Le Coureur 1776 1:48 (CAF) by Salty

[BradNSW]

Deck is looking awesome!

Leaving it open so you can see your great barrels, interior bulkheads, mast steps, etc is perfect!

Thanks for sharing!

 

[GrantTyler]

Good morning Salty. You are building a good ship. I agree the open deck looks fantastic it’s good to see all the work in the lower decks. Cheers Grant

 

[Albert Mary]

Onto the last cabin:

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Each cabin has had its challenges and this was no different. This time it was getting the panels to fit neatly with the beams which runs across the middle of the cabin and making sure they don’t cross under any carlings.

This is the end of the internal fittings and it’s onto the deck next.

Kind regards

Salty

Hey Salty. Exquisite details all over the place, congrats!

 

[Salty]

Brad and Grant, thanks for your compliments about the deck. As you can see below, I think there a balance to be had between leaving off enough planks to show a hint of what below and having enough planks so you can actually finish the rest of the deck furniture!

Albert, thank you also. There’s certainly lots of detail in this kit and you not necessarily have to “invent” things to make it look nice.

The finished planking on the poop deck:



I think it’s not looking too bad, but there’s been a bit of work to get a nice fair finished surface. I do some work on the kitchen bench and the sun coming through the windows shows every little imperfection.

As an aside, if you want a traditionally laid deck with seams on a full size boat, you would use Jeffrey’s No 2 Black Marine Glue

https://www.classicboatsupplies.com...ack-marine-glue/?searchid=0&search_query=Glue

It’s comes as a solid block. You chip off bits, heat it up in a tin and pour it into the seams with a ladle.

Kind regards

Salty

 

[Salty]

Here is Le Coureur with her deck completed





Probably more through good luck than good management, the missing planks seem to work well. They show enough of the fit out below, but don’t make the hatches and doghouses look like they are floating with any support.

Kind regards

Salty

 

[Salty]

Thank you to everyone who has been following my progress. I feel like finishing the deck was a bit of a milestone and I can see the finish in the distance (albeit still a lot of work left).

For a bit of a change, I started on the cannons. Le Coureur had 8 two pound cannons which weighed about 800 kg each in real life.



They are very detailed, right down to the links in the capsquare chains.

Obviously, the most difficult part is fitting all the photo-etched parts. I have a pair of Xuron scissors which help cutting and trimming the parts, but all the holes in the carriages had to be done by hand as the drill bits were so thin they wobbled in the chuck in my electric drill. All were started with a no. 80 drill bit and then widened with a large one to suit the piece to be fitted.

I also made the eye bolts out of 0.4 mm wire as the kit parts were a little big for my liking. They’re not difficult to make, especially if you hold your mouth right.

I have also decided not to blacken the brass parts. Again it’s a personal preference, somewhat driven by wanting to handle the parts as little as possible for fear of losing them. Double sided tape certainly helps keep track of them on the workmat, but despite this, I did manage to lose a few cap square eyebolts, but 0.4 mm wire was a good substitute.

Kind regards

Salty

 

[Salty]

Here are the finished cannons:





I thought this would be a quick diversion from finishing the hull, but it’s taken on a life of its own. The carriages are quite small despite the model being 1:48 scale but I think the rigging doesn’t overpower them too much.

The hooks are 3.5 mm, the blocks are 2.5 mm, the breech lines are 0.8 mm and the tackle lines are 0.2 mm. The seizings are made with 100 weight cotton thread which is the finest I could find locally. The blocks are from Zoly at Drydock and are very nice. All the holes are drilled through and the sides have nice deep grooves which really help securing the stropping.

The seizings are actually nail knots made with a tool from the local fly fishing shop.



You can hold everything in place with your right hand while winding and threading the other line with the left. Sometimes it helps to use a needle when seizing thicker lines which tend to fill the groove. It took a while to get the hang of it, particularly the final tightening of the knot which I found had to go be done quite slowly to stop tangles.

Kind regards

Salty

 

[Salty]

I have been putting the capping on the top of the frames. This involves extending some frames to fit through precut slots. It’s a relatively straightforward process, but there’s a lot of trial fitting to get the frame extensions to fit.



The next job was finishing the inside planking of the bulwarks and channels.







I did the planking from the top down. Although it was more difficult that way, I think I got a better result as I now have a couple of neat rows immediately under the capping. The downside was that fitting the plank at deck level took lots of fitting. I have to admit I cheated with the channels as they sit beside the planking and not underneath it as set in the instructions. For that matter, I don’t think the channels are strictly correct if fitted that way as I think they should be installed directly in the deck beams.

She’s looking more like a ship each day now. It looks like a clear run now to finishing the hull, with a few mini projects to complete the deck furniture. Then onto the sails and rigging.

Kind regards

Salty

 

[BradNSW]

When it all starts to come together, with these finishing touches, you can feel a real sense of accomplishment.

She's looking awesome, thanks for sharing the photos!

 

[Salty]

Brad, thanks for following my progress on each new post. Although the “finishing touches” might seem easier, they rely heavily on previous steps, so there’s a certain level of anxiety to starting each new part.

The catheads were a nice little project:



It was a bit difficult to thread the pin through the sheaves, but I managed to do it in the end. I also added some fasteners as all the work nailing the hull has faded with the passage of time.

I also made the flue for the stove up forward



The metal hood on the stove had come adrift, so this was my chance to put that right when I made the opening for the pipe. Now with the flue attach to it, I am pretty confident that it won’t happen again. I chose to make a surround for the flue as illustrated in Boudroit and Berti and am quite pleased with the result.

Kind regards

Salty

 

[Salty]

Here are the bilge pumps:



It’s just one picture in the instructions and one in the plans, but it was quite difficult to get a result I was happy with. I have started using brass sheet instead of some of the photo etched parts in the kit. I think it is just that little bit thinner and easier to bend and glue in place. I also used 0.5 mm brass wire instead of the 0.8 mm in the kit. The 0.5 mm had a little more room for error when drilling out the holes in the handles.

On the other hand, the windlass was relatively straightforward:







This time, I followed the kit rather than Boudroit and Berti, partly because the two bases in the kit sit on the margin boards, whereas in Boudroit and Berti the port base would be floating in the area I haven’t planked.

I also made the bowsprit partners. It was a tight fit to get them in place as they are sandwiched between the windlass and the forward hatch, but again all seems to have worked well.

 

[Salty]

Thanks again for everyone following my progress. It’s a great help in spurring me onto finishing.

Over the last few days, I have been working on a few bits and pieces, but mostly on the rail around the aft section of the deck.



I thought it might be quite difficult to install as it’s quite delicate, but a pair of recently purchased self closing tweezers came to my rescue. I could use them to hold the posts exactly where needed while the glue dried with the rail in place as a guide. I thought the tweezers might have been a bit of a luxury when I got them, but I can see them being very useful.

Under the front section of the rail are hull sheaves which I think are used to tighten the standing rigging for the main mast.

There are some small filler blocks between the tops of the transom timbers and the rail. It was probably hoping for too much for the rail would fit neatly, but I have done my best. After all, it’s not Lego.

It’s a little out of sequence, but I also made the bowsprit and base of the fore and main masts. I did this mainly to check how everything fits in the bow.





I have a little finger plane which was prefect for shaving the birch dowels down to size. The dowels in the kit are 10 mm in diameter and had to be reduced to 8.5 and 7.5 mm for about 3/4 of the length and then by another millimetre for the rest.

Kind regards

Salty