This is all excellent information and work.
You have raised the bar for me, hope I can clear it.
You have raised the bar for me, hope I can clear it.
Black Pearl 1:50 ZHL
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Raise your own bar. It will be good.
What nice job on those rails and steps.
I'm not at that point yet but when I get there I'm sure I'll have a few questions for you.
I do agree with you on some of these parts not being cut, I already did a massive kit/scratch build and I wanted this kit to be a relief from that.
For the most part it is, but as you mention in your post more care could have been taken.
Anyway, keep the pics and info coming
Finally got around to typing this up,
I next added the little down turned hook in the photo below. The instructions show this being added in a later step of the second book after everything else on the bow is assembled. I have no clue why so I added it here.
Then I attached parts 27b and 28b and the outer strips as the manual shows.
I didn’t do it myself, but Step 80 shows drilling holes for the line that ties around the bowsprit. After the side pieces are attached but before building any of the framing would be a much better time to do this.
So I decided to go ahead and build the doomaflogen that goes on the front of the bow. Don’t have a clue what it’s called but the thing with all the funny shapes that kind of forms a cage around the front. Rom reading Vic’s thread and many others it appears to be a problem for most everyone in one way or another. In my case the wood this was made from might as well have been dried clay, these things were so brittle it was crazy. Now before bashing ZHL too much I have had the kit here in western Colorado for over a year. Rite now it’s 102 degrees F and 5% humidity. To call this area dry is a massive understatement. Even after soaking the wood for an hour it still pretty much just popped when I tried to bend it. Being lazy I just kind of went with it. I got it glued roughly where it should be and just used some bent pieces of planking to make something that looked kind of like the picture. Here is what I ended up with.
As I mentioned above I didn’t drill the step 80 holes when I should have so I ended up hacking them in from the bottom with a router bit in a Dremel flex shaft.
Next I turned my attention to the catheads. (How about that?I actually know the name of a ship part.) There were some strange things going on here. First the angle the cathead is supposed to lay relative to the deck is questionable. There are two parts with different angles shown for the braces under the cathead. See the photos below.
Next the instructions do show adding a relief but it’s hard to guess how much. I cut mine clear down to the deck level on each side.
And finally one of my favorite parts in the instructions. Here is Pole 2 step 82.
Unfortunately; wouldn’t ya know it, I let a friend use my tiny rectangular hole drill bit and he never returned it.
In all seriousness this isn’t even a picture of a cathead with rectangular holes they just digitally drew some rectangles on it. I’m guess at some point ZHL was thinking there would be wheels in these grooves to hold the anchor, but after seeing the size they decided against it and just moved on. The instructions never explain why you should make these slots or how to attach the anchor once you’ve done it. I have a mill so if I had wanted to I could cut the rectangular slots, but that’s time consuming and I didn’t see any point in it unless the plan is to add the pulley wheels which would just get covered up.
So here is my solution. I just drilled 4 holes in each of the catheads. I will run a line up each inside and down each outside hole to simulate the idea that it’s a block.
Here’s how the front looked after I got done with all the craziness.
Next I did the rails and stair steps on the side of the ship. The stairs are pretty self explanatory, however I got a little hung up on the rails. The parts for the rails seemed way to long to fit on the side of the ship. You have to cut them down for the port side. I did that and threw the short ends in the trash. A while later I figured out that ZHL exprects us to make the short rails for the starboard side from the ends cut off of the port side pieces. Because you have to cut the part you also have to radius the cut ends. So after a little dive into the trashcan and some paint I had these.
I did soak and bend the long ones which didn’t take much effort because the bend is rite where the notch weakened the part to begin with. Here they are on the ship.
Here’s a photo of how it was looking at this point.
I next added the little down turned hook in the photo below. The instructions show this being added in a later step of the second book after everything else on the bow is assembled. I have no clue why so I added it here.
Then I attached parts 27b and 28b and the outer strips as the manual shows.
I didn’t do it myself, but Step 80 shows drilling holes for the line that ties around the bowsprit. After the side pieces are attached but before building any of the framing would be a much better time to do this.
So I decided to go ahead and build the doomaflogen that goes on the front of the bow. Don’t have a clue what it’s called but the thing with all the funny shapes that kind of forms a cage around the front. Rom reading Vic’s thread and many others it appears to be a problem for most everyone in one way or another. In my case the wood this was made from might as well have been dried clay, these things were so brittle it was crazy. Now before bashing ZHL too much I have had the kit here in western Colorado for over a year. Rite now it’s 102 degrees F and 5% humidity. To call this area dry is a massive understatement. Even after soaking the wood for an hour it still pretty much just popped when I tried to bend it. Being lazy I just kind of went with it. I got it glued roughly where it should be and just used some bent pieces of planking to make something that looked kind of like the picture. Here is what I ended up with.
As I mentioned above I didn’t drill the step 80 holes when I should have so I ended up hacking them in from the bottom with a router bit in a Dremel flex shaft.
Next I turned my attention to the catheads. (How about that?I actually know the name of a ship part.) There were some strange things going on here. First the angle the cathead is supposed to lay relative to the deck is questionable. There are two parts with different angles shown for the braces under the cathead. See the photos below.
Next the instructions do show adding a relief but it’s hard to guess how much. I cut mine clear down to the deck level on each side.
And finally one of my favorite parts in the instructions. Here is Pole 2 step 82.
Unfortunately; wouldn’t ya know it, I let a friend use my tiny rectangular hole drill bit and he never returned it.
In all seriousness this isn’t even a picture of a cathead with rectangular holes they just digitally drew some rectangles on it. I’m guess at some point ZHL was thinking there would be wheels in these grooves to hold the anchor, but after seeing the size they decided against it and just moved on. The instructions never explain why you should make these slots or how to attach the anchor once you’ve done it. I have a mill so if I had wanted to I could cut the rectangular slots, but that’s time consuming and I didn’t see any point in it unless the plan is to add the pulley wheels which would just get covered up.
So here is my solution. I just drilled 4 holes in each of the catheads. I will run a line up each inside and down each outside hole to simulate the idea that it’s a block.
Here’s how the front looked after I got done with all the craziness.
Next I did the rails and stair steps on the side of the ship. The stairs are pretty self explanatory, however I got a little hung up on the rails. The parts for the rails seemed way to long to fit on the side of the ship. You have to cut them down for the port side. I did that and threw the short ends in the trash. A while later I figured out that ZHL exprects us to make the short rails for the starboard side from the ends cut off of the port side pieces. Because you have to cut the part you also have to radius the cut ends. So after a little dive into the trashcan and some paint I had these.
I did soak and bend the long ones which didn’t take much effort because the bend is rite where the notch weakened the part to begin with. Here they are on the ship.
Here’s a photo of how it was looking at this point.
At this point I’m getting pretty close to finishing the hull and one of the things I didn’t do yet was attach the rudder. Step I believe 108 has you cut a hole in the bottom of the ship for the top of the rudder. This step should be located clear back just shortly after planking the hull. I’m going to put an edit back in this thread for people that read this later. Being as I hadn’t already done it, and flipping the ship upside down wasn’t really an option at this point, out came the Dremel with the flex shaft.
This should probably have one of those “Don’t try this at home” warning labels. It you’re not really proficient with a Dremel I’d recommend a less nuclear approach. Of course as above hopefull you’ll do this before flipping the ship over becomes a problem.
So here is the hole I hacked in. I was pretty pleased being freehand.
I’m not a huge fan of bending brass into hinges though I’m sure it works fine. I had the hinges below in my parts box. I don’t even know for sure where they came from. My best guess is a Mamoli Constitution kit I got for $100 off of ebay when I was refurbishing my constitution. At any rate I decided to use them
I had to sand the front of the rudder to a radius to fit in the hinges ad then notch the keel as below.
I just bent the excess length of the hinge out to the sides. This makes more sense to me that cutting them off. You wouldn’t want only a couple bolts in the keel and four on the rudder, which would happen if these were cut off. I just glued the hinges on.
I decided to just go with a solid wire through the hinges because I thought it looked neat. Visually fills up what is probably an overly large gap from the keel to the rudder. Here’s the result.
One thing I wanted to mention and should probably show earlier is the framing that goes on the platforms for the mast. Mine ended up pretty broken up by the time I got to this point. I spent a lot of time looking for parts and these are pretty fragile. I would recommend gluing the framing to the platforms much earlier, like the first step when you get to using the second box much. Either that or take that particular laser cut sheet out and set it aside. Here are mine after gluing all the broken parts back together and making filler pieces where I couldn’t find the originals.
Next up was the gun port covers. I have to say rite up front that this has always been my nemesis in the ship modeling world. I’m not sure if it’s just my lack of patients or the fact that by the time I get to this point I’m tired of tedious little pieces of wood projects. But I never do a very good job on these. I’ll go ahead and show what I did, and then go sit in the corner for a while. Definitely find somewhere else to see how to do this rite.
Once again ZHL wants you to drill rectangular holes for the brass struts that hold the rope above the port. Then they want you to build the brass hinges with a nail for the hinge rod that goes in the side of the ship. My favorite part is they show you that in the instructions; and then in the next photo you can see that they failed to accomplish that task themselves, and just glued the back of the hinges to the side of the ship. Clearly that will result in repeatedly knocking the lids off because gluing such a small piece of brass to wood is going to be a really weak joint. I'm way beyond this point in the build rite now but as I type this I’m thinking I should just draw up some gun port lids and have them printed if I do another ship that needs them. That would allow me to mold in pins to attach them to the side of the ship. Could even print the ropes with it. That’s a project for another time.
What I did was cut the back of the hinges off and made an L shaped piece I could glue to the top of the gun port. I used it to hold the line from the port lid. This allows me to glue the wood to the side of the ship and should make the lids really sturdy.
I wouldn’t recommend this but on the overall ship they will do the trick. I don’t expect anyone who sees this anywhere but here on the forum would think there was anything wrong here. So this is how it looks.
This should probably have one of those “Don’t try this at home” warning labels. It you’re not really proficient with a Dremel I’d recommend a less nuclear approach. Of course as above hopefull you’ll do this before flipping the ship over becomes a problem.
So here is the hole I hacked in. I was pretty pleased being freehand.
I’m not a huge fan of bending brass into hinges though I’m sure it works fine. I had the hinges below in my parts box. I don’t even know for sure where they came from. My best guess is a Mamoli Constitution kit I got for $100 off of ebay when I was refurbishing my constitution. At any rate I decided to use them
I had to sand the front of the rudder to a radius to fit in the hinges ad then notch the keel as below.
I just bent the excess length of the hinge out to the sides. This makes more sense to me that cutting them off. You wouldn’t want only a couple bolts in the keel and four on the rudder, which would happen if these were cut off. I just glued the hinges on.
I decided to just go with a solid wire through the hinges because I thought it looked neat. Visually fills up what is probably an overly large gap from the keel to the rudder. Here’s the result.
One thing I wanted to mention and should probably show earlier is the framing that goes on the platforms for the mast. Mine ended up pretty broken up by the time I got to this point. I spent a lot of time looking for parts and these are pretty fragile. I would recommend gluing the framing to the platforms much earlier, like the first step when you get to using the second box much. Either that or take that particular laser cut sheet out and set it aside. Here are mine after gluing all the broken parts back together and making filler pieces where I couldn’t find the originals.
Next up was the gun port covers. I have to say rite up front that this has always been my nemesis in the ship modeling world. I’m not sure if it’s just my lack of patients or the fact that by the time I get to this point I’m tired of tedious little pieces of wood projects. But I never do a very good job on these. I’ll go ahead and show what I did, and then go sit in the corner for a while. Definitely find somewhere else to see how to do this rite.
Once again ZHL wants you to drill rectangular holes for the brass struts that hold the rope above the port. Then they want you to build the brass hinges with a nail for the hinge rod that goes in the side of the ship. My favorite part is they show you that in the instructions; and then in the next photo you can see that they failed to accomplish that task themselves, and just glued the back of the hinges to the side of the ship. Clearly that will result in repeatedly knocking the lids off because gluing such a small piece of brass to wood is going to be a really weak joint. I'm way beyond this point in the build rite now but as I type this I’m thinking I should just draw up some gun port lids and have them printed if I do another ship that needs them. That would allow me to mold in pins to attach them to the side of the ship. Could even print the ropes with it. That’s a project for another time.
What I did was cut the back of the hinges off and made an L shaped piece I could glue to the top of the gun port. I used it to hold the line from the port lid. This allows me to glue the wood to the side of the ship and should make the lids really sturdy.
I wouldn’t recommend this but on the overall ship they will do the trick. I don’t expect anyone who sees this anywhere but here on the forum would think there was anything wrong here. So this is how it looks.
Those hinges were fiddly little things. I did pretty much the same thing on my rudder. I was wondering, did your brackets for the bow piece fit? I wound up just breaking them and gluing what was left in some kind of pattern. Later, when I was working on the rigging, I think, I broke them off and had to reglue them. I was amazed that my gun ports pretty much stayed on. Looking good, Jodie. Some parts look a lot better than mine!
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Jodie, great write-up....boy I’m glad I had Vic and you to follow because we have the same version of the Pearl! I’m also picking up a lot from the guys with the Golden Pearl version too! I finally fit my main deck and finished up everything on the gun deck....tomorrow is main deck gluing! Thanks again for all the tips you are sharing.
I moved onto the anchors next. I glued the wood parts together and didn’t notice that they want you to recess the outer two pieces. They clearly didn’t plan this rite and designed it so the anchor fit 90 degrees from where it belongs, like seen below.
They tell you not to cut down the anchor shaft but I did it anyway. Here’s the result prior to adding the anchor details.
Next up was the life boats. There are three boats and near as I can tell all three are identical. In the instruction they show one picture with the parts labeled D1-DX etc. and another picture labeled C1-CX. After studying the plans there aren’t any C parts for the boats.
As is typical they don't really give you a good order but this made sense to me, I started by gluing the three keel parts together. I'm guessing the idea ZHL had was that you're supposed to cut a rabbet into the stem piece on the back side along the stem. I didn't do that and it didn't help.
The next mission was to fare the frames. These are pretty small so a bit of a challenge but they are scored for fairing and I was guessing this would be easier to do before they’re attached to the little keel. There is just one on the front and one on the rear.
After that I attached the frames and benches to the keel. These don’t quite fit right so they could be adjusted a little. I didn’t want to make a major project of these little boats so I just forged ahead.
Then I attached the upper rails and this is what I came up with. So after you admire my crappy job of fitting these together I want to draw your attention to one particular point. Look on the left side of the photo, on the top of the stem of the middle boat, you can see the upper rail (the rail that is largely hidden by the keel of the boat in the foreground). These rails have a notch in them. If you want to build these correctly you need to cut the rabbet on the stem mentioned above. If you don't do this and get these in the correct location the parts provided for the upper plank around the boat will be too short.
I left the life boats sit a while do to frustration that will be discussed later and worked on some other projects.
The next thing I did was took a look at the bow sprit. I sanded the sprit in a power drill to put a little taper on it. Then I put it in. It seemed to me to be pointing up way too much. So, I cut the top of the keel piece down enough to bring the bow sprit to parallel the framing below it. That is roughly the angle indicated on the plans.
I also cut the dowels for the lower portions of the three masts at this time just because I had everything out. I test fit them in the holes in the main deck and they looked good. I did check them when I was setting the decks. So that was in good shape.
However; I missed a little detail. I tried to slide the capstan onto the main main mast and it got stuck. It stuck because when I built it I drilled through sides to put in the hook for the chains and the brass hooks protruded into where the mast should be. Somehow this managed to function kind of like a zip tie, and by the time I got the capstan to break loose from the mast, it did just that.
That didn’t make me particularly happy, but what’s that saying… You have to break a few capstans to make a Black Pearl? …. Or something like that.
Anyway I moved forward with the bow sprit and painted it, then glued it in and tied the rope to hold it in place. It seems to me that something here is located in the wrong place. I think the ropes should be perpendicular to the bow sprit. Doesn’t really matter on a model but the rope in this configuration should want to side down and the bow sprit would likely loosen over time. But it is a model.
They tell you not to cut down the anchor shaft but I did it anyway. Here’s the result prior to adding the anchor details.
Next up was the life boats. There are three boats and near as I can tell all three are identical. In the instruction they show one picture with the parts labeled D1-DX etc. and another picture labeled C1-CX. After studying the plans there aren’t any C parts for the boats.
As is typical they don't really give you a good order but this made sense to me, I started by gluing the three keel parts together. I'm guessing the idea ZHL had was that you're supposed to cut a rabbet into the stem piece on the back side along the stem. I didn't do that and it didn't help.
The next mission was to fare the frames. These are pretty small so a bit of a challenge but they are scored for fairing and I was guessing this would be easier to do before they’re attached to the little keel. There is just one on the front and one on the rear.
After that I attached the frames and benches to the keel. These don’t quite fit right so they could be adjusted a little. I didn’t want to make a major project of these little boats so I just forged ahead.
Then I attached the upper rails and this is what I came up with. So after you admire my crappy job of fitting these together I want to draw your attention to one particular point. Look on the left side of the photo, on the top of the stem of the middle boat, you can see the upper rail (the rail that is largely hidden by the keel of the boat in the foreground). These rails have a notch in them. If you want to build these correctly you need to cut the rabbet on the stem mentioned above. If you don't do this and get these in the correct location the parts provided for the upper plank around the boat will be too short.
I left the life boats sit a while do to frustration that will be discussed later and worked on some other projects.
The next thing I did was took a look at the bow sprit. I sanded the sprit in a power drill to put a little taper on it. Then I put it in. It seemed to me to be pointing up way too much. So, I cut the top of the keel piece down enough to bring the bow sprit to parallel the framing below it. That is roughly the angle indicated on the plans.
I also cut the dowels for the lower portions of the three masts at this time just because I had everything out. I test fit them in the holes in the main deck and they looked good. I did check them when I was setting the decks. So that was in good shape.
However; I missed a little detail. I tried to slide the capstan onto the main main mast and it got stuck. It stuck because when I built it I drilled through sides to put in the hook for the chains and the brass hooks protruded into where the mast should be. Somehow this managed to function kind of like a zip tie, and by the time I got the capstan to break loose from the mast, it did just that.
That didn’t make me particularly happy, but what’s that saying… You have to break a few capstans to make a Black Pearl? …. Or something like that.
Anyway I moved forward with the bow sprit and painted it, then glued it in and tied the rope to hold it in place. It seems to me that something here is located in the wrong place. I think the ropes should be perpendicular to the bow sprit. Doesn’t really matter on a model but the rope in this configuration should want to side down and the bow sprit would likely loosen over time. But it is a model.
A week after the fiasco above, I decided I wanted to do something but didn’t feel like doing the life boat planking or other logical things so I went ahead and mounted the figurehead. I used epoxy to both glue this on and glue the wings and arm on. It was a bit of a chore waiting for it to set up but think you really need to wait on at least the arm to make sure it looks correct with the angle of the bow sprit. The arm is pinned in but there is quite a bit of play in the joint. Like the rest of the statues I think it’s too white but the admiral likes it. I’m guessing it’ll somehow weather a little more than you might expect something just sitting on a shelf to do in a fairly short period of time.
I then went ahead and attached the rear decorations as well. Part of the reason I did this it I’m going to embellish the rigging from what is shown in the plans and need to make sure I can attach extra lines in certain general locations and miss the decoration.
Here’s a view of where I’m at, at this point. Somewhere along the way I glued in the belaying pins in all of the holes I made for them along with the ones shown in the manual. I had to but about 20 extra pins from model expo to fill in all the holes, and left them bare brass for decorative purposes.
My next little project before I got to where I couldn’t do it, was to make some fake mast hoops, wooldings, wingdings, whatever you want to call them. I decided to take the lazy way out and just cut a bunch of electrical heat shrink to the same width, which I just eyeballed the first one, and made the rest the same. This has to be done before you put something in the way of sliding the heat shrink up the mast if you’re going to do it.
And here’s what it looks like when it’s done. I did all three masts.
The next thing I decided to do having put it off for quite a while is to detail the anchors. The rings on the anchor are once again, electric heat shrink, and then I drilled it for the copper nails, and added the brass rings.
I then made the big blocks for holding the anchors from the catheads. I just set these parts aside as the anchors are huge and I think they will likely be in the way while rigging and I think one end needs to wedged in around the deadeyes for the foremast.
I then rebuilt the capstan around the bottom of the main mast. I tossed out the broken parts that were originally on the capstan and just replaced them with pieces of a 1mm X 4mm strip of wood cut to length and angled a bit on the ends. Then added the hooks and chain like I did originally. I think it looks fine. I’d highly recommend waiting till you’re ready to prep the main mast before building the capstan and then just built it around the mast. You could do it earlier than this point in the build. But built it around the mast.
Now I need to acknowledge the advice I gave to @Jeff T to fix his deadeye layout. I should have re-built these boats correctly. I feel a bit of a hypocrite, like a smoker telling someone not to smoke. So sorry Jeff no offense met I should fix these. I know I'm not following my own advice here.
My next mission was to turn my attention back to planking the lifeboats. I carefully and painstakingly formed the strakes from fine ebony and blood wood taking about a day per plank until the upper railings were perfectly aligned within a tenth of mm. Then formed the garboard strake from fresh sawn Alaskan cedar because of the wonderful flexibility of the freshly cut planks.
so who am I kidding here?
I successfully built several small lifeboats similar to these in the past, but this just wasn’t going to happen. What happened next was a full on soup sandwich. I tried at least 3 times to get the upper rails to match up with barely passable results, followed by totally failing to get the next plank down to fit. My original framing was out of whack to the point of forcing the outer plank wide making it too short to work. I ended up cutting a portion on the front framing off so the planks could reach the stem. And finally after getting the upper planks in place and trying three times to form the next plank down, I just gave up on the idea of planking these things with wood at all. So I tried card stock with about the same results I planked one side of one boat. It looked so bad with the gaps I tore that off and moved to plan G. That’s G for Gorilla Tape.
Basically I just don’t have the patients at this point to spend a couple weeks working on planking life boats. So In my haste, I planked them with strips of Gorilla Tape. Here’s the results. It’s not great, but for 20 minutes work and a little painting It’s good enough for me.
I then went ahead and attached the rear decorations as well. Part of the reason I did this it I’m going to embellish the rigging from what is shown in the plans and need to make sure I can attach extra lines in certain general locations and miss the decoration.
Here’s a view of where I’m at, at this point. Somewhere along the way I glued in the belaying pins in all of the holes I made for them along with the ones shown in the manual. I had to but about 20 extra pins from model expo to fill in all the holes, and left them bare brass for decorative purposes.
My next little project before I got to where I couldn’t do it, was to make some fake mast hoops, wooldings, wingdings, whatever you want to call them. I decided to take the lazy way out and just cut a bunch of electrical heat shrink to the same width, which I just eyeballed the first one, and made the rest the same. This has to be done before you put something in the way of sliding the heat shrink up the mast if you’re going to do it.
And here’s what it looks like when it’s done. I did all three masts.
The next thing I decided to do having put it off for quite a while is to detail the anchors. The rings on the anchor are once again, electric heat shrink, and then I drilled it for the copper nails, and added the brass rings.
I then made the big blocks for holding the anchors from the catheads. I just set these parts aside as the anchors are huge and I think they will likely be in the way while rigging and I think one end needs to wedged in around the deadeyes for the foremast.
I then rebuilt the capstan around the bottom of the main mast. I tossed out the broken parts that were originally on the capstan and just replaced them with pieces of a 1mm X 4mm strip of wood cut to length and angled a bit on the ends. Then added the hooks and chain like I did originally. I think it looks fine. I’d highly recommend waiting till you’re ready to prep the main mast before building the capstan and then just built it around the mast. You could do it earlier than this point in the build. But built it around the mast.
Now I need to acknowledge the advice I gave to @Jeff T to fix his deadeye layout. I should have re-built these boats correctly. I feel a bit of a hypocrite, like a smoker telling someone not to smoke. So sorry Jeff no offense met I should fix these. I know I'm not following my own advice here.
My next mission was to turn my attention back to planking the lifeboats. I carefully and painstakingly formed the strakes from fine ebony and blood wood taking about a day per plank until the upper railings were perfectly aligned within a tenth of mm. Then formed the garboard strake from fresh sawn Alaskan cedar because of the wonderful flexibility of the freshly cut planks.
so who am I kidding here?I successfully built several small lifeboats similar to these in the past, but this just wasn’t going to happen. What happened next was a full on soup sandwich. I tried at least 3 times to get the upper rails to match up with barely passable results, followed by totally failing to get the next plank down to fit. My original framing was out of whack to the point of forcing the outer plank wide making it too short to work. I ended up cutting a portion on the front framing off so the planks could reach the stem. And finally after getting the upper planks in place and trying three times to form the next plank down, I just gave up on the idea of planking these things with wood at all. So I tried card stock with about the same results I planked one side of one boat. It looked so bad with the gaps I tore that off and moved to plan G. That’s G for Gorilla Tape.
Basically I just don’t have the patients at this point to spend a couple weeks working on planking life boats. So In my haste, I planked them with strips of Gorilla Tape. Here’s the results. It’s not great, but for 20 minutes work and a little painting It’s good enough for me.
I’m there with you, Buddy! I broke so many pieces in the process of making the boats, I only had enough pieces left for two of them. And those two boats had issues. I did manage to get them planked. There were spaces between the planks, but I filled them with glue and sawdust. After placing the boats on the hatch, I noticed you couldn’t see much detail on the hulls anyway. And the capstan gave me nightmares. I built it after installing the mast, only to discover I couldn’t drill holes for the hooks from the rear because of lack of room for my Dremel. I opted to delete the extraneous chain. I think we both did fine, considering. I love the model. The instructions leave much to be desired.A week after the fiasco above, I decided I wanted to do something but didn’t feel like doing the life boat planking or other logical things so I went ahead and mounted the figurehead. I used epoxy to both glue this on and glue the wings and arm on. It was a bit of a chore waiting for it to set up but think you really need to wait on at least the arm to make sure it looks correct with the angle of the bow sprit. The arm is pinned in but there is quite a bit of play in the joint. Like the rest of the statues I think it’s too white but the admiral likes it. I’m guessing it’ll somehow weather a little more than you might expect something just sitting on a shelf to do in a fairly short period of time.
View attachment 242395
I then went ahead and attached the rear decorations as well. Part of the reason I did this it I’m going to embellish the rigging from what is shown in the plans and need to make sure I can attach extra lines in certain general locations and miss the decoration.
View attachment 242396
Here’s a view of where I’m at, at this point. Somewhere along the way I glued in the belaying pins in all of the holes I made for them along with the ones shown in the manual. I had to but about 20 extra pins from model expo to fill in all the holes, and left them bare brass for decorative purposes.
View attachment 242397
View attachment 242398
My next little project before I got to where I couldn’t do it, was to make some fake mast hoops, wooldings, wingdings, whatever you want to call them. I decided to take the lazy way out and just cut a bunch of electrical heat shrink to the same width, which I just eyeballed the first one, and made the rest the same. This has to be done before you put something in the way of sliding the heat shrink up the mast if you’re going to do it.
View attachment 242399
And here’s what it looks like when it’s done. I did all three masts.
View attachment 242400
The next thing I decided to do having put it off for quite a while is to detail the anchors. The rings on the anchor are once again, electric heat shrink, and then I drilled it for the copper nails, and added the brass rings.
View attachment 242401
I then made the big blocks for holding the anchors from the catheads. I just set these parts aside as the anchors are huge and I think they will likely be in the way while rigging and I think one end needs to wedged in around the deadeyes for the foremast.
View attachment 242402
I then rebuilt the capstan around the bottom of the main mast. I tossed out the broken parts that were originally on the capstan and just replaced them with pieces of a 1mm X 4mm strip of wood cut to length and angled a bit on the ends. Then added the hooks and chain like I did originally. I think it looks fine. I’d highly recommend waiting till you’re ready to prep the main mast before building the capstan and then just built it around the mast. You could do it earlier than this point in the build. But built it around the mast.
View attachment 242403
Now I need to acknowledge the advice I gave to @Jeff T to fix his deadeye layout. I should have re-built these boats correctly. I feel a bit of a hypocrite, like a smoker telling someone not to smoke. So sorry Jeff no offense met I should fix these. I know I'm not following my own advice here.
My next mission was to turn my attention back to planking the lifeboats. I carefully and painstakingly formed the strakes from fine ebony and blood wood taking about a day per plank until the upper railings were perfectly aligned within a tenth of mm. Then formed the garboard strake from fresh sawn Alaskan cedar because of the wonderful flexibility of the freshly cut planks.
I successfully built several small lifeboats similar to these in the past, but this just wasn’t going to happen. What happened next was a full on soup sandwich. I tried at least 3 times to get the upper rails to match up with barely passable results, followed by totally failing to get the next plank down to fit. My original framing was out of whack to the point of forcing the outer plank wide making it too short to work. I ended up cutting a portion on the front framing off so the planks could reach the stem. And finally after getting the upper planks in place and trying three times to form the next plank down, I just gave up on the idea of planking these things with wood at all. So I tried card stock with about the same results I planked one side of one boat. It looked so bad with the gaps I tore that off and moved to plan G. That’s G for Gorilla Tape.
Basically I just don’t have the patients at this point to spend a couple weeks working on planking life boats. So In my haste, I planked them with strips of Gorilla Tape. Here’s the results. It’s not great, but for 20 minutes work and a little painting It’s good enough for me.
View attachment 242404
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- Joined
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- 168
Wow! Jodie I don’t know where to start! From the anchors to the bow spirit to the lifeboats….so much information! I appreciate all the info you are providing us novices! Your Pearl is really looking great! I keep referring back to Vic’s and your builds! I’m finishing up the Captain’s Quarters this week and I have a lot of soldering up next with some crazy light options! Keep the updates coming! Thanks!A week after the fiasco above, I decided I wanted to do something but didn’t feel like doing the life boat planking or other logical things so I went ahead and mounted the figurehead. I used epoxy to both glue this on and glue the wings and arm on. It was a bit of a chore waiting for it to set up but think you really need to wait on at least the arm to make sure it looks correct with the angle of the bow sprit. The arm is pinned in but there is quite a bit of play in the joint. Like the rest of the statues I think it’s too white but the admiral likes it. I’m guessing it’ll somehow weather a little more than you might expect something just sitting on a shelf to do in a fairly short period of time.
View attachment 242395
I then went ahead and attached the rear decorations as well. Part of the reason I did this it I’m going to embellish the rigging from what is shown in the plans and need to make sure I can attach extra lines in certain general locations and miss the decoration.
View attachment 242396
Here’s a view of where I’m at, at this point. Somewhere along the way I glued in the belaying pins in all of the holes I made for them along with the ones shown in the manual. I had to but about 20 extra pins from model expo to fill in all the holes, and left them bare brass for decorative purposes.
View attachment 242397
View attachment 242398
My next little project before I got to where I couldn’t do it, was to make some fake mast hoops, wooldings, wingdings, whatever you want to call them. I decided to take the lazy way out and just cut a bunch of electrical heat shrink to the same width, which I just eyeballed the first one, and made the rest the same. This has to be done before you put something in the way of sliding the heat shrink up the mast if you’re going to do it.
View attachment 242399
And here’s what it looks like when it’s done. I did all three masts.
View attachment 242400
The next thing I decided to do having put it off for quite a while is to detail the anchors. The rings on the anchor are once again, electric heat shrink, and then I drilled it for the copper nails, and added the brass rings.
View attachment 242401
I then made the big blocks for holding the anchors from the catheads. I just set these parts aside as the anchors are huge and I think they will likely be in the way while rigging and I think one end needs to wedged in around the deadeyes for the foremast.
View attachment 242402
I then rebuilt the capstan around the bottom of the main mast. I tossed out the broken parts that were originally on the capstan and just replaced them with pieces of a 1mm X 4mm strip of wood cut to length and angled a bit on the ends. Then added the hooks and chain like I did originally. I think it looks fine. I’d highly recommend waiting till you’re ready to prep the main mast before building the capstan and then just built it around the mast. You could do it earlier than this point in the build. But built it around the mast.
View attachment 242403
Now I need to acknowledge the advice I gave to @Jeff T to fix his deadeye layout. I should have re-built these boats correctly. I feel a bit of a hypocrite, like a smoker telling someone not to smoke. So sorry Jeff no offense met I should fix these. I know I'm not following my own advice here.
My next mission was to turn my attention back to planking the lifeboats. I carefully and painstakingly formed the strakes from fine ebony and blood wood taking about a day per plank until the upper railings were perfectly aligned within a tenth of mm. Then formed the garboard strake from fresh sawn Alaskan cedar because of the wonderful flexibility of the freshly cut planks.
I successfully built several small lifeboats similar to these in the past, but this just wasn’t going to happen. What happened next was a full on soup sandwich. I tried at least 3 times to get the upper rails to match up with barely passable results, followed by totally failing to get the next plank down to fit. My original framing was out of whack to the point of forcing the outer plank wide making it too short to work. I ended up cutting a portion on the front framing off so the planks could reach the stem. And finally after getting the upper planks in place and trying three times to form the next plank down, I just gave up on the idea of planking these things with wood at all. So I tried card stock with about the same results I planked one side of one boat. It looked so bad with the gaps I tore that off and moved to plan G. That’s G for Gorilla Tape.
Basically I just don’t have the patients at this point to spend a couple weeks working on planking life boats. So In my haste, I planked them with strips of Gorilla Tape. Here’s the results. It’s not great, but for 20 minutes work and a little painting It’s good enough for me.
View attachment 242404
View attachment 242405
Just got up to date with your build somehow I missed the last few posts. First you've made excellent progress and overcome some major issues,a your BP is really looking good.
I like the idea of using heatshrik on the mast and anchors that would have saved me a lot of time. I also had a lot of trouble with the lifeboat luckily I only had one and I'm ready to give up with the instructions. My rigging plan needs a lot of work I've found 3 lines attached to the same point.
I like the idea of using heatshrik on the mast and anchors that would have saved me a lot of time. I also had a lot of trouble with the lifeboat luckily I only had one and I'm ready to give up with the instructions. My rigging plan needs a lot of work I've found 3 lines attached to the same point.
Some of the lines have to be tied off to the side rails--no belaying pins. I also wound up having a couple of lines tied to the aft yoke-looking cleat thingy. The directions didn't have braces for the bottoms of the shrouds and the stay sails, so I just improvised. I looked at a lot of pictures to see how lateen sails were tied off to get an idea where they might be tied. Not a lot out there.
I decided the next project I would start is to build the masts. I first went in and cut the mid and upper mast sections and yard arms to the length shown on one of the full sized plans Between the first pole and the 3rd pole most of the diameters for the spars etc are listed in a table in the front of the manual. I wasn’t really happy with some of the diameters and changed a couple out with dowels a couple mm’s thicker. I had a lot of the thicker dowels left over. I popped out and trimmed the laser cut parts for the third pole and put them together.
Here I spent quite a bit of time looking at the plans and the photos in the manual. One thing that struck me as odd was the ratio of the bow sprit to the masts. The bow sprit looks stubby and kind of naked. And the masts seem disproportionately tall. After looking a little closer I realized that there was an extra section on both the fore and main mast. While it’s not unusual to see a mast tree above the top sail on a mast, I don’t ever remember seeing a mast cap and an entire extra section of mast above the top sail. It probably exists somewhere but not on the ships I have. I think ZHL got carried away trying to add some more interest and made the mast an extra section too complicated. I say too complicated instead of too tall because I think the mast should be taller than where the upper mast cap is in the instructions but not as tall as it is on the plans. I also think the center section of the masts seemed out of proportion. So I made the center section of the fore and main masts an inch shorter than the plans and also made the top section an inch shorter than the plan shows for the top two sections.
Then while I was at it I cut the stubby looking bow sprit back and added another section so it’s about 4 inches longer than the plans show. Here is how the proportions look now. None of the masts are glued in or completely glued together in this photo, so don’t panic about them not being quite straight.
My next mission was to add the rails to the rear of the lower platforms. For the Fore Mast and Main Mast I used the tall eyelets included in the kit and first pin drilled the holes, then glued the wires in. The next morning I cut the excess off of both the top and the bottom. The photo below is of the Main Mast.
Then I went to work tapering and assembling the yard arms and upper mast sections. I would explain how I did it but I’m pretty sure that would facilitate a visit from OSHA. It involved multiple power tools used in other than intended ways, but other than sanding the skin off of one knuckle, no monkeys were harmed in making these parts.
Next up I found the center of the yard arms and pinned them for the mast. Every square rigger ship model I’ve built shows the yards just being tied to the mast. I find it much easier to pin it in and then add the rope and blocks to make it look tied on. One again I used the long eyebolts and just cut pices to length after glueing them in.
Now while I was at it I made a sprit boom. I don’t plan on adding a sail here it’s main purpose is to make the bow sprit look more supported and complex instead of just having a single boom sticking out. Before putting it on I also added some eyelets across the top to hold the rigging. You can also see eye bolts added to the front of the catheads.
Then I painted the upper potions of the masts. These are still not glued in but here’s a good idea of how they’re looking.
Here I spent quite a bit of time looking at the plans and the photos in the manual. One thing that struck me as odd was the ratio of the bow sprit to the masts. The bow sprit looks stubby and kind of naked. And the masts seem disproportionately tall. After looking a little closer I realized that there was an extra section on both the fore and main mast. While it’s not unusual to see a mast tree above the top sail on a mast, I don’t ever remember seeing a mast cap and an entire extra section of mast above the top sail. It probably exists somewhere but not on the ships I have. I think ZHL got carried away trying to add some more interest and made the mast an extra section too complicated. I say too complicated instead of too tall because I think the mast should be taller than where the upper mast cap is in the instructions but not as tall as it is on the plans. I also think the center section of the masts seemed out of proportion. So I made the center section of the fore and main masts an inch shorter than the plans and also made the top section an inch shorter than the plan shows for the top two sections.
Then while I was at it I cut the stubby looking bow sprit back and added another section so it’s about 4 inches longer than the plans show. Here is how the proportions look now. None of the masts are glued in or completely glued together in this photo, so don’t panic about them not being quite straight.
My next mission was to add the rails to the rear of the lower platforms. For the Fore Mast and Main Mast I used the tall eyelets included in the kit and first pin drilled the holes, then glued the wires in. The next morning I cut the excess off of both the top and the bottom. The photo below is of the Main Mast.
Then I went to work tapering and assembling the yard arms and upper mast sections. I would explain how I did it but I’m pretty sure that would facilitate a visit from OSHA. It involved multiple power tools used in other than intended ways, but other than sanding the skin off of one knuckle, no monkeys were harmed in making these parts.
Next up I found the center of the yard arms and pinned them for the mast. Every square rigger ship model I’ve built shows the yards just being tied to the mast. I find it much easier to pin it in and then add the rope and blocks to make it look tied on. One again I used the long eyebolts and just cut pices to length after glueing them in.
Now while I was at it I made a sprit boom. I don’t plan on adding a sail here it’s main purpose is to make the bow sprit look more supported and complex instead of just having a single boom sticking out. Before putting it on I also added some eyelets across the top to hold the rigging. You can also see eye bolts added to the front of the catheads.
Then I painted the upper potions of the masts. These are still not glued in but here’s a good idea of how they’re looking.
What color paint did you use for the masts? Is it metallic black? I also was not pleased with my stubby bowsprit. It looked stunted and the jobs were disproportionate. And now that you mentioned it, my Connie doesn’t have the extra cap above the topsail.
Nice progress, I like the bowsprit I always felt mine didn't look quite right and the masts only needed 3 sections. As all my parts where made I decided to go with plan.
Vic - The masts are painted with Pearlized Black colored Createx Airbrush Colors. Love this particular paint line. It's available at Hobby Lobby in the US.
Interesting design idea. I used the pearlized white for the lintels of my staircase and ballistrade.