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Mantua Sovereign of the Seas 1:78 bashed to death kit from Janos

This is the adaptation of the Vanda-Lay Duplicator. And the first (rather second) attempt to make it work. In the first one I used a timber block to hold the pattern and it was not sturdy enough. Now I attached the pattern holder to the lathe bed and it is much better. I know the shortcomings of my solution and I realize that the V-L is better in more than one aspects. Their cutter can be working by hand, independently of the feeding screws, mine is not. Their cutting tool is a small (3-4 mm?) diameter silver steel which slides in a bigger dia brass tube. The tip of the cutting tool and that of the follower tip is much more similar to each other. However, my setup allows me quicker roughing out and I don't have to change to a different cutter for the details.
So I am working on some details to make this solution better as it needs some measuring and manual cutting as a consequence of all the above. And then I have an idea which I plan to implement. Instead of making the pattern (at the moment it is made of 1mm brass plate) which is a job and a half in itself I plan to completely manually turn the first piece on the basis of the drawing, then using this as a master, fixed between two tips as the pattern. Watch this space.
Janos
 
Nice I haven't heard of that duplicator, I had one made from aluminum that I bought from ebay a bunch of years back that had so many issues it wasn't funny. I started casting things I needed multiples of but even that was work to get them to machined finish I still had to chuck them up and turn them. I cleaned them up with files and sand paper so wasn't really saving much time. I still do the old one at a time thing, but now that I'm interested in scratch building a duplicator is in order I think I can build something to hook to the rear bed way on the back like you have that will clamp on to hold the pattern. the follower on the cross slide will be easy
 
what you have seems to work well you cannons look great ill go look at that post. Im pretty good at fabricating things from metal and I have a lot of Machining exp in a manual shop. shouldn't be to difficult
 
Just catching up with your work Janos.STUNNING!I am in awe of not just the complexity of your carving skills but also the speed at which you produce them.When I do get back to my build that has been sat dormant for five and a half years,I reckon you have a ten year head start on me the speed at which I carve:rolleyes:
I am moving house again in the next couple of months but will regain a nice big workshop,something I have been without for the last four years.Time I think to crack the rotary tool out again,my build has been sat for far too long.The only frustration is that of the many,many WIP pictures I took have all now been lost.Should have backed them up onto a memory stick,my bad

Kind Regards

Nigel
 
After a long time (while building Oliver Cromwell) I am now back with Sovereign. Nearly all of the outside carvings are done (just a few missing at the bow) and all cannon barrels turned (3 different types for the carriages and 3 other ones, which are going to be shown only partially. Carriages are also done, 3 different types. For the barrels I changed the decoration after Donald Dressel noted, that they are not correct, showing the Tudor-rose only. So I made another stamp, showing the rose, the crown and the anchor as much as my non-existent jeweller-capabilities would allow. Not perfect. The next step is the installation of the guns, and then the big question whether or not to finish the model with or without masts, yards and rigging - this way she would end up so big that becomes virtually unhandeable (she is a female after all...).
Janos



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This is the current state. Nearly all of the carvings are done. Guns in place, breeching ropes to be added (no other ropes for the guns this time). Working on the desktop furniture now. Finally, I tend to install masts and yards, even if I have to sacrifice mobility.
Janos
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