Ark Royal circa 1587.

[mdesaxe]

I am reasonably certain that Airfix did not make up the flags you illustrate. The most useful and reliable source for flags of this period (other than trawling though documentation in archives and private collections) is W.G. Perrin's British Flags: Their Early History, and their Development at Sea; with an Account of the Origin of the Flag as a National Device (Cambridge University Press, 1922). Perrin was the Admiralty Librarian from 1908 until his death in 1931, a prominent member of the Society for Nautical Research and the Navy Records Society, heavily involved in the establishment of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, and a meticulous researcher of this topic. This used to be difficult to find (and probably would be impossible to access from repositories in these times of lock-down) but now is available on line through Project Gutenberg in its entire full-colour glory here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46370/46370-h/46370-h.htm. The blue or green striped cross-of-St.-George flags are well documented in contemporary records (green and white were the colours of the Tudors). His work will greatly assist you in determining both the correct flags or pennants and those appropriate for Ark Royal's squadron status.

 

If you do not want to slog through all 250 or so pages of Perrin (though this can be quite enjoyable in its own right), there is a quite useful (and generally quite well sourced) summary for the Tudor era here: https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/Flags/gb~tudor.html#gwstripes

 

Maurice

[patmaquette]

@Black Knight & @mdesaxe very many thanks for your insights and information. It's really good to have your contributions and I much appreciate it. I'll study the information on flags.

 

Having completed work on the rigging, I've moved on to detailing the hull. The cannon castings had been painted a bronze colour - a lighter shade on top and darker beneath - and drilled out at the breach end to take a short length of wire that was glued in place. This in turn located into a hole already in place in each gun mount to hold the cannon in place. A rectangle of plastic card was notched at its corners to provide a further support for the cannon whilst the glue set. 9-pdr demi-culverin for example.....

 

 

 

The  lids for the gun ports were also castings. The plastic ones in the kit were given some extra detail for the hinges. A larger one was also needed for the big guns along the gun deck, so the master for these was made by adding some plastic strip around the sides. These two sizes on lid were cast from a one-piece mould.....

 

 

 

The detail on the outboard face of the lids was captured okay, but the inboard side had lots of air pockets, so I scratched my head for a while to think about what to do.

I saw from my own searches that the port doors had a raised inner "lining" that was made from a softer wood, so I recreated this with rectangles of 0.3 mm plastic card glued over the pock-holed surface & painted with a wood colour mixed from Humbrol 103 Deck Tan and 84 Sand. Individual planks were added in a vertical direction with various tones on acrylic paint and plank edges marked by pencil.

 

 

 

 

On 02/04/2020 at 13:02, Black Knight said:

On Tudor ships the gun port covers could be removed completely and stowed inside by the guns. On Mary Rose the lower gun port covers had been removed. Not being available to close off the ports may have have contributed to its very quick sinking. May have, or may not have.

afai have read, usually the gun port covers were raised to be up tight to the hull. Use as a platform works both ways but more in favour of your enemy. Very little use to you but your enemy can use them on a boarding attack, which you do not want to encourage

Ships would start off a close fight at about 400 yards and gradually close till they were 10 feet apart and the rigging intermixing, Usually a captain would try to have his enemy's rigging reduced to make him immobile. Prize money was good for a sound hull. Raking a ship was very effective. Once a ship was close up and the guns were no longer feasible the gunners boarded each others ships via the open gun ports and killed each other, sometimes aided by marines.

I now had doors with interesting detail on both faces that I did not want to hide, so - despite the fine advice above (apologies @Black Knight!) - decided to attach them at an angle so both sides could be viewed. A short length of wire was added from the outboard side of each lid to the hull to represent the rope that was hauled on to swing them open. I think for the larger ports I really should have put two ropes on, attached to the ends of the hinge plates. I reckoned to myself that having the doors in this position would shield the gunners inside from small bore fire coming from the upperworks of the enemy - who knows!

Some shading and highlighting was applied by brush. I found it useful to rest my hand on a wood block when doing the detail work....

 

 

The hinges in the white area of the rudder were outlined with Citadel Nuln oil dituted in Vallejo thinner medium. The shaded areas were given a heavier application. Joints between the planks (which had been cut in using an Olfa-P cutter) were shaded with The Army Painter Soft Tone Ink, once again diluted with Vallejo Thinner Medium.

I had noticed that some rudders had chains to the transom. I found some photoetched ones in my spares box. I played around with a piece of copper wire to get the shape I wanted for the chains and, once decided, then worked the photo etch to shape. Some excess length was left on to hold the chain for painting and washing. This was then assembled to the transom. A plastic card spacer was placed between the rudder and post to set the gap between the two as the glue set.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next step: anchors.

 

Many thanks for reading and any comments gratefully received!

Cheers for now,

Pat

[Black Knight]

Lookin good

On HMS Victory some of the gun port doors were lined with lead sheet

[JohnT]

That’s man sized hairy chested full on modelling at its finest. Stunning stuff Sir. I can’t show it to Mrs T or she will say why don’t I do real modelling too

I’ll  tag along to the finish in awe 

[Chewbacca]

On 25/05/2020 at 12:33, Black Knight said:

The lengthening of the ship timbers under the waterline and the shortening of the topsides causes the ship to bend upwards at the free ends

Thus the rake of the foremast and mizzen are eliminated, as the ship bends up at the ends the masts become more vertical. If they were vertical to start with they would now be leaning into the ship. 

So therefore if you were putting one of these into a seascape base, the advice would be to mount all masts vertically? (Not that I'm planning one any time soon, I've got far too many 20th century ships in the stash to go first!)

[Terry1954]

This is looking absolutely splendid. The paintwork alone is a marvel and all the detailed construction work, rigging, the lot, just incredible. As @JohnT says, I would likely getting a similar response from my own Mrs H!

 

Terry

[mdesaxe]

16 hours ago, Chewbacca said:

So therefore if you were putting one of these into a seascape base, the advice would be to mount all masts vertically? (

I would not do that. All wooden ships "hogged" as they aged; that is, the ends dropped and the keel took an upward curve amidships, primarily because the finer (less amount of hull, in simple terms) hull shape at bow and stern meant the ends had less buoyancy.  Consequently, the rakes of the fore and mizzen masts if anything would tend to increase rather than tend towards the vertical.

 

Mast rake was a topic of debate then and it still is in sailing (especially racing) circles. Changing the rake of the mast moves the centre of pressure of the sails and thus modifies the vessel's sailing characteristics (not that sixteenth-century mariners thought of it in those terms). The goal was to achieve a balance of the pressures to optimise performance. At that time, this was done by rule-of-thumb (following what had worked before) and modifying the rake of masts from sailing experience. There are literally hundreds of extant logbook entries that record captains "shifting the masts" as they sought balance in the rig. Furthermore, the rake of masts was not always slightly forward on the foremast, vertical on the mainmast, and slightly aft on the mizzen. Anthony Deane (Charles II's favourite naval architect), for example, recommended a vertical foremast with the other masts raking aft, and so did several of his Continental contemporaries.

 

The other point (which feeds into why masts were raked) is that essentially only the sails on the fore and main masts on ships of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the primary sources of motive power. The sails on the bowsprit and the mizzen(s) were important primarily to provide manoeuvering power (because rudders were not very effective) and help balance the rig.

 

If you want to explore this more, I suggest reading the late great John Harland's Seamanship in the Age of Sail. I must confess to some possible bias here, because John was a very good personal friend of mine for over thirty years until his death almost exactly two years ago.

 

Maurice

Edited May 29, 2020 by mdesaxe
left out until his death

[Murdo]

On 5/27/2020 at 9:25 PM, patmaquette said:

I saw from my own searches that the port doors had a raised inner "lining" that was made from a softer wood, so I recreated this with rectangles of 0.3 mm plastic card glued over the pock-holed surface & painted with a wood colour mixed from Humbrol 103 Deck Tan and 84 Sand. Individual planks were added in a vertical direction with various tones on acrylic paint and plank edges marked by pencil.

 

It might be worth "drawing" lots of wee square shapes with added lines in e.g. MS Word (or something similar) and then printing off on paper pre-painted with the correct colour and gluing in place.

 

So create one then CTRL C (to copy) and CTRL V (to paste) then print on pre painted paper.

 

Lots of identical copies in a few seconds.

 

 

The 1/350 ship in the foreground shows an example of this. Obviously these are hold planks so would be failry large:

 

 

By the way, the Carpet Monster got that entire scratchbuilt ship and I can't find it!          

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2020 by Murdo

[Dave Swindell]

16 hours ago, mdesaxe said:

The sails on the bowsprit and the mizzen(s) were important primarily to provide manoeuvering power (because rudders were not very effective) and help balance the rig.

Sails are far more effective at steering than a rudder, especially at low speed.

 

[patmaquette]

Thank you for your great feedback and conversations everyone! This has been and continues to be an informative project that makes model building such a good way to discover historical information and tips for how to do things.

 

Anchors.....

The kit parts for the anchor needed a lot of cleaning up. Ejector pin dimples were plugged with discs of plastic card before sanding flush......

 

 

 

The anchor shanks were glued to the stocks and gaps between them filled with Mr Dissolved Putty. The steelwork around the centre of the stock may not be correct: most illustrations I have seen have the shanks passing through a hole in the centre of the stock without there being any surrounding steel.

 

 

The assemblies were airbrushed with Humbrol 92 Iron Grey and then shaded with Paynes Grey oil paint thinned with Sansodor. The areas shaded depend on the position (port or starboard) and how the anchor would "sit" on the model, so some experimenting and dry fitting was done beforehand to see where the light and shadows would fall. Once the Paynes Grey had dried, they were airbrushed with Citadel Nuln Oil to soften the shading. Nuln oil was also applied as a pin wash at various crevices to accentuate them......

 

 

Worn metal effects were added by lightly dry brushing with Citadel Necron Compound, followed by picking out highlights with Citadel Leadbelcher and then with Darkstar Tarnished Steel where the light catches....

 

 

The stocks were blocked in with a couple of coats of Badger D6-113 "Mummy". Although this paint is intended for airbrush use, it worked fine when applied by hairy stick. This became the shade colour for the wooden stock. Various lighter shades of acrylic paints were applied to give the object a three dimensional look. This was harmonised with some layers of Citadel Seraphim Sepia applied by paint brush by working from the tips of the stock towards the middle: this allows the wash to build up at the join with the shank. This was emphasised further with some lines of The Army Painter Dark Tone ink.

 

 

A reference gives the circumference of Ark Royal's anchor cable as 17", which scales out to a diameter a smidgen below 1 mm. Some string of this diameter was dipped into Citadel Seraphim Sepia and the excess removed by running the string through my fingers and then hanging it to dry straight.

 

 

Cables were secured to the anchors by cotton thread seizing tied and wrapped in two bands....

 

 

 

 

Ropes for securing the anchors were tied to the foremast chainwales and then the anchors secured to the chainwales using Gator's Grip. 

 

 

Some simplified tackle was made from wire for supporting one of the anchors each side from the cathead. This comprised a length of fine wire bent around a 0.7 mm drill shank and glued to a disc of plastic card to represent one side of a block.

 

 

The second half was then glued on to sandwich the wire between. 

 

 

Going back to the anchor, a turn of 0.2 mm lead wire was applied and then one side of the tackle lower block popped onto a dot of Micro Industries Liquitape. Another dot was applied to the underside of the cathead.

 

 

 

The lifting tackle was then trimmed to length and positioned onto the Liquitape and then set solid with superglue. A second disc was added to the lower block to complete the job....

 

 

 

 

Thanks for reading and your interest!

 

Pat

 

 

 

[mdesaxe]

6 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Sails are far more effective at steering than a rudder, especially at low speed.

What is the boat in your avatar? I have a Flying Scot and a Thistle, both wooden from the 1950s. Some of my friends think I like the designs of Sandy Douglass too much!

 

Maurice

[Dave Swindell]

27 minutes ago, mdesaxe said:

What is the boat in your avatar? I have a Flying Scot and a Thistle, both wooden from the 1950s. Some of my friends think I like the designs of Sandy Douglass too much!

 

Maurice

Hi Maurice, it's a Seafly dinghy. The wind had dropped to a force 7 when the photo was taken, it had been gusting 8+, I was crewing for a mate of mine, quite an exilurating ride, we came back right way up and didn't break anything!

[dnl42]

23 hours ago, mdesaxe said:

If you want to explore this more, I suggest reading the late great John Harland's Seamanship in the Age of Sail. I must confess to some possible bias here, because John was a very good personal friend of mine for over thirty years until his death almost exactly two years ago.

I too whole-heartedly recommend that book. It's very well written and is an excellent source of ship operations. 

 

I'm so very sad to hear John passed. He was a treasure. I "met" John on the SMML email list lo those years ago, where he was quite kind and eager to provide authoritative info. I used to spend more of my time in that modeling genre than I do now.

[dnl42]

Pat,

 

This continues to be an outstanding build. A true testament to what this kit can be! 

[mdesaxe]

45 minutes ago, dnl42 said:

I'm so very sad to hear John passed.

He was 95 years old so he a long and productive life.

 

Maurice

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

19 hours ago, Dave Swindell said:

Sails are far more effective at steering than a rudder, especially at low speed.

 

As are parts of a ship’s structure that act as quasi-sails.  The war canoe I had the privilege of commanding (HMS Blackwater) had large slab-sided funnels and a fairly high freeboard; at low speed in any sort of breeze she could go sideways like there was no tomorrow, which sometimes made ship-handing a little on the “squeaky-bottom” side when entering narrow harbours.

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

12 hours ago, dnl42 said:

I too whole-heartedly recommend that book. It's very well written and is an excellent source of ship operations. 

 

I'm so very sad to hear John passed. He was a treasure. I "met" John on the SMML email list lo those years ago, where he was quite kind and eager to provide authoritative info. I used to spend more of my time in that modeling genre than I do now.

It sounds a fascinating book, I agree - but a search of Amazon & Abe Books (admittedly not an exhaustive one) suggests North of £45 at best.

[Dave Swindell]

 

5 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

As are parts of a ship’s structure that act as quasi-sails.  The war canoe I had the privilege of commanding (HMS Blackwater) had large slab-sided funnels and a fairly high freeboard; at low speed in any sort of breeze she could go sideways like there was no tomorrow, which sometimes made ship-handing a little on the “squeaky-bottom” side when entering narrow harbours.

Definitely. We had the same problem on a much bigger scale, with the added "interest" of the sail area and position being changed at every port with no regard for ship handling...

 

[Chewbacca]

22 hours ago, patmaquette said:

Cables were secured to the anchors by cotton thread seizing tied and wrapped in two bands....

And there I was waiting to see you splice a soft eye into it 😀

 

Seriously, great work.  I'd endorse the comment above about how the wind can effect the ship's structure.  I was putting GLASGOW alongside in near perfect conditions in Portsmouth when out of nowhere a gust blew up and started to swing my stern in.  In fairness I'd probably come in slightly too shallow but even with twin screws, if I'd not taken the precaution of still taking tugs, I would have redesigned EXETER's foc's'le!  Captain D's comment was that I should have more faith in my own ability...

[patmaquette]

On 25/05/2020 at 16:52, mdesaxe said:

I am reasonably certain that Airfix did not make up the flags you illustrate. The most useful and reliable source for flags of this period (other than trawling though documentation in archives and private collections) is W.G. Perrin's British Flags: Their Early History, and their Development at Sea; with an Account of the Origin of the Flag as a National Device (Cambridge University Press, 1922). Perrin was the Admiralty Librarian from 1908 until his death in 1931, a prominent member of the Society for Nautical Research and the Navy Records Society, heavily involved in the establishment of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, and a meticulous researcher of this topic. This used to be difficult to find (and probably would be impossible to access from repositories in these times of lock-down) but now is available on line through Project Gutenberg in its entire full-colour glory here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46370/46370-h/46370-h.htm. The blue or green striped cross-of-St.-George flags are well documented in contemporary records (green and white were the colours of the Tudors). His work will greatly assist you in determining both the correct flags or pennants and those appropriate for Ark Royal's squadron status.

 

If you do not want to slog through all 250 or so pages of Perrin (though this can be quite enjoyable in its own right), there is a quite useful (and generally quite well sourced) summary for the Tudor era here: https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/Flags/gb~tudor.html#gwstripes

 

Maurice

Thank you for that link to Perrin, Maurice. I browsed through it and found it very interesting. I also found each of the striped designs in the Airfix printed sheet and they are appropriate for the date and use on Revenge.

Reference is made to a picture of ca 1600 of Ark Royal in "Hakluyt's voyages" that I was able to find on Google books. The picture is indeed labelled as being of Ark Royal. However, I could see no stern turret or crenelated poop deck bulwark features said to distinguish Ark Royal. In fact, I had already seen this picture in Osprey's Tudor Warships book, but they do not ascribe it to be Ark Royal and think it an extremely fanciful German woodcutting. However, the Royal Standard and the Arms of Lord Charles Howard are very well depicted: strange why the picture can be correct in some respects but so erroneous in others. The diagram shows the cross of St George on the fore and bonaventure masts, Royal Standard on the main and Tudor rose on the mizzen. Airfix include an ensign with the Tudor rose in their printed sheet.

Lord Howard's Coat of Arms is shown at the waist of the ship. I'm not sure what it would attach to and wonder if it is some convention the artists use left over from when knight's shields were shown along the ship's sides? My intentions are to display this flag from the gaff staff on the poop deck if I can paint up something respectable.

In terms of identifying the squadron, I read that this was not being practiced at the very beginning of the 1588 armada battle and, as Ark Royal was the flag ship flying the Royal Standard, may not be necessary.

Also shown are pendants streaming from the mast tops, each being divided into two points. One pendant from the fore top gallant has an anchor design that is mentioned in Perrin's study.

Dimensions for flags of Coats of Arms are given as 5 x 4.5 yds, or 32 x 28 mm at 1:144 scale. The flag pole on the kit is only 23 mm high though, so I'll need to decide on what to do about this.

I'm now exploring ideas for making the flags. These include wrapping paper each side of a foil inner as mentioned by @Black Knight as well as coating paper with superglue or matt varnish. I am also thinking of rolling out some Duro. My first trial, though, has been to make cross of St George ensigns measuring 22.6 x 20 mm from some .003" brass shim.......

The brass sheet was scored using an Olfa-P cutter and then snapped from the sheet by flexing along the scored line. Two of the three trial pieces was left with some excess material to make handling easier.....

 

 

The surfaces were abraded using a glass-fibre pen....

 

 

Ripples and folds were then formed into the brass....

 

 

These were primed with Badger Stynylrez and left to dry overnight. They were then airbrushed with a pale grey acrylic mix followed by lighter tones applied by brush. I'm still struggling to get the results I want by using acrylics (not due to the paints, but my inexperience with them) so switched to oils. Three tones were mixed from Paynes Grey, raw umber and titanium white with Sansodor as medium.......

 

 

 

 

 

I'll leave these for a day or so to dry before airbrushing with matt enamel varnish and adding the crosses in red.

 

Thanks for reading and any comments welcomed,

Pat

 

[mdesaxe]

You may not realise it but you are following a long-standing tradition. Some of the earliest surviving examples of flags on models of English warships were painted on very thin brass or copper.

 

Maurice

[patmaquette]

19 hours ago, mdesaxe said:

You may not realise it but you are following a long-standing tradition. Some of the earliest surviving examples of flags on models of English warships were painted on very thin brass or copper.

 

Maurice

That's nice to know - thank you for mentioning it, Maurice.

 

Thank you everyone for your comments & likes.

 

Small guns....

I have painted up those supplied in the Revenge kit. Here are some embarrassingly enlarged photos of them that look ghastly!.....

 

 

 

If anyone has any details on the Fowler and Port Piece guns then can you let me know? From my Google search the information I have gathered so far is:

Fowler: breech loading wrought iron gun firing a 6 lb stone shot, large stocked with a short barrel of 5 1/4" bore.

Portpiece: large wrought iron breech loading gun from 1535 onwards weighing some 1200 lb and having a bore from 6 to 10" for a shot of 9 - 10 lb (presumably stone)

 

The final piece of  mast work - the bowsprit - has now been installed and rigged. As before, as much rigging as possible had been attached to the model first of all. 

First off, the elastic thread for the fore stay was glued to the dead eye on the bowsprit and left to set.....

 

 

Bowsprit glued and held in place for the glue to set....

 

 

Leads to the spritsail clew lines (lower corners of sail) and buntines (bottom edge of sail) were quickly connected from the beak to the sprit yard. The elastic thread was held under tension using a hair clip (becoming more important items for me now my hair is getting so long!) and secured with a spot of superglue. Excess was then removed once the glue had set.....

 

 

The most time consuming rigging was the bowlines. These run from a belaying pin rail on the fo'c'stle via blocks on the bowsprit to each of the fore sails, branching into brails near to the sails. Elastic thread was run from the bowsprit blocks to the furthest connection point on each sail. Brails were then tied on to these and adjusted to be level on both sides. Once happy, they were secured with dots of superglue.....

 

 

The brails were then stretched to the sail edge to get the right shape and tension before gluing in place. My crocodile clip clamps on magnetic bases have proved a boon for rigging the model as they are so adaptable and easy to position. Two sets were employed to speed up the work.....

 

 

The rigging was completed by adding some blocks made from 1.2 mm diameter discs of plastic card.

 

 

 

 

 

Many thanks for reading and any comments most welcome,

Pat

 

 

 

 

 

 

[beefy66]

That rigging looks so complicated but soo eloquently done a masterpiece. 

 

beefy

[patmaquette]

On 04/06/2020 at 12:57, beefy66 said:

That rigging looks so complicated but soo eloquently done a masterpiece. 

 

beefy

Many thanks for your kind words, @beefy66. Ships rigging looked bewilderingly complicated at first but I found it very interesting to learn what it was all about and the terminology. I did three sets of rigging plans during the build. The first two were to make sure I had everything in place on the hull which led to me extending the chainwales and adding a lot of belaying pin rails. I had to do it twice because the first attempt didn't work out. The third one was closer to the time when I actually started the rigging. I tried to keep to the layout in my references, but sometimes departed from it to reduce the number of ropes crossing over each other. I'm pleased with it as a first attempt (not that I intend to do another one for a long time to come!).

 

Materials arrived to make the base for the display case. Here's some notes on how I made it, hopefully you will find it of some interest and not too boring!.......

 

You may remember that the model is intended for a local museum that has an interest in Sir Walter Rayleigh, who commissioned the ship originally to be called "Ark" or "Ark Raleigh" (Or more likely at that time, "Arke" or "Arke Rawlye"). It became "Ark Royal" when the ship was purchased by the Crown and that was how she was named when flag ship of the English fleet against the Spanish armada of 1588. Anyway, the model was intended to be wall mounted for display at the foot of some stairs and visitors would be able to look up beneath the model when on the ground floor or port side on when on the stairs. So I decided to keep the model clear of any supports underneath and to support it from the starboard side. The museum have now decided on a different location, although still wall mounted, but viewable from three sides and the top. So my design of display case changed but now looks like a conventional type with a base and clear top.

 

I used some oak moulding (pre-finished, for carpet or tile edging) as a frame for the base (SPWE18/OAK from Weatherbar Sills). This was cut using a saw and mitre block and the corner joints made to fit as best as I could (a sanding machine from Lidl being really helpful!) before gluing the frame together. A mitre clamp would have helped to pull the joint together during bonding, but as it was I just applied glue, positioned the parts and left the glue to set.

 

 

 

The gaps in the corners are wide, but not as bad as my usual attempts! The gaps were filled with Perfect Plastic putty with some acrylic paint added to colour match the oak....

 

 

 

The space inside the frame was filled with 2 sheets of material that I had in stock. Having trimmed these to fit inside the frame, holes were drilled to suit the wall brackets I had purchased and M4 nuts inserted and held captive when the two sheets were glued together.....

 

 

 

 

 

As mentioned earlier, unlike convention where the ship would be supported from the underside, my model had provisions to support it from one side as it was to be wall mounted. The model was built with a couple of support sockets glued to the wooden spine that holds the decks straight and true. The sockets are behind gun ports on the starboard side as can be seen from these photos from last July (crikey - that long ago!)....

 

 

 

Brass support rods that fit into the sockets were bent though 90 degress and hole positions marked onto the base. A bench drill was used to make sure the holes were drilled vertically. The rods were trimmed to length before cleaning up with steel wool and sprayed with a couple of coats of Halford's clear lacquer from a rattle can.

 

 

 

 

 

The base was given a decorative layer of baize cloth. First off, some filler was applied to fill the gaps and smooth any step between the oak frame and MDF inner. With the filler sanded flat and all the dust removed, some low-tack masking tape was run along the inside edge of the oak trim where I did not want the baize fabric to attach.....

 

 

 

The baize (SAM01b from CRS Fur Fabrics Ltd) was supplied as a folded sheet of sticky-backed material. I positioned the fold to be on the far side of the base in case the creases did not come out (and they didn't come out fully). An oversized piece was cut from the sheet and the adhesive backing film peeled away. It went on without fuss. A plastic rule was useful to press the baize into the corners.

 

 

The baize was trimmed using a new No10 curved blade run along a thin metal ruler. The low tack tape did a great job of allowing the excess baize to be removed without the strong baize adhesive making itself a nuisance.

 

 

 

 

The job was completed by epoxying the brass support rods in position and installing the wall brackets (very nice stainless steel ones: Sayayo B07WZS2BRY).

 

 

 

 

My next step is to order a Perspex top and then get on with the final details to complete the model. Here is how it looks so far....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many thanks for reading and any comments would be appreciated,

Pat

[Black Knight]

Tis looking very, very well. The museum should be well pleased

or they'll have me to answer to ! (joke)

 

imvho I think the ship sits too high

It reminds me of the flying island in Gulliver's Travels or ships in a story in Baron Munchausen's Tales