Le Coureur 1776 1:48 (CAF) by Salty

Deck is looking awesome!

Leaving it open so you can see your great barrels, interior bulkheads, mast steps, etc is perfect!

Thanks for sharing!

Good morning Salty. You are building a good ship. I agree the open deck looks fantastic it’s good to see all the work in the lower decks. Cheers Grant

Salty said:

Onto the last cabin:

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Each cabin has had its challenges and this was no different. This time it was getting the panels to fit neatly with the beams which runs across the middle of the cabin and making sure they don’t cross under any carlings.

This is the end of the internal fittings and it’s onto the deck next.

Kind regards

Salty

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Hey Salty. Exquisite details all over the place, congrats!

Brad and Grant, thanks for your compliments about the deck. As you can see below, I think there a balance to be had between leaving off enough planks to show a hint of what below and having enough planks so you can actually finish the rest of the deck furniture!

Albert, thank you also. There’s certainly lots of detail in this kit and you not necessarily have to “invent” things to make it look nice.

The finished planking on the poop deck:



I think it’s not looking too bad, but there’s been a bit of work to get a nice fair finished surface. I do some work on the kitchen bench and the sun coming through the windows shows every little imperfection.

As an aside, if you want a traditionally laid deck with seams on a full size boat, you would use Jeffrey’s No 2 Black Marine Glue

https://www.classicboatsupplies.com...ack-marine-glue/?searchid=0&search_query=Glue

It’s comes as a solid block. You chip off bits, heat it up in a tin and pour it into the seams with a ladle.

Kind regards

Salty

Here is Le Coureur with her deck completed





Probably more through good luck than good management, the missing planks seem to work well. They show enough of the fit out below, but don’t make the hatches and doghouses look like they are floating with any support.

Kind regards

Salty

Thank you to everyone who has been following my progress. I feel like finishing the deck was a bit of a milestone and I can see the finish in the distance (albeit still a lot of work left).

For a bit of a change, I started on the cannons. Le Coureur had 8 two pound cannons which weighed about 800 kg each in real life.



They are very detailed, right down to the links in the capsquare chains.

Obviously, the most difficult part is fitting all the photo-etched parts. I have a pair of Xuron scissors which help cutting and trimming the parts, but all the holes in the carriages had to be done by hand as the drill bits were so thin they wobbled in the chuck in my electric drill. All were started with a no. 80 drill bit and then widened with a large one to suit the piece to be fitted.

I also made the eye bolts out of 0.4 mm wire as the kit parts were a little big for my liking. They’re not difficult to make, especially if you hold your mouth right.

I have also decided not to blacken the brass parts. Again it’s a personal preference, somewhat driven by wanting to handle the parts as little as possible for fear of losing them. Double sided tape certainly helps keep track of them on the workmat, but despite this, I did manage to lose a few cap square eyebolts, but 0.4 mm wire was a good substitute.

Kind regards

Salty

Here are the finished cannons:





I thought this would be a quick diversion from finishing the hull, but it’s taken on a life of its own. The carriages are quite small despite the model being 1:48 scale but I think the rigging doesn’t overpower them too much.

The hooks are 3.5 mm, the blocks are 2.5 mm, the breech lines are 0.8 mm and the tackle lines are 0.2 mm. The seizings are made with 100 weight cotton thread which is the finest I could find locally. The blocks are from Zoly at Drydock and are very nice. All the holes are drilled through and the sides have nice deep grooves which really help securing the stropping.

The seizings are actually nail knots made with a tool from the local fly fishing shop.



You can hold everything in place with your right hand while winding and threading the other line with the left. Sometimes it helps to use a needle when seizing thicker lines which tend to fill the groove. It took a while to get the hang of it, particularly the final tightening of the knot which I found had to go be done quite slowly to stop tangles.

Kind regards

Salty