Ignore mate, it was a silly response to a line I mistook as part of your content and, well, it just gets complicated after that.
HM Armed Cutter Alert (1777) - Vanguard Models - 1/64
- Thread starter Smithy
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True story
Good morning Smithy. I been a tad preoccupied of late and had to play some catch up here. Awesome log BTW, informative and entertaining. As for your Alert it is so very good. Some serious skills here. Cheers Grant
Yes, I saw you ‘liking’ your way through as I was composing a reply on the AL HMS Victory thread. I wondered who it was.
Well I’m glad you like it. I aim to entertain.
Bored
I'm sailing on calm seas with the wind behind me. The sky is clear all the way to the horizon, the harbour and home. I know these waters like the back of my hand. There are no squalls forecast and visibility is so clear that I know of no significant difficulties on the way. All I need do now is carve another finial, glue stuff together, do some painting, build the spars and the simple rigging. It's all stuff I've done before and know that I can do again. Granted, I haven't rigged a gun before but I anticipate no difficulty there except that rigging the next eleven will be excruciatingly tedious.
The fact is, folks, I'm bored with Alert. It's been exciting at times but not now. It was very helpful in the winter and spring of this year when I was mired in grief and lost my way for a while but I don't need that therapeutic boost now. I'm not depressed now, I'm actually rather high and craving excitement! I'm the kind of person who's good at beginnings but struggles with long term commitments which is possibly why I'm single
. It was great having Alert look after me when I needed help, and some of the wild things we did together were amazing but now she just wants me to stay in, watch TV and do the dishes every night! 
So I have to find a way to complete this project against all the resistance of my impulsive, child like character. I have to find a way to keep chipping away at it until it's done and ignore the temptations of starting something new and exciting because if I start another model I know from experience that I will never come back to this one.
Any suggestions?
I have two.
One. Postpone indefinitely the masking and rigging. You can come back to it anytime if you wish. Without that, Alert becomes a semi-admiralty model (with the guns - without the framing) Everything else gets built right up to the lower deadeyes and the bowsprit fid. Bin the fries so you can enjoy the burger without throwing up and losing the lot.
B. Reset that deadline so that there’s an interesting element of drama in trying to beat the clock. There are 68 days left of the year including today which sounds plenty but knowing you, you’ll be a slacker until that last minute dash. You never did homework until you were on the bus to school in the morning.
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Yes. I like that. It will be also be easier to display and perhaps more interesting for being unusual. That treatment would also suit the ‘shipyard’ style of the base better than a full rig.
That’s just cheeky! What about that essay on bees I slaved over all weekend for the beautiful young biology teacher?
The end of the year is too far off to be interesting. How about the end of November?
36 days? Still plenty of time even with 12 guns.
Three weeks from Sunday? 30 days.
Go for it!
Sunday November 24th is the new target date. Yay!
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A gun a day keeps the doctor away.
I've requested a wellness check...
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I'm plodding along in the doldrums. all stuns'ls out and no progress. Seas like oiled glass. I've taken to writing stuff no one will ever read to stave off the boredom. "Water, water everywhere" trodding a dry, shrinking, splintery, salty deck; with an albatross of a model dangling around my neck. When it comes to masting and rigging, I'm thinking of calling "Flying Cloud" a dockyard model, declaring victory and moving on. Problem is I'm blessed (or cursed) with a coterie of devoted fans looking forward to and urging me on to the next installment! So, I can relate to much of what you (Smithy) have posted above. (I'm one of your fans, by the way, eagerly awaiting the next installment on your beautiful "Alert" model.) 
Pete
Pete
Once I get going on them guns Oi'll be turnin 'em out like a machine, my boys. Oi'le be a machine gunner 'ere.
(I 'ave no idea why it should be so, but Oi've been talkin' like a Devon poirate all of the livelong day today.)
Well (ha!), I like that idea.
I don't, it seems to have too much water in it either way. (Bit cryptic that
)They don't seem to mind.
He's in the kitchen.
That's about the size of it. (Idiom for "You are approximately correct")
,beer everywhere, would have made that poem so much better... or Bitter.Why does it keep replacing my words with pictures? We are grown ups and can READ!
Why not take your coterie with you onto the next exciting project. Heck, just start building the next one in the same thread and see if anyone notices.
I thought it was getting drafty in here.
Ha! Peter's build report is so full of pictures of clipper ships (with accompanying dialogue) from two of his forum friends that I already forgot which ship he's building...Heck, just start building the next one in the same thread and see if anyone notices.
Look that ship in the Deadeye and tell her that Smithy mate.
She's been a loving and loyal companion when you needed her her most, so dress her up in her finest and she show her she was worth it.
Cat (the romanticist
)
Jayne Mansfield, Hawse Holes and a Good Sturdy Tiller
I haven't only been going crazy today, I've re-motivated myself and worked some wood. I haven't had that much time between my other commitments (napping, reading a novel, playing with the dog, walking the dog, feeding the dog, apologizing to the dog for going out to the shop and so on...) but despite that I've made three
First, there's a very dusty port side finial to accompany Marilyn. This one's a bit more bulbous at the front so she is Jayne, for the lovely Miss Mansfield.
I said they wouldn't be a perfect match but would you rather have two Marilyns, two Jaynes or one of each? I love them both.
It's good to have your workpiece held firmly but when this is impossible, I have discovered that it's almost as helpful to put the file in the vice and move the wood. The danger is obvious. When I dropped the carving on the floor, severally, and bent down to retrieve it, I had to be rather careful not to trepan myself getting back up again.
Next!
These were described as 'hawse holes' in the instructions though I think they should be called hawse pieces? I've done a little work on the one on the right. Hawse holes need to have a nice chamfer so that thr cable slips in and out without too much friction or wear. Like the scuppers they were lead lined but in this case to reduce the friction as well as for waterproofing.
There's a name for the sacrificial timber directly below the hawse holes but I've forgotten what it is. [Edit: BOLSTER!] In this case it's the 'go-faster-stripe' fitted a day or two ago. It would be worn by the cable when the anchor was coming straight up so I attacked that with a file as well.
Both together. It's an odd looking design but I suppose the reason will become clear when the anchors are on board.
Next!
At the top is the kit's tiller. It has a twin and these are supposed to be laminated for strength and thickness. It looked a bit weedy so I made the one at the bottom from a piece of spare, thicker fret.
Now I have my little man to help, I can quickly check the apparent size of things. He's actually leaning on the tiller so it would be at about armpit height which is about right? It looks enormous and couldn't be held in one hand like a rowing boat's tiller. I presume two or three hefty helmsman would lean on it with all their weight. It's a short one so not much leverage and it's a big boat with lots of sail area. With that in mind, when I fit it properly, I'll set it a tad lower so they can put their backs into it.
~~~~~~~~~~
That deadline has definitely provided the necessary kick up the donkey and ejected my from my slough* of despond.
*There's a town called Slough in England. It's not generally thought to be a nice place and in the old days when train toilets carried the warning notice "Do not flush the toilet while the train is standing at a station" it was customary to find pencilled underneath "Except at Slough".
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Look that ship in the Deadeye and tell her that Smithy mate.
She's been a loving and loyal companion when you needed her her most, so dress her up in her finest and she show her she was worth it.
Cat (the romanticist
But when you don't need one...
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Don't know why it reminded me, but in my mid 20's to late 30's I travelled extensively for an engineering company.
I was at Heathrow in the early days of the Concorde and there were promotion posters everywhere.
I laughed out loud when this poster read "British Airways: Breakfast in London, lunch in New York" and someone wrote underneath "Luggage in Hong Kong"
Perfect mate, looks real
Loving the work mate, keeps me going
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