HMAV Bounty by Candice - Caldercraft - Scale 1:64

[Candice]

Finally another update!! Work, life and other projects have been getting in the way of late, but a short holiday in the middle of nowhere allowed me to carve out some quality time at long last to get back to ship building. 

 

First up in the progress report is planking the deck. As per the instructions I started in the middle and worked my way outwards, cutting the tanganyika planks to fit around the deck openings.

I enjoyed cutting and sanding the planks to follow the curvature of the bow

The sides closer to the stern were an even more interesting challenge as the planks tapered off.

I was pretty chuffed with the end result

I then sanded the deck down and was mildly frustrated to find that it too needed woodfiller, and of course of a different colour to the hull. So back to the hardware store. Oak seemed to be the colour of choice this time. It was a messy process as always but the deck looked far better for it. This was then followed by two layers of clear varnish.

A closer up for full effect

Next I cut, painting and placed the 2x3mm walnut strips on the inside of the bulwarks. I had neglected to do this previously as I was worried about the complications of having to plank the deck around them. Though in hindsight I suppose one could have cut them short enough that the planks slotted easily underneath them.

With having opted to not copper the hull I had to then decide what to do with the rudder. Leaving it as bare wood didn't feel like an option. I tried painting it black to the waterline but that disappeared too much

I then coppered it anyway but that was way too stark

I finally settled on painting it gun metal grey, an enamel model paint that I had lying around (picture coming soon). The next challenge was the construction. The indents for the rudder hinges weren't nearly as long as indicated in the plan sheet. If I constructed them separately as shown, I then wouldn't have been unable to slot the hinges (213) onto the brackets (214 ) afterwards. 

So this is what I then resorted to

It was a very finicky process to then make holes in the rudder post and slot the four rudder brackets into them simultaneously. The top rudder hinge came unstuck in the process (it didn't come with brass straps to better secure it). Gluing it back in while everything was constructed didn't work out as well as the first time so the gap between the rudder and the hull sadly widens slightly at the top. I was however very satisfied with my final colour choice.

The bow rails were next, in all their intricate glory. Lots of sanding and fiddling later, all the little bits finally lined up well enough to look presentable. The outermost topmost rail gave the most trouble. It wanted to sit a lot higher on the hull than the black capping allowed. I ended up sanding down it's termination point quite severely to get everything to line up. It looks a little better from a normal distance than it does in this extreme close up! My bow hull curvature issues of earlier also came back to bite me again as I really struggled to get the bow cheeks to lie flat against the hull. I eventually settled for a small gap, though it isn't visible head-on as in this photo.

That's all for now. I'm currently getting stuck into the deck fittings as all the other sticky-outy bits that actually come next will make transporting my ship home rather difficult.

 

[Candice]

Another progress report at long last! Things have been slowly inching forward (at the snail's pace of about 30min every second night) for the last few months, but are now finally all coming together quite beautifully, courtesy of one of the strictest Corona lock downs anywhere in the world! I had built many of the deck fittings separately but will add them in here as they become a proper part of the ship.

 

My currently completed progress began with figuring out how to drill 0.7mm holes in 1.5mm thick pin rails in order to "pin and glue" them onto place to hold the rigging. I discovered that hardware stores only stock down to a 1mm drill bit, and the only hobby shop for hundreds of kilometers had nothing smaller in stock either, and said the same of their supplier. Thankfully I eventually found that a creative college of my mom had a set of smaller drill bits that he had special ordered from China that he was willing to lend me. I was still concerned about drilling straight with such a narrow margin for error. Much asking around and figuring out later, I borrowed a Dremel from work and my dad adapted it to fit into his drill press. This was the final contraption:

I cut a piece of scrap 1.5mm wood off the edge of the laser cut sheet and practiced a few times to get the hang of it:

I then got my adrenaline fix drilling into the irreplaceable pin rails, cappings and channels, as well as drilling the corresponding channel holes in the hull. Scary stuff! It didn't go too badly though! I drilled right through one channel late one night, but no worries there as it later got a piece of walnut over it anyway. I also drilled one pin rail hole a bit too shallow so the wire makes a small bump on its top surface (only I'll notice). The holes in the already painfully glued down bulwarks proved to be an extra challenge as the distance between the bulwarks was too narrow for even a hand-held Dremel to make a perpendicular hole. I had previously figured out with the rudder that the brass pins were also 0.7mm. I therefore carefully used a pair of pliers to push a brass pin into the bulwarks to make the necessary holes, accepting a small degree of wood-splitting due to a lack of rotary action. I then cut small sections of wire to push into the two corresponding holes of all the pieces to hold them together.

Below is an example of the pin rails attached to the mid-deck cappings (excuse the low light cellphone quality). I was very excited to see what the super cool belaying pins in their minute detail would look like in their rail. Aaaaand came upon some more drilling work that needed to be done! The holes in all the rails were 1mm diameter (top rail in the photo) but the belaying pins were 1.5mm thick. So I had to unpinned all the rails and drilled all the holes bigger (bottom rail in the photo).

Next came the channel support brackets and putting together the chainplate assemblies. All of this came in a brass sheet so I decided that it would be easier to paint all the hundreds of little bits black first and then cut them out and use them. More important lessons were in store for me! I didn't know that paint, even enamel model paint, doesn't stick very well when painted straight onto brass. I gave all the pieces three coats then broke out the first ones and ended up with tiny black bits everywhere except on the brass! Back to the drawing board. After cleaning off all the flaking enamel I found some metal primer and used that instead, covered by two layers of black paint. It still did come off a bit in places but was far more manageable than Plan A. But I am now very tired of painting...

 

The chainplate assemblies were made up of three interlinking brass pieces, the final of which was nailed together with a fourth brass piece into the hull in two places:

The chainplate assemblies have to follow the (now imaginary) angles of their respective shrouds and backstays. The plan provided the angles but only of one side of the hull. I am a bit left-to-right challenged so found the best solution was to take a photo of the plan and invert the image, then copy the angles off my now left side of the hull. In pinning down the support brackets and chainplate assemblies I found it easiest to use a pair of pliers once again to push the pins into the hull.

 

It was a lot of very finicky work and caused very sore fingertips and worn down nails, but the resulting detail was quite attractive! This is before the covering piece of walnut over the slots and the final coat of paint (I had also painted and glued all the timberheads into place along the deck railing, later photos will show them better):

I worked with the hull lying on its side on my lap but the amount of force needed to push the pins into the hull caused one of the channels on the opposite side to come off. It was fortunately very easy to fix and alerted me to the potential problem of having a completed side down while pushing hard on the side that was under construction. I therefore altered my set up to include a piece of polystyrene that had holes to accommodate all my hard work on the other side. I checked every few moves that everything stayed in position while completing the other side. Here I am lifting up the hull to show where the channels will be when the hull is sideways and under pressure (you can see the pressure lines in the polystyrene walls):

Each channel got a length of 1.5mm square walnut to cover the chainplate slots. This was sanded down on either side to be flush with the channels and everything was given another coat of primer and black paint (see photos below). 

 

I then went back and did the side ladders. I varnished the first five that were to go straight onto the hull. Although not in the plans, I liked DanPage's idea of painting the ones on the whale strips the colour of the corresponding strip. I had also taken heed of the struggles Matrim faced in getting the ladders to line up and decided to use two pieces of very thin gut tied around the circumference of the hull to provide a more reliable reference point for alignment:

I arranged the ladders first, then glued the coloured ones down as they had the least option for variation, and used their spacing to dictate the brown ladder placement. The top brown ladder is therefore a bit further down than on the plans but I preferred that to more uneven spacing option. When they were arranged to my satisfaction I used tiny rolled bits of prestic to mark their positions and took one out at a time, added a line of wood glue and then stuck the ladder back down with a pair of tweezers.

The alignment turned out quite well:

Finally let's take a step back from all the close-up work and see how it all came together! You can see the timberheads in the bow railing slots, as well as the added yellow chesstree breaking the yellow upper side rail.

 

Edited April 4, 2020 by Candice

[Candice]

More progress to report! This is definitely a long term project!

 

Next up were the deck fittings, starting with the hatch gratings. Slotting all the comb shaped pieces into each other and brushing them with watered down PVA was great fun! I chose to bevel the edges for added effect as I had seen others do. In the picture below you can see the difference between the small gratings that are already beveled and the large ones that I had yet to do. I started varnishing the whole grating in the imbuia that I had used for the hull but was dissatisfied with how dark it made grating; I quite liked the contrast. I sanded that one down and instead used clear varnish on the inside and imbuia only on the walnut.

 

In the next photo you can see the varnished hatch gratings and constructed deck hatches, as well as the next challenge that I faced. Before putting the final touches to the other deck fittings and pin/gluing them in place I had to find a way to insert the NUMEROUS eyelets into position around the deck and hull. After trying various drill and hand chuck options I finally settled on using a pair of plyers to push in a nail, as nothing else allowed me to get into the cramped corners that required eyelets. The holes for pinning the deck fitting I used a drill for as these were more central and accessible.

 

I thankfully managed to track down some patina to blacken the copper eyelets, no small feat in a hard lockdown! I also learnt from this amazing community that I could blacken the eyelets after they were already in place which made things a lot easier as the black does rub off with handling. An earbud was too big and absorbent, so I ended up using a cut down version of a small sponge make-up applicator which worked really well. It took going over them a few times but the final look was very satisfying.

 

For the rest of the deck fittings here is a zoomed out view first for orientation:

 

For the catheads I cut a recess in the capping rail to act as a ramp, allowing for their 45ish degree slant.

The cathead support brackets also needed adjusting in order to fit around the capping rail. Below is before and after adjustment. The long side fits along the cathead, the short side against the bow.

.

Oddly enough the catheads came with no holes through the top end or instructions for attaching the anchors to them. I really liked what DanPage did with his, however, so I predrilled holes to create pulleys for the anchors at a later point. That is their purpose after all. Below is a photo with the anchor just resting on the timberheads for now. The anchor gave me a little trouble due to some poor plan reading on my behalf. I first glued the anchor stock in the same plane as the bottom of the anchor but realised when I tried to put them on the ship that that couldn't be right and had to pry/cut them apart again. The plans also showed a ring on the top of the anchor but the kit included no such thing. I therefore bought some at a haberdashery and will still get around to covering them in black thread later. I chose to paint the anchor gun metal grey instead of black to contrast a little with the capping rail and timberheads.

 You can also see a nice close up of the swivel gun assembly in the previous and next photos. They ended up being a lot more wobbly in their construction than I would have liked but I am unsure as to whose fault that is, mine or the kit. I actually ended up losing one of the housings in transit between two building locations, so you will see the two bow swivel guns are missing. A friend with a 3D printer has taken the second with the promise of modeling me another one. I also chose to paint the gun barrels gun metal grey like the anchor and the housings black like the instructions.

 

Following the feedback that I received with regards to the missing stern capping rail I fashioned my own rail out of the left over 1.5mm walnut sheet. It took a lot of fiddling, sanding and wood filler to get it all to line up, particularly due to the inward slant of the aft capping rails, but I was satisfied with the end result.

 

Despite cutting a slot in my new stern capping rail, the fitting of the flag locker still proved to be a challenge as I had to chose between aligning it with the deck or with the stern fascia, it would not align with both. I chose the deck so you can see a slight widening gap between the back of the flag locker and the stern fascia

 

The construction of the deck cannons went smoothly. I chose to paint them gun metal grey as well. The paint of all the metal objects may need some touching up in the end due to all the handling. I also still need to attach the cannons to their carriages and tie the thread that anchors them to the bulwark eyelets. I did find it a bit strange that they rest so heavily on the gun ports thought. I tried taking out the small block of wood at the back of the carriage that the barrel rests on, but it made the cannons themselves look strange, even if it did give a more aesthetic look from the outside of the ship.

 

The windlass was great fun to build with all its little panels. I chose once again to use imbuia varnish on the walnut parts and clear varnish on the ply to maintain the contrast.

The three little brass pawls were far too small to fit into the recess in the post and positioning three strips of equal length around the windlass seemed very impractical. I therefore made two new ones out of wood that were wide enough to fit the recess. As they get painted black their original material seemed less important. 

There was no indication as to how to attach the bell to the bracket so I chose to drill a hole through it for a piece of thread. The theory was that the slightly recessed knot at the bottom of the bell would look like the clapper and the thread would allow the bell to swing a bit independently of the bracket giving a more realistic look than a fixed wire. The one snag was that the casting of the bell got too hot while drilling and melted onto the drill bit! It was a bit hard to get it off! The rest turned out as envisioned however. I painted the bell gold and decided to leave the brass bracket as is to match.

 

The pump assembly was a bit of a figuring out mission. The plans were poorly labeled; some lines had no labels, some labels were incorrect and some things weren't labeled at all. I cut the wrong sized dowel to begin with but eventually figured it all out.

 

I got my first taste of working with blocks, thread and eyelets in the construction of the ship's wheel mechanism. I'm a veterinary surgeon so it felt surprisingly natural to tie reinforced surgeon's knots in small corners with some spare surgical instruments that I had lying around. Getting the mechanism to actually turn the rudder was another story! In my efforts I ended up loosening the tiller arm from the position that I'd glued it and suddenly everything worked! Turns out I had glued it at too much of an angle so that it was under too much tension.

 

The last piece of update for now is the harrowing experience of drilling the 3mm holes in the bow for the anchor hawse ropes. In order to have them level with the deck I drilled from the outside in as the drill would not fit flush with the deck to enable drilling from the deck side. In hindsight I should rather have gotten the positioning more even and dealt with a downward sloped to the holes. In order to fit between the cheeks and headrail frames the drill bit had to be quite long. This made for less accuracy and visibility during drilling was poor, which, combined with my general lack of skill, sadly resulted in rather asymmetric holes.

 

But, as with all these small mishaps, it will hopefully only be noticeable in the final product if it were to be specifically pointed out. In driving home that point, here is a zoomed out last picture of my progress thus far:

 The lanterns I will leave til last as they complicate transportation. The ships boats are currently in the process of being planked. Otherwise it's onto the bowsprit and masts!

[AJohnson]

Beautiful build, nice to see another CC Bounty under construction, we are at similar stages, I'm also doing the ship's boats and considering the bowsprit. I will follow your build. 👍

[Candice]

 

On 4/17/2021 at 9:01 PM, AJohnson said:

Beautiful build, nice to see another CC Bounty under construction, we are at similar stages, I'm also doing the ship's boats and considering the bowsprit. I will follow your build. 👍

Thanks! I thoroughly enjoyed looking through your log! As a first time and severely part time builder I have so much still to learn about the ins and outs of ship building from the logs of others. I like the way you tied your blocks and will give it a try for the multitude of mast blocks that I am fast approaching. Though we may be at the same place currently, I only get to build for decent blocks of time a few weeks a year while on leave so you'll son be overtaking me!

[Candice]

Finally another progress update! The going is slow but progress is being made:D

 

First up, some sprucing up of the cannons. I added the eyelets that rope the cannons to the bulwarks as well as small strips of the copper plating from the hull to hold the cannons to the carriages. The dimples of the copper plating give it a nice studded look.

 

Next I tackled the masts. I only had a grinder and a few files to use with a vise-grip, so tapering and making different sections square and round again presented a rather interesting challenge. Through a technical error that Huawei can't explain to me, I lost all my cellphone photos so sadly I have no progress shots of this step. I also added all the blocks and railings and such.

 

 

 

I also had progress photos of tying the woolding but have lost those too:'(

 

I then did the bowsprit but opted not to bevel the bowsprit cap as I felt the risk-benefit ratio wasn't good enough and the problems then encounter with the angle of the holes in the cap also didn't seem worth it.

 

I ran into some trouble fitting the mizzen mast into the deck as I had not glued the binnacle and ships wheel on with sufficient space to account for the angle/slope of the mizzen. I also had to do lots of filing of the deck and keel holes as they did not align nicely to allow the masts passage.

 

The finished look of the masts:

 

My dust-preventing dishtowel now no longer suffices so I cut up two boxes to give my hard work some much needed protection:

 

Between doing the masts I have also been tacking the ship's boats. It was difficult to get back into planking again after a few year's gap, and on such a minute scale! I was very glad to have a layer to practice on that could be covered over with the second planking! The bigger boat didn't go too badly. I lost the progress photos but here is the hull sanded and wood-filler-ed:

 

The little guy gave me endless trouble! First off the bulkheads, although carefully numbered before cutting out, seemed to be in the wrong order such that a plank lying across them missed the bulkheads either side of the middle bulkhead as shown by the gaps in the photo below:

 

I also struggled a lot with the curvature. I first tried planking top down as the instructions recommended but had to cut a plank in the middle to make the curvature which I wasn't happy with:

 

Side two I tried planking from the bottom up but ran into different problems and still wasn't entirely satisfied with the result:

 

For the second planking I opted to instead start in the middle:

 

This seemed to work much better and I was finally happy with my work! I still need to fit the keel plank on this one before sanding and wood-filler-ing.

 

Lastly, I have begun with planking the inside of the bigger boat after removing the bulkhead tabs:

 

That's all for now! Hopefully it won't be almost a year again before the next update!

 

Edited March 5, 2022 by Candice

[AJohnson]

Hi, really happy to see an update of your 'Bounty'  you have been busy and made great progress, very neat cannons and masts, you have leap-frogged my progress there, as I have got side tracked on another little project.  

 

The ships boats are a challenge alright! 😆

 

Also like your dust protector - good idea! 👍

[fifthace]

Hey, welcome back!

Believe it or not, I am building this again! I took a 5+ year break from wooden ship building, and decided recently to get back into it, I picked this kit because I remember from last time I had very few issues with it, and wanted to correct a few things on my previous attempt.

Let's just say, it's NOT going well. I am more out of practice than I thought. The first planking is turning out to be an absolute hash. Thankfully it's nothing that will matter with the second planking.

Yours is coming along nicely, well done.

[allanyed]

Your ship model is looking quite good Candice.  Regarding the boat which you affectionately called the little guy can be a relatively easy build if you don't use the kit design which looks nothing like the launch or any other boats found on the Bounty or other British ships. If you do a little research here on MSW you will find quite a few posts on building a ship's boat that will look realistic.  There are also detailed drawings and scantlings in various books that will help you.  Feel free to PM me if you are interested in some drawings, scantlings, and explanations that I can share.

Allan