Duchess of Kingston - Beauty of the Seas - Wooden Sailing Ship 1/64

[GazzaS]

Harrr...   now she can be dis-masted with a well aimed broadside.

 

Keep up the good work, Rob.

[DocRob]

14 hours ago, Martinnfb said:

Phenomenal!

Thanks Martin, in this case it's the kit not me .

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Hold your horses Gary, this is a yacht and not a ship of the line. The armament consists of six four pounders, good enough to keep some rowing boats at distance. Four of the gun ports are only fake or were maybe used to feed the fishes by green faced blue blooded passengers.

Cheers Rob

[Peterpools]

Rob

With the masts fitting so well and one less  large assembly that would need a lot of fine tuning to fit. All those details surely will be adding a lot of character and feel to the deck.

Keep 'em comin

Peter 

[Martinnfb]

9 hours ago, DocRob said:

Thanks Martin, in this case it's the kit not me .

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

It looks like nothing has happened lately, but as I'm preparing all the deck clutter, there is only not much to show. There are multiple sub assemblies like the anchor winch, the bell stock, , the binnacle, the belaying rails, pumps, ..., accompanied by adding numerous eyebolts. 
Speaking of, the PE eyebolts were primed and airbrushed satin black, but I should have burnished them, as through rough handling with tweezers, the color chipped often and a lot of touch up was needed.
The wooden parts are mostly laser cut and the cleanup of the char takes a lot of time, if made thoroughly.

I may assemble the cannons, before I add everything to the decks. I will make it as easy for me as possible, due to a well thought order of mounting the parts.

So for now, there is only an ugly pic with some of the prepared parts, cleaned and varnished.

Cheers Rob

 

 

 

[Peterpools]

Rob

Loads of prep work and loads of time; just part of the game and then when you're ready to add them to the build, WOW a major leap in the construction timeline. Just go slow and take your time, as  is so important and the foundation of the build.

Keep 'em comin

Peter

[Bomber_County]

Rob, gobsmacked the workmanship which  is going into this build…..congrats….

[DocRob]

21 hours ago, Peterpools said:

Loads of prep work and loads of time; just part of the game and then when you're ready to add them to the build, WOW a major leap in the construction timeline. Just go slow and take your time, as  is so important and the foundation of the build.

Thank you Peter, there are lots of subassemblies and test fitting to do and I will prepare everything and then drop it in the right place in a comfortable order. In the manual, the guns are last mounted, but I'm not so sure, if rigging them wouldn't be difficult with all the other parts in the way. In the prototype build the guns where not rigged, but I plan to do so, at least simplified.

14 hours ago, Bomber_County said:

Rob, gobsmacked the workmanship which  is going into this build…..congrats….

Thank you Phil, there are new challenges lurking at every corner, but generally nothing proved too hard to overcome. In fact part of the fun of the build is to find solutions.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Speaking about solutions. I didn't like the look of the cannons wheels, so I measured the axle hole and found some Albion brass tube of 1,8 mm diameter, which tight fitted as an axle and put the wheels on the mini lathe. I then carefully sanded the char away from the wheels. Friction was sufficient to hold the wheels in place.

The Proxon mini lathe is a great help as a tool for wooden ship models, but the quality of the plastic collets is horrible. Right from the start, you scratch the working material with these, because they have burrs. The four mm diameter collet needed drilling and sanding to accept 4 mm diameter workpieces .

The first test assembly of one of the tiny cannons or should I say, muskets on wheels. There is more cleanup to be done, I have to paint the barrels and varnish the wood, but that's how the artillery of the Duchess will look.

Cheers Rob

[Peterpools]

Rob

Brilliant solution to cleaning up the canon wheels, as they look so good in the last photograph. The amount of parts and sub assemblies in a wooden ship kit is close to beyond comprehension - nerves of steel and an amazing amount of self discipline are easily the order of the day, no of the the build. Have you been keeping track of approximately the time you have spent so far on the kit - easily way past what would be needed on most of the kits we build.

Always wanted to have some 'real' shop equipment but could never justify it as I am mostly an OOB builder. But I think if I ever took the plunge, I would easily  go for a mini lathe and a drill press.

Keep 'em comin

Peter

 

[GazzaS]

Rob,

    Love the solution to the wheels.  I've always thought about buying a Proxxon Mini lathe.  Have you turned much brass with it?  Would you recommend it to a nearby friend who is known to have a mercurial personality and lots of training in Martial Arts?

Cannon looks so cool. 

[DocRob]

18 hours ago, Peterpools said:

Brilliant solution to cleaning up the canon wheels, as they look so good in the last photograph. The amount of parts and sub assemblies in a wooden ship kit is close to beyond comprehension - nerves of steel and an amazing amount of self discipline are easily the order of the day, no of the the build. Have you been keeping track of approximately the time you have spent so far on the kit - easily way past what would be needed on most of the kits we build.

Always wanted to have some 'real' shop equipment but could never justify it as I am mostly an OOB builder. But I think if I ever took the plunge, I would easily  go for a mini lathe and a drill press.

Thank you Peter, parts count isn't overwhelming. There is a lot in the box, a mix of materials, but opening some of Dragons boxes is even more frightening. The different materials need a lot of different techniques to be attended, but there is nothing which can't be done until now with a bit of experience in working with wood, PE and resin.
The way the kit is designed, brings it nearer to us plastic addicts through the extensive use of PE and resin. Time consuming processes like opening gunports for example are made easy here with pre-fabricated parts, which only need a bit of clean up and adjusting.

I haven't tracked the time consumed by the build, but I'm astonished, how fast it went on. I worked on the DoK for a bit more than two month now, but have no idea, how long masts and rigging will take. I've worked longer on some plastic kits, for example, my Fokker D.VIII build took more than three month. 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

5 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Love the solution to the wheels.  I've always thought about buying a Proxxon Mini lathe.  Have you turned much brass with it?  Would you recommend it to a nearby friend who is known to have a mercurial personality and lots of training in Martial Arts?

Thanks Super-Gary, I now have a picture of you in my mind, combat ready with blood stained eyes . 
The Proxxon mini lathe is only for wood working, there is no way to adapt the necessary cutting tools for working with metals, except maybe sanding them. You can work with wooden parts up to a diameter of 8 mm with the standard issued horrible plastic collets. You can add a three jaw chuck for more flexibility, but the machine has a lot of limitations due to the tiny size and power. 
As I have to prepare the mast parts, which often are conical and have indentions, it will come handy. 
If you plan to work with metals, you have to spend more, not only for the machine, but the necessary tools as well. I thought about buying a better lathe, but skipped it, as I don't use it often enough to rectify the money. 

Cheers Rob

[GazzaS]

40 minutes ago, DocRob said:

Thanks Super-Gary, I now have a picture of you in my mind, combat ready with blood stained eyes . 
The Proxxon mini lathe is only for wood working, there is no way to adapt the necessary cutting tools for working with metals, except maybe sanding them. You can work with wooden parts up to a diameter of 8 mm with the standard issued horrible plastic collets. You can add a three jaw chuck for more flexibility, but the machine has a lot of limitations due to the tiny size and power. 
As I have to prepare the mast parts, which often are conical and have indentions, it will come handy. 
If you plan to work with metals, you have to spend more, not only for the machine, but the necessary tools as well. I thought about buying a better lathe, but skipped it, as I don't use it often enough to rectify the money. 

Cheers Rob

Thank you for the detailed description, Rob.   "mercurial personality and lots of training in Martial Arts" isn't a description of me.  I made him up as the kind of person you wouldn't want to piss off.

[DocRob]

5 minutes ago, GazzaS said:

Thank you for the detailed description, Rob.   "mercurial personality and lots of training in Martial Arts" isn't a description of me.  I made him up as the kind of person you wouldn't want to piss off.

I would never have thought so Gary 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

There were not so frequent updates, because I prepared the numerous sub-assemblies for the decks. 

Here you can see some of them ready to install:

The cannon barrels where sprayed matte black and received a rub of Uschis iron pigments. The tiny PE-parts which fix the barrel I bent over a halved brass rod of 1 mm diameter and attached with CA, after the carriage was assembled and varnished.

I enhanced the pumps by adding angle cut brass tubes as an outlet. They were painted bronze with the mechanics held in matte black with iron pigments. I will tone down the shininess a bit further.

Then I pondered about the rigging of the cannons and made a prototype, which was time consuming and nerve wrecking. I only went for breech ropes, where I made some rings from 0,5 mm brass rod to be later attached to the eyebolts in the bulwark. I made a loop through the ring and CA'ed the ends together. Than I added a thin thread around the ends, like it's done on ships. The whole assembly was very fiddly and I think about a simpler way with a similar result, as I doubt, I can do that six times looking equally.

The gun is not finally glued on and the breech rope still has to be slung around the knob on the end of the barrel. I have to glue the rope there and therefore will be sure, this is six times doable.

On the following pics, I added most of the subassemblies to the deck, but nothing is glued yet. The winch drum was airbrushed matte black, then the rings were masked off and the part got a layer of desert yellow, followed by two different red brown oil colors, to make it look a bit more like wood.

That's how it will look in the end, still with more details to come. There are cannonballs and some cleats and I also bought a little boat, made from spars and planks. I'm not sure, if the boat is too much, but I will try, how it looks. It's not a part of the kit.

Cheers Rob

 

[KevinM]

Looking good Rob just keep in mind the position of recoil..

[DocRob]

8 hours ago, KevinM said:

Looking good Rob just keep in mind the position of recoil..

Thank you Kevin, I read somewhere, that the breech ropes should be three times the length of the barrel. That is the case here, when the rope is finally attached to the barrel.
On the other hand, I doubt that these cannons were ever shot.

Cheers Rob

[GazzaS]

Love all of those deck details!  Nice work!  The cannon are especially nice.

[DocRob]

4 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Love all of those deck details!  Nice work!  The cannon are especially nice.

Thank you Gary, to put together the deck equipment is fun, but very time consuming. Until this phase of the build, there was nearly no clean up needed. On deck things are a bit different, lots of char to remove and all amounts to build it in a good sequence to not corner yourself. It also involves some preparations for the fit of the masts and other pats, later.
The cannons are nicely made, if you lay out the parts in front of you, they look a bit simple, which changes assembled luckily, with a little help of varnish airbrush and pigments.

Cheers Rob 

[Peterpools]

Rob

Shiver me timbers! The details are amazing and just bring the deck to life. The canons and breech rope ropes are so very detailed and the rope work for them, looks fantastic.

Keep 'em comin

Peter

[DocRob]

On 5/17/2022 at 8:59 PM, Peterpools said:

Shiver me timbers! The details are amazing and just bring the deck to life. The canons and breech rope ropes are so very detailed and the rope work for them, looks fantastic.

Thank you Peter, as you can see in the following post, I simplified the rigging a bit, because, I couldn't make it look equal for the other cannons. I think it will be sufficient as well.

Cheers rob

[DocRob]

The hopefully last assemblies for the decks will be the connecting staircases. I glued them together with CA, but decided to refine the parts a bit before. I found the front edge of each stair looked too thick, so I beveled each step with the disc sander and now they appear a bit finer and scale right.

Here are both of them, this time with varnish on.

I rigged two cannons in half the time, I used up for the first one (the left one). I had to rip out the eyebolts and made the assembly on my work desk, not on the deck. The thread is a bit thinner, but the method is easier to accomplish. In the picture, all knots still remain to be refined, ends cut and of course the eyebolts glued in. I will do that, when all six cannons are rigged this way.

Cheers Rob

[Martinnfb]

Beautiful work Rob, truly humbling experience. I recently bumped into this interesting thread. 

Cheers

Martin

 

https://modelshipworld.com/topic/21776-carriage-gun-rigging/