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HM Armed Cutter Alert (1777) - Vanguard Models - 1/64 - Completed Build
- Thread starter Smithy
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- alert vanguard models
FANTASTIC. No competition, YOU win!
I have been watching the TV series Air Warriors and other than the one on the UH60 Blackhawk my favorite episodes were about the planes that defended God and country in the Battle of Britain including the Hawker Hurricane and Spitfire.Allan
let me guess...is it a Kumongo?My Xmas present does have a little rigging but only six strings.
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I wrote that yesterday, in a thinking aloud, relaxed, chatty state of mind. Twenty-four hours later, I find it to be absolutely true for me.
From the age of about eight until I needed to be cooler to attract girls at fourteen, I made maybe a hundred models. Between 18 and 27 I built half a dozen to pass the time in barracks. After I got married I began to take it a little more seriously, to the horror of my wife who didn’t realise that I had an inner nerd. (We didn’t know each other very well, I initially believed she had human emotions. Ha!)
After the divorce there was a long period when I was too busy with gaining a part-time degree, raising children and a full-time job to need a hobby, but in 1998 a work colleague gave me a model Hawker Hurricane as a secret Santa present. That was 26 years ago and since then, I don’t think I’ve ever stopped modelling.
At first I built them on my own, then I joined a local club, and then the Internet arrived with forums like this. I enjoyed the writing as well as the modelling and the hobby became all consuming. I can’t tell you how many models I’ve made since that Hurricane. I don’t actually know because they all blur together. It doesn’t take long to make a plastic kit of an aeroplane, or a tank, or a ship so the total must be in the high hundreds.
They blur together in my memory because essentially it’s been the same thing over and over again. I open the box and there’s chaos inside. I solve some minor problems on my own, read some books, copy what everyone else is doing and eventually organise it into a model of an aeroplane or a tank or a ship. It lives on the shelf for awhile becomes dusty gets broken and is thrown away. Then I do it again.
I’ve made a few wooden ship models now and they do take much longer. They seem to be more appreciated by the casual viewer too. But even so, plastic or wood, it’s the same old thing - a combination of a three dimensional jigsaw and painting by numbers resulting in a smaller copy of the real thing, whatever it was. So many copies, so little that’s really my own creation.
I’ve modified kits, even built a few from scratch. Ive always tried to make my models slightly different from the other thousands out there. I’ve built dioramas and tried to tell stories in plastic, but despite all that, I no longer see it as a creative way to spend my time. It’s boring me!
I’m only making the model to have something to write about and I think my writing is becoming boring too, and not just to me but to you all as well.
Modelling has been a brilliant pastime for me. It’s a craft and a hobby that I have enjoyed very much over the years. But is it art? Is it art? No, of course it’s not.
That’s a way to make a model of a boat that qualifies as art and it’s so far beyond what I do with a model kit that it’s not even in the same solar system.
Nope. I’m going to finish Alert (because I want to finish modelling on a high) and then walk away from this hobby. The thousand hours a year I’ve been spending on it can be spent in much more fulfilling ways making music and writing stories. What might I have achieved in 26000 hours of practicing guitar or writing for publication? And what did I get out of all that modelling, all that writing?
The polite and well-meant, though largely insincere, approval of strangers.
But then, what do I know?
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That’s a string on bulkhead guitar! Hahaha!
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FANTASTIC. No competition, YOU win!
Allan
That photo of me was 1974, not 1934. I’m not that bloody old. Hahaha!
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I find your log both entertaining and informative. Although I don't give you a thumb's up ever time I read your installments, I've learned a lot following your log. Nevertheless, if you are no longer receiving pleasure from building and / or writing, then perhaps it may be time to take a breather and re-evaluate.
Furthermore, you received quite a number of suggestions for your proposed diorama build and I believe there are a number of folks that have "pulled up a chair" to watch the build come to fruition. Me included.
Sending you Christmas greetings from across the pond. Put an extra treat in Buddy's stocking for me.
...henry
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to you perhaps but that may be because you have become so talented at doing so that you now feel close to the top of your game and any improvements are more difficult to reach and no longer providing that sense of accomplishment.
To that I would disagree. Your point of view, I think, is too narrow and biased. A quick Google or other search engine online search will find many definitions and descriptions of what "art" is. To paraphrase several such results which of course fit my biased view:
Your rigging is very good and really looks the part. The Devil is in the details and you are managing those details rather well. I have learned much about the age of sail and the intricacies of these vessels following your build log and those of others here on Ships of Scale.
Seasons Best Wishes to one and all.
cheers, Graham ( in cold and snowy Eastern Ontario )
Merry Christmas to you and your gang as well! Enjoy the season!
Merry Christmas Smithy.View attachment 491405
How do you like these Christmas shrouds and backstays?
View attachment 491404
Merry Christmas to all my readers.
Merry Christmas Smithy
Bill
Bill
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Here's your big Christmas Step-by-Step Update. It comes in three instalments because of the large number of pictures. Please be patient and refrain from posting replies or questions until all three instalments are online. (That's a trap to see who's actually reading this properly. )
The preventer stay is a back-up to the mainstay. It's slightly thinner but perhaps enough to prevent the mast falling backwards should the mainstay ever part in action or tempest. At the top it's exactly the same as the mainstay but the lower end is a little different and perhaps more interesting.
I pre-stretched and straightened a length of black line. I wet it with spit and hung it to dry with a heavy weight on the end, ensuring that the weight could not untwist the fibres.
The first thing to create is the small eye on the top end. I served it with very fine Gutterman sewing thread. When I did this with the mainstay, I used a thicker thread and when I bent the line to form the eye, gaps appeared on the outside of the curve. I wanted to avoid that so I used this fine line bound as tightly as possible. One end of the stay is in my vice and the other end held by my robot duck (picture later).
I start with a little half hitch sealed with CA.
At the end of the serving, I applied glue to the stay and wound the serving over it a few times for a tidy finish.
It's a little hairy but not to the naked eye.
Thats a 1.5mm drill bit. The eye must be at least that size to allow the free end of the stay to pass.
Good. This time there are no gaps in the serving of the eye. I tied the ends around the drill bit for convenience and glued them together
Ah, here's Robot Duck pulling the line tight for me.
He stands on tiptoe to give a constant pull.
Everything is reinforced with CA and then the unwanted material is cut away at an angle. It look awful at this stage but it will all be covered with the main serving which comes next.
I need to know where the mouse will be so I wrapped a line around the mast and cut it to the required length as a template.
The line was marked with some light coloured paint to tell me where to make the mouse.
I'm now using my serving machine but this could easily be done by hand - it would take longer of course.
End of Pert One
)Rigging the Preventer
The preventer stay is a back-up to the mainstay. It's slightly thinner but perhaps enough to prevent the mast falling backwards should the mainstay ever part in action or tempest. At the top it's exactly the same as the mainstay but the lower end is a little different and perhaps more interesting.
I pre-stretched and straightened a length of black line. I wet it with spit and hung it to dry with a heavy weight on the end, ensuring that the weight could not untwist the fibres.
The first thing to create is the small eye on the top end. I served it with very fine Gutterman sewing thread. When I did this with the mainstay, I used a thicker thread and when I bent the line to form the eye, gaps appeared on the outside of the curve. I wanted to avoid that so I used this fine line bound as tightly as possible. One end of the stay is in my vice and the other end held by my robot duck (picture later).
I start with a little half hitch sealed with CA.
At the end of the serving, I applied glue to the stay and wound the serving over it a few times for a tidy finish.
It's a little hairy but not to the naked eye.
Thats a 1.5mm drill bit. The eye must be at least that size to allow the free end of the stay to pass.
Good. This time there are no gaps in the serving of the eye. I tied the ends around the drill bit for convenience and glued them together
Ah, here's Robot Duck pulling the line tight for me.
He stands on tiptoe to give a constant pull.
Everything is reinforced with CA and then the unwanted material is cut away at an angle. It look awful at this stage but it will all be covered with the main serving which comes next.
I need to know where the mouse will be so I wrapped a line around the mast and cut it to the required length as a template.
The line was marked with some light coloured paint to tell me where to make the mouse.
I'm now using my serving machine but this could easily be done by hand - it would take longer of course.
End of Pert One
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Part Two
The serving is normal up to the paint mark. There, I make a seal with CA and run the serving back up the line.
Then I repeat and go forwards to about 2/3 of the length of the mouse.
Back again to the start of the mouse and then forwards to the end. This makes a rough carrot shape.
I wasn't concentrating and inadvertently crossed the streams which could have destroyed all life in the universe, but didn't.
After applying more glue I shaped my carrot more neatly before...
...winding some of that thin sewing thread over the mess to neaten it all up.
I like it.
I can now pass the trailing end through the eye to make the bigger eye which will go around the mast.
It fits! It fits! Now I can marry the prince.
The mast is now looking like a very sombre maypole.
The Duck was back on pulling duty while the spit re-soaked upper end dried in position and I ate my dinner.
End of Part Two.
The serving is normal up to the paint mark. There, I make a seal with CA and run the serving back up the line.
Then I repeat and go forwards to about 2/3 of the length of the mouse.
Back again to the start of the mouse and then forwards to the end. This makes a rough carrot shape.
I wasn't concentrating and inadvertently crossed the streams which could have destroyed all life in the universe, but didn't.
After applying more glue I shaped my carrot more neatly before...
...winding some of that thin sewing thread over the mess to neaten it all up.
I like it.
I can now pass the trailing end through the eye to make the bigger eye which will go around the mast.
It fits! It fits! Now I can marry the prince.
The mast is now looking like a very sombre maypole.
The Duck was back on pulling duty while the spit re-soaked upper end dried in position and I ate my dinner.
End of Part Two.
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Part Three
Dinner was burgers and beer so I almost stopped taking photos at this stage. I seized my home made heart onto the stay, just like the Tin Man.
The lower heart was seized in the same way and then, as it was likely to chafe against the mainstay, I served the whole length of it before lashing the tow hearts togetter and frapping the lashings as well as beer would allow.
also suggested that I snake the preventer to the mainstay. Some say the snaking was to hold the mast up if the mainstay and the preventer were both shot through at different points. I doubt this was the real reason because the snaking line is so thin. Maybe it was to stop the broken stays falling onto the sailors below? Anyway, beer commanded, so I obeyed.
It's an easy job for any half-way sober modeller.
And even a drunk one can make it look quite swish in a matter of minutes.
End of Part Three.
And that's the last of these long step by step posts (Hoo-blinkin-rah!) because the rest of the rigging is more or less simple 'threading the blocks' stuff. The trick with running rigging as far as I can see is to keep adding more and more of it until it's such a jungle that no-one can tell whether you are doing it wrong.
Dinner was burgers and beer so I almost stopped taking photos at this stage. I seized my home made heart onto the stay, just like the Tin Man.
The lower heart was seized in the same way and then, as it was likely to chafe against the mainstay, I served the whole length of it before lashing the tow hearts togetter and frapping the lashings as well as beer would allow.
also suggested that I snake the preventer to the mainstay. Some say the snaking was to hold the mast up if the mainstay and the preventer were both shot through at different points. I doubt this was the real reason because the snaking line is so thin. Maybe it was to stop the broken stays falling onto the sailors below? Anyway, beer commanded, so I obeyed.It's an easy job for any half-way sober modeller.
And even a drunk one can make it look quite swish in a matter of minutes.
End of Part Three.
And that's the last of these long step by step posts (Hoo-blinkin-rah!) because the rest of the rigging is more or less simple 'threading the blocks' stuff. The trick with running rigging as far as I can see is to keep adding more and more of it until it's such a jungle that no-one can tell whether you are doing it wrong.
Nice progress here Smithy! I probably shouldn't ask - but does beer care if your mouse is facing the wrong way?