USS Constitution 1797 by The Bitter End - 1/76.8 - 44 Gun Frigate - heavily modified kit

[The BItter End]

Stern Ports

The stern ports on the model are pretty simple. They appear in many contemporary paintings but interestingly do not appear on the 1812 Isaac Hull model. Here we can see them clearly in the Corne Tripoli bombardment painting.

For exact placement I chose to use the design offered up by David Steel for a frigate of this size. It seemed to be the best and most accurate way to position them on the stern.

There is also a photo from the 1870s(I believe) which shows them, and here we can see that the sizing seems to be fairly close to the sizing shown in steel:

To show the ports I just parked them in pencil and then etched their outline with a chisel and placed 2 shortened hinges left over from my Pegasus build on each hatch.

At this point I stopped to do some painting and oiling but the final result was achieved after painting by drilling a hole for the retraction rope to come from and a hole for its anchor point to go into. I used 0.2mm rope and reduced the size of the eye bolt given with the kit to get the desired scale. not perfect but this is quite out the way so I can accept the result.

 

[The BItter End]

Adding some color and protection.

I began with the waler, this I masked off and spray painted with Rustoleum matte black paint followed by Tamiya matt sealer. The hull was protected using Tamiya masking tape for the details and standard masking tape for the hull. The deck was simply covered with tin foil.

The upper part of the bulwarks will be painted at a later stage to allow gluing without the need for paint removal.

 

[The BItter End]

Oiling The hull

I realized that I failed to mention a pretty significant mistake from my initial application of Osmo Poly X and I felt that this warranted a repost in case someone made the same mistake as me.

When they say mix the product prior to application, what they mean is MIX THE PRODUCT PRIOR TO APPLICATION!

I failed to do this with my first coat and the product came from a tin which had been standing in my workshop for some months. This resulted in a very unsatisfactory finish which i had to try to remove with Mineral spirits, I think I got most of it taken off and the final result was still ok but the mess to get this resolved was less than ideal.

One of the best parts of the build. Oiling the hull.

The hull was sanded back to 400 grit until all scratches were removed (kind of) and then given 2 very thin coats of Osmo Polyx Oil, this is a beautiful product. My only tips are to apply it with a soft scouring pad, to work in circular motions and to be very conservative with quantity.

I also applied this over the paint which dried well and gave a lovely satin finish.

I know I should really copper or paint this hull, but the wood is special to me and I quite like this very unique effect. I hope you do too and your feedback is welcomed.

 

[The BItter End]

[I have to thank Haiko a lot: accompanying his build is a huge pleasure and his questions are challenging and motivating to dig deeper and think further. More than once his questions forced me to cross check my interpretation of things and due to his hints - partly caused by issues in building the model, partly because he had found historical evidence I did not recognize before - we managed to have a better understanding of what might have been, and what may be not that much likely. One of the most interesting experiences is that in adding discussed features on the model, the technical interpretation seems to shape a more balanced and more likely representation of the ship than we believed when we theoretically discussed these features. That is a fascinating process.

Let’s start with the "air vents".

William Bass in his beautiful book "Constitution - Superfrigate of Many Faces" did investigate the ships "2nd phase" - between 1803 and 1808 by analyzing Cornè´s 1803 and 1804 paintings .. Especially in the 1803 sideview - a painting which was done purely to show the ship under sail. He obviously saw and tried to represent these "squared things" - as Bass called them later - on the ships hull in this painting. Bass discussed those with Cmd. Tyrone Martin - and as the former captain of the ship did not believe in Air Vents - due to their "too high" position and due to the several times mentioned actions of adding more air vents (although their numbers and places are not very good specified) in the ships logs Bass proposed this idea of seeing here squared "washers" and a centering bolt & nut which might be iron stiffeners crossing the hull. Cmd. Martin did not believe in this theory either. But he did not propose any better interpretation.

Antoine Roux, a well-known French artist, did generate - beside hundreds of other maritime paintings - several representations of US Frigate President. Beautiful paintings showing so many detailed features! And here we clearly see Air Vents - some of them even opened - in about the same height as what we believe to see in Corne's tiny painting.

And if we make use of a Lord Section cut and compare the position in Cornè´s painting with some of Roux´ USS President paintings, we might assume the position as shown here:

The yellow marked thing being the lid - and the opening being just below the Gun Deck ceiling. That would - in our opinion fit pretty good with what we see in Cornè´s painting - at least for the height.

The positioning of those possible air vents is a different story. One of Cmd. Martins’ doubts may be caused by the dense place in Berth deck due to so many knees - which would interfere with possible openings.

This photo from USS Constitution´s facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158391010821741&set=pcb.10158391011666741) gives an impression of the room at the ships hull in berth deck level - as there are vertical ("hanging"), diagonal and even longitudinal knees along and below the gun deck beams. The only thinkable room is above that diagional knee, right? So we needed to figure out: where might those have been positioned?

There are 3 existing drawings which help to understand the position of deck beams and even the knees in the early ship.

Two of them are drawings by a Samuel Pook - done in 1847 and one in 1849 - profile inboard drawings - showing clearly the deck beams. ... and even older: Waldo´s 1817 deck plan.

A comparison of both showed, the deck beam position did not change (at least not much of them) and the deviation between both in the foreship is most likely to be explained by distortions due the several times copying and possible issues in digitalization. For us that is evidence that we might trust all three of those plans - at least for the position of the beams.

The Waldo Deck plan revealed even more: you can see the horizontal or "longitudinal" knees and the diagonal ones - and if you compare all that, you can estimate where there is room for possible air vents:

if you place the air vent opening always below the horizontal knee - just in front of the beam behind that, you should be fine. The orange squares should show that.

An odd thing we noticed: nearly all longitudinal knees in Waldo´s drawing are pointing forward. No switch in the center?

And: those positions match with Cornè ... Well, they match in a degree which seems plausible. If we place all those views together, we notice that Cornè seems to have had a problem in perspective - but .. the deviation of the gun ports match with the expected deviation of the air vents:

It is interesting to note that in none of the paintings - especially in the very detailed Roux representations - we see a feature as a hinge or an opening mechanism. A hinge it must be, as in the French painting the open air vents open like a door - sideways. But obviously the mechanism was hidden from view - maybe because any outside visible metal feature might be endangered as to position is within the most critical area of the wales, where you can expect contact with other objects. An extruding feature would be damaged soon!

We may be wrong with all this, but for now we cannot see a major "no-go". And even the several times described addition of more air vents in the ships log is still possible. As the above status of 1803 still has gaps in the ship’s forecastle.

We saw that the deck beams are represented in the same positions in 3 drawings in 3 different years. Those seem to be a fact. The function of this "feature" visible in Corne's painting seems to match with something in another artist’s interpretation on a sistership. The vertical position seems to fit in function and needs (as far up as possible in berth deck to avoid as much as possible accidental entry of water). The longitudinal position in Corne's painting is traceable into the drawings.

In our opinion, it is more likely to follow this logic, based on observations, comparisons and evidence and therefore generating a certain likelihood, than believing in any other purely guessed number, position or interpretation of those "squared things" as Bass called them.]

Thank you for taking the time to give this detailed breakdown of your findings and our discussions. This process of trying to find the most plausible historical truth brings me easily as much joy as the building of the model itself and I look forward to the rest of our journey.

Please keep these more posts coming, you do a far better job than I of painting the full picture!

 

[The BItter End]

Gun Port Linings

Gun port linings next, it would appear that the constitution didn’t not have fixed(Hinged) gun port lids at the time of launch but rather removable split lids. There is no indication of port lids at this point on any of the paintings or drawings of her or her sister ships in the early years of their existence. There may well have been port lids on the forward most ports and possibly coverings on the aft most ports, but I will get into that detail at a later stage. For now, our only concern is gun port linings.

The only place where we can see these linings to any real degree is from the 1812 Isaac Hull model and perhaps the Corne 1803 painting. In these two sources the ratio of lining to openings seems fairly consistent. If we assume an outer port opening of 3ft 3 inches as indicated in the 1794 body plan by Joshua Humphreys then we can deduct that the inner lining of the port is 4inches wide (1.3mm at scale).

The only other piece of evidence that was vaguely relevant is the orientation of the joints. This detail is purely academic as the ports will be painted but it is worth mentioning that David Steel shows the port linings to be the exposed frame section with 2 horizontal upper and lower sills mortised into them. This means what would be visible to the viewer is 2 horizontal joints at the upper edge of the gun port and 2 miter joints at the lower edge of the gun port once planking has been installed.

I bulk cut the 120 side to just slightly longer than their correct length, then bulk squared off one side of each plank and marked their correct length with pencil. I first installed the upper and lower sills and then squeezed the side sills into them more tightly. I made sure that the edges were slightly too close to the outer planking and then tapped them to the correct depth using this little jig.

Once all the sills were in, I gave them a good buff with some steel wool and dragged a sausage of steel wool through each port to clean up the edges. I then made up a mix of wood glue and wood filler to make a gooey filler and used this to tidy up any little gaps between the outer and inner framing. This was applied with a small silicon sculpting tool.

This is the almost final result, These ports will be painted in red ochre but that is a task for another day.

 

[The BItter End]

ote: This was probably not needed as it would later get covered by a rail.

After living in denial for some time I realized that I would have to after all do some form of molding on the transom (If this is the incorrect term, please correct me).

The only specific evidence for this which I can find is in the close-up photo taken of the Isaac Hull Model by @Force9 (thank you for these great photos they have been a huge help)

here we can see some molding around the Quarter gallery portions. Unfortunately, the stern was closed in the 1812 configuration so there is no example of how the upper transom would have looked but I decided this was good enough for me to try and copy.

As I am writing this I am beginning to wonder if this was a mistake, but that ship has sailed...if you will.

To get this result I filed a profile into a sacrificial box cutter blade:

After a trial or two to determine a suitable profile I cut this into the transom and went over it with some steel wool to smooth things out.

And painted it black as well as touching up the ochre (The notches are to allow a tight fit under the bulkheads when pressed into place).

 

[The BItter End]

[What kind of wood did you use for the molding?]

The upper molding wood was selected kind of by accident. I was making a table from South African Yellowwood which I happened to have in my workshop. When I finished the table, I ended up with some very uniform, very thin offcut strips which I decided might come in handy on this build. lo and behold they worked perfectly for the upper edge of the transom. So short answer...South African yellow wood.

 

[The BItter End]

I didn't do a whole lot on Constitution except for some repairs to the gun deck (lessons learned will be shared in my spar deck post if I ever get there), a bit of tinkering on a stand to replace the pillow I'm currently using and a bit of research and execution on gun port painting.

This was not the world's most complex process, but it was an agonizing decision to make. Various rips records refer to "red" paint being part of the ship's supplies as mentioned in "Close up":

Aug 1803 -- Paint pigments in ship's stores included 305# black, 3 cwt white lead, 3 cwt yellow, 50# green ("verdigris"), and 28# red ("vermilion"). [Receipt for John Osborn, 1 Aug 1803, Samuel Brown Papers, MHS.]

11 Jan 1804 -- Received 15 kegs of yellow ochre, 2 of red paint, 7 small ones of black paint, and 50 gallons of black varnish. [Ship's log, DNA.]

This obviously does not tell us anything at all about where the paint was used or in fact what exactly was meant by "red"

It is fairly safe to assume that the color that they are referring to is red ochre, a shade of red with a fair amount of brown in it. Below is an example of a building restored to its appearance at the time of the constitution launch showing just one of many shades of red ochre.

This leaves us with 4 paintings by Roux and Corne to find evidence for the color we need. My approach began by selecting a portion of each painting where the color of the gun port lining can be seen and putting it into an online color analysis. The smaller square of color in the upper right corner indicates what the actual color of the specific selected pixel isI realize the many flaws in this method, but it gives us an indication....all rather brown.

After some discussion with good old Marcus we agreed that the color shown on the painting may be wrong for 2 reasons. Firstly, the artist wished for the viewer to experience a certain color, depending on lighting etc that may require use of a brown to show a reddish color. In addition, and arguably more importantly, we don't know how paint colors deteriorated over the 200 odd years since these were painted. That then led me to the next step of the investigation: to pull the color from the American flags which would all have been a fairly standardized bright red color as can be seen in this example which flew on the Constitution around 1816.

This resulted in surprisingly brown color samples for something which is known to be red:

This color deterioration clearly showed that the color of the gun port lining was meant to be closer to red than brown. The next logical step was to feed AI all the data I had from all the paintings and tell ChatGPT to do a color correction for the gun ports based on the known color deterioration of the flag. The result was surprisingly pleasing. Without any other prompting it gave me one value, HEX #A3050F:

This seemed like the perfect balance between a modern and historical red.

The application of this chosen color was achieved as follows:

1. masked off the hull completely and applied a spray-painted layer of rustoleum matt black primer

2. Applied a thin coat of Vallejo "Red"(70.926) with a tiny, tiny amount of Vallejo "Black"(70.950 and a drop of Vallejo "Cavalry brown"(70.982) with a single drop of paint retarder. Exact ratios are hard to describe but it's mostly red, a smidgen of black and a drop of brown)

3. I then applied another thin coat over this of "Red" with a small drop of Vallejo "Carmine Red"(70.908)

4. I finally finished this with a dry brushing of pure "carmine red to highlight the edges and to give the ports a bit more of a natural look.

This recipe is by no means perfect, but it worked for me.

Now unless anyone has a warning of some sort for me I believe my next step is to begin the Quarter Galleries.

 

[The BItter End]

[I think your color looks good.

I don't think the following caveats are deal breakers to your methodology for determining the paint color, but I figured I would note them.

There are two main reasons why the colors will not match (both of which you noted):

1. The lighting - The issue here is that in real life (and in paintings) things look very different depending on the lighting and what is around them. For example, looking at the door of my office, it is all painted the same color, but the different faces are very different colors. This means that if you want to adjust using the ai (as you did) you need to make sure that the red deterioration you are measuring on the flag is in a similar lighting situation (in this case it should be in shadow).

2. The yellowing - paintings mostly change color due to the deterioration of the varnish layer (that is how you get the yellowing of a painting). This does not impact all colors evenly and depends on how much dirt and how long since the varnish was replaced. For this reason, I would be careful about comparing color change between two different paintings. If you want to do the comparison, try to stick to the same painting (it was not clear from your explanation if this is what you did or not).

That all being said, there is a broader question about how you want to depict the model. Do you want your color to "be accurate" or do you want it to "look accurate", these are not the same thing. A model is a small-scale representation of a much larger object and so light and shadows do not react the same way on these smaller objects. If you want it to look like a miniature version of the real thing then you actually need to do some tricks (your dry brushing was a good start) to try and simulate the impact of a light on the real size object.

I don't have enough time to cover it all here, but essentially you may want to consider simulating some of the shadows and highlights as opposed to simply using "the correct" color. I did a presentation on the topic for my model group (though I am by no means an expert) if you are interested in more info on the topic.]

You are absolutely correct on all of that. The nuance of the various colors is very hard to predict. Particularly when we are dealing with the number of variables which we find in the resources available. Intended perception, lighting, deterioration and in fact the errors which the original artist may have made. I am quite obviously not an artist of any kind but even when trying to match a single color in a single scenario with modern paints and tools it took me ages and its definitely not a perfect match.

I would be really interested in seeing your presentation! Where can I find it? I have looked high and low for exactly that but find very little, most of the information I am getting is coming from miniature wargaming (Warhammer mostly) but the scale is very different and a whole different set of rules apply. I was particularly interested in if I should be applying some of this technique to the pale (a large flat pack strip but I simply did not know how so I abandoned the Idea.

It’s not too late to change gun port colors so any info would be a huge help.

 

[The BItter End]

[I think the color you chose was fine, my point was simply that given the issues noted, I am not confident that your methodology has produced a definitive result.

In terms of resources, I would actually say miniature painting tutorials are useful as long as you are looking at similar scales and styles to what you want to achieve. Most miniatures are at about 1/56 (many scale models are at 1/76) scale which is not too far off your scale so many of the techniques would apply. That being said if you are looking for a more realistic look then I would look at scale modelers not general miniature painters. Most miniature painting tends to be more stylistic in nature (which is fine if you want that sort of look). If you look at my alert model you can see how this might look on a model. I painted my alert to depict her as if she was in a painting, so it has a very stylized saturated look. You could use many of the same techniques just mute the contrast a little and use less saturated colors if you want a more realistic look.

If you have limited painting experience, then I would probably limit myself just look into adding some edge highlights and maybe use selective application of a wash in the recesses and upper side of the port to push them more into shadow. This of course is based on my personal stylistic views. At the end of the day the question is really what do you want to achieve.

Do you want it to look good from 1 foot away or 5 feet away. The further away the desired viewing distance the more you should push the contrast. The closer you are the more important it is to have smooth transitions.]

You are right about the shortcomings of the methodology and it’s definitely worth considering for the rest of this build as the handful of color resources available will most likely be used over and over again.

Thank you so much for sending me that information. I will climb into it immediately. I would like to use this opportunity to improve as many skills as possible, so I am happy to spend some time learning how to improve my painting using your information as a resource. I also always endeavor for my work to look good from 1 ft away although I realize that is more of a goal than a reality! I am in no rush to get this done so why not make each part as perfect as I can make it. This is my second build after my Pegasus and I have realized that my joy in this hobby comes just as much from the process of learning as it does from the actual construction of the model.

Thanks to the prompting and excellent presentation by Thukydides I decided to take another run at the gun port painting. It has made a huge difference to the feel of the model, and I am very grateful that I got that little push to improve my work in this way. I look forward to getting better at this ability and hopefully translating that skill onto the rest of the model’s paintwork.

This simple upgrade was achieved by reading @Thukydides excellent presentation and applying what I learned in the form of 2 edge highlights, one of pure Vallejo flat red and one of Vallejo flat red mixed with Vallejo yellow ochre followed by a glaze of watered down red to make a less hard gradient.

 

[The BItter End]

Ladies and Gentlemen, that concludes my repost of the lost log.

From here on out things will take significantly longer to put together as I need to go back through old conversations with myself and Marcus to piece together our thinking on decisions. I will aim for a post or two per day to bring this log up to date.

Cheerio

Haiko

 

[The BItter End]

Quarter Galleries.

This portion of the build goes back several months so I can unfortunately not offer the same depth of justification for my choices. In this case I largely just looked at the available sources and created what looked the best in my opinion. I have attached images of all the sources I looked at as a matter of interest but this is really up to the modeler. I hope that @Marcus.K. can add some more historical meat to this discussion but below are the main sources.



Of course we begin with Corne 1803 - Measuring the proportions of this gallery it becomes apparent that the upper rooves are stretched vertically. There is however some great information here on style, position and decor.

Corne 1804 Tripoli - Totally incorrectly placed relative to the gun ports but some clues can be found here too.

The Hull model - showing a later configuration. The quarter galleries were vulnerable and seen as almost sacrificial parts so many changes are expected and seen. Here we see that the forward and aft "windows" are false as in the stern.

A source which I leaned on heavily was the Constellation quarter gallery which shows great detail. I consider this positioning and design to be pretty close to a potential reality

Doughty shows a similar configuration but with a 9 pane window. This is not seen in corne and is a nightmare to produce so I opted for a 6 pane window.

The Charles Ware "united states" plans ovvered some insight into the top down profile, essentially the only available source for this view:

In addition I also looked at the paintings of the President and united states as well as the modern version.

Despite all of this evidence the final design was really the dealers choice. Below is my process for this part of the build:

First the main ledges of the gallery were produced and fitted: The alignment for this was taken off where the mouldings from the stern and the mouldingas on the hull would intersect with the galleries. These elevations were largely determined by the doughty plans.

Once this basic structure was in place i did a dry fit of the window position with card and some pencil sketches.

Followed by outer framing:

and then inner

I then created some of the decorative elements using a profiled razor blade to cut moulding from thinly cut pear strips and carving out the lower drop decorative elements.

The last step was poorly documented. but I utilised miliput rolled out flat and cut with a rolled beverage can to make the upper bunting and then made the scroll work by using copper wire and solder to bend and assemble these feature. My advice on the copper and solder is to use a solder with a very low melting temperature and all of your patience. with some hammering, filing and buffing it comes out ok. I hope that the black paint that will ultimately be applied will brin this all together in a way which pleases the eye.

This is working from some rather old memory so if anyone has questions about specifics please let me know as usual.

Cheers

Haiko

 

[ERSRich]

Beautiful work, thank you for posting.

 

[TheGatzby]

Those quarter galleries look exceptional.

 

[JSGerson]

Well, I got my copy of your log in sync again. How you made your reconstituted log in in one day is amazing...as is your craftsmanship. Those quarter galleries drove me crazy and I never was satisfied with my results. You did yours so elegantly. Well done!!!

Jon

 

[Der Alte Rentner]

I saw that only unegawaya seems to have done his waterways after decking but I cannot find his log.

I just checked. His build log is back up at MSW. I did see his user ID here, but there don't seem to be any log entries at this site.

 

[The BItter End]

Beautiful work, thank you for posting.

Thank you Rich! I was cautious about posting before it was painted so your positive feedback is great to hear.

Cheers

Haiko

 

[The BItter End]

Those quarter galleries look exceptional.

Thanks Gatz! I'm Glad you approve, it was a hang of a challenge.

Cheers

Haiko

 

[The BItter End]

my copy of your log in sync again. How you made your reconstituted log in in one day is amazing.

Well, I got my copy of your log in sync again. How you made your reconstituted log in in one day is amazing...as is your craftsmanship. Those quarter galleries drove me crazy and I never was satisfied with my results. You did yours so elegantly. Well done!!!

Jon

John you Legend!

Thank you again, I cant believe you saved me like you did. As for the rapid repost...when someone gives you a gift you make use of it! Lots more to come in the next few days, keep an eye.

Cheers

Haiko

 

[The BItter End]

I just checked. His build log is back up at MSW. I did see his user ID here, but there don't seem to be any log entries at this site.

Thank you for looking Peter. I will take another look on MSW. Have a great weekend.