Last Chance Build of HM Sloop Alert (1777) Vanguard Models
Hello everyone. I found this thread by accident while exploring the site yesterday and it's exactly what I didn't know I needed. You see, I'm keen to share a build with you because model making can sometimes be a lonely hobby. However, I don't want to start a full scale build log for my current project because I'm about half-way through already and more importantly, because I'm not entirely confident that I will ever finish it. I've had nothing but failures in recent years and I'm shy of staging a disaster in the public eye.
Following my series of dead ends, I have vowed that if this kit defeats me I will give up the hobby, sell my tools and kits and take up knitting, baking or jigsaw puzzles instead. I'm glad to say that making that promise to myself seems to have helped and the build is going well, if slowly. I only work on her when I'm really in the mood so some weeks there is nothing done and then I might put in a ten hour day.
And now some photographs:
Here's a recent picture taken to celebrate the end of hull planking and coppering and the attaching of the base. Those of you who know the kit will see that I have made it mine own with some modifications.
I used walnut for the outer bulwarks because I read in Goodwin's Anatomy of the Ship that Alert was not painted but varnished. It it was going to be varnished then I wanted some pretty wood and to show that the model was made of many small pieces. My choice of contrasting colours was rather unsubtle but it's too late to worry about that now.
I hand shaped the planks below the wale to suggest Alert's clinker-built construction.
I didn't have to fake much clinkering as I had some copper plates left over from one of my fails and used them to copper Alert.
There was a lot of fun to be had with the copper, and some pain. I annealed the sheets of plates so that I could easily bend them to fit the hull, and each other. This gave me a variety of colours and textures and led to much experimentation as I treated batches of plates with various household chemicals to differentiate them. I was working on the assumption that mid eighteenth century, mass produced copper would be very impure and after a few months at sea, there would be many chemical reactions taking place. The copper would have been almost any colour but never, never shiny.
The stand is intended to suggest a boat on blocks in a boatyard - something we are all familiar with. When she's finished I intend to add some barrels, blocks, timber and rope to improve the look of the setting.
Moving onto the deck, I'm using maple (I think) which I have sawn into strips from a single stick bought at a local timber merchants - mostly to see whether I could do it. I've incorporated a margin plank as you see and have planked over most of the holes in the under-deck as unnecessary. The deck furniture doesn't allow a view inside and there's no interior detail down there anyway.
AotS shows that the deck planking was joggled into the margin planks. It's easier that you might think to joggle to this standard. Perfection would be very difficult but at my point on the learning curve, that doesn't really worry me.
She's an odd looking thing next to the beautifully decorated, white bottomed, carvel-planked, acrylic mounted Alert models that come out of the box but she might be slightly closer to the real thing and crucially, she's mine and I'm a bit proud of her.
All being well, I hope to have her finished by the end of 2024 and whatever I build next can have the full build log treatment in the new year.