Garth and Daisey,

Thanks for the kind words. I'm really enjoying it as well. More photos to come very soon.

Id say about 3mm for the buckets, I once made some powder buckets from rolled copper tape.

The brass ones at the top of this page would be about right - http://www.cornwallmodel...aA4143_2f03#aA4143_2f03


Steve

Finished, the launch is finished and I am very pleased with how it turned out. I got quite a sense of satisfaction out of completing that. Here it is empty, and with all of the accessories stowed.

Nothing wrong in keeping them safe, Dominick, well done.

Hans,

Thanks. I figure it could be a year or more before I need them again so best to keep them safe and dust free.

Ian,

Thanks. I am very pleased with it - I never would have thought I could have done so well with my first planking job. I avoided it for many years because I was afraid of screwing up. To anyone else that's holding off on doing something like this because they are worried about planking I would say, take the plunge - you won't know until you try.

I've started putting together the rest of the frames for the aft section of the hull. I should have them finished by the end of the weekend and then I want to give a few of them a light soak and try to straighten out some of the warps. None of them are too bad and I can probably jockey them straight as part of the hull and false deck assembly but I want to try straightening them one more time before assembly.

In the mean time, I've also picked up the Owner's Manual for the real HMS Victory published by the Royal Navy. It seems a pretty good book so far, a lot of history and photos and very good technical descriptions of many of the ship's construction features and furniture; very informative.

Hi Dominick, great to see the second pack safely in your hands... Andy's recommendation of looking at Jase's photo packs is well worth taking a look at, packed full of beautiful pics and detailed information... .. Look forward to seeing your progress....

Regards

Alan

All of the frames are now assembled and the rest of the frame components have received a light sanding on the edges to remove the bulk of the charcoal from the laser cutting process. I just finished the last 2 this morning and those are nice and flat. I plan to give those a few more hours to dry under the book stack and then I'll clear off the garage bench (I'm trying to do the bulk of the sanding work outside to keep the inside workshop as dust free as possible) and work on flattening any that are warped.

Next up, I'm going to try to convince the wife to let me borrow the glass coffee table top off of the patio table and use it to straighten the warped frames (wish me luck) so I don't have to go and buy a piece of glass. Then I'll give any of the frames that are off a short soak and press them for a good week or so to get them as straight as possible.

While those are drying out I plan to build the second 12 pounder and the barrel stack.

Today I finished the second of the ship's 12 pound cannons and started on the barrels.

First I lightly sanded the barrels to clean up any fuzz. Then I aged them using Weather It. I got the idea from member Steve_O's beautifully aged deck (credit where credit is due). I really like the way they came out - they look much more like real barrels now.

I am following the suggestion in the instructions about using thin masking tape instead of painting the iron hoops. I started with an 8 inch piece of Tamiya 6 mm tape and cut a few 1mm or so strips. Instead of painting the strips I decided to use a black Sharpie marker which worked really well but...

I wanted to make sure the tape never comes loose so I started to apply a little thin CA with a micro brush. Alas, some of the ink started to bleed into the CA (see the first picture). Luckily I caught it in time and was able to recover by making that the bottom of the barrel pair. Shame because I wanted to add some light rusting to the metal bands.

Here's what it looks like without the bleed over (picture 2). And how it will look when it is mounted on the skids (picture 3). I still plan to paint the skids and eyelets black and add the line to tie the barrels down.

I should finish that in the next few days and by then all of the frames that are being pressed should be dry and hopefully warp free (or at least very close to warp free).

Neat work as ever Dominick.

You may also want to consider popping a couple of cocktail sticks in as bungs. Have a look here-


Barrels