Coppering
I was happy with the results of my plankings but keen to get the copper in place to hide the worst of it. There's no provision for coppering provided in the Alert kit but it's known that it was done and I wanted to experiment. I'd coppered a model once before, with self-adhesive foil, so I knew the layout, but this time I chose to use some copper sheets made for the purpose by Amati. They were 0.1mm thick and very hard and springy. They were also shiny. Patrick O'Brian, C S Forrester and suchlike authors often mention the beautiful shining streaks of copper showing at the waterline of a ship heeling to the breeze. Clearly they were off school on the day they should have been taught chemistry. Copper in seawater doesn't keep its shine for long, and I suspect that 18th century copper straight from the foundry wasn't particularly lustrous. It was likely to be contaminated with many different compounds which would all react quickly with salty water to produce some marvellous colours - and a lot of brown.
To kill the shine, start the reactions that I wasted to simulate and soften the plates, I annealed the large sheets of copper before breaking them into individual sheets. That's a simple matter pf heating the metal to red hot with a soldering torch and letting it cool slowly.
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By heating the sheets irregularly, I found that I could vary the colours. Painting on various solutions of household chemicals like bleach, vinegar, saline before the heating was even more spectacular.
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The sheets came with an engraved pattern of circles, meant to represent the nails which held the copper to the hull. I thought the circles were too large, too few and far too regular so I used a variety of sharp tools to impress patterns and random marks into the surface.
A coarse round file was the most useful for general nailmarks. I rolled it over the sheets before separating then into the individual plates, trying to avoid any regularity creeping in. I also coarsely sanded both sides of the sheets for texture and to key the surface for the CA glue.
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Each of the 700+ plates were overlapped and worked into place with a ball ended tool. Toolmarks just improved the chaotic, organic appearance of the copper.
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Once applied, I gently sanded the high spots. This made the overlapping structure far more apparent and also exposed some fresh copper for the last stage in my chemistry process. I was having such fun - think of a mad scientist, drunk with rum and inspiration. Actually it might have been the CA fumes...
The last stage was to hard boil ten eggs, chop them up and place them in a bowl inside a large plastic storage box with the model. The sulphur compounds that give the eggs their marvellous aroma gave turned some of my copper into copper sulphate and other 'stuff'. (I didn't listen to the chemistry teacher much either.)
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This was one of my favourites. There are greens, reds, yellows, black, oranges... Isn't that gorgeous?
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After a few weeks the chaos was muted by the general tarnishing of the copper by the ambient atmosphere in a small flat occupied by a single man and his dog.
This was the best of times and the worst of times. I hugely enjoyed the creative experience of playing with chemicals, fire and sharp things. On the other hand, the exposure to a large amount of CA glue over about three weeks of working was bad news. I was already sensitized to CA so I took precautions.
I had all the windows open, giving a strong cross breeze across the flat. I directed a small fan across my desk with another very big fan blowing the fumes out of the downwind window. I wore nitrile gloves and worked with tweezers. I wore a mask.
I'm glad I was so careful because it must have reduced the damage. However, I still contracted dermatitis with sores on my hands, particularly the right one which was closest to the CA in its little dish (with a cover!) and on my face around my mouth and nose where I'd breathed the fumes in. I looked like a chronic glue-sniffer, which indeed I was, thankfully temporarily. I developed chest pains and a cough too. The sore in my left nostril took a month to heal and bled daily. This is the last time I'll be using CA in any quantity for any reason. It's as nasty as novichok as far as I am concerned.
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It was all worth it though.
