Armed Virginia Sloop by GuntherMT - FINISHED - Model Shipways - scale 1:48

[SawdustDave]

Best job of creating realistic rope coils I've ever seen. It's pretty obvious you have put in extraordinary time and effort into the details of each and every coil.

Another great lesson learned here on MSW. Thanks for teaching.

Beautiful work Brian.

Dave

[GuntherMT]

Thanks again for all the amazing comments on the rope coils.  Sometimes it's the little things that get noticed the most!

 

Tonight I worked on the anchor lines on the deck, but no photo's as they are currently under weights to dry, the larger rope doesn't behave nearly as nicely while wet and is a lot stiffer.

 

I also broke out the soldering stuff and worked on fixing my swivel guns.  I had bad solder joints that broke on three of them, which of course needed to be repaired.  In the process of fixing 3, I broke 2 again, which is pretty much how all of my soldering on the swivel guns has gone, but after a few more attempts, I got them all together and the joints seem to be good now.  I re-blackened the newly repaired guns, and now all 8 swivels are pretty much ready to go on the ship after the anchor's are finished.

 

 

I may do another blackening treatment on them, but I sort of like the 'rough worn' look that they currently have, so I might just leave them be.

 

May not get anything else done until Sunday, as tomorrow is a release at work, and Sunday I'm going to be sailing.

 

Until then, cheers!

[gerty]

Beautiful work Brian !

[hamilton]

maybe you mention this elsewhere Brian, but where did you get the swivel guns? they are clearly not the britannia ones included with the kit...

hamilton

[GuntherMT]

Thank you all for your comments and likes.

 

Hamilton, both the main guns and the swivel guns are from Syren (Chuck).

[src]

Wow, Wow WOW! Another great build I have been missing, Brian. To bad its so close to the end, my loss. Coils look great, filing this one away.

Sam

[hamilton]

Definitely worth it to replace them if my memory of the britannia castings serves correctly.....those guns look really nice

hamilton

[GuntherMT]

Thanks Sam & Hamilton.

 

Yes, it was worth it for sure.  When I started I thought the swivel's would be ok, but when I got to that point in the build, I started trying to clean them up, and decided that even with a great deal of effort on my part, they still wouldn't be as nice and crisp looking as the main guns, so I put them aside and ordered the barrels from Chuck after printing out his PDF of his gun barrels and laying the cast guns on the smallest of his swivels and seeing they were almost a perfect match in size.

The real challenge of those swivels for me was learning to solder well enough to piece together the yokes and handles and get them all to stick together.

[donrobinson]

Great work Brian

[dgbot]

You have nothing to complain about your soldering came out great and looks good.

David B

[GuntherMT]

You have nothing to complain about your soldering came out great and looks good.

David B

 

Wasn't complaining, or certainly not about the final results, was just saying that the soldering was a new challenge for me.  Attaching the yokes, pins, and handles was (in retrospect) a pretty funny 'keystone cops' exercise, as I was constantly getting the already soldered pieces too hot while trying to attach the other pieces.  I probably ended up soldering about 3x more connections than I actually have because of how many times I had to redo things while trying to figure out how to keep the heat from making an existing connection fail.

 

In addition, there were at least two instances of me breaking off handles (in one case of three guns at once) while they were hanging to dry, just because of my clumsiness while working on something completely unrelated.  I should probably learn a lesson from that about where to place drying parts.  

[src]

Brian, what temp does the solder you have melt at? Jewelry suppliers sell it in different melting points. Some times referred to as extra easy, easy, hard and extra hard. When you have multiple solder joints sometimes it's easier to use a higher melting point solder first then work down. In theory at lest you don't melt your previous joint that way.

Sam

[GuntherMT]

Yep, that multi-heat solder is on my list of things to look into for my next build.  For this one I was using 'Solder-It' paste.  Not sure what temperature it melts at, but since it's the same on every joint, and the handle is really very close to the yoke on the swivel guns (1/4" or so?), it was a challenge for someone new to working with solder and brass.

 

I ended up attaching 2 alligator clamps between the back end of the gun and the mounting point, and another clamp forward of the mounting point, all to act as heat sinks to give me a little more time to work before the head migrated through the barrel and softened the other joint.  Worked ok as long as I didn't mess up the joint I was working on and tried to keep heat on it too long.

[GuntherMT]

Sneak peak on the finish line approaching..  I've been working on a display base to hold the ship at the slight angle it should be at to make the waterline 'level' with the viewer, and finally started working on the anchor buoys and I rigged the catheads.

 

What could this possibly be?

 

 

Silliness is what it is!

 

 

And that sneak peak...

 

[GLakie]

Looking great Brian.  Yup - You've peaked my curiosity! 

[src]

Yes, very nice!

I read your block stropping tutorial last night, gonna try that either tonight or tomorrow depending on my work life. Thanks

Sam

[hamilton]

I found those little things to be really tricky! Yours came out great!

hamilton

[mikegerber]

Your Sloop looks simply fantastic, Brian! ...

... and your are truly a rigging master!

 

Do you have already a idea, what your next build will be?

 

Anyway, looking forward to more from your shipyard ...

 

All the best,

Mike

[Stuntflyer]

Hi Brian,

 

You've done a great job on the ship. I especially like the rigging work you have done. Must be nice working with quality rigging line.

 

Mike

[GuntherMT]

Thanks all.

 

Mike,

 

Yes I do know what the next build will be, and it's on the shelf waiting.  I'll be unveiling that after the AVS is completed, which might be sometime next week.

 

The building has slowed significantly as I've decided that I needed to get off my **** (literally) and do something about my fitness before I keeled over of a heart attack.  So I joined a gym and have been working with a personal trainer, which is now eating up a large portion of what was already limited free time.  Combine that with the sailing classes on the weekend, and still trying to spend some time with my family on occasion, oh yea, and working full time, and things are quite a bit slower these days in the hobby room than they were at other points in the last year.

 

I have all of next week off on vacation though, so I will absolutely finish the AVS, and then go through and try to make something slightly less messy out of the hobby room and then will begin the next ship building adventure.

 

Other Mike (haha!) - the rigging line really makes a huge difference, and when you consider how long a build takes, it's not really a large cost factor.

 

Edit: Hahaa.. the forum censors "a r s e".  That's pretty funny.

Edited October 29, 2015 by GuntherMT

[Omega1234]

Hi Brian

 

Wow! She's a real looker! Coming along very nicely, indeed.

 

Good luck with the fitness regime...just remember that if it ain't fun, you ain't doing it! Oh wait, your personal trainer may not entirely agree....

 

All the best!

 

Patrick

[fmodajr]

Hi Brian,

 

Nice work!

Thanks for sharing the picts of the anchor buoys! I need to make a couple for my model soon. 

 

Frank

[mrangus]

Brian checking in looks great! I refer to this build often for ideas....

Fitness is important - if we don't have anything else, we have our health. Good to hear you're working out...

[Mahuna]

Hi Brian

 

Looking forward to seeing you and the model next weekend - I feel another award coming, your AVS is awesome!

 

Also looking forward to our meeting and getting to see your shop.

[GuntherMT]

Glad you made it back Frank!  Thanks for the kind words, and see you Saturday.

[GuntherMT]

The day has come.  I spent a lot of time messing with the anchors, but I simply couldn't find a position where they looked decent to me when lashed to the timberheads, so I chose to display them hanging from the catheads.  I then spent far more time than I probably should have messing with the anchor buoys, and in the end was just unhappy with how they looked when properly attached to the anchors, so I decided to display the ship without them.  I may make a couple of rope coils and place them on the empty timberheads where the buoys would be hung and belayed, but other than that, and some inspection and touch-up painting/matting, the Serenity is done.

 

I need to re-do my lighting arrangement (which means rearranging the room I take these in) as I'm not real happy with the way these photo's turned out (from a lighting perspective), so I will probably do a full 'finished' photo-shoot sometime later this week.

 

Image dump (bigger than usual - 1600x on the long side)...

 

[J T Lombard]

Brian:

What a beautiful job. I hope to preserve your build log so I can use it when I get to this kit.

 

again congratulations

 

J Lombard

[Chuck]

Beautiful work Brian!!!!!!   

 

Really outstanding.  

[Jack12477]

Brian, great job on the ship - outstanding model - Photography is outstanding also.

[Dimitris71]

Great job Brian !! She is beautiful !!! :) Congratulations!!

 

Cheers

Dimitris