Christiania 1774 by TJM – approx. 1:67-1:64 – Danish Light Frigate based on Vanguard Models HMS Sphinx

[TJM]

Log entry 12 - thinking about colours and the second planking

 

While I am sanding the first planking layer, I am thinking about how to proceed with the second layer. I have to plan ahead as I have some ideas I want to try:

I prefer to keep as much as possible unpainted to show the wood itself. But I also want as much of the colour sheme as possible to show on the final model! With flirt, I elected to not paint below the waterline, and I am very happy with that deisicion. But it does mean that the overall look is not as 'accurate'. My solution to this for this build is going to be use of different woods for different parts of the planking.

 

Below the waterline, I intend to plank with maple - it is quite light in colour (I have only come across american holly that is whiter) and I can get thin sheets of it for laser cutting parts as well. And this is needed, as I need to make the keel and rudder parts below the waterline out of this as well! This will be a small mini project in itself. I am confident that i can do this, though it will take a bit of time, I am more worried about achieving a nice waterline between the pear and the maple. I will also use 12 cm strips to simulate planks as I did with Flirt and as @Ronald-V has done so successfully on his Sphinx. This will make it much easier to handle I hope. I intend to do the following: when a pear plank crosses the waterline, that I will mark on the inner planking, I will cut it off along the line, make a maple piece that is identical to the cutoff and the attatch both. Hopefully I can keep the waterline straight enough like this, but I do fret about this. If I manage, I think the end result could look great. Perhaps I should make a test on a small section of another model first...

 

Apart from this, I also want to emulate the yellow band around the gunports with a yellow wood, either boxwood or alaskan yellow cedar. I will make the swivel gun supports out of the same material (eventually...). 

 

Here are a a comparison between the woods:

The order is: Boxwood, Alaskan Yellow Cedar, Maple and Pear

 

I am leaning towards AYC for the yellow band but perhaps it is too light and not actually yellow enough? I will probably end up using boxwood for the quarterdeck and forecastle planking - I would be happy enough with the laser cut deck, but my forecasle deck shape is probably too changed to use that, and then I would like everything to be consistent. But I could use boxwood for both the deck and the bulwark stripe.

 

Any opinions of what would be best to use here?

 

I am also considering how far down to plank with Boxwood/AYC, and have tried to make a colour mockup of two options:

 

 

I am leaning towards the last one, so that there will only be yellow between upper wale and the decorated part, but I am not sure. Again, any opinions? 

 

BR

TJM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 17 by TJM

[Ronald-V]

I don't think it's a bad idea to use the same wood colours in other places on the ship. Like boxwood for the forecasle and bulwark stripe. This makes it look like a whole and doesn't make it too cluttered with all the different wood tones. But that's just my humble opinion  

 

And I agree with you on your colour mock-up...the bottom one looks a bit more balanced in terms of colours.

I think it's a very interesting approach to apply the colours with different wood tones, and I'm curious to see how it will turn out in the end.  

[TJM]

4 hours ago, Ronald-V said:

I don't think it's a bad idea to use the same wood colours in other places on the ship. Like boxwood for the forecasle and bulwark stripe. This makes it look like a whole and doesn't make it too cluttered with all the different wood tones. But that's just my humble opinion  

 

And I agree with you on your colour mock-up...the bottom one looks a bit more balanced in terms of colours.

I think it's a very interesting approach to apply the colours with different wood tones, and I'm curious to see how it will turn out in the end.  

Thanks Ronald, much appreciated! It is a good point about not using too many different colours, to have some consistency. My though was that one will simulate a raw wood deck, the other a painted colour, so perhaps they should be different? But perhaps that does not really matter, and perhaps the two are too close in colour to register as different if both were on the model... Hmmm..

 

 

Edited September 18 by TJM

[Thukydides]

I like the ideas you have. I was looking at contemporary depictions of Danish frigates and I found this one from the battle of Copenhagen in 1801 at the RMG (I have copied the relevant potion):

 

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-12020

 

You can see the yellow band is actually a bit wider than you have it. It seems to me (a general observation on the many frigate paintings I have looked at) that when the switch from painted decorations to just black and yellow came they tended to make the yellow band wider. You might want to consider bringing the yellow band up to the next molding sand potentially make the molding black. Granted this is a bit later than when your ship launched.

 

The ship in the painting appears to have built up quarterdeck bulwarks hence the large black band on the top.

 

I agree with Ronald, less is more. If you are using the maple for below the waterline then I would also use it for the deck as they are both meant to be "whiteish".

Edited September 18 by Thukydides

[Ronald-V]

1 hour ago, TJM said:

Thanks Ronald, much appreciated! It is a good point about not using too many different colours, to have some consistency. My though was that one will simulate a raw wood deck, the other a painted colour, so perhaps they should be different? But perhaps that does not really matter, and perhaps the two are too close in colour to register as different if both were on the model... Hmmm..

 

 

Maybe it's a bit difficult to try to decide everything in advance. Unless you need to order all the wood in advance, then it's a different story. But seeing wood on the ship will be different then artificial colors on a screen. I do think it only can get you so far...But some people are better in visualizing then others and maybe you are one of them.

[TJM]

3 hours ago, Thukydides said:

I like the ideas you have. I was looking at contemporary depictions of Danish frigates and I found this one from the battle of Copenhagen in 1801 at the RMG (I have copied the relevant potion):

 

https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-12020

 

You can see the yellow band is actually a bit wider than you have it. It seems to me (a general observation on the many frigate paintings I have looked at) that when the switch from painted decorations to just black and yellow came they tended to make the yellow band wider. You might want to consider bringing the yellow band up to the next molding sand potentially make the molding black. Granted this is a bit later than when your ship launched.

 

The ship in the painting appears to have built up quarterdeck bulwarks hence the large black band on the top.

 

I agree with Ronald, less is more. If you are using the maple for below the waterline then I would also use it for the deck as they are both meant to be "whiteish".

Thanks! I tend to agree, that the one line is a bit to thin, which is also why I was considering extending the yellow to in between the wales as well. I don't think it should be extended upwards - it seems pretty consistent that the upper part of the yellow is more or less aligned with the upper edge of the gunports or a bit below this. There seem to be a clear 'division' in the plans that match those on the Sphinx very well. 

 

When looking at the painitng of Søerideren, it seems the broad yellow line is actually because the two wales were also yellow on that ship: 

I don't know how comon this was, but if following this, the mockup would look like this: 

 

The trouble is just that I don't really care for this look! And I know for a fact that the two thin wales for each gundeck that was common on the Danish ships of all sizes were often painted black or very dark brown. So I think I will stick to that. But the dilemma is then to decide whether to keep the line think - I agree with Ronald that it looks more harmonious - or if I extend it down between the wales, as that is maybe more realistic as Thukydides points out! 

 

Here is a few more images to compare with:

 

 

 

On the first and third image, the battery lines does not look that thick. But all of these may depict slightly later periods than my ship. I don't know how much it changed in the 20-30 years in question. After 1807, white lines became common, so it can't be much more than 30 years after Christiania was built.

 

Regarding using maple for the deck, I had actually not considered that! That may be a good option, thanks for that input! 

 

2 hours ago, Ronald-V said:

Maybe it's a bit difficult to try to decide everything in advance. Unless you need to order all the wood in advance, then it's a different story. But seeing wood on the ship will be different then artificial colors on a screen. I do think it only can get you so far...But some people are better in visualizing then others and maybe you are one of them.

True! It never looks quite right in the digital images. I have all the wood in stock so I can wait a litltle with the final desicion, but I will need to make it soon-ish.

 

Thanks a lot for your inputs, lots to consider and more comments are most welcome if you have any thoughts on my considerations 🙂.

 

BR

TJM 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 18 by TJM

[TJM]

Log entry 13

 

I Have now proceeded with my plans to mix up the wood and hve made replacement parts for the outer keel patterns from 1 mm maple.

 

 

As the inner keel would show at the bow, I filed away around 0.7 mm and added a 3 mm maple strip (lying on the desk in the bottom right if this image)

 

 

I then added all the elements of both maple and pear:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the contrast between the woods look very good and if I can manage to get a straight waterline, I think this will be good in the end. If I can manage a helf decent planking job at least.

 

The maple is, ad expected, very hard, but that means it sands very well! I think I will take @Thukydides's suggestion and use it for the upper decks as well.

 

The bottle in the background in some of the above images are being used to form the stern piece - also slightly modified as my stern is a bit wider, so I had to cut out a new piece. I think I may plank the outer layer. I do have 0.5 mm pear sheet, but maybe it will be more consistent to plank it as all other non painted parts will be planked.

 

Thanks for following along!

 

BR

TJM

 

 

Edited 5 hours ago by TJM

[Ronald-V]

That does look really nice! Eventually the maple would age a bit more yellow if I remember correctly, but in my opinion that would only look more beautiful.

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Ronald-V