HMS Jalouse - Caldercraft by Ted

Most of the spars in this kit are 4 mm on the plans. The kit provided one 3 mm dowel. That is not enough to build the designated parts.
However, their are four 6 mm dowels.
Caldercraft clearly substituted 6 mm dowels for the 4 mm. This makes for hours of unnecessary sanding. I'm truly disappointed in Caldercraft.
So far they have not responded to my emails on materials or missing parts.
The only response being they don't have updated plans showing that I'm using the proper contact information.
I hope that their newer kits have improved.
 
Rob444 said:
Here is a wonderful video from Olha Batchvarov showing her rigging the cannons for a ship.
Click to expand...
Rigging the breech rope off the ship is really a great idea as it gives room to do a clean job.

Unfortunately her rigging of the breech rope has no similarity to how guns were actually rigged on English ships. The breech rope was secured to a ring bolt, not an eye bolt for the bulwarks. Until 1811 the breech rope was never secured without a knot plus the seizing after which two seizings without a knot were used. (William Congreve, An Elementary Treatise on the Mounting of Naval Ordnance). Seizings were usually not tarred rope. Prior to Blomefields from Steel's The Elements and Practice of Rigging and Seamanship, following the use of thimbles, the breech rope was secured to the pommilion with a cont splice, not a loop as in the video. For this model of Jalouse though there would have probably been Blomefield guns so the rope would pass through the loop.
Allan
 
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I'm going to use the fixture I made mill the 6mm dowels down to close to 4 mm to make the bowsprit spar.
If someone has a better solution please let me know.
Is it better to use a high or low speed when milling Walnut dowels?
Happy modeling IMG20250515100137.jpg
 
I think I have developed a technique that will work l.
First the dowels were slightly oval shaped with two ridges 180 degrees apart.
I chuckled up the dowel and smoothed them out with a file. Second a light sanding
The milling seems to work best at lower speeds on the Dremel.
At highspeed, prior to filing, it was gouging the dowel.
 
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My technique did translate from the 8mm fixture to the 6mm fixture. I tried sanding and using beeswax.
I couldn't get a smooth cut as the 6mm dowels.are oval shaped and have a small rough ridge on both sides.
I tried chucking it in my drill and sanding but just smoothed out the oval. When the fixture was tight enough to secure the dowel with the thick side touching. It became loose and wobbly when rotated to the thin side of the oval. The resulting cut chucked up and gouged the surface to different depths.
I gave up and broke.out a file and gave it a good workout for more than an hour.
I'm pleased with the resulting 3mm x 2mm spar. 1747613042252979996191932450168.jpg
.
 
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