US Brig Syren by Gahm - Model Shipways

[Gahm]

Before moving on with building all these gun port lids I wanted to make sure that the rear gun ports of my Syren model were correctly located and properly dimensioned . . . at least this was a good excuse to build the long guns first  .

 

Finished long guns.

 

 

Stern of Syren showing long guns.

 

 

[russ]

Beautiful work so far. Your hull is really nice. The planking and coppering look great. The guns look they are spot on from the photos.

 

Russ

[augie]

Ah, the baby has her first teeth.  Lookin' GOOD!!!!!!

 

And neat work on the black under to hatches.

[Gahm]

Thank you, Russ for stopping by. I was also quite happy with the way the guns ended up in the middle of the gun ports.

 

Augie, I kind of had the same thought . . . the first 2 teeth. Well, hopefully another 16 to follow soon.

 

Thomas

[Chuck]

Wonderful job.  I am really enjoying the progress updates.  Thank you so much for sharing.  

[Gahm]

Thank you, Chuck.

[Gahm]

I was also curious what a carronade would look like. Below is my first prototype.

 

Views of carronade prototype

 

. . . and how it fits into the gun ports

[russ]

The carronade looks very good. The fit seems to be good as well. Nice work.

 

Russ

[augie]

Looks dead on.  Well done!

[Blue Ensign]

Just picked up on your Syren log Thomas, what a beautiful build, your work is of a very high standard.

 

Regards,

 

B.E.

[j21896]

Hi Thomas,

 

I'm a new arrival to your log as well.  Your Syren is just beautiful!  Fantastic work.

 

Cheers,

Robert

[Gahm]

Thank you for your compliments! The truth is it is not too difficult to build a nice looking Syren model due to the high quality of the kit, the excellent instruction book, and the amazing details which Chuck designed into the model. 

 

Thomas

[Chuck]

Thank Thomas...but the Kudos go to you.       You are doing a super job on it.  The Carronades look fantastic.

 

Chuck

[fnkershner]

I have to tell all of you I just can't wait to get up in the morning and read the latest new posts. This such a fantastic group. Wonderful builds, great kits. Makes it hard to go to work. Nice work Thomas, you should take credit for the excellent job. But I also agree with you Chuck should also take credit for his work. He has done this hobby a world of good.

[Ferit]

Salute Thomas,

She looks very impressive, the details are so clear and clean... Congratulations...

 

I apologize for my ignorance, may I ask a question about the windows at the quarter deck? At every Syren I have looked, I noticed that behind the windows, there are the deck, the cannons, the handle of the rudder, the upper side of the hull planked with wood... İf the windows have not been built for the captain's room, are they only for ornamentation of the ship?

[Gahm]

Hi Ferit,

Thank you for stopping by. And yes, to my understanding in some of these smaller ships the quarter galleries were just decoration, perhaps to make the ship look more impressive from a distance.

 

Thomas

[Ferit]

Thank you Thomas, for the information.

 

Each time I observed the Syren, I was trying to understand the aim of this construction...

[Gahm]

I started with the lids for the sweep and gun ports (still chapter 9 . . . I have the feeling I am stuck for ever in this chapter  ). In comparison to the plans the photo etched horse shoe hinges for the sweep port lids seemed a bit too thick and too triangular shaped . . . so I thinned them out and got the shape “more horse shoe like”.

 

 

 

I also experimented with changing the eye-bolt simulation on the gun ports to the real thing. The trick here obviously is to stay within scale and not to end up with rings which are too large. But I think my first prototypes (3 black eye-bolt ring combinations mounted on the little wood stick as compared to the not painted brass eye-bolt simulation) got close enough.

 

 

 

The next 2 images show my first set of gun port lids and how they (test) fit into the gun ports as well as the finished and mounted sweep port lids. As it is the case with most of  the Syren models I also will finally mount the gun port lids in the open position.

 

 

[augie]

Looking very nice Thomas.....as always.  Hull details are fun!!

[prodas]

Thanks for your input, help me to continue my

[Blue Ensign]

Those ring bolts are a far better option than the bent eyebolt, and that broadside shot of your Syren is impressive, especially when it is brought up to full size.

 

Great work Thomas.

 

Regards,

 

B.E.

[russ]

Thomas:

The ringbolts look good. I think the scale effect will be good. Nice work.

 

Russ

[MD11pilot]

Thomas, I'd be very interested to know how you thinned the horse shoe hinges. Dremel?

[Gahm]

Thanks to everybody for the encouraging remarks. Especially when working on these tiny ring bolts I started to wonder whether it really will make a difference . . .  they seem to defy gravity completely! 

 

Thomas

[Gahm]

Eric, I think the trick here is not so much which rotary tool but that you use a fine diamond bur with the tool. I have a Proxxon with a flexible shaft. The flex shaft just allows for more precise motion control. And only separate the hinges from their photo etch grid once you are done with the thinning task. It makes for much easier work that way because you have a nice handle!    

 

Thomas

[Gahm]

Hi Dirk,

Before we had the “big crash” there were several build logs of people showing different ways of constructing the quarter galleries. They all yielded very nice results. One person carved each quarter gallery out of a piece of (box?)wood . . .  it looked very nice. The most common approach was to carve the part from the bottom of the windows down, and the part from the top of the windows up, and design the windows and the pillars in the gap between these two parts. For the roof they went with individual shingles made out of birch veneer. I think Chuck may have used a similar approach for his original designs, and he may still be able to provide you with a few images. This type of technique you also find in some of the scratch build logs for the design of the quarter galleries. And then there is also the polymer clay sculpting approach, and last but not least using the metal casts from the kit, and refining/ recasting them. So there are a lot of possibilities . . .

Where my method is concerned I don’t really have a lot more images than what I published in my log already. I basically broke down the whole task into a lot of little steps which could be individually refined. I started with the 3 moldings. The width I got from the plan, the depth and general shape I extracted from the metal castings. Each molding was built from 2 pieces of bass wood sanded down to the correct thickness (see plan). I rounded the edges and glued them together with a little piece of black paper in between for better contrast.  You cans see one of the finished moldings in image 2 (1^st page of my build log), upper right corner, a second one already mounted on the window wood block in the middle of image 2. The individual windows and the wood block to mount the windows came next. The window frames were made from thin strips of birch veneer painted white, the window panes out of bass wood, thinned down and painted black. I assembled the windows out of little parts as shown in image 1. The wood block is a bit tricky because you must get a lot of angles right. Especially don’t forget that the whole assembly is not perpendicular to the ship’s wall but angled by about 75 – 80 degrees, which makes things even more interesting. The next step then is to glue the upper molding to the wood block, mount the 3 windows, design the pillars in between (I did mine out of pear wood) and finish off the assembly with the lower molding (images 3 and 4). All that remained to do then was to make the two filler pieces below the window assembly, the top part and the side ornaments. All of those I made out of pear wood. The 2 lower pieces were cut in shape using an Exacto knife. When doing that you obviously have to leave enough wood so once you carve the ornaments you end up with the right dimensions. The carving of the ornaments was done with the Exacto knife, some micro chisels, and for the coarse work a rotary tool. It took me several attempts to get these right, but once satisfied I glued them together and ended up with the result shown in image 5. The top part of the quarter gallery consists of the backplane with some ornaments and the shingle block. The backplane I cut out of pear wood sanded down to about 1mm thickness. The shape of it I extracted from the plan. The ornaments were made using the same tools as before. Finally the backplane was sanded down again until the thickness appeared right for the scale (~ 0.75mm  . . . see image 8). The shingle block was cut in shape with an Exacto knife and the shingle layers cut into it with the rotary tool (image 7). All that remained to get the final shingles were some vertical cuts and rounding off of the corners (image 9). To finish off the quarter gallery the shingle block needed to be glued in place and the side ornaments had to be made (image 6). For most of these pieces it took me several attempts to come up with an acceptable result. So patience and time are important ingredients in this process.

I hope this description helped a little to explain how I made these quarter galleries. Good luck with it!

Thomas        

[Gahm]

The first 8 starboard gun port lids are in place.

 

 

[Gahm]

Thank you, Dirk!

[Ferit]

Salute Thomas,

Your build looks very clean, accurate and beautiful...

[Gahm]

Thank you, Ferit! Your compliment is highly appreciated.

 

Thomas