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

[Ronald-V]

Very cool those decorations in combination with the windows! And the figurehead looks also very good! Well done!  

[wvdhee]

I had a look at heroforge too for my figurehead, but thought the hand and feet were too big. But printed it looks good tbh, or did you fiddle with it?

[TJM]

Thanks for the likes 😃.

 

On 4/22/2025 at 7:52 PM, Ronald-V said:

Very cool those decorations in combination with the windows! And the figurehead looks also very good! Well done!  

Thanks Ronald, much appreciated!

 

 

On 4/23/2025 at 7:42 AM, wvdhee said:

I had a look at heroforge too for my figurehead, but thought the hand and feet were too big. But printed it looks good tbh, or did you fiddle with it?

 

They are a bit cartoony by default, but you can just make the body size larger without changing hands, feet and head until the proportions look more realistic. I have done that for all the tests I have made. This is the only example where I have purchased the STL and printed it, but there will be more coming 😉.

 

Here's a few examples:

 

 

Edited April 25 by TJM

[TJM]

Log entry 25 - stern colour tests

 

While planking snails on, I have been trying a few options for the stern decorations on some mis-prints (I had a few, as I had a hole in the release film on my printer...).

 

The upper test uses non-metalics and I started with a medium brown, followed by yellow ocre with a few beige highlights. The second is using Vallejo Liquid Gold with a brown shade. I would do highlights as well jere, but decided at this point that I will be going the non metallic route.

 

Now for a few observations:

- I am woefully out of practice when it comes to painting miniatures. I did this for many, many years and while I never achieved mastery, I was a solid painter. Not so anymore!

- I really need new brushes. I don't have a detail brush that will keep a point or let the paint flow smoothly (I hope this is a big part of my bad performance here). Order placed.

- I need to start with a lighter tone of brown/yellow and use more colours in between. I have gotten away with this combo before, but on small parts. 

- these were quick tests, just around an hour of work. I will spend more time on the final piece.

- on a side note, the liquid metal paints from Vallejo absolutely destroys brushes and while coverage and finish is great, it cannot be applied to fine details (like the tiny poles on my friese) as it is super runny!

 

I am still waiting for new brushes, but I tried again with lighter colours on another scrap piece:

 

 

Better, but still not satisfied. It looks fine from a distance and the macro shots reveal all the nasty stuff, but I would still like to do a little better than this. And I have only base coated the red flags for now. I would like the white cross of the Danish flag on the big one on the right, but I am not sure I can make it work.

 

Let's see what new paints and more time will do.

 

BR

TJM

Edited May 22 by TJM

[Nirvana]

TJM, to me this looks really good! Again, we are our own worst critics.
What doesn't look good to you may not even be noticed by another.

[TJM]

2 hours ago, Nirvana said:

TJM, to me this looks really good! Again, we are our own worst critics.
What doesn't look good to you may not even be noticed by another.

Thank you for that, I really appreciate it. And yes I know we are all our own worst critics, but I just know I could do better once 😄.

Edited May 22 by TJM

[Ronald-V]

Agreed with Nirvana! Looks really nice  

Edited May 22 by Ronald-V

[TJM]

19 minutes ago, Ronald-V said:

Agreed with Nirvana! Looks really nice  

Thanks Ronald 🙂

[Thukydides]

Great job.

 

I like the top one the best. It just needs a bit more, it feels like it has the most depth. The issue is the mid tones need to be brighter so you need to extend what you have for highlights down over more of the surface and go for even higher values on the highlights.

 

In general it is better to make too much contrast as opposed to too little. You can smooth it all together with a thin glaze of your mid-tone once you are done if you think you went too bright. If you do this be careful that you don't let it pool in the recesses. It will have the consistency of a wash, but you don't want to use it like one.

 

Glazing over the transitions using the darker colour pulling from light to dark will also help with smoothing out the transitions if you are concerned about them.

Edited May 22 by Thukydides

[TJM]

7 minutes ago, Thukydides said:

Great job.

 

I like the top one the best. It just needs a bit more, it feels like it has the most depth. The issue is the mid tones need to be brighter so you need to extend what you have for highlights down over more of the surface and go for even higher values on the highlights.

 

In general it is better to make too much contrast as opposed to too little. You can smooth it all together with a thin glaze of your mid-tone once you are done if you think you went too bright. If you do this be careful that you don't let it pool in the recesses. It will have the consistency of a wash, but you don't want to use it like one.

 

Glazing over the transitions using the darker colour pulling from light to dark will also help with smoothing out the transitions if you are concerned about them.

Thank you! 

 

I remember all of these techniques when you mention them, but I am so rusty! So thanks for the great description here.

 

I am at least encouraged to try again and really try my best, keeping these points in mind - I think the postman has delivered my new brushes today, so....

[TJM]

I have tried again with my new brushes and a few new paints and a wet pallette to keep the paints thin and flowing.

 

These are the steps I took:

 

1. Base coat yellow areas with a light brown:

 

2. main colour layer with yellow ochre.

 

3. Bace colour on the red areas:

 

4: wash all areas with brown wash.

 

5: go over with main yellow colour again.

 

6. Dark red wash on red areas

 

7. Highlights with a yellow/beige mix and a light red

 

8. final highlights with beige:

 

I am ok with this result and from normal viewing distance it looks totally fine.

A little unhappy about the monogram details though.

 

I am considering re-printing this but with the z-axis scaled to 150% or so. It should make it much easier to paint when the relief is not as shallow and it may still be ok in terms of overall thickness. It is very thin as it is.

 

But I would probably be ok with this one if it is the best I can get 🙂.

 

BR

TJM

 

[Thukydides]

I think that looks much better than your previous versions. Great jobQ

 

If you would like some suggestions to make it really pop, I would still go up a little higher in value on the highest highlights of the red. Maybe mix a bit of orange in with your red to get that highest highlight.

 

On the gold I would use pure white or maybe white with a little yellow in it and try and pick out the upper edges of the monogram and any sharp upper edge points such as the tips of the cannons. This would be really small dots/lines, but it will push that contrast just that bit higher.

Edited June 8 by Thukydides

[TJM]

Thanks, @Thukydides! I totally agree, I need a little more, especially on the reds. 

 

I will try it out 😃

[Ronald-V]

Very nice painting!

[TJM]

Log entry 26 - trying to model the side galleries

 

Hi everyone,

 

It has been quiet in this log for a good long while now - I have been on summer holydays, and after, I have been doing garden projects and working a bit on my Elben project.

 

But even though planking is going painfully slow, I am working on other parts of this build as well. One of them is the stern decorations and side aglleries. I had originally though I would just make up modified parts for the side galleries, but the more I though about it, getting close to the drawings seemed to me a difficult task. I therefore decided to try to model the whole side gallerie in 3D, hoping I will be able to 3D print the whole thing. 

 

I have no prior skills in this area, and I am not ready to start learning to actually model in a 3D CAD program, so I have been using some workarounds:

 

I am drawing simple parts based on the original scalled drawings in QCAD. Then I load these into Onscape and extrude them to a resonably close thickness (I can modify this later, so it does not need to be procise). Then I import into the slicing software I use for the 3D printer and build everything in there. This is surely a bad way of doung it, but the interface in the slicer is super simple and at the same time offers full flexibility when it comes to positioning and scaling parts - I just can't make any more advanced modifications to the individual parts, except for straight cuts! 

 

I am not done yet, but this is the current state of things:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are the original drawing I am trying to approximate:

 

 

I am happy with the overall shape, except for the very lowest portion of the side gallery - it is a very dificult geometry, and I just can't get it wide at the bottom. I may end up just deviating a bit from the drawings in this area. I have tried many multiple times and it just ends up looking bad. I would rather have a deviation from the original that looks good, than something cunky and ugly! 

 

I am still in the process of adding ornaments and I just started the modelling of the stern face. I am not sure I will 3D print the rear windows, but I would be nice to have the window frames match the side galleries, so maybe I will give it a shot. 

 

The friese is blank here - as you can see in the posts above, I have modelled the friese, but in a flat version. I figured a way to get the correct, thick 3D shape and I think I will import my other friese file and transfer the design to the curved surface. I will then re-print it to get a much better final shape of that piece. No matter what, I will print the stern friese and/or windows seperately from the two side galleries. 

 

I think I will do an export and make a test print before moving much further, just to see if this is a viable approach at all - it is a time sink to do this, so I want to make sure it is worth it! 

 

BR

TJM

 

[TJM]

Alright, even though the 3D model has a few rough spots, I hoped that the tiny scale and the antialiasing used in the slicer on export would work in my favor.

 

And I am very happy to report that it did!

 

 

 

 

The finish looks really great and all the details pop. The prints cane out basically perfect.

 

So I am very encouraged by this. Now, the fit for my Christiania is not quite good enough. I am not sure exactly what has happened, but the lower part and the top are both a bit too tall. The window portion seems to fit fine. So I will be scaling some parts of the model a bit and trying again to get a better fit. It wil likely not be perfect, so a bit of filler will be needed, but that is ok. Stay tuned for more experiments soon...

 

 

[Ronald-V]

Those look beautiful! Still in awe what can be done these days, even just at home  

[Beckmann]

Hi TJM,

Somehow the QG leans backward and the roof leans forward, shouldn't both lean backward? 

But beautifully done anyway,

Matthias 

[TJM]

1 hour ago, Beckmann said:

Hi TJM,

Somehow the QG leans backward and the roof leans forward, shouldn't both lean backward? 

But beautifully done anyway,

Matthias 

 

 

Hi Matthias,

I see what you mean! Dome of it is due to the perspective, especially in the last image, and som of it is due to the way I made the roof. The thing is, the QG area is largest at the rear, so I have stretched the shape in that end to cover more of the area. Snd conversely, I need it to be compressed in the forward end, to make it fit the shallow roof there. Unfortunately that gives an impression of leaning forward a bit, from some angles. I am contemplating if there is anything I can do a bout this - perhaps there is. My problem is that I cannot stretch just the top part backwards with the simple tools I use, but I will see if I can find a workaround. 

 

Thanks for pointing it out to me!

 

BR

TJM

 

 

[TJM]

Ok, I made a quick edit of the roof and here is a comparison: the previous version on the left, the new one on the right:

 

 

 

The new one looks much more natural, with the lean towards the stern.

 

Thank a lot for pointing this out Matthias! In the end, the change took just a few minutes to do, so very much worth it! 

 

This version is also a bit re-scaled (the comparisson on the left is as well) compared to the print I made, so I will try this one and see if the fit with the hull is better now. 

 

 

[Beckmann]

That looks much better now. Well done!

Matthias 

[TJM]

Log Entry 27 - modelling the stern friese 

 

I am still working on the fit of the quarter galleries, but as I decided to remodel the friese in actual 3D (not just a raised relief/projection), I have been working on that.

 

I am very happy with the overall shape and together with the galleries, it is really shaping up now. There are still some rough spots at some of the joints between parts, and I think I will print the stern and side galleries seperately, and then some of the ornaments are still missing (tiny lion heads I and som garlands, flowers, etc. )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It will take some more (probably rather difficult) work to get it to the final shape - I may print a test version at some point to se how the fit is. 

 

I find it very satisfying to see the whole thing in 3D, but I also find that the dimentional accuracy of the resin printing is not super good for large parts, both due to uncertainty in the z-axis (layer thickness) but even more the warping flat parts. Over such large pieces, you quickly more a milimeter or more from the target and that makes it very difficult to fit onto the model in a prcise way. So I think I basically have to iterate with a buch of trials, which is quite tedieous with the resin printing process! 

 

We'll see how it turns out in the end 🙂 

 

 

BR

TJM

Edited September 14 by TJM

[TJM]

Log entry 28 - a 25 ft 'Barkasse'

 

Hi everyone,

 

Wow, progress is slow for me at the moment 😅. Vacation, covid, other commitments, etc. has meant that I have not managed to progress with the actual ship since last time. 

 

But I found myself exploring a particular rabbit hole: would it be possible to make acurate ships boats for the model?

 

Many of the drawing sets at the Danish National Archive includes drawings of ships boats, and there are two for Christiania, a  20 ft 'Jolle' (=Yawl) and and a 25 ft 'Barkasse' - I believe the english equivalent of this is the launch. I think it is likely the ship also carried a 'Challoupe' (Pinnace/barge), but there are no drawing of a challoupe specifically for Christiania, but they are the most prevalent class of ship boat in the archive. 

 

The Barkasse, is very box like ('kasse' = box - perhaps a coincidence, pahaps not...), more so than the English launches, so I decided to try to model this for 3D printing! a bit daunting, as I was just figuring out what worked as I went along, but I am happy with the end result.

 

This is the original drawing (G312): 

There is  also a sail drawing, but that is not so relevant for my use case.

 

First, I drew the frames and keel acc. to the plans (at 1/64 scale):

 

 

This was done in QCAD. I have prepared the frames for klinker planking - I know the English launches were caravel/cravel planked, and this might have been as well. However, all the drawings in the archive shows all boats, regardless of type and size as cravel planked, and I am pretty sure many were klinker planked, so I decided to do this as I like the detail that it gives on the hull.

 

After this, the parts were brought into Onshape (free onling 3D CAD program) and extruded to the correct thicknesses. Then I aranged the frames on the keel and started making point-constrained surfaces using the plank section of the frames. That creates a surface thatcan then be extruded, but while it covers the plank in question, it is over-large and need to be 'trimmed' to the correct plank shap. This I did with two boundary surfaces which, when extruded to a 3D shape, can be used to trim the plank to shape (with a boolean operation). Then I repeat that for all 12 planks. 

 

This was the difficult part - planking the hull - and then it is easy to make the other elements in a similar fashion, drawing and extruding the parts and adding them to the model.

 

This is the final result:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The planking looks a but rough in a few places, but bear in mind that the model is really small: the overall lenght is 123 mm and the thickest part of the planks are just 2 mm wide! The grating holes are 1x1 mm.

 

I have no direct evidence of how the grating and deck should look for this particular boat, so I have made a more or less generic interior. While the drawings do not show it in this case, there are many drawings of 'barkasser' in the archive that shows mountings for swiwel guns in connection with the heavy cross bracing fore and aft. To add a bit of interest, I have added this feature to my model as well. The drawing also does not show the rudder, but I have used a rudder shape from another (larger) barkasse from very close to the same year as Christiania - this is hopefully a resonable approximation. 

 

At the very least, I will make the seats out of 1 mm pear, but I may also make the grating out of pear. I think I will print a version with and without the grating and see what works best.

 

The blue sections in the image below will as a minimum be made of wood:

 

The very tiny oar 'pins' will not be printed, they are just to small at 0.2 mm thickness. I am not 100% sure this is actually what they looked like, or how they are supposed to work. Some drawings show what might be a small eye ar the top, so perhaps a loop of rope was attached to keep the oar in place? If anyone knows how this type of oar rest worked, please share! 

 

Now I look forward to seeing how this prints! And then I think it is high time I finished that planking so I can continue with all the interesting bits that comes next! 

 

BR

TJM

 

 

 

Edited October 25 by TJM

[Thukydides]

Really good work. How did you handle the lofting at the bow? I found I had a lot of trouble with that when I was faring the hull for perseus.

[TJM]

19 minutes ago, Thukydides said:

Really good work. How did you handle the lofting at the bow? I found I had a lot of trouble with that when I was faring the hull for perseus.

 

Thank you @Thukydides!

 

I think I got lucky and that my methodology just happens to 'work out'! I also think it helps that I am doing this on a plank by plank basis, as compared to making a surface that hugs the whole of the hull in one go. 

 

Here's an example of a plank of average complexity in terms of topology on my boat:

 

Firstly, the planking runs are determined already in 2D CAD based on the lines from the original drawing (with my crude extrapolations on top):

 

In hindsight, I should have been more carefull, especially around the upper 4-5 planks and made some smoother help lines. This would have avoided the slightly wonky run of those planks, but when I discovered it, I was quite far and it would have meant starting over, as all the frames would need to be altered.

 

Here is a look at the surface that will form the 4th plank from the top:

It is quite extreme and a lot of it will need to trimmed away. I found that the shape only worked when I had fixing points at the keel (the rabbet?).

 

After this, I made two 'limiting' surfaces where the plank edges should be. I use the klinker shape of the frames to make the perpendicular surfaces:

 

After extruding the two help surfaces, they are used as tools in the subtractive boolean operation, removing the unwanted part of the plank:

This leaves just the plank in the correct shape, but it is quite tedious to do, and for some of the surfaces, I was getting close to the limit of computing power in Onshape, as it was getting quite slow!

 

After repeating 12 times, I got the 12 planks, in the correct position, faired against the frames.

 

I should mention that when thickening the frames, I extruded 0.1 mm outwards and 0.3 mm inwards. This means that non-faired nature of the frames gets covered in the plank thickness, and that any micro-protusions of the frames through the surface gets covers by the outward extrusion. 

 

I hope this makes some sort of sense! I basically have no clue what I am doing and I am lacking some vocabulary/teminology to properly describe the process, I just try until it seems to work! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TJM]

Ok, I made a print yesterday and in general, it turned out really nice. 

 

 

 

 

I printed two with grating and two without, but one of those with failed. 

 

A few observations:

 

I should probably use slightly thicker planks. 0.4 mm is very thin (and see through!) 0.6-0.7 mm is probably better.

 

There is a bit of cavity under the deck planks. Cavities with no drain is a big no no in resin printing. Technically these are not closed off, but it seems the openings are just a too tight here. You can see a bit of seepage around the openings. The solution is to fill out all the volume under the planks or make the gaps between planks a bit wider. I do think everything is so thin that I am able to cure everything, but it is not ideal as is.

 

This is close to the largest object I can print. Including supports, this was 136 mm tall and I only have 150 mm total. Without rudder, I can go up to a boat of max 30 Danish feet. 

 

This was 2700 layers and it took a full 12 hours to print! However, each boat, including supports only consume 10 ml of resin 😄. 

 

If I can fit in wood grating, I think that will be the better option, though the 3D printed one is ok. 

 

All in all, I would say this experiment was a success and a good proof of concept for future ship boats! At some point I will make the 20 ft Jolle and a 23-28 ft Challoupe for Christiania as well.

Edited Monday at 06:41 AM by TJM