Loveley work as always. You have a real eye for the detail.

Regards

Foz

Still pushing those boundreys I see Rob. Brilliant work though and some bloody good tips there. A credit to the build mate. Thought I was looking at the caldercraft one.

Hi again to All!

Well, I said the next post could be anything, and this one is a little different in that it is not a ‘How I did this’ like most of the others, but a ‘How I WILL be doing this’ instead.
Like Sparks in his diary, I was intending to improve the chainwales, (aka channels), which will have to be fixed to the hull sides to take the shrouds in the not too distant future. (That’s fixing them to the hull I mean, the addition of the shrouds is way off yet!) But that’s the beauty of a vessel as complex as the Victory, if you don’t want to get on with the next job, there are dozens of others that can be done ‘out of synch’ to break up the routine.
Although, (also like Sparks), I had always intended to replace those plastic deadeyes for more traditional wooden ones, I had wanted to at least try and improve the kit provided plywood parts. Unfortunately that proved to be impossible. The kit parts weren’t too bad as far as length was concerned, but the holes provided for the subject of this tutorial, the Deadeye Frames (or is that Strops? The ref books don’t mention them at all!) were far too big, and the width of the wooden pieces were far too thin. Measuring from the McKay plans they should be 13mm wide in this scale, the kit ones were only 10mm.
Anyway, I’ve sent an order off to CMB now for sufficient walnut deadeyes to make up the largest ones for the main shrouds and enough for the smallest ones which figure on the little twin channels and some in between the main channel deadeyes too. I thought that I had a load of deadeyes in my spares box which, indeed I had, unfortunately they were all the same intermediate size, which are just right for the ones up on the platforms up the masts. Also ordered is a second pot of yellow ochre (I’m getting a little low on that one!), a strip of mahogany to cut the channels from and a pot of the new-ish Admiralty stain, Ebony in this case, I want to try and stain the wooden deadeyes rather than simply paint them. So while I’m waiting for those materials to arrive I’ve been experimenting with a method of producing the iron strops/frames for the deadeyes to secure them to the channels and the chains below.

Right then … In Photo 1 you can see yet another jig in the long evolutionary process. This one is also very basic and very easy to construct (it will be more complicated in the future when I add a little bit more to enable me to make up the scratch built chains as well, but this is the simple one for now.) It consists of just three brass pins and a larger brass nail (the nail doesn’t have to be brass of course!). Simply tap a thin brass pin into one of the holes on the deadeye and into the wood of the jig below. Snip off that pin level with the top surface of the deadeye and turn the deadeye until the hole becomes the bottom most of the triangle (see Photo 2) then tap in the remaining two pins, snipping off level each time. Now you have to add the thicker brass nail. Referring back to Photo 1, with the deadeye in position, pop a length of the channel wood just underneath it (not quite touching though) and then mark the bottom edge of the channel, (you can just make out the pencil line above the nail head, the channel is represented by the white rectangle). Allowing another small gap below this mark, pencil in the position directly below the deadeye and then pre-drill a small hole to guide the point of the nail before tapping it down as shown here. You should now have a set up like Photo 2.
To begin making the frame, bend a short length of steel wool polished brass wire (this is good old 0.5mm, larger scales means thicker wire), you may, as I did, find it easier to ‘pre-bend’ the wire around a suitable drill shaft or similar held in the vice rather than trying to do it all around the wooden deadeye. You now have Photo 3.
The next stage is to use some thin long nosed pliers to ‘crimp’ the wire together in between the deadeye and the nail head as shown in Photo 4. Try not to over squeeze, although saying that it does involve quite a bit of pressure too! It’s not difficult once you get the feel for it and the result should look like that in Photo 5.
The next stage was impossible to photo one handed! It involves two pairs of pliers; one to grip the wire as you did to crimp it and the other to carefully bend the two ‘legs’ around the nail shaft. You can twist them around one at a time and leave them overlapping which is probably easier, but however you get there, once they are twisted around the nail, snip off the excess wire and squeeze the tips into a ‘butt’ joint (ie butting up together). Once completed, if you then spring the shaped frame off the deadeye, you should have something like Photo 7.
Photo 8 is basically the same shot but after the brass wire has been dunked into the ‘Blacken it) to transform the shiny brass into a lovely black iron effect, this was the reason for steel wool polishing it, to remove any contaminant that would affect the chemical action!
The little insert Photo 9, shows a before and after shot of the soldering process. This is perhaps the trickiest part of the entire process which is why I’ll be trying to improve the jig later to try and squeeze the wires together, maybe a sliding thingy with a wingnut to tighten it. The art is to squeeze the wires together below the deadeye and simultaneously solder the butt jointed ends. I almost forgot! don't do this with the wire still around the nail! You'll never get it off the jig if you do!! It can be done though and once joined, a length of thin electric wire was put through a hole in the deadeye and the soldered joint was suspended just into the Blacken it with the wooden deadeye safely high and dry above the surface.
The final result is shown in Photo 10. You will of course need a separate distance jig for each size of deadeye, but its so simple to make up that’s no great problem.
So that’s it for 2013, I’m just awaiting the CMB delivery now but in the meantime, more planning and experimentals for my big new project coming up next year.

Happy building to All and a Happy New Year!

Robin

Hi tf64.

To be honest, I'm not sure, I found my big roll of solder out in the garage during one of my recovery expeditions! It's been out there for donkeys years so I suspect that its just a basic general purpose solder as we all used in the days (or years) before all these hards and softs came in!
It seems to have done the job well though so I should think any modern solder should do. Whether the hard variety will blacken as well chemically I have no idea though.
If you have both types, let me know which you think worked best, we are always learning on here!!

Happy New Year

Robin

Nicely done Robin.
The Del Prado channels definitely needed changing. Its so long ago now, I don't remember, but did they supply the two smaller channel boards for the main and mizzen mast backstays ?
Regards
Alan

Hi again to all!

In this section I have begun to fashion the replacement Chainwales or Channels, those horizontal boards which stick out of the hull sides and carry the deadeyes and lanyards, which support the shrouds (the ‘guy-ropes’ for the masts).
Although many kits supply these as simple flat wooden components, a close look at the plans and drawings in the McKay and McGowan books as well as photos of the ship as she now stands in Portsmouth reveals that the edges of the Channels are actually a 3D moulding with a semi-circular strip running along the length of the board. Sparks has done a lovely job on his version of the DelPrado with brass wire ornamentation and I have followed suit on mine with a slight variation as I will show below. This task involved a great many individual steps, so many in fact that I have split this tutorial into two halves due to all the photos it required to explain the procedure. Part One will be the actual channel board itself with it’s deadeyes, Part two will be the scratch built iron chains which secure the deadeyes to the hull sides below. I decided to experiment with the smallest of all the channels first, namely the main and mizzen mast backstay channels, the theory being if I cock it up I waste less wood (which I just bought from CMB) and secondly, if I can make a good job of the smallest ones, the big blighters should be a lot easier to work with!
Photo 1 illustrates the DelPrado channel sheet as supplied with the kit. As you will see as the replacements come together, the kit version is very basic, a slanting edge at each end instead of the graceful curved outline and quite large ‘cut-outs’ where the deadeye frames pass through. In the top right corner you can see one of the replacement boards, it’s actually sitting on top of the kit counterpart, so some difference in size!
Part of the supplies I bought from CMB was a collection of walnut deadeyes to replace the nasty plastic things that came with the kit. Without checking on them, I think I’m right in saying all the kit deadeyes were the same size. There should be at least three different sizes in reality, I already had quite a few 4mm boxwood deadeyes left over from the Grimsby enhancements, enough to furnish the mast platform sets (I hope!) and from CMB I ordered 120 5mm and 30 2.5mm walnut ones. Actually the 30 is far more than I need but it’s always nice to have some spares! When they arrived, I have to admit I was taken aback by just how small the 2.5mm ones were! I’d never seen anything below the 4mm’s in the model shop and I never realised they could be made that tiny! Anyway! Along with the sub-micro-miniature deadeyes, I also bought a bottle of the Admiralty Ebony wood stain. Again an experiment, I wanted to see if staining the deadeyes would give them a slightly different effect than simply painting them. After trying it out on the four examples for this project, I can heartily recommend this stuff to anyone, it’s a fantastic water based wood dye, takes a couple of applications (the walnut is quite ‘polished’ by the moulding process and a shiny surface doesn’t soak in as well) but after a couple of coats the deadeyes were a lovely black and the tiny little holes weren’t affected at all, no clogging up as you might get with paint!
Photo 2 shows the four little 2.5mm deadeyes drying off after the first coat of stain. The great metal ‘bar’ that they are threaded onto is in fact an off cut of 0.5mm brass rod!
Photo 3 illustrates the first two mini deadeyes. They were constructed in exactly the same way as the previous post outlined and the trial 4mm deadeye used in that session is posed alongside them. As I mentioned, the 4mm’s will be used up on the fighting top platforms. Incidentally, the larger trial version was painted with a couple coats of dark oak ‘Blackfriars’ spirit based varnish. This came up quite shiny so it was lightly sanded over with very fine wet and dry. As you can see, quite some difference in size!
The actual construction of the channel board itself begins in Photo 4 with my brand new 15 x 2mm mahogany strip fresh from CMB cut down into a piece just over the dimensions shown and then sanded down, again with a very fine wet and dry. Once the basic ‘plank’ was ok, the first job is to ground down the side ends into the concave shape as shown in Photo 5, also shown here is the rotary tool grinder head used to produce the curve. The first attempt involved placing the board into the mini vice and trying to carve out the curve by placing the rotary against the wood. This proved very difficult however as it’s almost impossible to judge where the exact centre of the grinding cylinder is in relation to the wooden piece and resulted in ‘off centre’ curves which didn’t match up symmetrically. The second attempt proved far better. I held the rotary in my right hand in a vertical position with the grinder upper most. The piece of wood was held tightly in my left hand and, peering through the multi-layered reading glasses for a good close up view, I brought the wood into contact with the tool instead of the other way round. As long as you hold it tight enough, it is far easier to get the curve just where it is needed in the middle. As soon as wood and grinder make contact, watch to see where the first tiny impression into the wood takes place, if it’s not in the centre move the wood slightly to bring it dead centre and then gently but steadily push the wood ‘into’ the grinder. When the curve is deep enough pull back and the job’s done. All it needed then was a light sanding to remove any slight burring of the edges.
The final basic shaping of the board is then completed by sanding the sharp corners on the outer front edge into a rounded profile. You have to be very careful here, it’s very easy to split the corners off, in actual fact, the one in Photo 6 did lose a corner, but it was a very clean split and was super glued back into position with no problems and once dry and lightly sanded was invisible to the naked eye.
The next job is one of the most fiddly of the procedure. As mentioned above, the edges of the boards are not just flat, 90 degree ‘slabs’ but incorporate their own fine moulding detail. I really liked the ones that Sparks had constructed and decided to ‘imitate’ the brass wire solution that Sparks had used. Rather than a straight copy however, I decided to virtually line the entire board in the brass which required a suitable groove all around the three outboard edges of the channel. To do this, I used a nifty little tool from my larger JAK diamond dust rotary tool set. The tool and the result of its work is shown in Photo 7, it’s not that easy a task, but really just requires a steady hand (or hands on both the wood and the rotary!) and a good tight grip on the wooden piece especially. Using the close up glasses combo again, it’s a case of carefully guiding the spinning ‘disk’ cutter on the top of the diamond tool around the middle of the edge of the wood. If you’ve never tried this before I’d recommend some practise on bits of scrap wood first, once you’ve got your eye in though it becomes much easier to guide the disk along, cutting the groove into the edges as shown here. The last bit of cutting work is to cut out the two grooves into the outer edge to allow the deadeye frames to pass through the board. On the first trial versions I tried to simply file the grooves in but that mahogany really does love to split when under hand tool abrasion so in the end I did it with yet another diamond dust tool, the cut-off / grinder wheel as shown in Photo 8. Another light sanding on the top and bottom faces and the basic wooden board was complete. Between Photos 8 and 9, there were a couple of tasks which I haven’t got photos of. Firstly, the rear edge of the board (the one which butts up against the hull) was drilled out to take two lengths of brass wire (0.8mm or possibly 1.0mm?), which will strengthen the joint with corresponding holes into the hull itself. One of these wires was deliberately left over long and provided a nice little handle to hold the board by once the two wires were super glued in place. The second task was to stain the board with the same Admiralty Ebony as the deadeyes, two or three coats were applied with sufficient drying time between them. Once all was dry, the two deadeyes were super glued into place in the slots with a slight inward lean which should hopefully follow the line of the backstays themselves sometime in the future. This can be seen in Photo 9.
With the basic ‘unadorned’ board completed, it was now time to add the moulding detail to the edges. I began by snipping off a length of 0.5mm brass wire just a little longer than required to go around the three faces of the channel, super gluing it in place on the front face, enclosing the two deadeyes. The wire was then pressed into place in the curves and finally, the channel, with the excess wire protruding backwards was lightly gripped in the vice, just squeezing the jaws tight enough to press in the wire. Once enough pressure was applied, super glue was dribbled around the wire, allowing it to wick into the joint, Photo 10 shows the channel in the vice jaws. After a night to set hard, the excess wire was snipped off close to the back edge of the wood and the wire ground down flat as seen in Photo 11.
The final task for part one was to measure and then remove a section of the hull decorative strip under the poop deck barricade where this particular channel will be going. The two locating holes will be marked and drilled when the extra long ‘handle’ wire has been trimmed back to allow easier positioning. (Photo 12)

So that’s Part One! Sorry it’s all so wordy and long, but even though this is such a tiny little piece of the ship, there are so many separate tasks involved in making it, I can’t reduce it much further down!
In Part Two I’ll be making up the two iron chains which secure the deadeye frames into the hull and which, in real life, take all the stress and strain of the mast backstays. See you then!

Happy Building to All

Robin

Many thanks again Alan, really appreciated! By the way, that 'certain book' is back in the Plymouth 'Works' again!!

OK then, here’s part two! During the writing up of this section I changed the procedure slightly due to some difficulties which came to light during the construction of the first Channel. The second one on the opposite side was built in the newer fashion but some of the photos are of the first version so I’ll point out the differences as I go!
Photo 1 shows the situation at the end of the first part; the channel has been completed and is ready to receive the iron chains below. At this point I had already drilled the two holes into the hull sides for the brass pins and test fitted the channel. As you can see on the decorative brass wire, some of the black paint has worn off during the handling but more on that later.
The jig for making the chains up is the simplest one to date, it consists of a line of three brass pins hammered into the wooden base as follows: First of all, dry fit the channel into the hull position as seen in Photo 12 in the previous post.
Once it is set in place, carefully measure the distance from each of the rings underneath the channel board to the place where it is secured into the hull (check your own building instructions or, as I did, the McKay drawings for the exact location). Then draw a pencil line on the jig base wood the same length as those measurements and add another mark half way along the line. The two ends and the middle of the line now becomes the point where the nails or pins are put in. In my case I made a combined jig incorporating both the chains for the Mizzen Backstays. As you will see, they are not the same length! The aft one is shorter than the forward, in my 1/100 scale this is 10mm and 13mm. I therefore have five pins in the jig, the 3rd one down being the bottom pin of the short chain and also the top pin of the long one.
I found it easier to start the bending process using a suitable drill bit held in the vice as in Photo 2, (remember to remove it after working though, I’ve got a couple of lovely stripes up my forearm now!). With the first curve put in, partly by hand bending and then tidying up with the long nosed pliers, hook the curve over the top pin and pull the brass wire (0.5mm again) around the second pin to form a sort of paper clip shape (Photo 3). Then, using the finest wire snips, cut through BOTH the wires on the double side as shown in Photo 4, this should ensure that the wires are cut in the middle and should butt up to each other with a little manipulating with the pliers to form the first chain link as shown in Photo 5.
Now for the second, slightly more complicated link. Again, start the first curve around the drill bit and then hook that over the second pin as in Photo 6. This is where the procedure changes! In the first example, I then crimped the wire around the second pin as shown by the white arrows and looped the ends of the wire around the ‘headed’ pin, trimming them to size so they met at the bottom of the pin diameter. Then I hammered the headed pin down and soldered the ends of the wire to the pin. You can see the soldered pins in Photos 10 and 11. However! When it came to fitting those pins into the predrilled holes in the hull it proved extremely difficult to get the holes exactly right, the width of the pin shaft too high and the chain dangles, the same width too low and the over taut chain pulls on the channel too much!
I have now changed this procedure so that it is much more like the method of making the deadeye frames from two posts ago. Instead of soldering the pin to the chain I now solder the two ends of the chain link to form a solid, one piece link. The two chain links (before the lower one is squeezed and soldered are shown in Photo 8.
Photo 9 shows the earlier version in its bath of Blacken It, the new method sees the individual links being blackened before they are joined together (which is better really as both get an equal soaking without any rubbing together).
Photos 10 and 11 show the ‘ironed up’ chains, on their own and attached to the channel. The difference now is that I have to open up one side of the top link, thread the bottom link over it, and then pass the open link through the ring below the deadeye, before closing it up with the long nosed pliers. This part is very fiddly indeed and swearing is permissible! Once the chains are finished the positions for the fixing nails can be marked through the bottom ring of the lower link and the hull drilled accordingly (much easier!)
The final result is shown in the last Photo, No.12. Ignore the colouration of the chains and the deadeyes! I was using an ultra bright white LED torch to illuminate the area for the camera to focus with and it has somehow removed all the wood stain from the deadeyes and the Blacken It from the chains. In actual fact they both look the same as in the earlier photos, a lovely ‘tarred wood’ and ‘wrought iron’ effect which looks much more realistic than simply painting them.
I now just have to fit the second channel on the other side of the stern and then think about the other two backstay channels and the full set of fore, main and mizzen shroud channels. With this year’s special project now on the move, that thinking might be all I do on them for a little while! (“Little” could be very subjective!!

As an add-on to this, I recently had a thought about the brass wire around the edges of the channels. I suddenly remembered, hang on! Copper is a much softer metal than brass, I wonder if I can get any 0.5mm copper wire instead? A search on ebay revealed not only yes I could, but I can also get it pre-coloured in black. For a paltry £1.75 plus p&p I now have a roll of 15 metres of 0.5mm black copper wire which I will be trying out in the future. The rubbing off the black paint when fitting the channels to the hull won’t be such a problem either. It doesn’t have that nice ‘iron’ colour to it (but I’ll try dunking it just to see what happens) but if any modellers out there who don’t feel that they want to blacken or paint these items, this might be a viable option or alternative. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Happy Building.

Robin

Very detailed descriptions Robin and coming along nicely too. This diary will be used by Victory scratch builders for years to come.
Steve

Many thanks to the Alans again and thanks to Stevie as well for such a high honour!


A short update this time round as most of my time and effort has been going into the Messines diorama but as I was stuck a little, waiting to get hold of some items for the next stage I’ve managed to get a little more done here.
The black coloured copper wire mentioned in the last post duly arrived and I’ve tried it out on this, the next pair of ‘mini’ channels, the Mainmast Backstays. The copper did indeed prove far easier to mould into the concave curves as I’d hoped but I ran into an unexpected problem – whatever it was that the copper wire is coloured black with, it absolutely hates superglue! It took me at least three goes to get the stuff to set in place and even then it proved a problem as you will see later. I then decided to see if the plain copper wire would be any easier to use, theoretically it should be, the plain brass sticks ok with superglue so copper should too. This material is really cheap on Ebay, a coil of 20m was less than £4 so you can’t really not experiment with it! The plain copper arrived within a couple of days of ordering and lo and behold, it glued perfectly well. In the photos that follow you’ll see that I’ve used both types. The black, once stuck in place could almost have been left as it was but I did over paint it with the Admiralty Dull Black just to match in with the rest of the hull. The plain copper did paint over with the same paint but just like the brass wire it did rub off on the corners and needed a second coat later. So here’s the story so far:
Photo 1 shows the main component parts for the mainmast backstays. Construction wise this is simply a repeat of the earlier post on the mizzen backstays. The shaped wooden pieces are also blackened with the Admiralty Ebony Wood Stain as are the four tiny deadeyes and the brass wire deadeye frames have already been blackened ready to fit and solder. The wooden pieces are slightly bigger than the mizzen types, they are the same size in depth but a little longer at 11mm, the size can be seen by the safety razor blade for comparison.
Photo 2 shows the two completed channels, one with the plain 0.5mm copper wire, the other with the black plating.
Photos 3 and 4 shows the most heart-rending part of the procedure, cutting into the Victory’s already painted hull side to remove a section of the thin moulding and the drilling of the pair of locating holes for the .07mm brass wire which protrudes from the rear of the wooden channels. Photo 4 illustrates the port side channel simply pushed in place to check the fit. It took a couple of attempts to get the damned holes to exactly match up with the brass wire pins! Once the fitting was all correct, the hull was repainted in dull black before the channels were super glued into position the next day.
Before they went back on however, both sets were fitted out with their blackened brass wire chains as seen in Photo 5. I had thought that the mizzen backstays were the smallest channels of all and although they are the smallest overall, the shortest of the pair of chains on the main mast channels is even shorter than the mizzen ones! (It all depends on where the end of the chain has to be fitted into the hull of course, the mizzen backstay has nothing underneath it, whilst the mainmast one is set right above a gun port! )
Photo 6 shows the port backstay in place whilst Photo 7 illustrates the opposite starboard one.
It was only after completing the second channel that I had my ‘senior moment’ revelation! I could have super glued the black copper perfectly well by simply sanding away the black on the back of the copper wire, sticking the bare copper to the channel and still retaining the overall black on the front! Doh! The final problem I had with the black wire was after the channel was fixed in place and the chains hammered in underneath. I noticed then that the channel could have gone back another 1/2mm so I decided to gently try tapping it back with a little jeweller's hammer. Two taps later and both sides of the black wire popped off again! I managed to get it back in place with a pair of sprung tweezers and yet more glue before a re-re-paint! Still, I’m beginning to get a good collection of brass and copper wire hanging off my workroom ceiling which will all come in useful down the line as you can see in Photo 8!
That’s all for now, I’ve finally got my home made hot wire foam cutter to work so its back to Messines for a little while!

Happy building to All!

Robin

Lovely work once again Robin.... .. Just thinking, would the black coloured copper wire respond better to quick setting epoxy rather than superglue.... just a thought...

Regards

Alan