Hi again all!

Finally completed the Skid Beam rebuild with the exception of the supporting pillars which are underway now.

Photo 1 below shows the area at the bow end of the waist after the removal of the first skid beam. The sawn off end of the beam is visible under the black frame which has suffered superficial damage in the process. It’s not as bad as it looks however, and the damage is really nothing more than the removal of the black paint which is easily replaced. The end of the beam was then sanded off on the edges and painted black.

Photo 2 is the aft end of the waist with just two beams to go. You can also see the small strips of (toilet) paper placed in position under the ends of the beams ready to catch the sawdust from the X-Acto Razor Saw. This method worked really well and caught every last bit of the sawdust leaving no mess at all.

Photo 3 (excuse those damned lines again) is the completely beam-less waist. The extra space created is incredible, if only I’d been able to do this when the 12lb-ers were ready to fit in position, it would have been soooooo much easier instead of trying to thread them down between the beams!!

Photo 4 shows the converted hull planks trimmed and notched to form the beam support ledge (Part A in the previous diagram). These were then (not without a few choice words) fitted and superglued in under the waist frame and deck to produce the finished ledge as shown in Photo 5.

Photo 6 shows the new skid beams cut to size from 4x3mm hardwood (Sapele?) sanded down to a good finish before adding the strips of thinned hull planks to form the shape of the original scarfed two part beams. It was far easier I found, to super the strips in place on the sides of the beams and then sand them down to size already glued on than to try and sand them to size first (apart from the rounded end of course). The finished beams with the ‘joints’ can be seen in Photo 7 and Photo 8 shows the final painted and dry brushed beams in their rough position. I still have to measure and re-check their final positions before final gluing (Far in the future!)

I have now to make up the supporting pillars, ten in total, these are being created from cocktail sticks on my Mantua mini lathe at the rate of one good one per two or three rejects, cocktail stick wood is not the most forgiving of materials but at £1 per 200 approx. from the Pound Shop, I can live with that! I’ve got three done so far, two are glued under the aft-most beam and the third is the copy to make the others from. So that’s it for now, the main recovery job is almost complete, just another month or so to finish those pillars (Just joking, I think!) and then I’ll be back on track until the next howler turns up!.

Happy Building to All

Robin

Lovely work robin

Well done Robin, a master at work. The detailed tutorial and pics excellent.

Looking great Robin, well done M8.
all the best
Alan

I'm listening Robin..... .. I can't afford the Unimat either, I just have a very kind hearted brother in law..... ain't he wonderful... ... Back to the build, superb stuff and to think I have thousands of cocktail sticks and now know they can be put to real good use.... will definately be trying out your technique on some of those sticks with of course my ....... UNIMAT.... .. Keep em coming Robin, excellent work....

Regards

Alan

Lovely stuff Robin. She beginning to look real grand and thanks for the tutorial. Filed away for future use.

Many thanks to all above for your kind comments! I was hoping to carry on playing Napoleon Total War tonight but the blasted Steam thing that runs the game has broken down yet again so here I am instead! I really HATE that Steam!!!!

Ok! This is the second part of the aft Waist Barricade, the spindly top section. I had intended to try and make the pillars out of cut down wooden belaying pins as in the first photo but after getting the hang of using the mini lathe I decided to abandon that idea and make the pillars out of yet more cocktail sticks. The result of that change is shown in Photo 2. I tried to make them as doubles like the bottom example but too many of them broke so I made them singularly instead. The only good double was itself fated, when I cut off the first half I dropped it and it disappeared onto the floor never to be seen again (despite a long and hard search) A replacement had to follow!
Photo 3 shows the eight new pillars glued up into the shelf piece, once dry (overnight) the excess tops were trimmed off and the shelf sanded down before painting in Admiralty Black and drybrushed white. The resulting barricade is completed in Photo 4.

Once the Barricade was fixed in place the next section was the Hammock Netting frame to go on top of the shelf.
Photo 5 shows the frame made up out of 0.5mm brass wire on top of a brass base. The Hammock Cranes were bent to shape and only the outside two were soldered lightly to the brass base. Once they were in place the two horizontal wires which will later become the supporting ropes were soldered onto the tops of the frames (not as easy as I imagined!). With the 'ropes' in place, the remaining cranes were placed in between the wires and kept in position with a kinked ended pair of sprung tweezers whilst they were soldered to the wires (but not to the base).
I tried to blacken the frame with Blacken It which proved a complete failure, despite cleaning the frame in PCB Cleaner and Flux remover, all I got was a black powdery finish which wouldn't clean off completely and made the Admiralty Metal Black replacement finish go lumpy with every brush stroke!
Eventually however I managed to get a reasonable covering of paint as can be seen in Photo 7 (not glued down, just standing on the shelf)
For the Hammock Netting I employed the first piece of the nylon mesh I bought from the market stall in Plymouth (Hi Moriarty, it's the flimsier one, the thicker one seemed a little over scale when I tried it here.)
I had bought the black netting not realising that the actual netting was natural hemp, not tarred which makes sense, nobody would want tar all over their clean hammocks after all! So the first job was to tone down the black mesh with a light brushing of Citidel grey (the one I bought to undercoat the scratch built figures) just brushed a strip onto white paper, laid the mesh on top and brushed over it doing both sides at once. The difference it made can be seen in Photo 7. Once the grey was dry, only a few minutes, it was trimmed roughly to size and wrapped around a scrap of plank wood to help ease it into the frame, after it was in position the plank was removed and the excess trimmed down to the top of the frame. The final completed frame and net can be seen in the final photo, No.8

It's turned out fairly well after all the work involved, it was a little more fiddly than I thought it would be but the final result isn't too bad so I'll be using the same method for the rest of the Hammock Frames in due course. I'm also going to make up a thin sausage of white Milliput epoxy putty cut into equal lengths to simulate the actual hammocks just to see if it looks better with them in the nets (which, as I'm modelling her in the actual battle they should be in there really!) Again, the frame is not yet stuck down, I'm leaving it loose until the gun crew figures are down there, it does stick up a little too much for my (once nimble) fingers to avoid!

See you soon (if that damned game still won't work!)

Robin

Ah, forgot to mention I haven't glued the netting in yet, I think PVA should do it without too much mess!

Love it Robin, another first class description of your techniques... ... Looking forward to seeing more...

Regards

Alan

Never thought of doing the steps in plastic Rob and theres me using it all the time, very neat job done with them, they look great