Beagle by OcCre 1/60 ~ Bertie's Second Build

[Willy from Wigan]

The time to incorporate stealers was rapidly approaching - to my horror. On my first boat build I had simply narrowed a plank to a long sharp point which sort of worked but was neither historically right nor very strong. This time I wanted to do it right.

This was my guide diagram from Zu Mondfeld's Historic Ship Models. I had no idea how to achieve this result and decided not to look it up because I'd enjoy working it out for myself. I was unusually careful however, and experimented off the boat, with some scraps.

That was the easy part. I hadn't narrowed the end of plank prior to cutting the end at the 45 degree point. This experiment was where I learned that it would be necessary!

I placed the stealer on the other planks and drew around it.

I cut the waste out with a piercing saw.

And tidied up with files.

Not bad.

Three strakes became two. This was quite encouraging.

I had used CA which carried some of my pencilled markings into the grain but apart from that I was delighted with the joint.

See how the outer planks are curving outwards? I thought about shaving their mating faces so that the entire assembly would loses more width in an elegant and gradual way.

This was the second experiment. I had abandoned the sawing and filed the joints instead. It was more efficient that way.

Note that the three planks now have straight lines at the outside for mating up with the rest of the hull planking.

The third test involved reducing the width of the centre plank before making the joint.

So this is where the shipwright says, "We are getting close to half width here, better make it a stealer." Of course in 1/1 scale HE can chop out a recess in the plank above even after it's 'nailed' to the frames.

I was a bit bored by this time so test three is rushed but I think it showed that reducing the outsides of the centre plank and the inner sides of the outer planks together makes a nice steal. I planned not to take as much from the centre plank as in the test though - I wanted all three planks in the area of the joint to have the same width. Just because.

So now I was an expert! Hahahaha!

Time to try it for real. Twice.

Marking is vital. It's very easy to glue them on the wrong side upside down and inside out. I also marked the hull to match so that I will perhaps notice any screw-ups.

Sure enough, there I go measuring the starboard plank against the port hull. That was not deliberate and as it was only for the photo shoot it didn't matter, but I had to laugh when I just noticed the error.

The photo was supposed to show you that I'd cut the stealer to lie over a frame so that It would be strong when it was done, just like the real ones.

This is how I do the marking out. I use two planks underneath to stop the upper one from falling off. I line up the midships arrows - roughly is good enough, there will be some fore and aft adjustment later on. The pointy plank END points to the edge and seven cms back the EDGE of the pointy plank crosses the edge of the one I'm marking.

As I took this pic, I realised that I hadn't tapered the pointy plank. So I started over. That's why I work in pencil.

I filed a taper on the pointy stealer, reducing it to 2/3 of its original width over about 7cms.

When the flanking planking was remarked (top plank) I was happy to note that the blue line is about 2/3 of the red line. This should mean that the three planks will all be 3.3 mm wide at the join, or 2/3 of a plank width.

The bottom plank is the first, mistaken marking and you see that the cut out would have been HALf a plank width if I hadn't caught the mistake. An error of 0.83mm would have ruined the symmetry and been very upsetting.

Things don't always fit first time. This is ok as I can recut, and shift the planks fore and aft to compensate - once. After that I'd have to start again as the long side would increasingly be the wrong shape. I have many planks but limited patience.

Still poor but I decided it was good enough to continue with this first attempt. (That was a poor decision)

And there we go. Not glued, just clamped for the photo. Only one side prepared. Not yet bent, not yet cut to length. Not yet glued onto the hull. Time elapsed? I thought it had been 20 minutes but when I checked the clock, I'd started at eight and it was five past nine. An hour and five minutes had slipped away unnoticed. Everything about boats takes twice as long as I expect. When time just ceases to matter like that, I know I'm really having the best fun!

The chopped up plank, now narrowed at the back as well as the front, was just waiting its chance to snap on me so it was very important to wait until the bending iron was really hot, otherwise I knew I'd tend to use too much force before the wood had softened. As I come lower down the hull sides there's less bending to do and it soon took the shape I wanted.

That plank went home easily. I expected no difference because the complicated stuff was on its lower edge. The middle of the three planks went on with little in the way of preparation but the fit at the joint was awful. I chiseled away at it as much as I dared and ended up with this.

Not only were the first two planks a poor fit but the third one wouldn't locate at all. It didn't make sense. the top and middle ones had a gap and I thought that should make the joint with the lowest one tight at the three-plank point, but the tightness was in front of it. (I'm probably not describing this very well, sorry.)

 

[dockattner]

Hi Bertie,

Just catching up. Very nice construction and compelling narrative. I'll pull up a chair.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

Hi Bertie,

Just catching up. Very nice construction and compelling narrative. I'll pull up a chair.

Well thank you. This is just the edited highlights - just see what happens when we go live!

 

[Willy from Wigan]

Back to those pesky planks. Many of you will have already worked out where I was making my mistake. I had to sleep on the problem for a couple of nights before realising that I'd laid out and cut my joints on a flat bench and was now attempting to install them on a compound curved surface. The geometry of a curved surface is fantastically complicated and well beyond my capacity to understand it in detail but what it means in this context was "YOU FORGOT TO BEVEL THE PLANK EDGES, DUMMY!"

And those planks were 2mm thick. That's enough to cause those gaps. The funny thing was that I had bevelled all of the other planks! My ageing brain couldn't remember that when it was trying to wrap itself around all of the other geometrical difficulties involved in this wonderful hobby of ours. (No sarcasm intended - it it was easy, I wouldn't do it.)

That was the sad and sorry mess that I created after a series of three experiments which were supposed to make me an expert.

Never mind, it's only a toy. Pretty calm eh? You have to bear in mind that I had already decided to paint this all black and then sheath most of it in copper plates. None of this would be visible on the finished product so I actually had nothing to lose and valuable skills to learn by continuing to play carpenter. And this was only the first one. Flip the boat round and try again!

 

[Willy from Wigan]

The following day was heavily photographed and I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Note to the Admins: If I'm going too picture heavy please let me know. I don't want to hog the server.

I may have discovered a better way to mark up a plank for routine tapering. Instead of a steel straight edge I'm using a second plank which begins parallel and on top of the one to be tapered and then is bent to the mark on its end.

The photo shows the method and as you'll appreciate, I end up with a curved line that blends smoothly with the untapered plank. I simply file to this line instead of using a knife.

Most planking tutorials tell you to mark the taper with a straight edge and if it's thin enough, to cut it that way too. The trouble is that boats are curved and a straight-line taper with an angle in it, however obtuse the angle, doesn't fit as well as a curve.

It seemed to work well for the remainder of this boat but I haven't used it on many planks so if you like the idea - help yourself but be prepared to refine it as you go.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

And now the second stealer...

Once the tapering for the extreme bow was done, I turned to the bevelling. I marked a cut line or guide line, so that I could see how much I'd removed.

The stolen plank would be bevelled both sides so it needed two guide lines. I drew them in using a finger as a gauge as you see. There's no need for it to be any more complicated.

I bevelled the top of the top plank where it would butt against the square side of the previously laid one. Then both sides of the middle one for symmetry. The bottom one was unbevelled as it will butt against the middle one's bevel. Three planks, three bevels.

For making a bevelling cut down the whole length of the wood, I held it in my home made plank vice. It's hard to make it out so the blue arrow is the plank.

I pencilled lines on the top edge to show me when my cut had crossed the whole of the edge.

My weapon of choice is a David plane.

Which produced a full length shaving almost every time.

See the bevel creeping across the edge of the plank?

Finished. Yes, i know it's not straight but it's only 2mm across so the rounded edge won't really be noticeable.

And the already tapered centre one gets a bevel on both sides.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

The planks now lie cosily together - no gaps.

For variety, because this was getting boring, I tried a different saw and got a better result from this Hasegawa Tritool saw.

I tried to photograph how the joint went together with a curve across the width now it was bevelled but it was tricky to hold it long enough to do so.

While taking this I realised that the centre plank has all the bevelling between the two outer ones. Forward of the steal there's no bevels at all. So I went back to the bench vice and cut some on both pieces.

Now it was time for gluing up. This was very difficult to do with all of my fingers crossed for luck.

 

[Uwek]

Note to the Admins: If I'm going too picture heavy please let me know. I don't want to hog the server.

No problem - we all love photos and our forum is prepared for a lot of them, so do not hesitate with the size and number of photos.

BTW: It would be better, if you would upload the photos here in the forum, with this you are able to use also much bigger size of photos, and the photos would be secured

 

[Willy from Wigan]

Before starting the gluing up, I put away all the tools I'd used for the cutting. With the desk clear, I wouldn't be hunting for 'that particular clamp' among the files, plane, sandpaper, breakfast plates etc. Also, there were now fewer things to catch on, and bust the end of the planks when I was turning the boat over.

That's the trio laid out flat. You can see how it will form a three dimensional joint when assembled.

Just in time I realised I hadn't tapered the bow ends of the outer planks so once again, back to the vice for some planing this time. I marked the line with the curve method I described above and found that I could plane to the curve as easily as filing, and with a tidier result too.

Those planks were rather cunningly spiled by this point but they were still flat. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph them being bent but we probably all know how to use a hot plank bender so I hope you will forgive me that.

I loaded my high-tech glue dispenser and was ready to go. (Send me £10 plus postage for your own glue dispenser by return of post.)*

*Joke

I knew there would be trouble at frame number three. Most of the planks barely touch it and some miss it completely. I had over faired it weeks before. I prepared some shims, just in case because that was the frame where the stealer joint would be located, of course.

And I used them. Look at the ziggurat steps of this planking. That's supposed to sand into a smoooth curve when this is all over. I will probably glue some thin strips into the corners where I see a danger of sanding it into pieces again. I did that on the stbd side - you can see it if you look closely.

Some of the plywood frames are beginning to split from the pins. This weakens them lower down and they split again. I've tried to reinforce them with thin CA and it seems to work.

Everything seemed to be happening at once and in the one place!

That's what it looked like when first glued. Yuk! Sanding and sealing the surface once it was dry only took a few minutes and gives a better impression of the result.

Above is a photo of the first go sanded down and sealed. This is without the bevelling and with the resulting wide glue lines.

And the second attempt. It's tighter. There's still room for improvement but this is good enough for me to cease and desist making official British joints. I declare that I've passed (scraped through) my stealer exams. When I next encounter this situation I'll have a good idea what to do, I'll concentrate more and my planks will be 1mm walnut, pear or cherry instead of 2mm lime.

This training exercise had been successful but now I wanted to crack on and get the hull done. I need to make progress or risk losing motivation. As the remaining area would be under copper, I made no more 'proper' stealers but settled for triangles. In fact, I reverted to the quick and easy OcCre method.

Their version.

My version.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

During my rush to finish the planking, this happened. I didn't even notice at the time but found the broken off knee on the floor before the dog did, fortunately. That little break would cause me a lot of heartache later in the build.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

Turning from a drive towards historical 'accuracy', which is often more wishful thinking than possibility, to gettin' the job done, I did THIS!

I blocked up the remaining holes, sometimes with two layers of planks, sometimes with the planks curved to shape as before and sometimes with them jammed in endways. The idea was to complete the shape of the underwater hull and provide a foundation for a tube of Plastic Wood filler. I'd sand the wood down, apply the filler, sand that down and bish bash bosh the job is done in two days instead of two weeks.

I nearly got carried away there for a while and was becoming despondent because I couldn't get it quite right. Then I recalled that this is a training ship for me and that these thick OcCre timbers were never intended for fine work in the first place. When I do the next model with its 1mm planking, I will find it so much easier to work with that it will be worth aiming for a higher standard (but NEVER for perfection, no Sir!).

Warts and all? I show you carbuncles, chancres and abscesses!

He said he was making a Beagle, doesn't look much like a dog to me.

The Plastic Wood was not very good but the hull overall was almost fit for purpose. Time for another experiment. Artists that paint on absorbent surfaces such as canvas and wood often prep the surface with gesso.

That's the second coat brushed on straight from the pot. I've already seen five things that I'd do differently. I put the first coat on with vertical strokes to work it into the cracks, that wasn't a bad idea but next time I'll finish with horizontal strokes because the vertical ridges left by the cheap brush stayed there as a subtle cross hatching effect.

Secondly, I could have thinned the gesso to get a smoother result. I'd try this on the second coat allowing the thicker first one to seal the wood and stop too much wetting from the thinner top coat.

Third, I could have sanded between coats.

Fourthly, if I'd sealed the wood with sanding sealer first, I think the gesso would have gone on easier.

The final thing I'd do differently would be to use a better brush.

It brushed on easily and dried very quickly as most of the solvent, the water, was absorbed by the model. Allowing a longer drying time would be safer on a 100% effort model.

The seams are now caulked. I'm happy with that result. Now for some paint.

Except that while I was handling the hull something about the bulwarks started to bug me. I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

No problem - we all love photos and our forum is prepared for a lot of them, so do not hesitate with the size and number of photos.

BTW: It would be better, if you would upload the photos here in the forum, with this you are able to use also much bigger size of photos, and the photos would be secured

Oh I thought I was uploading them to SoS! I've been dragging and dropping from my old log on Britmodeller assuming that they were being uploaded. I guess they are simply linked to my One Drive account.

I can't face going back and uploading them now but there's not much more of the old stuff to summarise so I'll carry on like this for a couple of days more and then learn how to do it the other way.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

During a comprehensive and expensive refit prior to the Darwin voyage Capt Fitz Roy had the main deck raised by 12 inches at the bow and 8 inches at the stern. This improved the headroom below decks and made the bark far more comfortable for the extended cruise. It may have raised the CoG slightly as the cannons and boats etc all rose commensurately, but since the bulwarks were NOT raised at all, it also reduced the amount of water which could be trapped on deck by them and reduced the chances of the Beagle rolling over to her doom after taking a couple of solid waves over her as had (probably) happened to some 26 others of her 'high waisted' class.

I just measured the height of the bulwarks of my model above the deck and guess what? That modification is not embodied. It's far too late to raise the decks so the question is, do I lower the bulwarks? This will mean that the profile of the boat will be wrong, viewed from outside, it will be too deep in the waist. On the other hand but the appearance of the decks and the equipment on them will be nearer to that seen by the crew. As It stands, the bulwarks appear very high, even to a newbie like me, and looking down on the deck, it has the appearance of a shoebox.

For me the most important parts of a ship are the places where the people were, the deck that Darwin walked, the rails that he puked over. The view from the outside is relatively unimportant to me. It seemed that about 20% of the bulwarks would have to go. Pity I didn't discover this before I planked them inside and out. Bah!

With the lower hull looking good I turned my attention to those pesky bulwarks.

The objective was to cut away 5mm and reduce them to the pencilled line. It was a long cut of what is now a fairly thick part of the structure so sanding the lot off would have been a crude and messy operation. Unless there's no choice, I try to avoid using sandpaper for the removal of material, preferring to keep it for surface finishing.

The first stage was to make these vertical saw cuts not quite to the cut line to get rid of the difficulties that come with long wandering saw cuts. Now I just had small horizontal cuts to make.

On the first side I made these triangles before reversing the saw and cutting off the peaks. As usual, a better way occurred to me in the process and on the other side, I only removed enough so that I could lay the saw horizontal and cut between the vertical incisions, removing more or less rectangular pieces of wood.

That's a Tamiya pull-action razor saw and is a marvellous instrument with a tiny kerf and an edge like a razor. It's the kind of blade that cuts so cleanly into your finger that despite it being a saw you don't realise the problem until you notice the blood. (Or so some careless fool told me )

I'm glad to say that I prefer the appearance of the vessel with the lowered bulwarks. The modification has opened up the deck area to view and also partly hidden the slightly distorted part of the port bulwark which I bent by over-clamping when I glued it on. That wasn't a planned thing but was very welcome.

Some minor external details were added.

I sprayed the hull with all of my Tamiya Tyre Black and then a coat of Panzer Grey shot from above for highlights. Photographed upside down like this the shadows and lights are very obvious around the strakes but when it's the right way up it looks natural and it also looks bigger. Larger things cast deeper shadows and this simple trick simulated that phenomenon quite well.

It's a long time since I airbrushed anything, and a very long time since I airbrushed anything this big. Spraying onto wood/gesso was a first. The Tamiya paints went down well. The Gesso layer is brilliant to paint on. It's like spraying onto paper - the paint stays where you put it. This did make getting into the cracks a bit of a trial as the paint wouldn't flood into them, but it wasn't a serious problem.

The greys came out dead flat and I might need to gloss them up a bit later. That will depend on how weathered I decide to make Beagle and so for now I just polished the dry but not yet hardened surface with some material from a pair of tights (pantyhose). It's excellent on shoes too if you are old-school enough to polish your leather shoes.

At this point I broke off building for several weeks while other things filled my days, returning to sheathe the Beagle's bottom in copper foil only recently. I have a kit of the Charles W Morgan in the wardrobe and learned how to do this type of coppering from that model.

I used real copper self adhesive tape. It can be used to make slug-proof barriers around plant pots or do repairs to PCBs. I think model making has many possible applications for the stuff.

I found a plan in Zu Mondfeld. and cut one of the reels of foil into appropriately sized 'plates'. Starting from the rear and the bottom to ensure the overlaps went in the right direction, I simply tiled the hull. It was a pleasant task and very relaxing after the trauma od the planking!

That's about 40 pieces.

I'd pencilled in the waterline and laid two strakes of Tamiya tape where the top two rows of tiles would lie. As I worked up the hull sides I would meet the Tamiya tape at bow and stern and slowly fill the almond-shaped gap. The foil is thin and when burnished down reveals whatever is underneath. I didn't want to have a jagged edge like broken brickwork under the top two lines of copper so I plated over the masking tape and then carefully cut along the edge of the tape. The triangular waste pieces came away cleanly with the tape.

Two final lines and I had this!

Rinse and repeat on the other side and I had this!! The upsweep may not be 'accurate' but I think it looks mighty fine.

Using a 'riveting' tool for plastic aircraft kits I made nails.

With diluted oil paint, I made the shadows and nails a little stronger. I really should have used enamels because I had a week's wait for the oil paint to dry.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

Next came the rudder.

The rudder irons were rather good and soldered together nicely.

The wooden rudder just needed bevelling at the hinge end and a little paint.

With the rudder irons in place, a shallow hole was drilled into the side of the rudder through each of the boltholes.

After this the copper foil was applied. It was a lengthy process despite, or rather because of the small size and awkward shape of the rudder. Once the foil was on, the holes were punched through and the irons superglued into place.

With shortened pins for bolts. They are overscale so I only used the minimum amount.

Shaping the braces to fit the hull was an incremental process with care required to avoid overstressing the areas weakened by the drilled holes. It was an anxious time!

Once satisfied with the shape, 0.6mm pilot holes were drilled into the hull and brass nails pushed into place. Some of the pins required shortening which was done with side cutters to leave a sharp chisel shaped point.

The pins held the ruder in place well but for extra security, thin CA was introduced behind the braces and around the heads of the nails.

The rudder is noticeably shinier than the rest of the hull - a clear demonstration of the value of the oil wash and of the natural tarnishing of the copper foil over time after it has been handled. It's impossible to say which of the three effects; time, fingerprint acids, or the wash, has produced most of the weathering.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

And finally, last weekend I started work on the head of the ship. You may remember that I'd broken the knee of the head? Well I'd glued it back on once and broken it off again so the mating faces were a little the worse for wear by this stage. However, I glued it on again being very careful to get it straight. A small error here would throw far end of the bowsprit off hugely and cause the boat to sail in circles forever.

The square piece of pearwood will house the hawse holes. Following the OcCre plans the hawse holes are suitable for ropes, hawsers in fact but the kit supplies chains.

Now in 1830, a small boat like this using chains for its anchors would be exceptional but Robert Fitz Roy was very much up to date in all things so it's reasonable to assume he would have insisted on chains. This would require metal hawse holes as a chain running out through a simple wooden plate would rapidly wear it away.

Fortunately for me, there's a compelling reason why I believe that Beagle did NOT have chains to her anchors. Fitz Roy insisted on expensive brass cannons because he did not want to risk magnetic interference caused by large pieced of moveable iron. This could have compromised his compasses and introduced errors into his charting - the main purpose of the voyage. To me it's inconceivable that he would have wanted several tons of iron chain on bard, chain which would have been laid up slightly differently in the cable tier every time the anchors were weighed. Nope. I'm going for good old fashioned rope.

I want the head to look something like this with a grating floor and two sets of 'seats of ease' for the crew.

OcCre want it to look like this, with some fake curly bits made from thick brass rod. I think this is horrible. It's entirely fictional as a small craft like this even as early as 1820 didn't carry this sort of ostentatious decoration. It's also unworkable as the hawse holes are so far inboard that the cable would foul the structure, especially when it was straight up and down.

DISASTER STRIKES

In order to make the head symmetrical, I decided to build one side first and then use that as a pattern to make the other. That was a dumb idea because at some point on the process, the knee of the head, superglued in straight, moved five degrees to port. Probably when I pressed the upper piece of plywood against it. Concentrating on the side elevation I didn't notice this until I'd bent, shaped and firmly glued in the second, lower piece of ply.

Even on this fuzzy photo snapped in anger you can see the significant swerve to port compared with the line of the centre plank of the deck. At the end of the bowsprit that will be 3 inches off centre. So I needed a fix. The superglue is now firmly set, as is the woodglue on the other pieces. I didn't fancy carving it all off and starting from nothing as that would destroy what was left of the knee. So I decided to fake it. I'd carve a plate to go on the starboard side of the knee, thick enough to make it symmetrical about the centreline. The bowsprit would then be straight ahead and the double thickness knee would be hidden beneath it, hidden from the side by the rest of the structure of the head, and difficult to see from below because the model will be on a base. From straight ahead I'm hoping that it will be lost to view amongst all the rigging - if not, I might hide it behind that spurious figurehead!

I filed the starboard side of the bent knee flat.

I made a pattern on a cigarette paper by the 'brass-rubbing' technique.

Glued the pattern to a piece of 2m walnut for strength and because its final tapered shape would make plywood inadvisable.

I cut the walnut with a piercing saw and sanded it to a wedge shape with a sanding disc in a Proxxon tool. I needed slightly more width at the end and laminated a 1mm slice of walnut to make it symmetrical.

Despite the slip up, yesterday and today have been very interesting sessions. No, actually, that's because of the slip up!

I have been logging my hours working on the Beagle and this days work took me to 140 hours exactly.

While repairs were on my mind I remembered this little slot which had torn out during the many breakings of the knee. It's important because it will be the lower anchor for the gammoning (lashing) which will secure the bowsprit to the knee of the head to resist the upward forces imposed by the spritsails.

I squared up the hole and cut a block of walnut to fill it.

Once that was dry, the knee of the head could be shaped, if that is a 'shape' as opposed to a blob.

Ew.

But black paint hides a million sins!

The last thing I did today was to give the coppering a couple of coats of acrylic varnish as I'd noticed a tendency for some of the tiles to lift at the corners.

So this photograph brings us into the here and now and the frequency of my posts will be slowing down as the amount of things I find to say increases.

I hope you have enjoyed the catching-up.

141:00

 

[GrantTyler]

And finally, last weekend I started work on the head of the ship. You may remember that I'd broken the knee of the head? Well I'd glued it back on once and broken it off again so the mating faces were a little the worse for wear by this stage. However, I glued it on again being very careful to get it straight. A small error here would throw far end of the bowsprit off hugely and cause the boat to sail in circles forever.

The square piece of pearwood will house the hawse holes. Following the OcCre plans the hawse holes are suitable for ropes, hawsers in fact but the kit supplies chains.

Now in 1830, a small boat like this using chains for its anchors would be exceptional but Robert Fitz Roy was very much up to date in all things so it's reasonable to assume he would have insisted on chains. This would require metal hawse holes as a chain running out through a simple wooden plate would rapidly wear it away.

Fortunately for me, there's a compelling reason why I believe that Beagle did NOT have chains to her anchors. Fitz Roy insisted on expensive brass cannons because he did not want to risk magnetic interference caused by large pieced of moveable iron. This could have compromised his compasses and introduced errors into his charting - the main purpose of the voyage. To me it's inconceivable that he would have wanted several tons of iron chain on bard, chain which would have been laid up slightly differently in the cable tier every time the anchors were weighed. Nope. I'm going for good old fashioned rope.

I want the head to look something like this with a grating floor and two sets of 'seats of ease' for the crew.

OcCre want it to look like this, with some fake curly bits made from thick brass rod. I think this is horrible. It's entirely fictional as a small craft like this even as early as 1820 didn't carry this sort of ostentatious decoration. It's also unworkable as the hawse holes are so far inboard that the cable would foul the structure, especially when it was straight up and down.

DISASTER STRIKES

In order to make the head symmetrical, I decided to build one side first and then use that as a pattern to make the other. That was a dumb idea because at some point on the process, the knee of the head, superglued in straight, moved five degrees to port. Probably when I pressed the upper piece of plywood against it. Concentrating on the side elevation I didn't notice this until I'd bent, shaped and firmly glued in the second, lower piece of ply.

Even on this fuzzy photo snapped in anger you can see the significant swerve to port compared with the line of the centre plank of the deck. At the end of the bowsprit that will be 3 inches off centre. So I needed a fix. The superglue is now firmly set, as is the woodglue on the other pieces. I didn't fancy carving it all off and starting from nothing as that would destroy what was left of the knee. So I decided to fake it. I'd carve a plate to go on the starboard side of the knee, thick enough to make it symmetrical about the centreline. The bowsprit would then be straight ahead and the double thickness knee would be hidden beneath it, hidden from the side by the rest of the structure of the head, and difficult to see from below because the model will be on a base. From straight ahead I'm hoping that it will be lost to view amongst all the rigging - if not, I might hide it behind that spurious figurehead!

I filed the starboard side of the bent knee flat.

I made a pattern on a cigarette paper by the 'brass-rubbing' technique.

Glued the pattern to a piece of 2m walnut for strength and because its final tapered shape would make plywood inadvisable.

I cut the walnut with a piercing saw and sanded it to a wedge shape with a sanding disc in a Proxxon tool. I needed slightly more width at the end and laminated a 1mm slice of walnut to make it symmetrical.

Despite the slip up, yesterday and today have been very interesting sessions. No, actually, that's because of the slip up!

I have been logging my hours working on the Beagle and this days work took me to 140 hours exactly.

While repairs were on my mind I remembered this little slot which had torn out during the many breakings of the knee. It's important because it will be the lower anchor for the gammoning (lashing) which will secure the bowsprit to the knee of the head to resist the upward forces imposed by the spritsails.

I squared up the hole and cut a block of walnut to fill it.

Once that was dry, the knee of the head could be shaped, if that is a 'shape' as opposed to a blob.

Ew.

But black paint hides a million sins!

The last thing I did today was to give the coppering a couple of coats of acrylic varnish as I'd noticed a tendency for some of the tiles to lift at the corners.

So this photograph brings us into the here and now and the frequency of my posts will be slowing down as the amount of things I find to say increases.

I hope you have enjoyed the catching-up.

141:00

Good morning Bertie. Man that was a fun read. I enjoyed your process and the photos are great. Thanks for sharing all those challenges and how you fixed them….it is encouraging (especially for guys like myself) to see how repairable working with wood can be. The coppering is “solid” (to use my children’s slang. Your Beagle hull looks awesome. Cheers Grant

 

[Willy from Wigan]

Good morning Bertie. Man that was a fun read. I enjoyed your process and the photos are great.

Hey Grant thank you! The fact that someone enjoyed the build and writing makes me glad . I enjoy the writing slightly more than the building as long as someone else is reading it.

Thanks for sharing all those challenges and how you fixed them….it is encouraging (especially for guys like myself) to see how repairable working with wood can be.

Sometimes it's embarrassing revealing how daft my mistakes are but art imitates life as they say. Recovering from calamities is more satisfying than getting it right first time.

"If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same..."

The coppering is “solid” (to use my children’s slang. Your Beagle hull looks awesome. Cheers Grant

Yes it really did look good last night. It was far too shiny for realism, but gloriously eye catching. I was looking forward to a years long oxidation process as it turned brown and interesting. I was quite pleased with myself.

However, calamity is never far behind hubris and this morning, all has changed. The acrylic varnish, Clear by Humbrol, has reacted with the copper over about half of the surface and turned it to powdery verdigris overnight. (Photographs to follow)

Oh well, stand by for another tale of bodging a solution and then claiming that I actually prefer it that way.

 

[Frank48]

During a comprehensive and expensive refit prior to the Darwin voyage Capt Fitz Roy had the main deck raised by 12 inches at the bow and 8 inches at the stern. This improved the headroom below decks and made the bark far more comfortable for the extended cruise. It may have raised the CoG slightly as the cannons and boats etc all rose commensurately, but since the bulwarks were NOT raised at all, it also reduced the amount of water which could be trapped on deck by them and reduced the chances of the Beagle rolling over to her doom after taking a couple of solid waves over her as had (probably) happened to some 26 others of her 'high waisted' class.

I just measured the height of the bulwarks of my model above the deck and guess what? That modification is not embodied. It's far too late to raise the decks so the question is, do I lower the bulwarks? This will mean that the profile of the boat will be wrong, viewed from outside, it will be too deep in the waist. On the other hand but the appearance of the decks and the equipment on them will be nearer to that seen by the crew. As It stands, the bulwarks appear very high, even to a newbie like me, and looking down on the deck, it has the appearance of a shoebox.

For me the most important parts of a ship are the places where the people were, the deck that Darwin walked, the rails that he puked over. The view from the outside is relatively unimportant to me. It seemed that about 20% of the bulwarks would have to go. Pity I didn't discover this before I planked them inside and out. Bah!

With the lower hull looking good I turned my attention to those pesky bulwarks.

The objective was to cut away 5mm and reduce them to the pencilled line. It was a long cut of what is now a fairly thick part of the structure so sanding the lot off would have been a crude and messy operation. Unless there's no choice, I try to avoid using sandpaper for the removal of material, preferring to keep it for surface finishing.

The first stage was to make these vertical saw cuts not quite to the cut line to get rid of the difficulties that come with long wandering saw cuts. Now I just had small horizontal cuts to make.

On the first side I made these triangles before reversing the saw and cutting off the peaks. As usual, a better way occurred to me in the process and on the other side, I only removed enough so that I could lay the saw horizontal and cut between the vertical incisions, removing more or less rectangular pieces of wood.

That's a Tamiya pull-action razor saw and is a marvellous instrument with a tiny kerf and an edge like a razor. It's the kind of blade that cuts so cleanly into your finger that despite it being a saw you don't realise the problem until you notice the blood. (Or so some careless fool told me )

I'm glad to say that I prefer the appearance of the vessel with the lowered bulwarks. The modification has opened up the deck area to view and also partly hidden the slightly distorted part of the port bulwark which I bent by over-clamping when I glued it on. That wasn't a planned thing but was very welcome.

Some minor external details were added.

I sprayed the hull with all of my Tamiya Tyre Black and then a coat of Panzer Grey shot from above for highlights. Photographed upside down like this the shadows and lights are very obvious around the strakes but when it's the right way up it looks natural and it also looks bigger. Larger things cast deeper shadows and this simple trick simulated that phenomenon quite well.

It's a long time since I airbrushed anything, and a very long time since I airbrushed anything this big. Spraying onto wood/gesso was a first. The Tamiya paints went down well. The Gesso layer is brilliant to paint on. It's like spraying onto paper - the paint stays where you put it. This did make getting into the cracks a bit of a trial as the paint wouldn't flood into them, but it wasn't a serious problem.

The greys came out dead flat and I might need to gloss them up a bit later. That will depend on how weathered I decide to make Beagle and so for now I just polished the dry but not yet hardened surface with some material from a pair of tights (pantyhose). It's excellent on shoes too if you are old-school enough to polish your leather shoes.

At this point I broke off building for several weeks while other things filled my days, returning to sheathe the Beagle's bottom in copper foil only recently. I have a kit of the Charles W Morgan in the wardrobe and learned how to do this type of coppering from that model.

I used real copper self adhesive tape. It can be used to make slug-proof barriers around plant pots or do repairs to PCBs. I think model making has many possible applications for the stuff.

I found a plan in Zu Mondfeld. and cut one of the reels of foil into appropriately sized 'plates'. Starting from the rear and the bottom to ensure the overlaps went in the right direction, I simply tiled the hull. It was a pleasant task and very relaxing after the trauma od the planking!

That's about 40 pieces.

I'd pencilled in the waterline and laid two strakes of Tamiya tape where the top two rows of tiles would lie. As I worked up the hull sides I would meet the Tamiya tape at bow and stern and slowly fill the almond-shaped gap. The foil is thin and when burnished down reveals whatever is underneath. I didn't want to have a jagged edge like broken brickwork under the top two lines of copper so I plated over the masking tape and then carefully cut along the edge of the tape. The triangular waste pieces came away cleanly with the tape.

Two final lines and I had this!

Rinse and repeat on the other side and I had this!! The upsweep may not be 'accurate' but I think it looks mighty fine.

Using a 'riveting' tool for plastic aircraft kits I made nails.

With diluted oil paint, I made the shadows and nails a little stronger. I really should have used enamels because I had a week's wait for the oil paint to dry.

Hello, the assumption of the copper sheets as a rule (not from me) must be superimposed both transversely and longitudinally from the bow to the center of the ship and the reverse from the stern to the center of the ship.

 

[Willy from Wigan]

Hello, the assumption of the copper sheets as a rule (not from me) must be superimposed ...

Thank you for raising this issue Frank.

I have also read that the copper sheets were superimposed both transversely and longitudinally from the bow to the stern of the ship. I think this is more logical because it protects the leading edge of each sheet from ingress of seawater caused by the ship's motion through the water. I guess it was done in both of these ways at different times and different places.

On Beagle the ship was first clad with a 2 inch layer of fir planking over the regular (oak?) planking. Then a layer of felt. Finally the copper. The process added 15 tons to the Beagle's displacement and increased her draft by 6 inches to 13ft aft. I speculate that the extra mass low down would have made her stiffer, less inclined to roll, and capable of standing more sail in windy conditions. The coppering was done as part of Fitz Roy's refit prior to the Darwin Voyage which improved her sailing qualitied greatly under the command of one of the Navy's most capable commanders.

 

[Frank48]

Thank you for raising this issue Frank.

I have also read that the copper sheets were superimposed both transversely and longitudinally from the bow to the stern of the ship. I think this is more logical because it protects the leading edge of each sheet from ingress of seawater caused by the ship's motion through the water. I guess it was done in both of these ways at different times and different places.

On Beagle the ship was first clad with a 2 inch layer of fir planking over the regular (oak?) planking. Then a layer of felt. Finally the copper. The process added 15 tons to the Beagle's displacement and increased her draft by 6 inches to 13ft aft. I speculate that the extra mass low down would have made her stiffer, less inclined to roll, and capable of standing more sail in windy conditions. The coppering was done as part of Fitz Roy's refit prior to the Darwin Voyage which improved her sailing qualitied greatly under the command of one of the Navy's most capable commanders.

Thank you for answering me, on the subject of protection there are various materials and systems, Thanks