago, SiriusVoyager said:

I am not thrilled that the stain is splotchy and uneven.  I'm not exactly sure what I can do about that.

 

This is sometimes due to the type of wood used for the spars. Some take stains better than others.

[SiriusVoyager]

3 minutes ago, ccoyle said:

 

This is sometimes due to the type of wood used for the spars. Some take stains better than others.

 

I thought that that may be part of it. I was also thinking that uneven sanding could be to blame as well.

[MikkiC]

Try a light sanding after they're dry and reapply? Sometimes that works. The stain doesn't look too uneven in the pics though.

[SiriusVoyager]

23 hours ago, MikkiC said:

Try a light sanding after they're dry and reapply? Sometimes that works. The stain doesn't look too uneven in the pics though.

I gave that a try last night before I went to bed.  It didn't seem to make any difference.  I am just going to go with it as is.  Once everything is rigged, I think it will be even less noticeable.

[SiriusVoyager]

The next step is to assemble the mast.  I think assembling the top after the trestle trees and the cross trees are fitted and installed would have been easier because the trestle trees needed to be shaped to allow the mast to fit though.

 

 

 

One issue I rant into is that the instructions don't show how to put the caps on the masts.  The holes clearly don't fit and there is no indication that you are meant to shape the top of the masts.

 

 

I decided to shove a piece of dowel into the hole where the lower mast goes and cut it flush to allow the pieces to glue together.

 

 

 

Getting the cap to stay in place long enough for the glue to dry wasn't working well, so I came up with another idea.  Drill small holes in the mast and the dowel in the cap and use a small piece of leftover brass to connect them.

 

 

 

 

 

This worked really well for the top mast so I repeated it for the lower mast.

 

 

The mast fully assembled and installed into the hull.

 

 

 

 

 

[SiriusVoyager]

The instructions call for making the entire mast first.  I learned after it was done that the lower mast should be made, then the shrouds so that they can be laid over the mast head.   Once the shrouds are in, then the top mast can go on.  This makes a lot more sense as the shrouds can really only be tied on around the mast head on a fully built mast. Next time I will make proper shrouds with lashed loops at the top.  I also didn't realize that deadeyes were meant to be positioned in a specific way.  I was able to turn most of them, but not all due to being glued in.  Also for next time, I would make one [set] of shrouds and lanyards at a time so the others aren't in the way as much.  I definitely need to work on my knot tying and lashing.  It's done, but not very clean.  With thread this fine though, I am not sure how to hide even a simple clove hitch.  I used some wire spacing jigs to try and line up the deadeyes, but I don't think they will be perfectly even when done.  Next time I will use a board and nail jig to make the all an even height.

 

 

 

The first lanyards were relatively straight forward. 

 

 

 

 

[MikkiC]

Looking good. I, for some reason, always enjoy rigging.

[SiriusVoyager]

2 hours ago, MikkiC said:

Looking good. I, for some reason, always enjoy rigging.

Thanks. I enjoy the rigging as well, at least what little I have done. 

[SiriusVoyager]

Started the ratlines. 10 out of 60 done.  They are a simple hitch on the outer shrouds and clove hitches on the inner shrouds.  Once I got a good routine going on the clove hitches they went on fairly quickly.   There is a touch of diluted PVA on each knot.

 

[MikkiC]

Nice! Once we get into the rhythm, they go more quickly than annoyingly slow. 😁