USS Constitution Cross-Section 1797 - 1:76 - Model Shipways by rlwhitt [COMPLETED BUILD]

[rlwhitt]

Hi folks!

I have just started posting here and am already in-progress on the Model Shipways Constitution Cross Section, kit MS2045. In looking around I see that there are a couple of Mamoli cross section build threads, but none for the MS. So even though I've started already I haven't really gotten all that far so I thought I'd start one and do a little bit of catch up.

There is an excellent kit review here already, so no need to trod that ground again, link here:

https://shipsofscale.com/sosforums/...n-1797-1-76-scale-designed-by-ken-foran.7150/

First a word of my plan for this build. It comes with all the materials to completely build and rig the main mast of the ship. I'm not going to do it all, in fact my build will stop with the lower mast, topsail mast stubbed, and the main shrouds/ratlines/futtock shrouds, as the promo picture on Model Shipways web page shows. I'm maybe considering fitting the lower yard, but probably not. The reason is I don't much care for doing masts and rigging (though I like how they look). Yeah, I know, some will say I've picked the wrong hobby to start if that's the case. Though I'm new to wood ship modeling, I have done plastics in the past and always rigging is the part I really don't enjoy so much (in fact kind of dreaded it). Not surprisingly, I see Admiralty models in my future.

 

[rlwhitt]

So onward picking up mid stream, apologies for the bits that will be skipped over. By and large I'm finding the instruction book and pictures to be excellent, so no need to embellish too much except where I found issues.

I do have one early picture for some reason, that being just the 3 frames and the jig base assembled. Each of the 3 frames (Bow, Mid, Stern) have a piece of the base designed into it, to which you add 2 cross pieces and glue them together. Most of the hull build is carried out with this base on, then when you get ready to plank and plate the lower hull, you cut it off. The kit includes a cradle stand that you then build and use from that point.



A few words from recent memory about this stage:

First, make sure you use something square clamped into the base parts while gluing as this assembly will rack diagonally if you don't have it good and square.

There are several moveable/removeable spacers included. The instructions have you scatter these about among the decks and will be moved around as needed. I mostly found them to be a pain in the butt. They fall out every time you tilt the assembly. I would keep the top 3 on the spar deck level as things get kind of spindly up there, but otherwise they tend to be in the way.

If you look at the instructions it seems that they wait (and I did too) to start painting these frames white. It would have been much better to paint the parts that will be visible first.

The bars across the top labelled "Brace" are temporary and barely attached. You WILL break these off at various times. It might not be a bad idea to reinforce the joint a bit with a drop of CA. YMMV.

 

[rlwhitt]

Fast forward to where I am now, at about page 17 (of 96!) of the instructions. Being a chronic CRS sufferer, if I don't write it down it didn't happen - but I do remember a few tidbits to share to this point:

- Putting in the gravel. I used about half of the bag of rocks. If you try to put in the whole bag I think you'll fill the hold! Also, you will need plenty of diluted glue to make them stick. It never really says how much and I didn't initially use enough because I was trying not to make mess. But I ended up having to dropper in more to get it all to stick so be generous. And on a related note be sure to put a pan or paper plate under the assembly or else you'll have a nice puddle of white glue on your work bench.

- Barrels. Even though I only used half the gravel, I found that I had to shave some sides from the bigger barrels to get them to fit under the orlop deck frame top. Plan ahead accordingly - you could put less rock or squish them down into the still wet bed of rocks. Also, I didn't use 2 of the medium barrels in the stern side and I see they didn't as well in the instructions - there's just not room.

- Staining the decks. Just be prepared that they are going to warp a lot - the wood is very thin. I diluted the Oak stain a good bit to get a wash effect and keep all the laser cut detail (I ordered the MS paint set along with this so I'm using all the ones they recommend in the manual), so that dilution obviously enhanced the warping effect!

- There's a big oops in the instructions (page 15 in my version) where they tell you to glue diagonal bracing strips to the berthing deck walls. What they SHOULD say is the Orlop deck walls and that should be done BEFORE the berthing deck is added, as well as the "filler" they have you add at about the same point. I used some scrap 1/16" sheet I had rather than the 1/4" strip.

- Hatchway steps: The 2-step assembly on either side of all 3 stern ladder hatchways are made with these little tiny side pieces where the mid step placement laser etching goes almost all the way through the wood. Unless you have a very delicate touch you will probably be breaking some of these. Luckily it looks like there are extra. I did 2 things here that helped a lot. First this sheet of parts (and others) are so thin the parts fall out when you handle them, and can easily get lost. I put some Frog Tape on the back of some of them in strategic locations to hold them together. As for the little step side parts I painted a small amount of diluted Titebond on the face of them before taking them from the sheet and when that dried I had no more issue with breaking them.

Here are a few pics of progress up to this point:

 

[rlwhitt]

As of this point, the blog is now current with the actual build.

Now we will be doing knees on the berthing deck, to support the gun deck above. Lots of them. There are 2 types of large "standard" knees (6 go under the frames and have a notch), and 4 others not notched. Then 6 hanging knees between them and 14 "diagonal" knees to connect all that. In a prior picture you can see some pencil marks on the berthing deck side walls where these go, taken from the temporarly placement of the gun deck frames. The manual does a pretty good job of laying this out.



Some dry fitting shows that there will be a lot of adjustments needed if you want things to fit nice and tight, as the picture below hopefully illustrates. The backs will have to be adjusted to fit the wall and waterway, and the top will need a shim to meet the frames. I briefly toyed with the idea of pulling the frames down flat to meet the top of the knees. That would have solved one other problem with having to bend the under deck frames (more on that issue later), but that would make the structure factually incorrect as the decks are obviously supposed to be crowned. Now I'm not at this stage prone to be so strict about perfect accuracy, but this was a bridge too far even for me, and I'll suck it up and shim them. So, 30 knees, all needing lots of TLC to fit. This is going to take a while and I'll probably be having dreams about knees.

 

[Snowy]

I find these very interesting
Keep up the great work
Cheers snowy

 

[shota70]

welcome aboard rlwhitt
good luck with this interesting project, I will keep following with curious, because your start looks promising.

 

[rlwhitt]

Welcome @Snowy and @shota70, and thanks all for the Likes

 

[rlwhitt]

Berthing Deck - Knees

As shown in the last post's picture, there is some adjusting to do on some of the "standard" knees (those that are attached both to the deck here and the gun deck frame above. This picture is typical of the needed changes - sanded the back to adapt to the exact curve of the wall and fit the waterway better, plus added some shim to the top and the notch area to close the gaps.



And here the 6 main knees under the frames are in place. Not perfect fits, but better.



Next we add the intermediate standard knees and the hanging knees. No adjustments are needed for the hanging ones and they are thin enough to flex a bit when the gun deck above is placed so if they are a little high they should flex to fit. The free standing standard knees have to have the backs shaped to match the wall like the notched 6 did. My concern is the tops where they will meet with the gun deck framing. As you can see in this next picture, the tops are a bit low in relation to the other knees so they really need some shim to better fit the frames above. Not quite sure how I'm going to handle that, if at all. Might not be visible enough to matter much. We'll cross that bridge when we put the frames on.



Lastly, there are a bunch of diagonal knees that go between the ones already in place. The instructions and picture leave a bit to be desired here, but it's not to hard to figure where they should go once you see it in person. There are extra short ones. You have to sand and cut some bevels:



And finally, with all the knees in place. I didn't get all the diagonal lower ends just exactly even. It bothers me a bit, but I'd make a bigger mess ripping the offending ones out. Oh well....

 

[Uwek]

Very interesting building log - I will follow with big interest

 

[rlwhitt]

Very interesting building log - I will follow with big interest

Thanks Uwe,

Coincidentally, I just recently discovered your Granado build and am following that with great interest. Impressed that you've taken the split hull option and it's looking amazing! I'm just starting out, but aspire to gain enough skills and nerve to try something from CAF model someday.

 

[Uwek]

I'm just starting out, but aspire to gain enough skills and nerve to try something from CAF model someday.

you need only a little bit more experience and maybe some more time for the build, but due to the fact that the quality of materials is much much better you enjoy every minute doing such a model...... you have to try - and do not wait too long

 

[rlwhitt]

Berthing Deck Wrap-up

Before moving on from the Berthing Deck, the instructions have you pre-prepping the suction pipes for the bilge pumps. They are provided as white metal as shown in the bottom of the picture. You are suppose to straighten and shorten them a bit so as to fit the non-aligned holes between the berthing and orlop decks, and paint them copper. Even straightened somewhat it's a hard fit with a lot of fooling around and scraping, and you'd be about guaranteed to scrape half the paint off in the process. I decided I'd have none of that and went hunting for an easier solution. I found it in 22 gauge electrical wire. Cut a short section, stripped the end and used pliers to pull the copper strands out, and am left with a nice little flexible tube, that is a perfect friction fit for the little fitting at the bottom of the pump body. Plus the wire will take and hold paint a bit better. And since it's pretty flexible, it'll be easier to route through the holes. I did ream the flange holes out just a tad to make it fit.



And speaking of copper paint - this is Model Expo's excuse for said color. I don't know what this is, but it's not even in the same postal code as copper. So we'll be using some real copper hobby paint instead.



For now we put the pump and pipe pieces aside - they will be installed once the gun deck is in. For now, we have 8 stanchions to make and install on the Berthing deck before moving on:

 

[rlwhitt]

Gun Deck

All the decks except the Orlop deck have these nice heavy frame parts. As is, you only see the framing from underneath once the decking is on, but you could choose to do some decking cutaway to show the frames, as they have some laser scribed lines on them to simulate the real framing.

Since the decks have about 1/16" of crown to them, you need to bend the frames before installing. They are thick so it's not very practical to just put them in straight and coax the bend with clamps. So here I just clamp them down on a board over some scrap and apply heat from a hair dryer. They warn not to use water here, and I can imagine why as it's cause all sorts of swelling.



Here we have the 2 frame parts installed. Note the use of the short mast fixture to ensure alignment. There's 4 decks, 3 with frames, plus all the mast surrounds, so you have to use this thing a lot to make sure you're keeping all the things lined up so the mast remains straight side to side and the slight aft rake. So far I've not had to adjust the mast holes in the frames, but have consistently had to widen the hole in the deck planking a bit fore or aft.



Even though the instructions have you building the hatchways after the decking is on I prefer to do it first for easier access.

A quick dry-fit shows another design oops. Seems that the frame underneath encroaches the hatchway, as shown with the red circle. I went ahead and removed it - which would have been easier BEFORE it was glued in!



So the hatchway lower part is framed with some 1/16" square stock. I glued it on first, then chamfered and painted. Then it's installed on the deck:



The little step parts were mentioned earlier and here they are, Two things -the short step is not short enough, it'll have to be trimmed, and the upper part of the hatchway as shown is provided with gratings attached. I guess so you can either leave them in or not. I chose to let my imaginary sailors have free run of all the decks and removed them



And finally, the completed hatchway, awaiting ladders later.



Next up is to construct the waterways. Each deck has a set, and they are all shaped slightly differently. The picture below shows that the plans give you a good picture of what each one should look like. They start out as more or less square but pay attention to these as they are not really square in cross section when you take them from the part sheet. They are actually shaped so they fit right against the frame and so you don't have to carve that part.



Here is one installed after getting its green paint job:



The last picture here shows another design oops, I think. Pretty sure it's not me, as I didn't even get all the char sanded off the deck edges and the waterway is as wide as the supplied part allows. So there's about a 1/16" gap on both side. I'll have to shim that.

 

[rlwhitt]

Gun Deck, Part 2

Last post highlighted a design issue with the gundeck being too narrow. Added some 1/16" stock to shim, and sanded down to fit. Much better.



Next, we're back to dealing with the bilge pumps and their pipes. Model Expo take note, this is what copper paint looks like:



And after some digital gymnastics 'tween decks, all the pumps and pipes are in place.



Some itty bitty ladder bits, and installed ladders:




Onto the gun deck sides, and we find a documentation oops. The pictures and descriptions in the manual do not match the actual part and the plans. They have you putting the double eyebolts on the bottom of the knees (to be added later), and an extra set of singles on the walls that have no apparent purpose. Also, there are some extra holes above the gun ports that baffled me so I filled them.



Here we have the walls installed. A word of caution here. As designed, the side walls extend a little too far up the frames and would cause the spar deck flooring to not site down flush with the frames. So I sanded them down a bit before gluing them in.




Next up, making GUNS! All 4 of them.

 

[rlwhitt]

I have the 4 cannons made and have built a little cardboard "stage" for setting up the rigging since it's so hard to reach into the framework of the hull. I've ordered some Brass Black and will test it on the hooks for the gun rigging, so I'm setting this aside for the moment while I deal with the gun deck knees.

 

[Corsair]

Onto the gun deck sides, and we find a documentation oops. The pictures and descriptions in the manual do not match the actual part and the plans. They have you putting the double eyebolts on the bottom of the knees (to be added later), and an extra set of singles on the walls that have no apparent purpose. Also, there are some extra holes above the gun ports that baffled me so I filled them.

I won't say always, but often, each cannon should have an eyebolt on either side for the breaching line. Another eyebolt on either side for the gun tackle to pull the gun back into battery after it's been fired and possibly reloaded. The holes over the gun port could be for the lines to open the gun port door usually on the lower decks.

The rest of you guys please correct me if you think I'm wrong here.

your build is looking great !

Jeff

 

[rlwhitt]

I won't say always, but often, each cannon should have an eyebolt on either side for the breaching line. Another eyebolt on either side for the gun tackle to pull the gun back into battery after it's been fired and possibly reloaded. The holes over the gun port could be for the lines to open the gun port door usually on the lower decks.

The rest of you guys please correct me if you think I'm wrong here.

your build is looking great !

Jeff

Thanks for the kind word, Jeff...

I figured the hole over the port had something to do with being the internal part of the line we see outside on the port lid, but this one is not going to be so detailed!

 

[rlwhitt]

Gun Deck Finish

On the gun deck, we have 3 hanging knees and a few diagonal ones. The one under the frame (foreground), needed some shaping and bending to fit, and the diagonal ones are not going to be a great fit to the spar deck frames above without some bending/clamping. It takes a while to paint these as there's a bunch of end grain here and they are very thirsty!



Going a little out of order from the manual as I wanted to mount the guns last. So next we'll fit the topside pump parts. Here we encounter another design oops. As I hope you can see in the red circled area of this pic, there is not nearly enough room between the hatchway and the pump bodies to accommodate the base of the end frame. If I had realized this ahead of time I could have left off the hatchway combing on this side or cut a slot in it. No way I'm going to try to cut that with it all glued in, so the next best thing is to cut down the base of the end frame.



So I ground and filed until the base was just a little more thick than the frame. And then it fit OK.



Here we have the basic parts painted and installed. They look a bit wonky since to get everything to fit and seat properly I had to bend a couple of arms. Note that are a number of extra parts supplied here - I guess they think you might mess some up trying to get them to fit together. Not a bad assumption as this is all a bit messy, design and fit wise.

In the last picture, you can also see the pump handles. They are just sort of stacked on top, sort of like they'd be stored when not in use.



Finally, gun deck complete! Critical eyes will notice I bailed on the full gun tackle, and have elected to just put on the breech ropes. I have my justifications for this:

• A bit of lazy
• I don't enjoy rigging, as I alluded to at the beginning of the thread.
• I like the clean, sparse look of this.
• My future builds will be Admiralty style kits, and I notice a lot of those are done without full gun rigging, either with nothing at all or just the breech rope, so I feel like this is how I want to do it.
• Did I mention I'm a bit lazy and don't like rigging?

And yes, after these were in I realized I'd looped the breech ropes upside down on the barrel ends. Sigh..... We'll get it right next time.



Now on to the Spar Deck.

 

[rlwhitt]

Spar Deck, Part 1

Finally, we get to work out in the sunshine! Those dark lower decks were getting depressing.

The instruction book has us pretty much completing everything on the Spar Deck before moving to the outside of the hull (planking, etc). I'm not going to do that for the simple reason that I'm clumsy, and the more fragile crap I put out on the top deck while I flip this over and work on the bottom, the more I'm going to break off. I've already broken the tops of the frames about 5000 times, and knocked the stanchions off another thousand or so. So, I'm going to do the minimum strong bits to get us to the point of having solid bulwarks to rest on, then move to do the outside around the gun ports, lower planking, and coppering. THEN, we'll come back up top and finish off the deck details.

Just like every other deck below, we start this one with 2 frame pieces, painted, bent, and glued. No major drama on this one. Then, again same as prior decks, we shape and install the waterways. THIS time though, we have a little wrinkle. Before, the waterway piece snugged up against all 3 frames pretty well. On this one though, the design is curved along the side of the deck, so if we left the waterway straight there'd be a gap at the middle frame, and throw the bulwark width off. So, I just inserted at piece of scrap in there while the glue dried to force the curve (green arrows):



Next, a little look ahead. Later, the Bentinck shrouds will attach to an eyebolt in the waterway midway between the carronades. Since that will be a heavy piece of rig and under some stress, I didn't want to trust it to a eybolt just stuck in a hole with a dab of glue. So I drilled all the way through and stuck in a full length jackstay eyebolt. I then bent the wire over and CA'd it to the backside. As we tend to say in the southern US when we attach something securely, "that ain't goin' nowhere".



Proceeding on to the decking itself, I again install the hatchways first before installing it. And again like the gun deck, I had to shim. Not as much, but still. And sharp eyes notice that the shims needed are asymmetrical. So, that's a telltale that the frame has a little twist. Can't really tell though visually, and everything is still fitting pretty good.



Here we deviate from the plan a little more. As I'd mentioned earlier when dealing with the aft hatchways and stairs, all of them come with optional gratings. I've put them on this time, because I do not intend to put the stairs in. I've been reading a past build log of this kit on another forum, and the author was curious about this odd little partial "hatchway", and realized that it's just the aft end of the long hatchway amidships. And the stairs are at the forward end, so they don't really belong here. I'm fine with them not being here to allow a better view into the gun deck, and my sailors can still get upstairs using the back stairs.



And finally! Something to steady those stupid little fragile frames! Bulwarks insides painted and installed. Since I'm again only going to be installing breaching ropes, I didn't bother with all the extra eyebolts.

Note in this picture centered on each gun port, is a carronade pivot base. Instructions show gluing this to the bulwark side itself. If you did that, it'd tilt the gun upward a good bit, so instead I made the front a 45 degree angle to fit the waterway and installed them low.

So that's going to be it on the Spar Deck for now. I'm going to move on next to the outside, and come back to finish up here after.

 

[rlwhitt]

Exterior Walls, Gun port Frames, Wales

Prior to placing the exterior walls, we need to add port braces and some upper framing. The lower ones are laser cut, but they need a good bit of trimming to fit. The upper set is just pieces of strip stock:



So now we paint and apply the outer walls. They come as one piece, surrounding all gun ports. I'd be shocked if on anyone's build these index properly to all 4 ports as-is. Mine were off by a good bit. Rather than try to bend and force things, I decided to cut them in half and deal with 2 ports at a time, and shim between the parts as needed to blend everything back to together. Here I've split the pieces at the channel slot.

I find that I had to drop the lower part a little and rotate it slightly as well to get the fit correct.



The instructions say to apply the wall first, and then build the port frames and insert them. I thought I'd rather make the frames first, attach to the wall part and then install the wall using the frames to align things. Also, you are instructed to make inner and outer frames nested together for the main gun ports. Looking at my main guns in the ports I was a bit worried all that extra thickness of frame would end up contacting the bottom of the barrel, so I didn't use the inner frames. In fact, since the inner frames were made to fit an angled wall, and they were about the right size, I actually used them for the upper gun port frames. Just had to sand them down a bit. The ones provided for the uppers are completely square, I think these fit better. The port frames were a little too narrow, but not so much that shimming them with wood was really feasible. So I used some 110lb card stock, as you can see in the pic below. It made the fit perfect.



Here is one upper wall part with its frames before painting:



And installed, with its lower mate prepped and ready to go:



Lower section installed, and the red circle shows the result of the need to lower and turn the section. That slot for the channel is about 1.5X too large and more on one end than the other. It will need a wedge shaped shim to bring that slot back to correct size.



Final installation, with channel slot shimmed to correct width all the way across, and with the wale installed with scuppers and port lights.



Next time we will turn our attention to the worlds easiest planking job. So hopefully a bit of a breather.