Since my last posting, I have continued to add features to the bow, deck and inner hull. These include the inner hawse pieces, bowsprit step, catheads, carrick bitts, windlass, samson post, bollards, spurlings, anchor chain, companions, mast bitts, coaling hatches, king posts, waterways, main cabin, pilot house, paddle shafts and bearings, skylights, ladders, bridges, cleats, eyebolts, rudderhead housing, ship’s wheel, compass pedestal, bulwark rails, bowsprit and its cap, gammoning strap, bobstays and bow fairlead.
The upper paddle units and funnel are in place. For the funnel, you had to cut the 6” long dowel down to 4 ½” in length, which made it shorter than the paper you rolled and glued to the dowel and itself. Then you glued three 1/16” wide cardboard strips to the funnel paper. Modelers on Model Ship World and Ships of Scale websites complained that trying to glue the uppermost cardboard strip caused the funnel paper to crumble or tear. As someone else did, I temporarily placed the cut off piece of the dowel against where it was cut, so that when I rolled the paper and glued it to itself plus glued the cardboard strips, the paper did not crumble at the top. That worked great. The upper paddle units were painted with one coat of Vallejo Black Primer and two coats of Model Expo Hull/Spar Black paint. The funnel, steam whistle and safety value were painted with one coat of Vallejo Black Primer and two coats of Model Expo Iron/Cannon Black paint.
For the windlass assembly, I added, from scrap wood, the pawl, purchases and crosshead. The windlass supports (carrick bitts) were not large enough to add the strong back to the assembly as shown in the Instruction Manual windlass diagram (see the attached photo). The purchase rods and hand levers are from brass rods 0.8 mm in diameter. All were painted with one coat of Vallejo Black Primer and two coats of Model Expo Iron/Cannon Black paint. Please see the attached photo to identify these parts. I am not sure why Model Shipways did not include them in the kit.
Like others, I had to cut the photo-etched brass pilothouse windowpanes into three pieces, trimming the vertical edges of each piece.
Like some others, I had to extend the main cabin roof where the two 8-rung metal ladders went, in order for them to fit. I used the same limewood board that the roof came from, to make a piece 4 mm long. I also had to fill in the two pre-drilled holes there for the handrails for those ladders and drill new ones near the end of the extension, using my mini drill press.
The roof portion of the pilothouse was also about 4 mm too short, probably my error, so I added an extension to it from the same limewood board as I did the cabin roof extension, but where the back of the pilot house roof was located.
I messed up the driveshaft bearings. Since this is a laser cut kit, I assumed the driveshaft holes in the cabin for the bearings would line up with the other bearing, which goes in the back of the paddlebox. So, I glued the bearings to those locations prior to painting the parts which was a week or so before I glued the cabin/pilothouse to the deck and the upper paddleboxes in place. Turns out they did not line up, so my drive shafts are at a 20-degree angle with respect to the cabin walls versus 90 degrees. If I could do this over, I would glue the bearings on the back of the paddlebox after gluing it in place and gluing the cabin/pilothouse to the deck to ensure the 90 degrees, even if the bearing did not line up with the hole in the paddlebox cardboard piece where it should go.
Where the laser-cut gunwale pieces were glued together, I put some wood filler where the pieces met, so as to hide the gunwale was multiple pieces as much as I could. That seemed to work well.
Again, probably my error, but the bow fairleads did not lie flat to the gunwales (bulwark rails) all the way to the bowsprit. Since the wood was really thin, I decided not to try and cut the fairleads to fit better around the bowsprit. Instead, I used some scrap wood and wood filler to fill in the space between the bottom of the fairleads and the top of the gunwale, where they met the side of the bowsprit. I also filled in the smaller spaces with wood filler.
The bobstays (chains between the hull and the bowsprit) were attached to the eyebolts via 0.25 mm black rigging rope left from my Mamoli USS Constitution build, using my big eye beading needle. I consider this type of needle a much needed tool for getting rigging rope through eyebolts and rigging blocks.
The 5-step ladders going between the bridges on the upper paddleboxes and the cabin roof were not long enough. I probably did something wrong. Since I was missing some other parts, I told a little white lie and requested from Model Shipways two more of the 8-step ladder to use at this location, saying mine were lost. I used these extra 8-step ladders in place of the 5-step ones.
Since it will be easier to attach the cannon ropes in the bulwarks and spirketting eyebolts around the open gunports, I have put temporary rods in those gunports that will have cannons present. Once the cannons are in place, so will be their opening’s eyebolts.
I painted the bulwark rails with one coat of Vallejo White Primer and two coats of Model Expo Hull Bottom Copper Red paint per the box lid and not the white painted listed in the Instruction Manual. Otherwise, I followed the suggested painting colors. All painted pieces not painted black or grey had one coat of either Model Expo Primer for smaller pieces or Vallejo White Primer for the larger pieces. All pieces to be painted white had two top coats of Model Expo White paint. All pieces painted grey had one coat of Vallejo Grey Primer and two coats of Model Expo Medium Gray. All pieces painted black had one coat of Vallejo Black Primer and two coats of Model Expo Hull/Spar Black, except for machinery and ironworks such as the eyebolts, windlass, bobstays and anchor chain, which had two coats of Model Expo Iron/Cannon Black as the top paint. The ship’s wheel had two coats of Model Expo Deep Brown as the top paint. The compass pedestal’s compass portion used two coats of Model Expo White paint as the top paint while the pedestal itself had Deco Art Bright Brass as the top paint. I used a drop of that same paint for doorknobs on all the doors.
The waterways were treated with one coat of Model Expo Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner, three coats of two parts OcCre Pine dye with one part OcCre Walnut dye and then two coats of OcCre Satin Varnish. After each coat of the dyes and varnished, I lightly sanded down the surface with 320-grit sandpaper except for after the last coat of varnish, where I used a green kitchen scouring pad versus the sandpaper.
This posting covers Steps 27 through 29, Step 33 and Steps 41 through 75 of the Instruction Manual.
Please enjoy the attached photos.
All comments or questions appreciated.
P. S. For those of you planning to build this kit, I have some updates regarding eyebolts and rigging blocks. Steps 82 and 107 have a mismatch between the size of the eyebolt listed in the Instruction Manual and the part number for that eyebolt. Step 145 does not give the size nor part number of the eyebolts. I pointed this out to Model Shipways and they did get back to me with the correct information. From that I made the following chart:
Step | Number of Small Eyebolts (MS0429) | Number of Medium Eyebolts (MS0428) | Number of Large Eyebolts (MS0434) |
39 | | 2 | |
44 | | 2 | |
61 | 4 | | 3 |
62 | 4 | | |
66 | 20 | 20 | |
72 | | 4 | |
76 | 4 | | |
77 | | 12 | |
82 | | 2 | |
83 | 4 | | |
84 | 2 | | |
96 | 12 | | |
97 | 16 | | |
First 107 | 2 (Holes done in Step 104) | | |
Second 106 | 4 (Holes done in Step 104) | | |
Second 107 | | | 2 |
110 | | 2 | |
145 | | 2 | |
146 | 2 | | |
Total | 62 | 58 | 5 |
I had shortages of the small eyebolts, so filled out a missing parts request and received the missing items from Model Shipways.
I also did a similar chart of the rigging blocks. There were also steps that it was not clear which size block to use, but based on the number of blocks I got in the kit, I was able to determine the correct sizes (I believe). Here is that chart:
Step | Number of 3/32” Single Blocks (MS0301) | Number of 1/8” Single Blocks (MS0302) | Number of 1/8” Double Blocks (MS0308) | Number of 1/4” Double Blocks (MS311) | Number of 3/16” Double Blocks (MS0390) |
82 | | | | 2 | |
98 | | | | | 2 (one is used in this step and the other one in Step 102 separate from the 1/8” double block listed in this chart) |
99 | 2 | 6 | 5 | | |
100 | | 2 | | | |
101 | 1 | 2 | | | |
102 | | | 1 | | |
117 | 1 | | | | |
120 | | 2 | | | |
127 | 2 | | | | |
135 | 2 | | | | |
140 | | 4 | 2 | | |
143 | | 1 | | | |
145 | | 4 | | | |
148 | 8 | | | | |
Total | 16 | 21 | 8 | 2 | 2 |
I had shortages of the MS0302 blocks and received them from Model Shipways at the same time as the missing eyebolts and a couple of other missing parts.
Hope these charts are helpful.
