, mess cleaned up (although the "messy" seems to be omnipresent with me), so I'm trying to do other messy jobs, things that create sanding or cutting dust, which goes everywhere, before doing any more to the inside of the model.
To be honest, I'd planned on cutting the rudder into at least 2 pieces, instead of making the hole in the stern for it to go through. I reasoned that with the leather seal, no one would see it. But I was unsure what, if anything, would cover that hole in the captain's cabin, so decided to make a hole instead. I laid out the rudder post and angle it would swing, and felt that a 3/8" hole would create most of the opening, requiring only filing to complete. To help keep the drill bit in the right location, I made a little guide to help position it:
Which then positioned in place to drill the hole:
Drilling went okay, with the hole mostly where it should be:
Yeah, that's what I mean about messy. Hard to do finish construction when you're going to make a mess like this later.
Afterwards, the hole was shaped to the rudder a little better:
And the rudder does fit, although the hole is probably a bit oversize towards the rear:
Next - on to the Barrels for the hold. In Goodwin's book he states that the stores for the similar ship Thunder included 7 Puncheons, 50 Hogshead and 22 Half Hogsheads of water, and 35 Puncheons of beer, so it is logical that this ship had as many barrels as it could fit. While it is true that the accompanying tender would also supply a lot of it, I can't see the sailors letting another ship keep all its beer.
Most of the barrels listed are Hogsheads, about 37" high and 28" in diameter, so I designed 3d models in Fusion 360, and my son made a bunch for me. (The kit came with some nice wood & brass barrels, but they weren't quite the right size and I know from my Bonhomme Richard model that I didn't do a great job on them, so that's why the 3d ones.) Since anchor rope would take up so much of the hold, I felt the area to the sides of the mortar supports was the best location. Those areas could fit 4 Hogsheads end-to-end or 5 Half-Hogsheads, so I glued the barrels end-to-end to keep them in place:
I went ahead and placed about as many barrels as possible in those two sizes one the side of the ship which is closed in:
They will probably not really be visible there, but I still felt the need to locate them. I don't want to put many/any barrels in this location on the open starboard side, as they would block visibility of the mortar magazine, one of the most important features of the ship. For that area, I wanted to show a minimum of barrels, to provide better visibility but indicate that the area would be used for storage, so mounted just a couple barrels on barrel support strips:
I'd like to mount them now, but they will be very fragile, so may wait a bit. As you can see, I've left off some of the cross members to allow better access to mount all of these barrels. Here the barrels adjacent to the mortar magazines have been placed on the port side:
I also reasoned that larger Puncheon barrels would be placed in the small aft hold, as well as a portion of the main hold not occupied by anchor ropes, so added them as well as a few Hogsheads:
Naturally, I had to keep barrels from blocking the access doors to the mortar magazine, so that limited placement in the main hold.
The aft hold didn't have that restriction, but space for sailor access had to be allowed for:
Thus, we have the hull up to this point:
You may have noticed that I completed cutting of the cannon ports; I'd delayed that, thinking it might weaken the structure and allow the top of the structure to move, but it didn't seem to.
Jumping around in the construction, I wanted to have a good idea of how the stern decoration would fit. The instructions show the backing strip to be applied first, then the decoration over it, but being not sure how I was going to finish the decoration, I decided to glue these pieces together first and finish off the ship:
I tried to apply a slight curve to match the stern during gluing, but it didn't really "take". I'll have to force it a bit. I also went ahead and added the extremely fragile edge molding to the assembly, measuring to determine how much overhang was required:
In looking at the carving with my 3 diopter reading/modeling glasses, I thought it didn't need any cleanup. I see from the photo that I was wrong:
I'm not certainly how to clean this up. I think I will be gilding this panel, so paint will help fill in some problem areas, but I definitely have some cleanup to do.
Until next time -- Thanks for the comments and suggestions, they really help!
