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Arthur   Registered Member #1929 Joined: Wed Nov 30 2011, 03:05pmPosts: 3021 | The first POB model ship I built was the French corvette ‘Astrolabe’. I’ve always liked fully rigged ships, but I didn’t want to only build ships of that type so I’ve not built another one since then. Although Astrolabe turned out to be quite a nice model, the instructions went in the bin at a relatively early stage and it soon became apparent that the historical accuracy of the model was questionable. As I also have a preference for natural wood finishes, I’m equally guilty of not turning out more historically accurate models. So, I’ve decided to have another go at a fully rigged ship and bought the HMS Vanguard kit by Victory Models (Amati). This time it will be copper plates and paint rather than varnished wood. There’s no getting away from the fact that this is an expensive kit but it should keep me occupied for at least a couple of years, so that’s my excuse. There are some excellent build logs on MSW already for this model, so that’s a novelty for me - being able to see what others have achieved with this kit. So far the only modification I’m planning is to fit some LED lighting in various places, but I need to think about that at an early stage. I’ve had good service from Cornwall Model Boats in the past, so I checked with their website for the kit, I think sometime in early November, only to see it listed as ‘temporarily unavailable’. As I was still finishing Gulnara at that time, that wasn’t a problem. I checked the website at odd times to see if anything had changed but the expected delivery dates seemed to stay at 2 weeks (assuming that they included Victory Models with Amati). By mid December I was wondering if I could actually get this kit in time for Christmas (contributions towards it as a Christmas present were on offer!) so I queried CMB re the delivery dates using the form on their web page. Somewhat surprisingly, I didn’t receive a response, but the next time I checked the website it no longer showed as out of stock. I did wonder if that was a coincidence or if it had actually been in stock for a while and my enquiry had prompted an update of the page. Anyway, I placed an order. I ordered it on Friday and received it the following Monday! The kit is now showing ‘temporarily unavailable’ again. When I received the order acknowledgement, it included the shipping details showing the kit weighed 14kg. As the saying goes “Never mind the quality, feel the width”. When the kit itself arrived, I took the lid off the box for a quick check, but didn’t open or remove anything, I simply replaced the lid until Christmas. You may have noticed at this time that I altered my ‘Signature’ to say “Current build: HMS Vanguard – Under the Christmas tree”. That wasn’t actually true – it wouldn’t fit under the Christmas tree! So, what was in the box and what’s happened so far? These are general views of the box and its contents. PICT_V_0101 PICT_V_0102  Besides numerous MDF, plywood and hardwood sheets of laser cut parts, there are numerous bundles of what looks to be very good quality strip wood, a bundle of hardwood rods and three fairly large boxes of components. Finally, there was a large plastic bag containing plans and instructions. I was unimpressed with the instructions that came with Mantua’s Astrolabe kit – until, that is, I bought Amati’s Bireme. They made Astrolabes instructions look positively comprehensive. Krick’s instructions for Gulnara, once I got an English rather than a German set, were passable. I’d seen posts suggesting that Victory models instructions were fairly good so the contents of the plastic bag were going to be interesting. Lifting them out immediately showed where a reasonable proportion of the 14kg had come from. Out of curiosity I headed for the kitchen scales. We have a vintage set of scales and a set of both metric and imperial weights but I had to resort to the imperial set, I didn’t have enough metric ones! The plans and instructions weighed in at 4lbs 12oz. The calculator gives that as 2.15kg. A quick check showed that was 20 plans (1x A0 and 19 x A1) and two instruction books. So that’s what was in the box, what of the progress? I began by doing what I’d done with Gulnara, I scanned the instructions (the book with the text, not the book of diagrams) and the parts list and stored them as a document and a spreadsheet on the computer. That makes it much easier to check off and identify the various parts. In the course of this I discovered that plans 16 to 20 were full size diagrams of the various wood sheets and brass etchings. (Lots of sheets of brass etchings.) All I’ve done construction wise so far is to dry fit the keel and bulkheads together to see what goes where. PICT_V_0103  PICT_V_0104  I’ve already found a fair few (all be it minor) mistakes though. Hopefully there aren’t any major ones lurking somewhere. [ Edited Thu Mar 21 2013, 05:30pm ] | ||
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| Arthur Registered Member #1929 Joined: Wed Nov 30 2011, 03:05pmPosts: 3021 | Finally, some progress has been made. I’ve had a few days delay sorting out other things. What I thought was a relatively straightforward computer upgrade turned out to be anything but (I shouldn’t have been surprised I suppose) but the main things are working again now So, what’s happened so far? The only significant planned departure from a straightforward build is my intention to fit some LED lighting in various places, but that called for some modifications from the very start. Some time ago Cosmic posted a topic on MSW (now available in PDF format) about making the lights flicker, which I think is very effective. Alexey has fitted lighting in his Vanguard and his log has gave me a fair idea of where I need to get to with the wiring. The difference is that I’m not going to fit batteries; I’ll power the lights through the mounting screws in the same way as I powered my bireme. I’ve been experimenting with a microprocessor I appropriated from my son and I can use that to drive the LEDs. It will drive the LEDs directly and requires no external components other than its power supply. They’re available in different sizes, the one I have has 32 outputs so I think that will be more than adequate for the number of LEDs I’m likely to fit! Time to do a little machining on the keel. The keel is made from two 5mm thick MDF pieces which are laser cut. (The laser cutting of all the parts is exceptionally good and the use of MDF avoids any problems with warping.) There are 5 laser cut walnut pieces which fit around the MDF sheets. Rather than glue these on at this stage, my intention is to plank the hull before fitting them as I think this will give a neater finish. (Yes, I know I’m going to hide it under copper plates later!) To get the second planking to fair into the stern post and the keel at the stern, I needed to rebate the keel by 1mm in this area so I used a small router cutter to do this. PICT_V_0201  When the bulkheads are in place, I’ll fair them and the keel down to the level of this rebate. Once that’s done, I’ll start a second rebate where this one ends to take the first planking. The next step was to drill a lot of holes in the keel and bulkheads. PICT_V_0202  Most of those in the keel are to thread rubber bands through when I want to hold the planks in place, the ones in the bulkheads are to run the wiring through. This bit serves two purposes. I’ve drilled the keel for two mounting screws and in order to reinforce it I’ve glued off cuts of MDF on either side at these points. Each screw has a bronze pickup for the electrical connections. I’ll solder wires into these later. PICT_V_0203  This next picture is the actually the second bit of gluing, I’ve already glued the two walnut pieces together that make up the stem. PICT_V_0204  The bulkheads are only glued to the deck at this point, not to the keel. There are lots of glue joints here and it looked as though it could get messy if I tried to do them all at once. Once all the bulkheads are glued to the deck I’ll slide out the keel, glue it and slide it back in. Lego blocks are very useful for keeping things square! | ||
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| Tim C |
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 Registered Member #4126 Joined: Fri Feb 15 2013, 05:19amPosts: 1113 | Looks like a fast start. Kit looks nice and Thanks for the led post. Enjoy the build. Later Tim [ Edited Mon Jul 09 2018, 03:53pm ] | ||
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| Arthur Registered Member #1929 Joined: Wed Nov 30 2011, 03:05pmPosts: 3021 | Now that the keel and bulkheads are glued together, I wanted to block out the bow and stern sections. I roughly faired the first few bulkheads and paid the local model shop a visit for some balsa wood. I picked up two thick planks from the oddments bin for £1 each. When I got home, I found that the thicker of the two was an exact fit between the front bulkheads! I used 2 pieces of the thinner block for the bow itself. This shows the carving in progress: PICT_V_0301  The aft bulkhead carries 4 formers for the transom, the bottom part of which is plywood and the first planking ends at this point. (Edit: I glued these in square to the bulkhead. The outer two should be angled inwards and I had to realign these later. These two could be left off until the plywood patterns are fitted.) I glued these pieces to the bulkhead, dry fitted the bulkhead and roughly faired it to get an idea of how the stern should look. Note: This bulkhead can’t be glued into place until the plywood strips the carry the lower dummy gun barrels are fitted. This is the stern bulkhead roughly carved to shape: PICT_V_0302  Time to fit the plywood strips so the bulkhead can be glued in place. That proved to be an interesting challenge! The strips slide through the stern bulkheads without too much trouble (they curve inboard at both bow and stern) but came to a stop at bulkhead 3. A good soaking seemed to be called for. Although that was having some effect, I needed to keep some pressure on the strips to get them to gradually bend inwards. A small G clamp did the job nicely: PICT_V_0303  Even when the end was lined up with the slot, the problems weren’t over. Because of the sideways pressure in the bulkheads the strip didn’t want to slide forward. I placed a block of wood in front of the keel where it rises through bulkhead 9 and levered against that to push the strips forward. I then had to repeat the whole procedure to get the strips through bulkhead 2. The strips are in two separate pieces at each side and I was going to glue an off-cut of plywood behind the joint but I found there was sufficient length to make a short halving joint between the pieces. I’d painted the strips matt black before fitting them, but I also used some dark wood stain on the false deck and bulkheads. After this, fitting some blocks, gluing the aft bulkhead in place and doing some more carving, this was the result: PICT_V_0304  PICT_V_0305  | ||
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| Arthur Registered Member #1929 Joined: Wed Nov 30 2011, 03:05pmPosts: 3021 | The instructions don’t call for anything further to be fitted on the lower gun deck before the upper gun deck is glued in place. Looking at the instructions though, there are two ladders leading down to this deck. I think these will be virtually invisible once the upper decks and the various ships boats and launches are in place. However, it did seem a suitable spot for a little experimentation. As I said earlier, I’m intending to install some lighting so a light in this area seemed a good place to start. With a light here, it might just be possible to see the lower gun deck at the foot of these ladders. Even if it isn’t, a trial section of planking here shouldn’t be a problem. The instructions say “It is not recommended that ‘caulking’ is attempted, as the small scale of the model would make the ‘caulking’ too visible. At this scale (1:72nd), it is highly likely that no caulking would be visible.” I used black thread to simulate the caulking on Gulnara and was very pleased with the results but in view of the above comments I decided to try an alternative method. I tried the method of inserting strips of thin black paper between the planks. The paper I used came wrapped around a carton of curry from the local fish and chip shop! It was 0.4mm thick and I cut strips off using a guillotine and coloured it with a black marker pen. The first attempts were only moderately successful; it was fiddly to get the strips into position and sections of the paper tended to pull out later when the excess was trimmed off. Later attempts, moistening the deck and planks before applying the glue and running a wet brush along the paper strip once the plank was positioned, were much more successful. This shows the strips in position and being trimmed flush: PICT_V_0401  This is what the planking looked like after scraping it smooth: PICT_V_0402  Comparing this with the caulking on Gulnara (1:50 scale) – (Gulnara’s build log isn’t posted yet, but here’s the picture):  - I couldn’t see too much difference between them despite the fact that I used 0.14mm diameter thread on Gulnara which should make the seams over three times the width. The paper was significantly more difficult to use than the thread so I think I’ll use thread for the rest of the caulking. I have some 0.1 mm thread which should give seams equivalent to 7.2mm full size. That seems quite reasonable and even the 0.14mm thread (11mm full size) doesn’t sound as though it would have been excessive. The next step was to try a light above this piece of the deck: PICT_V_0403  The LED is fitted in the deck beam, midway between the two hatches. And this is what’s driving the LED: PICT_V_0404  I said earlier that I could drive the LEDs directly from the chip; whilst that’s true, it supplies too much current so I’ve added resistors to limit the current to 20mA per LED. There are 32 separate outputs available, that should be plenty! The next picture shows it after a bit of work with the soldering iron: PICT_V_0405  The ribbon cable runs all the way to the stern and the yellow wires with it drop off along the way to light the poop deck area. There are also wires running left to the fore deck area. Having now glued the upper gun deck pattern in place, as per the instructions, I now see I’ve made my first mistake! Plan No.4 includes a cut-away view of the hull. This shows the stairways referred to earlier: PICT_V_0406  The aft ladder has hand ropes and stanchions, the lower pair of which fit in the lower gun deck. I can no longer get directly above these to drill mounting holes to fit them! With a bit of careful measuring, hopefully, I should be able to drill these from underneath. | ||
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| bbrockel |
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  Registered Member #1520 Joined: Sat Mar 12 2011, 04:39pmPosts: 136 | Arthur, your wiring looks very neat and well thought out. Your ship will look terrific with all the lighting. Thanks for the tip on wetting the 'caulking' strips as you glue them to the planks. I was having the same problem of the paper strips pulling out as I tried to shave them flush. The strips were just too flimsy and the chisel pulled them out leaving gaps between one plank and the next. Making them stiffer with the watered down glue solved this problem. Thanks | ||
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| Arthur Registered Member #1929 Joined: Wed Nov 30 2011, 03:05pmPosts: 3021 | There was a post by Len (freewheelinguy) on MSW - no longer available - in which he described a variation on the technique which should work just fine. He glued his planks onto a sheet of black paper with spaces between them. When the glue had set, he cut them up, cutting close to one side of each plank. That left him a strip along the other side of the planks that he could fold up to form the caulking. As long as you don't apply too much glue initially such that it squeezes out and stops you folding up the paper, that sounds like a solution to the problem and a much easier way of laying the planks as well. The added thickness of the deck shouldn't be an issue. You could send him a PM and ask him for the pictures. | ||
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| Arthur Registered Member #1929 Joined: Wed Nov 30 2011, 03:05pmPosts: 3021 | Bob: I forgot to say thanks for your comments on the wiring.  | ||
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| Arthur Registered Member #1929 Joined: Wed Nov 30 2011, 03:05pmPosts: 3021 | Next job was to fit the gun deck. This is supplied as two separate plywood sheets, one for the forward 2/3rds of the deck and the other for the aft section. Fitting these is quite a challenge, they need to be rolled/folded along their length a considerable amount to get them between the frames. The instructions suggest either fitting them and then planking them in situ or, alternatively, cutting them in half (lengthways), planking the halves, and then fitting them. I compromised; I cut them in half, fitted them, and then planked them! The instructions imply that the whole of this deck is to be planked but I suspect that a large part of it will not be visible when the upper decks are added. I’m doing as I’m told; I suppose at least I’ll be able to show pictures of that deck later. The instructions suggest a 4 plank stagger. Assuming 20 foot planks, that equates to just under 85mm at 1:72 scale, so 84mm planks is a nice length to keep the measurements simple. As mentioned earlier, the instructions suggest caulking wouldn’t be visible at this scale, but this time I’m going to ignore them. After my experiment with black paper, I’m going to revert to the method I used on Gulnara, namely 0.1mm black thread. That scales up to 7.2mm seams between the planks which doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. I set up the guillotine to 84mm and sliced up a couple of strips of the 3mm x 1mm tanganyika. I decided to drill the various nail holes in the planks, but not to make any attempt to fill them, I think they should just be visible. I made up a simple jig by taping a length of card on the drill table and gluing strips of wood to it, one long length to lay the plank along and four short ‘stops’ for the hole locations. The left hand stop is for the end holes and the three right hand ones do the intermediate holes. PICT_V_0501  It was just a matter of moving the planks along and turning them round to drill the various holes. This picture shows some of the drilled planks and also the first ones glued in position: PICT_V_0502  I planked the sections between the hatches with full length planks but left the final section from the aft most hatch to the rear bulkhead until later. That way, when I laid the first uninterrupted length of planking, outboard of the hatches, I was able to match the butt positions. At this point I found, purely by chance, that with an 84mm plank length (plus caulking) the deck was exactly 8 planks long. (I had to update the spreadsheet I use for the plank layout as it couldn’t cope with a deck that long!) After a few days cutting, drilling, gluing and, finally, scraping, this was the result: PICT_V_0503  I’ll varnish it later when the deck fittings are sorted. | ||
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| Arthur Registered Member #1929 Joined: Wed Nov 30 2011, 03:05pmPosts: 3021 | The next step was to plank the inside of the bulwarks of the upper gun deck. This instruction comes with a warning to do it carefully as it’s difficult to sand it afterwards. I decided to experiment and sand and paint the inner surfaces of the planks before fitting them. I figured that if it didn’t work, I could still sand them and paint them afterwards. I’m quite satisfied with the results. PICT_V_0601  Now for a little progress on the deck fittings. The main bitts are provided as laser cut walnut parts. The forward pair fit through the upper gun deck and locate in holes in the lower gun deck. The aft ones fit in a similar way but extend all the way up to locate in notches in the beam supporting the main deck. As mentioned in an earlier post, the holes I’d cut in the deck planking were slightly too large for the bitts so I framed them with off cuts of the planking. The instructions don’t say anything about shaping the bitts but I opted to carve the tops and ends before assembling them. PICT_V_0602  The next items were the capstans. These are assembled from various plywood parts fitted around a length of 10mm dowel. These turned out to be an interesting little challenge! The tops are no problem, just a matter of gluing some plywood discs together. I next cut off a 22mm length of dowel as per the instructions and glued that into the assembled plywood pieces. Although that works, there was a problem and I changed the method for the second one and simply glued the plywood pieces onto the full length piece of dowel. All will be revealed shortly. The challenge was what to do with the whelps. There are 20 of these supplied, 10 per capstan. The picture in the instruction book shows them spaced evenly but I opted to glue them together in pairs to make 5 thicker whelps per capstan. Whether I fitted 10 thin or 5 thick whelps, the challenge remained, getting them evenly spaced. I finally glued one in, then made an inspired guess at the correct spacing and shaped the end of a piece of plank to fit in the gap between them. I used the wedge to work around the capstan and when I got to the last space, if the gap was too small I shaved a bit of the side of the wedge and went round again. If the gap was too large I shaved a bit off the end of the wedge instead. Once the capstan was glued together, the problem mentioned earlier became obvious. The capstans fit in holes cut in the plywood deck. However, in both cases the MDF keel runs across the bottom of the hole. That means that only about 2mm of dowel should be protruding from the base of the capstan. OK, at least it’s too long rather than too short but holding the capstan to saw off the excess isn’t easy. With the second one having the full length of dowel, it was just a case of holding the dowel in the vice and sawing the capstan off the end. What were missing were the pawls to stop the capstan running backwards. I cut some discs of card to fit under each capstan. I then made a ring from 0.5mm brass wire just larger than the capstan base, soldered the ends together and glued it to the card. I cut several short pieces off a 1mm square wood strip and glued these to the card just inside the wire to represent the stops and painted it all matt black. I made the pawls from short lengths of 0.5mm brass wire by simply forming a loop at one end. They were fitted to the base of the capstan with 0.7mm copper nails. PICT_V_0603  Time to have a look at the ships stove. The basic structure is made from plywood and this is then fitted with photo etched panels and fittings. The plywood pieces fit together very well, although I did find that the two holes in the end panel didn’t line up with those in the etching. Nothing that a 2mm drill couldn’t sort out. I soldered the little lids and doors to the panels. These are supposed to have handles made from 0.7mm brass wire but, checking the parts list, the only wire supplied is 1mm. I have some 0.5mm and 0.8mm wire but not 0.7mm wire. After a bit of searching I found some 0.7mm copper wire so the stove now has copper handles. The grid for the rotisserie at the rear of the stove is supposed to be made from 1mm wire but that seemed to be much too large. Checking the holes in the sides, they seemed to be just under 0.5mm so I ran a 0.5mm drill through them and used 0.5mm wire. I soldered the wires in place and also soldered front and side panels together. I then slid the assembly off of the top, applied some glue and slid it back on. The top plate was assembled the same way. I tried blackening the brass, but wasn’t happy with the result. As part of the stove had to be painted anyway, I painted the brass as well. Although not mentioned on the assembly instructions, the side panels actually have holes for the lifting rings and also for side rails to hang the various fire irons from. I’ve seen other models with the stove sitting on a brick platform. Many years ago I had a set of moulds to cast parts for model buildings. These were called Linka System - http://www.linkaworld.com/ - and were made to match 00 gauge model railways. Just the right scale! After a little bit of searching and some mixing, I had half a dozen brick walls: PICT_V_0604  I only needed two pieces and only the edges of those will actually be seen. After painting the panel, I glued it to the deck and made a wooden frame to fit around the brick plinth. This is how the stove looks in position: PICT_V_0605  To work out the correct position for the stove, it was necessary to dry fit the upper deck and centre the chimney under the appropriate cut out. With that deck in place, the stove is virtually invisible! I obviously need to take plenty of photographs before I finally fit that deck! | ||
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