HMS Snake by Beef Wellington - FINISHED - Caldercraft - Scale 1: 64 - First wooden ship build

[Sjors]

Jason,

 

That looks very,very nice.

Are you gonna varnish it or let you it this way?

 

[Beef Wellington]

Mort, Timmo, Hamilton, Robert - thanks fro checking in, definitely appreciate the encouragement!

 

Edwin - you had me wistfully reminiscing - I lived in Seattle for 13yrs before moving to Connecticut so definitely appreciate the beautiful area you live in.  And yes, a good Beef Wellington is hard to come by!

 

BE - I think I cheated on the gratings, I glued the coamings to the grates when assembling which really helped keep them neat.

 

Sjors - always welcome to look over the shoulder, I probably will use a matt finish on the compmanionway cover, there are some other wood fittings and would like it to "fit in" and not be the center of attention.

[Beef Wellington]

My new chain arrived.  After trying the 15 link per inch and not being convinced it wasn't too large, I ordered some more at 21 links per inch which in my opinion looks better.  Took the plunge and blackened it chemically which hopefully will work out OK in the morning...I used thin card for the spectacle plate and attached using diluted PVA glue, its hard to see but I suppose I know its there...

 

Attached the chain using the supplied ring bolts by prising them open and reclosing after cutting the chain to length, very fiddly indeed.

 

I'm sure no-one else will notice its there, but its another evenings work and can now move forward to the steering apparatus.  Sorry the photos aren't that great.

 

[Blue Ensign]

That looks better Jason

 

B.E.

[cog]

Jason,

 

Very nice the companionway, It's good to see you stick to walnut for it. Chains turned out very good to!

[Beef Wellington]

BE, Carl, appreciate you checking in.

 

Little bit of progress to get the tiller arm mounted and rigged.  Unfortunately I had a bit of an accident with the kit part arm and had to make another, no big problem.  I used a bull dog clip and some spare limewood as protection to keep the rudder straight while installing the tiller arm.

 

The wheel is the after market Caldercraft offering which I had built up a while ago.  I toyed with the idea of making a new wheel support, but decided just to go with the kit offering but mounted the wheel inside as this seems a little more authentic.

 

As mentioned earlier, the placement of the spirketting blocks took a bit of figuring out to make sure the tiller rope doesn't interfere with the ladders yet to be installed.  Rigging the rope proved a little challenging, I took it in stages and first wound the rope around the wheel and secured with dilute PVA, and when dry then took each block in turn ensuring that the tension was appropriate and used dilute PVA to keep the shape.  I found this approach gave a more natural flow of the rope around the blocks without having to have a ridiculous amount of tension.

 

Edited April 16, 2013 by Beef Wellington

[Beef Wellington]

...and for an encore, my 6 (and 3/4s daddy!) year old son wanted to show some pictures, we're building 1:700 HMS Hood and he is very proud of his progress.  Perhaps not enough for its own build log but I'll maybe post more if there is interest (he also chose the emoticon!) 

Edited April 7, 2013 by Beef Wellington

[normanh]

I like the chains , might add those retrospectively to my Snake.

[jim_smits]

Looking good Jason!

 

I have to concur that rigging up the tiller arm and wheel was a touch fiddly!

 

Keep it up!

[j21896]

Looking very crisp and clean Jason!  And the new chain looks perfect.

 

Cheers,

Robert

[ibrowne]

Hello Beef Wellington,

 

I have been following the two "Snake" builds by yourself and Jim which both look great. As a general question has any modeller chosen to make their vessel look like its endured the trials of time and appropriately "weathered" their craft. Copper plate would of course have a green oxidised coating and may look quite attractive and ...well almost "real". I haven't found any article much yet on weathering historic sailboats and copper for instance, but I would be interested in your thoughts. The convention seems to be to keep finished models like they have just been launched ...waiting for their crew.. Thanks Ian.

[Beef Wellington]

Norman, Jim and Robert - appreciate the encouragement

 

Ian - I think if you do a search in some of the forums you can find a few topics posted on this already.  Everyone seems to have their own preferences and look they are going for. As far as coppering goes, again there are lots of thoughts on this, and down to personal preference.  I'm taking the approach of letting the copper patina naturally, but I've read others using chemicals to speed up the process or sealing the new shiny copper surface so its preserved.  Personally, I've nothing against the weathering as it can look very striking, I have my hands full enough building this as it is and for me its as much about learning how things turn out and getting ideas about how I might do it differently next time.

[JPett]

Ahoy Jason

 

Please let your son know I think his build looks great. He should be very proud

[mort stoll]

The wheel looks great as does the Hood. Keep those Hood pix coming.

 

Mort

[Sjors]

Hi jason,

 

The first rope on the ship?

Nice job have you done with it.

And just what Mort is saying…let those pictures coming from the Hood!

Looks great!

 

[Blue Ensign]

The wheel looks good Jason, and very neat work on the blocks. Rigging the tiller is the first bit of rigging, and you've done an excellent job.

 

ps, It's never too early to get the next generation interested in the hobby, and your lad looks to be making a good start.

 

Cheers,

 

B.E.

[drtrap]

Absolutely nice and clear work jason.

I'm so delighted in following!

 

Stergios

[Beef Wellington]

Norman, Jim, Robert, Ian, Mort, Stergios - appreciate the encouragement!

 

JPett and all - Henry got a real kick from seeing your comments, will post more in due course.

 

Sjors - yes, first bit of rigging done to get some practice

 

BE - appreciate the comments as always, and you're absolutely right, never too early to start.

[mort stoll]

You are doing a great job. As Blue Ensign has said it is never to early. My 3 year old grandson helped me paint the intreior bulworks red and is looking forward to helping Poppy paint the hull occhre and black. I am hoping he has enough coordination to help me with the deck planking.

 

Mort

[drtrap]

...and the result with the new bow grating angle.

 

I lost the close up photo, but one thing you can just see in the bottom picture was the enlargement of the slots for the gammoning.  As supplied, these slots were not long enough to allow the gammoning to be done properly but it was pretty easy to extend these using a needle file.

Hi Jason, I'm still have'nt understood why you did extend the slots of the gammoning. I think that its geometry, position and fitting would have been the same one way or another...

Thanks

[ccoyle]

I hope your son keeps up with the modeling.  I tried to get my son to have a go at it, but it didn't take.  We have other shared interests, just not ship building.  Oh, well!  Oh, and I loved building in 1/700 back in the day.

[Beef Wellington]

Hi Jason, I'm still have'nt understood why you did extend the slots of the gammoning.

 

The gammoning ropes will need to pass vertically through the slot in the beak, and also through the two slots in the bow grating - so the slots in the bow grating need to align vertically with the slots otherwise the gammoning will be restricted.  Hopefully the picture below illustrates this, look at the red lines I added.  You can see that the front part of the slots sits too far forward (this isn't really an issue), but the aft part of the slots need to be extended backwards to align with the rear of the gammoning slot in the beak.  Hope that helps.

[Beef Wellington]

I hope your son keeps up with the modeling.  I tried to get my son to have a go at it, but it didn't take.  We have other shared interests, just not ship building.  Oh, well!  Oh, and I loved building in 1/700 back in the day.

 

Long way to go yet Chris, but I'm trying!  I keep chuckling, he is very grown up in some ways, in that he's already identified his next build, the Bismark!  I'm pretty excited because we're heading back to the UK over the summer and I have blocked a day to visit Victory (I've managed to get him fascinated with Nelson), Warrior and Mary Rose, as well as Belfast in London (with the Bismark and hence Hood connection).  Doing my best to instill the tradition of the Royal Navy into him.

[Beef Wellington]

Bit of a progress update, I'd mentioned earlier that I'd essentially run out of Tanganyika wood (not enough acceptable/useable left over to complete the platforms.  I'd ordered some more from Cornwall Model boats along with some other supplies, and I ordered plenty and glad I did.  The issue stems from the wood not necessarily matching in either colour or dimension, so I've been going through applying the varnish on a sample basis to determine which match best and are similar enough in width...finally identified the viable strips and have started on planking the rear platforms.

 

I did go back and revisit the companionway cover, something was bothering me about the height of the lip I had on the sliding top, so off it came along with the doors fascias, a bit of cutting and realignment to make the doors higher...et voila, something I'm much happier with.

 

 

[j21896]

Nicely done Jason.

 

Robert

[Beef Wellington]

Robert, appreciate the support.

 

Installed the rear platform and added the deck material.  The extra tanganika wood I'd ordered caused a lot of headache as it didn't quite match that supplied originally.  I had hoped to use what I had remaining and add the new stuff in randomly.  What I found was that the dimensions were ever so slightly different even though they were both 4x1mm and mixing would be too problematic.  I resorted to using all new wood on the aft platform so that was consistent, however, it does have a slightly different look to it.  Nothing I can really do at this point..

 

Dry fitted the aft ladders, the rear platforms needed to be reduced in height by one step to fit correctly with rear platform height.  Its a tight fit with the tiller ropes, but this is consistent with the NMM model and the plans - glad I had built ladders up prior to help determine tiller rope positioning otherwise could have had an unpleasant surprise.

 

Again, I deviated from the instructions which called for a 14mm wide step which just looked too wide, and estimated dimensions from the NMM model ending up going with a step 10mm wide (the plans are really no help in this area, scale is way off).  Shaped the bottom to account for the camber of the deck so ladders are vertical, and shaped the top to give it a more realistic look.  Overall pretty happy, so onto the fore platform...

[yvesvidal]

Fantastic Work. That tiller could almost function like the real one...

 

Yves

[jim_smits]

Looking good Jason!

[Kevin]

i appreciate no health and safety in those days, but would this exposed tiller ropework be  covered in any way, in heavy seas, with more then one person at the wheel they would be a real problem

Edited April 15, 2013 by Kevin

[jim_smits]

i appreciate no health and safety in those days, but would this exposed tiller ropework be  covered in any way, in heavy seas, with more then one person at the wheel they would be a real problem

 

I was thinking that with my snake build - it is a touch crowded down that end of the deck........