HMS Lyme (1748-1760) by Landlubber Mike - bash of Corel Unicorn - Scale 1:75 (CLOSED TO START SCRATCH BUILD)

[JohnB40]

Greetings Mike,

I admire your fortitude in putting the flaws of Corel's kit to rights.......Soon you are going to have to move your build log to the scratch build forum.

 

John

[Stockholm tar]

Mike,

 

Just catching up on your log, and I have to say that you're taking kit-bashing to a whole new level. You're going to such lengths to get it right, that I'd take my hat off to you – if I was wearing one, of course.

 

I like the changes you're making, with the help of your new 'toys'. I reckon your next model will be a complete scratch build, right?

Edited June 16, 2014 by Stockholm tar

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks very much Ian.  I think the new position does give it a more robust feel - not sure about ramming other ships, but maybe to ram the walls of my house if it should happen to get thrown across the room in frustration

 

Thanks also for the link to Dan's work.  Well, I'm not sure whether to thank you or curse you for now giving me nightmares about adding the headworks to my build    All kidding aside, Dan's log is going to be of big help to me at that stage (and others of course).

 

One interesting note about the Unicorn that I've come across in my research regarding the relationship of the cheeks to the wale.  In most models that I've seen, the upper cheek sits above the wale, while the lower cheek sits on the wale.  From Chapman's plans of the Unicorn, the upper cheek sits on the wale, while the lower cheek sits below the wale.  It's almost like the wale on the Unicorn sits considerably higher than other similar vessels.

 

Ian, while I'm on the topic, one other modification I'm planning relates to the wale.  The Chapman wale seems considerably thicker than the kit plans.  It's probably a bit hard to see in the pictures two posts ago, but I'm planning on extending the height of the wale by the plank above and the plank below.  In the pictures, I've shaded the area for the new wale in pencil.  That seemed the simplest way of conforming the kit to the Chapman plans.  Going that route, however, leads to an interesting question about what to do with the hawse holes.  The area above the wale will be very narrow if I extend it, so the question I need to answer is whether the hawse holes would ever have been located on the wale itself.  More to research I suppose

[Landlubber Mike]

Hi John, thanks for looking in.  

 

The Unicorn is probably more on the basic side of the kit difficulty section than the expert side, so I'm quite ok with some of the simplifications and other modifications to keep the kit at that skill level.  The folks at Corel are actually very nice as well, where they sent me free of charge, a dozen extra portholes in response to my request to buy extras.  I think where I'm most frustrated with the kit is on the plans, where the size of parts on the various plan sheets do not agree with each other, nor do they actually match up with the actual parts themselves (see my earlier post on where there are three sizes relating to the keel former between the two plan sheets and the kit part).  That to me seems a bit sloppy and not too much to ask for, whether you are building an expert kit or a beginner kit.

[Landlubber Mike]

Hi Kester, thanks for stopping by.

 

This kit was supposed to be my stepping stone to build the Amati Pegasus.  But now going through all the modifications, it's almost like I'm scratch building it, though modifying it off of independent research and guesses, rather than fully accurate plans.  I think ChrisLBren is right when he says that kit bashing is harder than scratching off of good plans   This clearly wasn't my intention, but I've sorta gone down this path with Ian as together we are helping each other build a more accurate model.  It's been a great learning experience and a lot of fun working alongside Ian, so I'm not complaining at all.  

 

For my next build, I still maintain that I'm going to build the Charles Morgan alongside this kit, but who knows    I don't know if I'm at the scratch building stage yet, but I have the Euromodel Friedrich Wilhelm zu Pferde on the shelf that I really want to build.  The FWZP, along with the Charles Morgan, offer lots of opportunities to improve the kit through scratch building many details, so I think those will be good models to go through before fully embracing the dark side.  

 

I just wonder where the Pegasus fits in these plans, as you really can build a gorgeous model out of the box because of the great kit components, plans, and detail pieces.  I might build it alongside the Unicorn just because it is very straightforward and will need a lot fewer modifications than the Charles Morgan, but I wonder about getting bored of working on two ships at the same time that are very similar (and both with mythological creatures for namesakes).   I suppose there are some efficiencies in working on similar ships at the same time.   Maybe I'll just flip a coin  

Edited June 16, 2014 by Landlubber Mike

[ianmajor]

Mike,

 

My children got my Unicorn involved in the intergalactic wars with the Daleks. A robust front end was a necessity. It took the pounding very well.   

 

On the relationship of the hawse holes to the main wales I had a look around. Each of the models that I looked at had the centre of the hawse holes in line with the lower edge of the gun ports on that deck.

 

I also had a read of Flynn's thesis on the Pallas (link). I find it useful since it pulls together information from various sources. On page 36 he writes about the main wales:-

 

"Ships like Pallas were planked both inside and out. The first and most important part of the planking to be fitted was the main wale, a belt of heavy strakes placed between the waterline and the gun ports. Its primary function was to add longitudinal strength. The main wales ran parallel to the line of the sheer rather than the decks. The lower edge tapered towards the ends of the ship.(81) Wales were made of the very best quality oak cut 25 ft. (7.62 m.) long and 7 in. (17.8cm.) thick. The main wales on both Diana and Pandora were at or near the dead flat of the sides (Fig. 14). All sources agree that the main wales on 36- to 38-gun frigates were composed of four strakes, 38 to 43 in. (96.5-109.2 cm.) wide, and 5½ to 7 in. thick.(82)"

 

There are two citations in there which expand to:

 

(81) Falconer, Universal Dictionary, 331, Fincham, Outline of Ship Building, 29, Goodwin, Construction

and Fitting, 53, Steel, Shipwright’s Vade Mecum, 140-141 and Murray, Treatise on Ship-Building, 209.

 

(82) Anonymous, Shipbuilder’s Repository, 268-69, Murray, Treatise on Ship-Building, 205, Goodwin,

Construction and Fitting, 53, McKay and Coleman, Frigate Pandora, 69 and White, Frigate Diana, 61. 

 

The main wales being below the gun ports suggests to me that the hawse holes will be above the main wales.

 

He is describing 36 - 38 gun frigates which are larger than Unicorn but I would guess the smaller dimensions he quotes for the wales would apply.

 

The Corel version is only to apply two fairly wide thick strakes as the main wales rather than 4, but I suspect this is one of the areas that the kit construction is simplified. 

[Landlubber Mike]

Ian, I'm glad your Unicorn survived the intergalactic wars, and with no battle scars  

 

Thanks very much for passing along this information.  That Flynn thesis looks like it has a lot of very good information, I'll have to print it out and give it a read.  It's nice that he included the Pandora, which is a 24-gun frigate descendant of the Unicorn.  I think I'm going to go with the 4-strake wale - or at least, make the width of the wale on my build equal to four of the strakes on the model.  By bumping the wale out in thickness by an extra strake above and below the wale on the plans, the wale really sets up nicely with Chapman, particularly with the location of the cheeks.  

 

I spent some more time last night sketching out the shape of the stem.  I think I got it fairly close in the pictures above, but I am going to angle the figurehead a bit more and push it back a millimeter or two from the sketch from a couple of nights ago.  I'm still contemplating how to construct the remaining 5-6 pieces of the stem - mostly, to give myself flexibility on whether I ultimately use the kit figurehead or try carving one of my own.  What I'm thinking I might do at this stage is to glue on all remaining pieces aside from the one or two pieces on which the figurehead will sit, this way I can do fine tuning of the pieces off the model to accommodate the figurehead.  The nice thing is that there does not seem to be any set standard on how to construct the stem, as from what I've seen looking at plans for the Pandora, Blandord and Diane (among others), they have have slightly different approaches.

[Landlubber Mike]

I made some more progress on the stem, building the five remaining pieces (main piece, bobstay piece, chocks, lacing, and the piece holding the main stay collar).  I ended up following the general pattern/shape of pieces from one of the stem diagrams in the AOTS Blandford book, with a slight modification to not include a fore foot as part of the gripe.  It seems like stems were constructed in all different ways, so I picked an example that seemed a little easier for me to execute given that I'm very new to the power tools I'm using.

 

A few of these took multiple attempts on the scroll saw to get right.  Thankfully I got the main piece on the second try as it is pretty complicated.  I still have to add the holes for the bobstays and the main stay collar, as well as shape the top of the main piece to conform to the eventual head rails - I figured I would leave a little extra to work with as I finalize what the head rail configuration would look like.  I also need to thin down the stem a bit where the figurehead will sit, as well as cut a slot into the figurehead so that it can sit on the stem.  Either that, or I need to carve a new figurehead which I'm tempted to at least try 

 

 

 

 

You can see that I also decided to glue all the pieces together, but not to the stem/keel at this time as it will be a lot easier for me to shape the stem off the model, and probably to plank it as well.  I ended up penciling in one edge of the joints to help better define the joint.  In some areas, the joint was probably a bit wider than I would have liked.  The trickiest is cutting scarpf joints against curved pieces - not fun!  So, I put very diluted PVA into the joint and sanded the stem over the joint so that the sawdust helped fill it.   I still need to make a few touch ups, but I'm actually quite pleased with how that all worked, especially as it toned down a bit of the pencil to make for more muted joint lines.

 

So, adding the bowsprit and figurehead, the stem area should look like this:

 

 

I think this is fairly close to Chapman's plans and other similar vessels, where the figurehead sits up higher and closer to the bowsprit, and sits on and within the stem as opposed to attached to the end of the stem as in the kit instructions.  In the pictures below, you can see how the stem on my build differs from the kit stem.

 

 

 

Next up is to start working on the bulkheads, and to modify the keel for the new angles to the decks and the scratched stern.  Thanks for reading!

Edited June 25, 2014 by Landlubber Mike

[augie]

Looks nice, Mike.  Joints have just the right amount of definition.

[riverboat]

Nice work there Mike.... I've been ck'n in now and then and I see how you are really enjoying this project. You are definitely headed to the dark side!!

 

Frank

[aliluke]

Wow Mike

You sure are drilling into the research and detail on this. It is looking extremely good and your efforts are well worthwhile.

[ianmajor]

Nicely done Mike. Who need kits anyway!  

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks very much guys, I really appreciate it.  I need to touch up the joints a bit, but overall, I'm very happy with how the stem came out (better than I expected).  Another approach would have been to cut out the stem as one piece, and scribe lines into it to simulate the various components.  That probably would have been a lot faster, but you probably have to make sure that your lines are very clean for it to look good.

 

Another thing I need to do in the very near future is to install the pedestal mounting components to the keel.  This build I'm going to epoxy nuts inside the keel and run stainless steel bolts through the pedestals and into the nuts like many others on here have done.  I had made the mistake with my Badger of waiting until after the ship was double-planked to drill the pilot holes for the wood screws that came with the two pedestals.  I forget if I drilled them by hand or not, but the holes must have not been perfectly perpendicular to the keel (or I screwed the screws in at a slight angle) as there is an ever so slight lean to the ship when on the pedestals that I could never fix.  By pre-drilling holes now at this stage just working with the keel, and using nuts and bolts rather than wood screws, I should be able to get things much more square.  What I'm still working out is whether I should use my mill to drill a hole for the bolts, or instead, to use my mill to mill out a narrow slot in the keel.  I'm thinking the latter approach would give me more control and allow me to follow the line of the bolt's path, but I would welcome any thoughts on the best approach.

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks very much Spyglass, this is very helpful.  I read through your Pegasus log the other day, which reminded me that I needed to start thinking about the mounting set up.

 

For my Badger, I used the Model Expo brass pedestals.  I forget exactly which I bought, but I think it was the 1.25" and 1.75", and then used grinding bits and a cut-off wheel to shape the cut out slot so that the model would sit with the waterline parallel to the building board.  If I remember correctly, I cut down the tops of the slots a bit, and shaped out a sloped groove to accommodate the fact that the bottom of the keel was not parallel to the waterline.  I'll have to try your felt approach for fine adjustments, that sounds like it would work perfectly.

 

Taking another look at your log and Dan Vadas' logs, it looks like I can just drill the hole, rather than milling out a full slot.  I'll have to think about this a little more - though, maybe I'm just over thinking things 

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks Spyglass.  For my Badger, I set up my pedestals very similarly.  I think I centered the hull on the baseboard (not including the bowsprit, driver/boom and maybe not the stem too, I forget), and then positioned the pedestals 25-30% from the ends.  I agree that you don't want them too far apart or too close together.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Landlubber Mike

[Landlubber Mike]

I've decided to start the Pegasus alongside my Unicorn build.  My Unicorn is fast becoming a completely bashed/scratch build which is fine, but I'm working off of plans that are inconsistent with each other and with the kit parts which has been very frustrating.  Last night I overlaid the profile view of bulkhead plans onto the profile plans of the completed exterior, and things like the gun ports, stem, etc. are not lining up.  So, to avoid being completely exasperated, I think having the second kit to turn to will keep me engaged in the hobby and give me a mental break from the frustrations of the Corel kit.  I have no problems with the simplifications that lead to historical inaccuracies, but when the plan sheets don't line up with each other, and don't line up with the kit parts, I have a big issue with the kit.

 

I still plan on working on the Unicorn, and am excited to do so.  Right now I'm just having a little trouble figuring out the stern area, so possibly by going through the process with the Pegasus, the stern construction will make more sense to me.  

[JohnB40]

Hi Mike,

 

I know how you feel regarding the kit,I too shelved it for a while for the same reason. However,I have rethought about it and decided I can construct a nice display model of a 18th century frigate,albeit with some inaccuracies. I am going to approach future construction with this in mind. As you saw in my build log I'm working on the transom/galleries. The windows are too high in relation to the deck,my way of rectifying will be to use a false deck a few mm higher than the main deck from the lockers forward to where I figure the great cabin would end and live with it. I paid too much for this kit to abandon it now......Have you priced it lately?

 

I think with the new equipment you have recently purchased,your experience on the Badger and with scratch building alterations,your skill can make the kit into a very fine model. We all might of been happier with the kit if we hadn't seen Chapman's drawings.

 

John

[ianmajor]

Mike,

 

Your concentrating on Pegasus will remove the risk of you overtaking me on my Unicorn and putting mine to shame.     

[Stockholm tar]

Mike,

 

Sounds like a good plan. Working on Pegasus at the same time would, as you say, most likely help in decifering the plans of the Unicorn. At the very least, it might stop you going bananas!

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks very much guys.  As John said, we might have all been happier if we hadn't seen the Chapman drawings 

 

I don't mind so much the historical inaccuracies, as this is a more basic kit and Corel has taken a few short cuts to make it easier for newer modelers.  But two nights ago was really the breaking point for me when I tried to plan out the stern area and felt like something was wrong.  The stem wasn't lining up on one of the plans, the stern wasn't on the other.  So I overlaid the plans to see if there was a discrepancy, and that's when I realized the plans are all over the place with gun ports in different positions, etc.  I knew that one of the plans was a bit shorter than the other, but I mistakenly assumed that at least the rest of the plans roughly conformed.  Problem for me is that I've been using both plans to plot out the ship.  So, I think I'm just going to have to use the plans to eyeball things, and build the ship more by feel.

 

Despite all my recent whining, I think I'm finally getting close to figuring out the stern area.  I am very likely to go with Chuck's framing approach, building out two (maybe more) stern extensions, with the outer pair shorter than the inner pair to create the curve in the transom.  They will sit on bulkhead 16, which is already angled pretty close to Chapman's angle for the transom, and I will drop bulkhead 17 and probably cut off the bit of the keel that runs just aft of bulkhead 16 because it will run right into the middle set of windows.  The extensions will serve not only to anchor the transom, but also to define the shape of the stern counter.  The outer pair of the stern extensions will serve as the outer edge to run the hull planking to the stern at the quarterdeck area.  Without bulkhead 17 and without gunport patterns as in other kits, I've been struggling to find a way to run the hull planking to the transom, which is considerably wider than the width of the ship at the edges of the hull planking.  I think framing the stern as Chuck did with the Winchelsea could work very well.

 

Of course, this is all more tricky than it sounds as the wale feeds right into the stern counter, so a lot of planning is going to be needed to get the shape of the extensions just right.  

Edited July 3, 2014 by Landlubber Mike

[Landlubber Mike]

Quick update - last night I put together the rudder.  I figured that it was probably easier to design it now with the keel flat and without bulkheads.

 

 

 

It's a bit oversized at the moment as I am still working out the stern counter and the stern in general, and I need to figure out where the waterline will end up, so I figured that I would give myself a little extra lengths at the top and bottom to work with.  It still needs the pintles (and carve outs for the pintle-gudgeon connection), iron works at top (if they end up being visible), the spectacle plate and the sole (essentially, a false keel for the rudder).  I ended up using the rudder design in the AOTS Blandford book, both in terms of general shape and composition.  There is a different design in the AOTS Pandora and TFFM series, which have tabled joints.  Since the Unicorn fell in between the two, I went with the Blandford design which was a little easier to execute and matches up with the stem design that I modeled off the Blandford as well.

 

One thing to note - the kit gives you three sets of pintles/gudgeons.  From my limited research, it looks like ships such as the Unicorn would have had four sets.

 

Next up is to install a nut into the keel to take the eventual mounting hardware, and to start gluing on the bulkheads.  I'm going to design the stern once the bulkheads are on so that I can see the run of the various lines and decks and design the framing of the stern accordingly.  

[Beef Wellington]

Thats a very nice looking rudder Mike, goes well with the wonderful stem.  I suspect that you will deviate more significantly from the kit when you progress, just can't see you being happy with the out of the box approach after all your research.

[Landlubber Mike]

Here's a quick update on where I am.  Despite my frustrations with the plans, I've plugged along and made some progress.  Even though the plans disagree with each other and the kit parts, the kit parts themselves fit together very nicely.  For example, the false keel, bulkheads and upper deck template all fit very well together.

 

I started to glue in the bulkheads.  The pictures show the first one being fitted.  So far I've fit up to bulkhead 5, and have 11 more to go.  I'm not going to use bulkhead 17, but instead, to get a curved, modified transom, will frame the stern using frames attached to either bulkhead 15 or 16.  I used clamps and angle squares, levels across the bulkheads, etc., along with the upper deck pattern, to make sure that everything was square (the deck pattern isn't sitting fully in the pictures, but it does sit fully). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My build board is a bit unorthodox as you can see.  It's what I used for my Badger.  At the time, I didn't have power tools, and was worried about finding long, perfectly straight pieces into which I could insert the keel.  So, instead I used these angle brackets - one side is fixed to the MDF board, the other floats - with the two sides attached via a nut and bolt.  I guess the good thing about this set up is that it is adjustable, so I was able to adjust the width between the brackets to accommodate the wider keel of the Unicorn.  It's not pretty, but it seems to work.

 

I'm pausing on adding the other bulkheads at this time, as I plan on adding a false lower deck in the waist accommodate stairs from the upper deck to the lower deck.  As you can see from the plans below, the plans have a long double-grating at the waist.  Instead, I am going to modify the upper deck hatchways, etc. (as well as the deck arrangements for the forecastle and quarterdeck) by using the plans for the Lyme, the sister ship of the Unicorn as you can see in the second picture:

 

 

 

 

In the meantime, I modified the rudder a bit to make it more like the Pandora rudder.  The Blandford rudder shape was, well, a little bland for me    So, I sanded off the back (I think that is what the aft-most piece is called), and added a new one that was longer and a big thicker.  I then shaped the area around where the spectacle plate will go.  I think it looks a little better now, or at least, less "bland"    Before and after pictures below.

 

 

Edited July 12, 2014 by Landlubber Mike

[augie]

That's a nice looking rudder.

[ianmajor]

Mike, great work. As you say the clamp is not a good looker but very functional - which at the end of the day is all that is required - and therefore it is perfect.

 

The rudder is a big improvement over the simplified Corel version. I like it.

 

One thought on the first and next couple of bulkheads. The Corel interpretation is to have them producing an outward curving bulwark above the fore deck. Looking at the Chapman diagram my interpretation is that these bulwarks should be straight up. Have a look at the line Q on the right of the rear view of the plan (which corresponds to the first Corel bulkhead) and O and L (which more or less correspond to the next two Corel bulkheads).

 

Shaping the first three bulkheads so that they are straight up above the foredeck level will make it look right IMHO - it will also make adding detail in this area at lot easier in the later part of construction - with which I struggled on mine.

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks Augie!

 

Ian, thanks very much for your thoughts.  I've been meaning to bring this issue up with you, as well as with Joe who also identified the issue.  It's interesting, -- I took a look at the Pandora diagrams, and the forecastle area bulkheads flare out to the sides consistent with the Unicorn plans.  I believe the Blandford does as well.  When I look at Chapman, it's unfortunate that lines Q, O and L don't extend all the way up - they are completely vertical up to the point where they end, but I wonder if extended all the way up, if Chapman would have them flare out?  

 

I'll need to think about it a little more.  The Pandora lines gave me comfort that Corel could have been accurate here (plus, it adds some more curves to the hull which might look aesthetically nicer), but if I'm mistaken, I would love to know.  I'm sure it makes things a little more complicated with the planking and detail items, but with all the other modifications I'm making, the curved bulkheads seem on the easier side 

Edited July 12, 2014 by Landlubber Mike

[Landlubber Mike]

I spent time this weekend planning out the waist area of the upper deck.  The kit plans call for a narrow waist, with two sets of double gratings in the middle of the waist:

 

 

 

After researching and conferring with my fellow Unicorn builders, the consensus is that the waist on the ship should be a lot more open.  That means reconfiguring the hatches and companionways.  Thankfully, plans of the Lyme, the Unicorn's sister ship of the Lyme class, are on the NMM site and provide plenty of detail.  Also very helpful is the fact that these plans are very close to the Pandora plans, that can be found in the AOTS book.  One interesting thing to point out is that on the second set of plans below, the plans show the tiller on the quarterdeck, which means that Ian was spot on as always in saying that the tiller had to be on the quarterdeck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, here is where I came out on the waist area of the upper deck.  Essentially, moving aft from the riding bitts, you have a a companionway and two gratings, followed by empty deck space, and then another two gratings.  I still need to add the various deck items around the main mast, but you can see the general configuration.  Interestingly, there's a very steep set of stairs just aft of the riding bits on the Lyme plans.  The Pandora omits this set of stairs, but adds them one level lower (lower deck to orlop deck).  

 

 

 

 

 

 

On my plans, I've drawn the gratings with a width of 25mm, which was shamelessly borrowed from Ian's deck calculations (he I believe used 24.5, but I rounded up).  The width might change slightly depending on how the coamings line up with the deck planking.  In terms of their length, I scaled up the Lyme plans as best I could.

 

As I mentioned earlier to Ian, surprisingly, the Corel plans actually matched up with the upper deck template.      Even more surprisingly, in scaling up the Lyme plans and drawing the gratings and companionways onto the Corel upper deck template plan, the Corel plans seemed to be actually quite accurate relative to the Lyme plans, as well as the plans for the Pandora and the Guadaloupe, close descendents of the Unicorn.

Edited July 15, 2014 by Landlubber Mike

[Landlubber Mike]

With the modified upper deck waist area to include companionways, I needed to build a sub/false lower deck.  This meant cutting out a section of the keel where I could drop in the lower deck.  ZyXuZ did something very similar on his Unicorn build.

 

Based on my planned arrangement for the waist area, the area between bulkheads 5 and 9 needed to be removed.  After marking out the section to be cut, I used a Dremel with a cut-off wheel to remove the sections of the keel.  The only difficulty i ran into was the fact that I had already glued in bulkhead 5.  It was a pretty easy fix in that I got as close to the after face of the bulkhead with the cut-off wheel, then used a sanding drum on the Dremel to remove the remainder of the keel that was along the bulkhead's after face.  I then used my scroll saw to cut out a profile into bulkheads 6 through 8, cut out a lower deck template, and used my thickness sander to get the template thinned down.

 

 

 

 

Here is what the assembly will look like after dry fitting the bulkheads and the false deck template.  I'm adding frames that will sit along the after face of bulkhead 5 and fore face of bulkhead 9 to help seat the deck template (not pictured).

 

 

 

 

Edited July 15, 2014 by Landlubber Mike

[Landlubber Mike]

One point of caution for future Unicorn builders -- make sure you check the symmetry of your bulkheads.  The bulkheads are not laser cut, and a couple of them were not symmetrical.  So, I used my disc sander to get them in better shape.

 

It's another very annoying thing about this kit.  Not only are the plans off, but the bulkheads are not symmetrical   

[ianmajor]

Very nice Mike. I love the idea of the companionway going down in to the (false) lower deck. When the ship is completed this feature will draw the viewer's eye and intrigue - where does it lead ............