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

[WojtasS]

Nice work Paul. I'm happy your not giving up and thanks for appreciation

 

[serikoff]

I understand you so well, my friend. The stern is the most difficult part of a ship to build, and all the drawings are usually flawed because they're just drawings. The only thing that's reliable is high-quality 3D modeling. Find that by all means. But the difficulty lies in reading these files, and then you need a technician to translate them from 3D into reality. I sometimes spend hours solving problems much simpler than your situation, and I can imagine how you feel. Unfortunately, I can't help you specifically, but I'm with you morally.

 

[Richie]

Sitting here waiting for church to start and I just realized I failed to post this update...

...from 12 hours ago...

Well, I got myself into quite a funk this past week! It is my policy to not build anything until I understand everything. While I often fail in this regard (most recently evidenced by the error uncovered by our colleague Wojtas), the exercise of figuring out every detail on the complicated stern of the Saint Philippe sent me into a tailspin.

Rather than setting this model aside I have decided to just carry on and stop being such a baby. I will certainly make more mistakes now, but so be it. This is only my third ship model and first scratch attempt, so I need to stop taking myself and this build so seriously. I think I forgot this is a hobby...

I've fabricated lights (windows) before so I thought I might be able to do that while I sorted out the quarter galleries and stern balconies. The lower level of lights are round/oval and it was my thought to build the windows as squares and then place a panel in front of them simulating their round/oval shape. The first attempt ended in the bin - a day long struggle with window frames and muntins (these divide panes of glass within a window) that left me in a lower place than I was at the start of the effort.

Renewed by a restful night I changed directions and decided to build the face panel first.

Here we go with a photo essay that should provide some sense of my workflow...

This is where we begin - these openings need to appear round/oval:

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A template:

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The resultant rough-cut panel (still needs to be curved into place):

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Each circle/oval needs to be framed. I decided to do that with a molding. I traced each circle onto a bit of fake boxwood and roughly cut out the inside with a hand saw (ooh, look at me rack up points with the we used to do everything without power tools crowd):

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These rough-cut moldings were then glued to the panel (no small challenge getting them centered):

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Next, the excess was removed from the inside of the molding using a spindle sander (thus forfeiting all my accumulated points):

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That looked good but not great - which led to spending a really unthinkable amount of time making these moldings look more delicate:

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Next up - back to the workbench to create light divides (muntins) and get them into these openings...

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Thanks for visiting.

Onward!

Yes Paul stop being a sook , your workmanship and attention to detail is exemplary.