Time for what has become my semi-annual update to this construction report, middling though it may be.
Before I can build-up to the f’ocsle deck, it was necessary to complete the main deck furniture. I will begin with the launch cradles. I had apparently failed to salvage 3 of the 4 kit cradles, but a quick examination of the part remaining illustrated its inadequacy; it is oversize, not cambered, and clumsy looking overall:
As I have been, for details on the small-work, I referenced Lemineur for a better idea of what these cradles should look like:
That lead to this interpretation, which does fit the kit large launch exactly:
For the sake of realism, as these cradles are roughly 3 scale feet in height, I scribed-in some plausible join lines. I think it unlikely that they would have been made from single balks of timber.
With that much settled, I scraped paint away from my hatches and glued them down. A few things to note:
Heller places the main launch partially beneath the f’ocsle deck. Apart from this arrangement being unlikely, I had decided to include a galley stove at the aft end of my f’ocsle deck. Clearly, these two details are not going to co-exist:
That’s okay, though, because I had always intended the ship’s boats to be in the water and tethered to the lower transom. The other weird Hellerism is that they mount the smaller launch to the quarter deck hatches. I think this is just straight nonsense. After all, there are no skids along the quarter deck section of the hull. The boats would have been nested inside each other and stored in the waist. For this detail, the representation of the cradles is enough. I will not show the stowage of spare topmasts and main spars, for the same incongruities of scale. I do still need to make and install ringed eyebolts for the boat lashings, just fore and aft of the cradles.
Next, I installed the cleats and block leads for the foremast spar brace leads, to either side of the main hatchway. I referenced Chuck Passaro’s super-informative tutorial for best practices of lashing blocks to eye-bolts/hooks:
Even on these really tiny blocks, this method works extremely well. My results were very good with some trial and error, and will only improve with practice.
So, now onto the Kavals. Here is where I made my mistake. You will see two of these free-standing belay posts mounted BEFORE the main mast. In my haste, and in consideration of other factors such as the placement of the waist ladders and the recoil path of the guns, I neglected to consider that these posts should be placed AFT of the main mast:
The blue squares of painters’ tape indicate what I should have done for their placement.
So, this creates a problem. Easily enough, I can just remove these offending posts. What is not so easy, though, is seamlessly matching the paint touch-up to what I laid down, in the first place.
My current line of thought is to simply leave these posts and add the others, where indicated. I COULD use these forward kavals to belay the fall of the mid-ship boat tackles to. That would at least make some sense. The kit rigging instructions have the fall running to the midship sheer rail.
What are your guys’ thoughts on that?
. Such amount of information in one book without having to look through hundred of different post and topics is worthy to be sold in Musee de La Marine. I have no doubt you possess skill to make such grand model. If you don't make this book before you pass away at least pass the notes to somebody who will
Probably, MSW was blocking robots or WebArchive was taking only specific pages - honestly, I don't know.
. Enjoy your special day.
