Thanks again to everyone who took the time to look in and comment, very much appreciated...

Moved the build forward again and this actually turned out to be quite a time consuming build session. Constructed another of the ships accessories, the ships approach hook. Simply a length of 4mm dowel, tapered down to 2.5mm at the end of the shaft. The other end had to be shaped to accommodate the hook itself and once done was give a couple of coats of matt varnish....

Next, I installed the benches from lengths of 4 x 15mm walnut, the rear benches were shaped from 4 x 20mm walnut strips. Once happy these were glued into place. The support brackets were the most time consuming part, these were individually cut and shaped for their respective positions, all from 2 x 15mm walnut. It was slow going....

Moved onto a heart stopping part of the build, the drilling of 10mm holes in the centre area of the decking to accommodate the 2 columns for the capstan ropes. The ropes from the capstan go down through the centre of the columns and come out of the bottom of the hull and run along to the stern area. These ropes were used when setting or recovering the Victory's anchors. An illustration on this has been posted here:

http://forum.model-space...amp;m=253045#post253045

The heart stopping moment came when drilling holes out through the bottom of the hull itself, I was concerned about splitting or splintering the hull. Happy to say it all worked out just nicely....

Last part of this build session was to fit the corner supports at the stern and the bow support. Everything was then given 2 coats of matt varnish.....

Next task is some more accessory items and the making up of the capstan/winch systems so until then, happy modelling all.....

Regards

Alan

Tremendous work Alan. Your doing an excellent job on the sloop.

Chris

Top work as always Alan

Beautiful work Alan, real craftsmanship at work.

Graeme

Part of the reason I'm enjoying this build so much is the fact that a great deal of the parts need to be fabricated from scratch and that includes the parts needed to make up the stern gantry. From the plans, I started by tracing the main gantry parts onto greaseproof paper, these outlines were then transferred onto 3.5 x 17mm limewood strips. Then it was a case of cutting and sanding down until I had the correct profile shapes. Once happy, marked out and drilled the holes to take 2mm dowels and 2mm brass rods. The marking out of these holes had to be done with care to ensure the gantry went together without straining any of the joints and that it sat square when finally fitted to the launch. Some of the brass rods required one end to be flattened out, this was done using a small anvil and hammer.

Also needed to cut a small length of 10mm dowel, drill a 2mm hole through the centre lengthways, first drilling from one end and then drilling from the other, this ensured the holes at either end were in the correct place and not offset. The dowel then had to be flattened on one side to match the profile of the stern transom and the tops of the gantry legs.

A dry assembly was then carried out to make sure everything went together the way it should and test fitted to the stern of the launch. Once happy I then glued the assembly together and left to dry. Next stage was to cut the ends of the brass rods and 2mm dowel, fine sand everything down before applying 2 coats of matt varnish. Now leaving to dry fully before assembling on the launch, this will be shown on the next update. All in all this was a fun assembly to do so until the next update, happy modelling....

Cheers

Alan

Beautiful work, Alan.

Hi Alan,
you're doing a superb job with the launch and that looks like a complicated bit of assembly work there considering you had to scratch build it.
I often wondered what purpose this part of the launch served until you enlightened us in your previous post. Well done.
Happy building
David

Looks like a real builders model and you`re doing a cracking job on it.



Regards
delboy271155
(Derek)