French cutter Le Cerf from Ancre drawings, scale 1/48

Moxis

Moxis

Joined
Jul 27, 2018
Messages
367
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278

Location
Finland
After a wish from Jimsky, I try to write a short build blog about the French cutter Le Cerf, which I have built a few years ago and published then at Model Ship World forum. Unfortunately I don`t have any more all the pictures of the building process, and don`t necessarily remember how and in which order I made the model, but I try to write as much as I remember.

In the beginning of 2016 after having finished my previous project I was thinking what to build next. I was searching from Internet all possible vendors of drawing packages for relatively simple but still attractive models with few masts, not so complicated rigging and a number of guns. Soon I found French Ancre, who is offering very nice documentation packages for interesting ships, and quite soon I found the cutter Le Cerf which fullfilled my needs nicely and was not very expensive, so I placed my order for an english language documentation package:

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The package arrived in a few days waiting, and after having searched what it included I found that there was a long story about the ship and it`s history & 12 sheets of nicely drawn plans, so it was quite easy to start building.

As always, first I was preparing a building board which is straight and sturdy enough, and this time I selected a piece of a very old bookshelf to be my building base. On that board I was installing some brackets for the keel to keep it straight, and having the possibility to fasten the hull also upside down to be able to make both the hull and deck planking:

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The next step was to start making the bulkheads. Drawing was placed on a self made light box, and on that box it is possible to draw all the half bulkheads on paper by seeing through the paper. When they were all drawn, they were glued onto thicker cardboard, and templates for full bulkheads were cut away and drawn on 12 mm thick balsa plywood from which material the final bulkheads were sawn with a bandsaw. Unfortunately I have no pictures left of the bulkheads, but here is the process of making the templates for them:

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To be continued.....
 
Hello Moxis,
We are all grateful that you are sharing your experience with everyone on SOS. We understand that your ship is already completed and the most difficult part is trying to remember what you did. One thing that you must keep in mind is that after you post something and then later on you remember something important about a certain aspect of that particular step, you can always come back to it and edit your comment. That way all of your knowledge is benefitted by our community while in turn you will also benefit from our experience. Looking forward to more of your posts.
Raymond.
 
Many thanks guys for your interest to my humble log. I really wish I could write a good and complete one, but unfortunately a lot of pictures have strangely vanished from my computers memory. I have an external hard disc where I have stored all the photos taken during different build phases, but now when I return to Le Cerf file, there are not many anymore.

And thank you Raymond for your comment about editing. It is a nice feature here, not every forum has that possibility.

Jim, don't worry. Even if a lot of photos have disappeared, I still have some left that might be of interest to you. But I try to explain everything with words, and of course you are always welcome to ask if you don't understand something written with my clumsy English.
And of course the model is still here standing on my table so that I can take new photos if necessary.
 
Thanks Uwe, I will reserve a confortable chair at the first row for you, together with a can of cold beer.

Unfortunately all the pictures to show the "skeleton" of the ship have disappeared, so next I will explain a little about how I made the hull planking.

The hull of Le Cerf is made with clinker planking, it means that the individual planks overlap slightly each other. The drawing suggests that bulkheads should be "dented", to provide place for each plank separately. I was thinking that to be a bit too complicated and decided to use normal smooth bulkheads without any denting, and locate the planks so that they overlap each other about 1...1,5 millimeters. Otherwise I was following the FAN method ( I tried to copy here a tutorial about this method, but it seems that it is not possible ) to shape the individual planks.

For the planks I was using abache wood. The real model builders have opinion that abache has no use in ship modeling, but I like it very much. It is straight grained, no knots, easy to saw and sand, and very easy to bend without heat or moisture.
So from an abache board I was first sawing 2x6 mm planks with my Proxxon table saw. Each plank was then tapered with a mini plane using a self made jig and glued into the hull. I didn`t want any nail holes into the planks, so I used small clamps which held the planks stationary during glue curing. As glue I was using normal white PVA glue.

Here is my jig for tapering the planks at both ends:

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For clamping the planks I used mini clamps made of thin plywood. Earlier I was using this kind of clamps made of metal, but they were so soft that they bent when tightened, and left some ugly dark dentations to the planks. Wooden clamps worked fine:

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Also some bigger clamps were necessary to keep planks in position:

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And after a few days work the hull was ready. Not perfect, but enough for me. The dark colored planks are also abache stained with mahagony stain.

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To be continued....
 
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Hello Moxis,
I admire your ingenuity with your home-made clamps. They look capable of holding down the most rebellious board until the glue cures. As to those "real modelers" who frowned on your use of abache wood, forget them. Draw your inspiration from Zoly's signature block, "Build what you like, and like what you build!!"
If you live by those simple words you will enjoy your hobby ten-fold.

Raymond
 
Thanks Raymond, exactly that I have done, I don`t care what other people say, I just make models for my own delight and joy.

Unfortunately there are no pictures about planking the deck. But it was made in the same way as hull, using same material. The only thing that was different, I "painted" the edges of planks with very soft pencil to emulate caulking.
The dinghy on deck was made of thin strips of birch veneer glued together on a plug made of balsa. And all other structures on deck were also made of this material and stained with dark wood stain. Hinges & other metal parts are of thin brass plate which were first painted with matt black and then weathered with dark brown pigments.

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Stern decorations are of boxwood. A thin plate, about 1 mm thick was first sawn with bandsaw, it was then sanded smooth and decorations drawn and sawn out with jeweler`s saw. The deer was found in Internet, it was scaled down and printed on paper & glued on the boxwood plate. Then it was sawn out, and edges rounded with a small rotary burr.
Letters LE CERF were first drawn and scaled suitably with Corel Draw program. Then they were saved as dxf file, which my CAM progran at cnc router can understand and milled from 1 mm boxwood with very tiny 0,3 mm router bit.

Thin brass chain and eyebolts made of thin iron wire were attached into the rudder.

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Hello Moxis,
Do not worry about missing photos and just present the few remaining ones that you have. They do say that a picture is worth a thousand words so they will speak for themselves. That stern section looks marvelous!!!! I too use a pencil to darken the edges of planks as a means of representing the caulk lines, there is nothing wrong with that.
 
Thanks for your message Jim, and many thanks to you guys who have sent the "likes" too!

Considering the guns, my first idea was to turn one barrel from brass and then make a mould of silicone rubber & cast the rest of polyurethane resin. However the quality of the resin barrels didn`t satisfy me, so I decided to buy them all from an UK vendor. The problem for turning everything myself was, that it is very difficult to get them all similar, and that will show then on the completed cannons.
So after receiving those beautiful brass barrels I painted them with a mixture of old bronze metal colour & black paint with airbrush. After the paint had dried the barrels were rubbed slightly with cotton pads to get the bronze colour to show more on the high spots.
The parts for gun carriages were drawn with CAD and milled with my cnc router to have all similar. And after assemby they were again stained with dark wood stain & installed all tiny hardware and rigging.

Brass gun barrels when arrived:

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After painting with a mixture of old bronze & black:

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Completed cannons with carriage & hardware:

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And installed on the deck but not yet rigged:

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There is not much any more to tell you about this build. However a few words about rigging. I have used various thicknesses of both dark brown and beige yarns, bought also from Cornwall in UK. Rigging was made in a common way like I think all of you guys are doing.
However I would like to introduce you two jigs I made myself and found necessary: a serving machine and a small jig to make seizings for blocks.

With the serving machine it is possible to make servings both for yarns, and by installing a small clamp to the other end also small servings for blocks etc. You can operate it manually or with a little toy gearmotor with a foot switch:

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And with this very simple jig it is possible to make seizings for blocks, because it keeps the yarn taunt when making seizing:

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And a few photos of the rigged cannons:

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