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Le Saint Philippe 1693 after Jean-Claude Lemineur (Ancre) in scale 1:48

Kurt Konrath said:
Hey Doc, between working at nights on the ship and posting online during the day, do you have time to work on teeth! Ha Ha, the work is great and I enjoy looking at how nice it can all come out when patience is used while working.
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Thanks for the visit, Kurt. It's true that the days and nights are full - but modeling is a sweet diversion from the frustrations of life (never mind the frustrations of modeling ROTF).
 
dockattner said:
I'll take this opportunity to respond to my own posting ROTF.

Brad had asked what the plans said about something... You can see part of my response to him above...

As a novice to scratch building (and a relative newcomer to ship modeling) I have encountered several issues:

1. the detail I am looking for is in the monograph (or on the plan sheets) but I can't find it.
2. the detail I am looking for is in the monograph (or on the plans sheets) but I don't understand what I am looking at.
2. the author assumes I should know how to do something if I am building a warship of this size from plans.

I have run up against each of these - often at the same time. Every possible detail is not on every drawing. So I look and look and look checking other plates to see if the detail I am looking for is included somewhere (ANYWHERE???). One time I was trying to figure out how to build a sill - looked everywhere without success - and ended up following the approach a modeling master took. @NMBROOK wrote to me gently explaining I did it wrong. He pointed me to a particular drawing and voila - there it was! How could I have missed this?!?

And then there are other times when the author is clearly assuming certain knowledge and experience on the part of anyone using his monograph - so it seemingly never occurs to him that he should explain such and such a thing. But then he will go on for pages about some obscure detail that isn't even a part of the model - just some arcane nugget about French naval architecture from the seventeenth century... How about we cut this discussion short and you tell me what bolt size to use!

I'm not really complaining. I'm a big boy who knew I was out of my depth when I started this model. I'm just wanting to provide some perspective for others wanting to move in the direction of scratch building.
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Hi Paul,

Maybe next build no monograph anymore. Just pick a nice subject, do the research and start building.
In this case if you are missing something it is your own research which is lacking. As we are perfect ourselves it can't go wrong otherwise we have to be angry at ourselves.
Sounds like fun.
Just kidding off course. :-)
You're doing great.
 
I’ve just finished a stretch of 14+ hour days and am catching up. After seeing your last update, I can only say,

What the what?!? How is such precision attainable at that scale? It”s astounding!
 
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serikoff said:
Excellent as always! I can already imagine how cool it will look in the end.
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Thanks, Sergey. The open-endedness (not sure that will translate well into Ukrainian ROTF) of this stern section model offers some unique opportunities to show the internal structures of a ship. I'm not going to include any of the build-out (walls/rooms) - just the infrastructure of the decks - so I hope that will be interesting for people who look at the model.

What I did not realize is how much work I was 'agreeing to' when I came up with this plan.
 
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Namabiiru said:
I’ve just finished a stretch of 14+ hour days and am catching up. After see your last update, I can only say,

What the what?!? How is such precision attainable at that scale? It”s astounding!
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Thanks, my friend. I actually think almost everyone on the forum could do what I am doing. The stumbling block is the amount of time it takes. There is a tension between process and accomplishment, especially on a forum such as ours where there is a subtle pressure (unspoken) to show progress. My solution is to remind myself that what I like about the hobby is doing - not finishing the project (or even the finished result).

Indeed, I have little interest in naval architecture or even ships. But I do have an interest in modeling - especially modeling in wood. To my purist detractors that is heretical as they tend to be dismissive of motivations that depart from their own. That's a bit of a loss for me because I believe their knowledge and experience would help me along the way. Of course, they won't show up here because I am the original poster of this thread and their worldview has been challenged (condemned?) by me in other threads.

Sorry for the philosophical meanderings... I'm experiencing a season in my life right now that has made me increasingly reflective :rolleyes:.

Back to tiny ships :)...
 
Just over one month ago I began work on the lower gun deck - today I pushed it across the finish line. This ended up being WAY more work than I had anticipated. The French propensity for dovetail joints didn't help - but mostly it was prolonged by the complexities of curved joinery and my unhealthy pursuit of getting things as good as I could get them. As time went on I was able to work more efficiently with improved (improving) outcomes, so I hope subsequent decks will be less of a struggle.

Here we go...

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Thanks for stopping by!
 
The time invested in this work is paying off. Your recent progress, which I admire, demonstrates that. Fantastic work. It's a great pleasure to watch the entire construction of this ship.

Regards
Andreas
 
Your joinery and surface finishes are a delight for the eyes. This type of display always makes me reflect in wonderment how those artisans back then were able to construct such vessels with handheld tools, oxen, and whatever block and tackle lifting devices they could think up. Thanks for the voyage Paul.
 
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Daniel20 said:
Your joinery and surface finishes are a delight for the eyes. This type of display always makes me reflect in wonderment how those artisans back then were able to construct such vessels with handheld tools, oxen, and whatever block and tackle lifting devices they could think up. Thanks for the voyage Paul.
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Indeed. A veritable army of shipbuilders with all manner of skills would have been needed. The tricky bit is that army has been reduced to one guy with an XActo knife and a disc sander ROTF.
 
The outcome of this deck is incredible, even under the scrutiny of the close-up camera lens!!

Your dedication to putting in all the dove-tail joints is inspiring.

It's amazing how easy it is to create a tight full-scale dovetail, with sharp tools. At this scale you are getting about as close to perfect as possible! I hope you continue to improve on the next deck, as you are approaching what is possible at this scale.

Thanks for sharing this wonderful build, with such great pictures!!
 
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