Steve D

Thanks Andreas, more filing, not magic Meanwhile, sneak preview of the hull plating, 2 sheets in the stern left, disappointed I couldn't quite get it complete today Please bear in mind this still needs more clean-up and some fine surface filler, it's very easy to ding such thin aluminium. However, I like the faceted nature of the hull, to me quite realistic. The lighting here makes it look rougher than it actually is. I've been cleaning the surface with a rotary steel wire brush and this leaves a surface that throws light in all directions. It's actually very smooth indeed Tomorrow I start the iron deck with an explanation about the deck plating drawing I've nearly finished and more pictures of the hull Cheers Steve

Absolutely Jon, the whole trick is holding stuff so it stays where it is when the heat comes Thanks Bertie, personally I use a Rothenberger Oxy-propane brazing kit with a micro tip (.8mm). This gives amazing control of the flame and location of the heat allowing multiple solders in a small space without unsoldering. However, I think the new micro-torches work well and are a smaller investment if you only do occasional soldering. I have two soldering irons, some jobs suit them but in general I try to avoid using them, Lastly, make sure everything is clean, can't say this often enough. Clean the work after each joint, I use sanding disks and wire brush disks, really helps adhesion and as everyone says, flux....

Not a daft question, let me try to explain. There are many reasons for the choice of each solder type. Generally, I use hard solder for small items that need to be strong, or for subassemblies that will be connected later. I use soft solder for assembly, largish items and gap filling. I use paste for surfaces and late stage assembly. Lastly, you can always fall back on glue. In this case, the join to the capping strip is long and somewhat gappy (sp?). Using hard solder would be difficult here due to the need to get the whole area to the high temperature without releasing joins already completed and cleaned up. Paste would not have given me the strength I needed, so a length of fine soft solder wire was the answer I specifically list these assembly stages as so many on this forum seem worried about soldering, un-necessarily in my view. I hope that helps but please ask anything else and I will most happily try to explain my thinking. I get a lot of stuff wrong, but somehow (mostly) manage to pull to together in the end.. Cheers Steve

Plating continues, on to the last strake now, meanwhile, to break it up a bit, I tackled the hawsehole assembly. This is a very prominent feature of the bow of the ship,, It sticks up from the turtle-deck and needs to be strong for handling. This is a job for brass, 0.45 mm thick. First I cut out two rough shapes and temporarily soldered them together with paste. This ensures they are identical after filing Here is the result with a rough oval hole ready to be unsoldered And then unsoldered and the hole opened up on each at the right slope Into that hole is soldered a short length of 4mm tubing, hard solder this time. Here is one ready for heat. bottom I've said many times, solder long and cut back, so much easier Next the two sides were connected via a short length of milled T section to create the narrow flat front. Again hard solder used. Here is the first side about to be heated Next the outer ends of the tubing was packed with an oval of 0.9 mm soft brass wire using soft solder and the whole filed (a lot) to create the outer profile of the hawsehole itself. (sorry no image of this) The top face is made of 2 mm x 0.5 mm brass strip. This was hard soldered together in a V and then soft soldered to the sides. To make things more interesting, the ends of this top curve down at the back so plenty of fettling first The end result BTW this is #2, #1 sits behind the block, 3 hours work in the bin ,sigh... Next it needed fitting. Now if I was good at this stuff, it would just have slid on to the wood, but no. First I had to remove the two forward most plates, use a cutting disk to make the slot for it, and I'm still left with a gaping hole two pack filler later And re-plated and tidied up. The plating here looks a little rough, it still needs plenty of clean-up and a little filling. It will be OK in the end It'll do Back to plating Steve

Just so cool

Thanks Pascal, let me have a go with that software first, if I fail, I'll come back Cheers Steve

Below a couple of ratings images from 1890. The working dress seems very similar to the French navy, without the bobble on the cap. To my eye, It is more obviously made from canvas than WW2 uniforms. I just like to place a single figure on the boat to help people understand the scale. They can be just loafing or doing something simple. I know I should follow your lead any get into that software, but if you could help with some inspiration that would be very kind. I can of course print it myself. The white canvas uniform shown here is most common in images of the time, the blue seems to be kept for best. I will use the white Rum (grog) ration queue, looks like a cruiser to me Early minelaying Stokers resting after maintenance on a torpedo boat around 1900, that kit needs washing before anyone gets shore leave..... Cheers and thanks Steve

Thanks Andreas, I don't own any styrene. My posts are all about trying to keep the old skills of wood and metal work alive , it's all I know how to do I do admit to using 3D resin printing however for some components. My hands can't do such fine work these days, but for this model, I intend to keep this aspect to the minimum. Irrespective, I will make everything bar the chains, who has time to scratch-build chains? I hope my explanations and mistakes inspire others, meanwhile, back to plating the hull Cheers Steve

Excellent, this was too good to leave in the loft Cheers Steve

Seriously Pascal, this is incredible work. I may need one Victorian RN sailor for Havock, any chance

Thanks for all the kind comments, I encourage people to give this a go, copper is so forgiving. Anyway, I forgot to post this image last night. The funnels are exactly 20 mm diameter, model scale and ebay provided a 30 cm length of 20 mm thin wall brass tube all the way from China for under £10, amazing. Here is the very strange look of this vessel with it's funnels resting in place Cheers Steve

I really don’t know why people don’t use copper more. It’s so easy to work and it looks so shiny when polished 😎

It’s not magic, just filing 🧙‍♀️

I drew the expansion of the shape and had the xtool cut it in .5 mm ply so I could trace it onto the copper sheet. Then lots of filing bending and fettling. Some hours later as they say Cheers Steve

OK, bridge assembly mark 2, the right way to do this job Before I start, just a word about my continual remaking of stuff. There are two reasons, sometimes its because what I did wasn't good enough, but mostly its because everything I do is a prototype. I have no build sequence or instructions, I'm just mentally wandering round the model trying to work out what to do next. That first bridge assembly was the wrong idea, it was a short cut and I should never give in to short-cuts. The right way to make this is for the actual roundhouse to be made of copper and be removable until very late in the build, actually the painting stage. That way I can leave the doors open and model the internal details. The roof supports the 12 pdr and the gun deck surrounds it and sits on it. So making it removable will help later on when I get to those bits. The roundhouse starts with a 33.5 mm diameter cylinder, I'm using 0.3mm copper sheet for this. To help get this round and also help to solder it, I made up this frame, that I could slide the cylinder into for soldering. The flat plate had a back strap hard soldered in place first Once the cylinder was about right, sliding in and out and pretty round (seen here in the backgro9und), I cut out the roof disk, heated it and roughly shaped it in a wooden doming block, very Arts and Craft stuff...trying to leave the centre 25 mm diameter circle flat The two were than mated to give the structure more strength. The tie wire is to help stop the cylinder unsoldering while I solder them together Next I had to achieve a number of things Trim the roof edge and create a smooth transition Make sure it is totally round Trim the length exactly Drill out the lookout scuttles Cut out the door opening (there a double doors, opening outwards), they will be etched along with a frame and soldered wide open to show the interior which will be white Knowing I had no chance of doing all tis with such a flimsy cylinder I made up an internal wooden buck that could support it while I hacked away. This was done by cutting disks in the xtool and gluing them together. Trouble was is was a tight fit (good) but probably would come out once fully in (bad). So I drilled it for a M8 bolt and tapped it, then cut it in half. The amount of wood lost to the cut was just enough to allow it to be inserted and removed, but screwing in the bolt tightened it up really well. Amazingly this all worked This picture might make things clearer And this And finally, the roundhouse complete . You can see where I drilled round the opening before filing it to final shape in the wooden buck I'm no silversmith, so this is quite good for me, its almost all hidden at the end... Next I had lots of fun drawing the remaining framework and cutting it out. Here it is in place with the roundhouse inserted. The two wing rooms are the urinal and seamen's heads. Looking carefully, you will see that I was too enthusiastic filing the transition and managed to open the roof up in a couple of places. This has been fixed now with more filling solder.. The covering of the framework was 1mm obeche sheet and the two small transition corners were from jelutong blocks. I've also fitted a 0.5 mm ply floor The rear wall is a single piece that runs back to the entry way behind the wing 6 pdrs and acts a a shield and weather protection. These were also cut from copper and rummaging around, I found some 1 mm wide "D" profile brass that I soldered to the top line. This trim isn't shown on the drawing, but it is clear on some pictures and it adds strength to that thin edge. Here it is set up for soldering (paste) Here are the matching pair made up and clean up. At the rear end is a 2mm x 2mm angle as there is a short return to be added later and this will cover the join. These were somewhat fiddly to say the least Here there are sitting in place. The edge resting on the deck was backed by a length of 2mm by 1 mm brass angle to give the joint some strength and help position it for gluing in place with epoxy resin Lastly, I covered the wing rooms in copper, I may need to solder to them later on. The turtle back itself will be plated in aluminium like the hull I'm neglecting Here is what it now looks like, sitting on its building frames for the first time. Those wing room walls all have curved edges (of course they do...), why make things easy... And a slightly out of focus short looking forward So, overall, solid bit of progress on one of the harder bits of the hull structure, now back to boring plating.... Cheers Steve

Jochen, That's a late war R-boote after the armoured bridge conversion, similar to this rare colour image (this is actually a great picture for showing actual colours) Looking at your picture which is new to me, it may be post-war in Demark as the Danes took over a lot of R boote for minesweeping operations after the war. If anyone is interested, I amassed over 200 r-boote images during the build including a lot of deck equipment shots taken during construction, but only a small number were posted to this thread. I'm always happy to help and thanks @Jochen Barett for adding to the thread. The one with the flotilla markings is extra special, I didn't have that shot Cheers Steve

Rather annoying were not the first words to pass through my brain when I realised However, there is a benefit in the mistake (we are the sum of our mistakes...) Now I will make the bridge open, watch this space, it will be sorted and better... Cheers Steve

Postscript. As soon as I wrote that comment about the plating width I realised how dumb it was. Two plates removed and trimmed, all sorted now, looks so much better.. Never settle for less than what you can do best... Cheers Steve

First, big mistake. The armoured bridge is 21 mm too far forward (nearly 40 inches full scale). I don't know how this happened, lost the reference from the frame I think. Anyway, preparing the deck drawing for deck plating layout showed this up immediately. It's all fixable, I simple chuck that thing above in the bin and make a different one, very annoyed with myself , stupid Anyway, plating update is more positive. First side more or less complete, bar the stern which I will do after the second side and finally the keel plates will be added. It still needs some clean-up but here it is That 5th strake is ~1mm wider than the 3rd which is not great (looks worse on this picture) , but I can live with it View from the stern. As I said before , there are some dings in the plating but I'm not worried, these vessels had very thin plating and it would get dinged, to my eye, this adds realism. Lastly, I drew a 3rd version of the propellers. These are 77 inches diameter with an 8 inch hub. Those blades are very big compared to the other props I've drawn. My normal approximate way to do this just didn't work this time, so I had to go back to a more formal way to draw them. Luckily I found this diagram in "Verbal Notes and Sketches for Marine Engineers" by J Sothern, 1918. This is an amazing reference volume with over 700 technical drawings Using this, in particular the rearward slant of the blade and the wash-out angles I produced this Which printed like this Looking remarkably like the as-built drawing and certainly good enough for casting in bronze. Meanwhile I'll use these versions to set the A frames and prop shafts in place. Note the two hubs are different lengths, the port prop is 5 inches longer than the starboard one. The blades don't actually touch but they come very close so staggering then slightly makes sense, potentially reducing vibration. Never seen that on any other vessel. Cheers Steve

Plating is boring so here is a little woodwork (actually the last woodwork on this ship), the buck for the armoured bridge, heads and focsle gun mount. This is actually quite a complex shape as it merges the turtleback with the deck wings. Lots of fun drawing it out and then cutting (I'm getting so lazy wiht this xtool) main frame in 2 mm ply Frame assembled Both pictures of version 1, wasn't quite right, version 3 finally came up to scratch. For such a small object there are a lot of things to consider The heads are either side of the roundhouse, sticking out with rounded corners Then the turtleback faired in using 3 mm x 1 mm lime This is removable still to help me work the copper that will form the surface and the curving wings down to the side gun enclosures, see picture on previous post. Lastly the top is turned from 2 mm ply in a dome shape, that will also be covered in copper. The 12 pdr gun mount site on the top of this dome, hence the flat area Seems OK, back to plating.... Cheers Steve

Good, I don't follow many builds so I hate it when one goes dark Like the others, I want to see this finished Cheers Steve

Thanks Andreas, I had found that link. Here is my cleaned up copy of that picture, probably the best close-up I have

Magnificent

Such a good question. It stopped me and made me think. Here are 5 reasons for doing it this way The plates overlap at full scale, so my inclination is to do the same The outer plate @ .2mm is 1/2 inch at full scale, seems about right and even if not, it looks right By overlapping the plates, I can be less precise than I would need to be if I butted them together. Remember, the plates have mostly straight edges but the butt ends are not at right angles to both sides of the join. If I had to butt the plates longitudinally, I would need to cut these slight altered angles into the long edge, and I'm not good enough to do that right. Slight gaps in the join will show up very much and really can't be filled. By overlapping the plates, I don't have the gap problem and it holds the edges of the thinner plates down which have a habit of catching and lifting. The thicker plates don't do this as they are stronger The overlap lifts the outer plate a tiny amount and this evens the finish of the hull making slight blemishes in the wood invisible So, at 1:48th I know this works. If I were working at 1:96th, I'd ignore the inner plating altogether and just apply the outer strakes Hope that helps explain things Cheers Steve

Short update on the plating. Really not much to say, it is a steady job as the saying goes, each plate is cut to size, most are trapezoidal, 4 sides not equal or even necessarily parallel (think that's a trapezoid ) Anyway, the process starts with marking out the lines of the edges of the inner plating strakes. I used stretch flexible line marking tape sold for cars, and kept adjusting it until it seemed about right. This took quite a while That thing behind the ship is an attempt at the buck for the armoured deck house that the bow gun sits on. It's slightly wrong, I will make a better one They don't look even because I worked from both the keel and the sheer line and so the side that is the edge of the inner plating changed. Don't worry, that's probably really confusing statement Anyway, I then used a Sharpie to mark the plating edges. The problem with using pencil is it tends to get wiped on with handling, the Sharpie doesn't. It looks a little crude here, but it will do Here is the beginning of the uppermost inner plating line Both these edges get covered by the outer plating runs so its not too critical. For this job I'm using Aluminium sheet, 0.1 mm for the inner rows and 0.2 mm thick for the outer rows. This cuts easily with a sharp knife, but the 0.1 mm thick sheet is really easily damaged when handling so be careful. You can buy this from 4D model shop among other places. The plates are stuck to the wooden hull using Gorilla Superglue, the brush applicator version which makes it easy to exactly paint the areas of the plate. Mostly there is either no curvature or single curvature only. The rear of the bilge keel inner row has some slight double curves, but tape holds is down enough to settle into the right shape while the glue hardens. More or less all the plates are either 6 or 7 frames long, so 120 or 140 inches, there are a few exceptions but all plates are a whole number of rows long. The only challenge is not getting confused regarding where you are, I do that often these days. Once stuck the surface is cleaned using a scotch pad. This takes the shine away and removes any glue that seeped out. It also leaves the surface perfect for priming. Starting the sheer line outer, all the same width until very near the stern. This has been cut around the bow tube It always amazes me that more or less flat trapezoid plates form such subtle curves. Above you can see that the inner lines are wider than the outer. Obviously the outer lap over the inner and as I only marked the inner, this is the effect you get. In fact, the inners are slightly narrower mostly, though not in the round of the bilge which is an inner line Second line complete, I will do the stern once both sides are complete Last detail is the condenser water intake which is a 9 inch pipe at ~ 20 degrees, so a long ellipse. I cut a short brass tube to the angle, epoxied it in place and then plated over it and opened it up. This hole will be covered by an etched brass grating later. So, not much more to say, this job will take me a few days to complete, but its all the same repetition so I'll post some more pictures once this stage is complete. The butt joints will almost completely disappear as this is flush riveted. However, the key word there is "also", when you look closely, you will be able to see them and that is the whole point of all this effort. Plus having the plates the right shape, means the process will work because it did on the real ship. The other point about using metal is it inevitably takes a little slight damage no matter how careful I am. Rather than worry about this, I like the realism this slightly knocked appearance provides. Cheers Steve