HMSV Beagle - OcCre - 1/60

[Bertie McBoatface]

After a couple of intensive days on the delicate art of rigging Lady Isabella I needed something I could hack, bash and besplatter and what better than the plywood keel and bulkheads of the Beagle?

 

First, I labelled the pieces. The part numbers of the various frames and fillets had to be transferred from the plan sheet onto the plywood before any hacking out of components could happen. This is not critical but saves a lot of confusion later. Then the parts were cut free working from both sides of the 'fret' so that the attachments wouldn't tear out. This was a very quick job, much easier on ply than MDF. Then I bashed it all together and for the first time I could truly 'know' the size of the 10 gun brig. It really was a tiny craft, about the same size as the Zulu fishing boat in fact. And they sailed it round Cape Horn several times!

 

 

The dry fit showed that the kit was made like a cheap suit - it fits where it touches. 😁 That's quite a lot of slop compared to the MDF Zulu but given the excellent gap filling properties of modern wood glue, not a major issue. In fact in some ways it made the evening's work easier.

 

 

With the deck popped on most of the wobble was stabilised.

 

 

In case you were wondering what is scrawled on the underneath of the deck, it's 'Bottom'. This makes it marginally less likely that I'll plank the wrong side of it when the time comes.

 

 

Even with the deck in place, I could move the keel ends of the frames fore and aft by this much. It doesn't really matter though and the movement would help me work the glue right into the centre of the joints. The glue is a little thick to depend on capillarity and I declined to thin it because I wanted those gaps filled solidly. 

 

 

I toyed with the idea of using my patent squarer-uppers for lining it up while glue dried but again, the variation of a few degrees would be far less significant than my sanding bevels onto the frames by eye and then planking the hull by feel. I did want to reinforce the joints though. Now where could I find some scraps of wood with right angled corners and straight edges?

 

 

How about these, snipped from the empty fret the frames came in. (I'm not really a tough guy, I just make empty frets. 😄)

 

 

I didn't want to glue the deck down yet because it's easier to plank it flat on the desk so I fitted an anti glue barrier along the keel to deal with any Officer Dribbles. It's just simple Sellotape. (Did you know it's called that because it's tape made from cellulose? True.)

 

 

Hacking and bashing had been a great success so it was time to besplatter. I'm told that this is traditionally the last shot in popular family videos so I'll leave it at that for tonight.

 

Evenin' all.

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Bertie, dice for set-squares? Considering the small space I think that's a brilliant idea. Regards, Jeff.

[Bertie McBoatface]

49 minutes ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Bertie, dice for set-squares? Considering the small space I think that's a brilliant idea. Regards, Jeff.

Just thinking outside the dice box…

[Bertie McBoatface]

 

With the decks in place and the reinforced keel/frame joints the bend in the keel is undetectable by sighting or straight edge. This makes the engineer in me happy but is a small disappointment to the historian. Beagle was a strong ship and one of the reasons for this is that in July 1817, three years before she was built, Sir Robert Seppings the distinguished naval architect and Surveyor of the Navy, sent new specifications to the shipyards building the 10 gun brigs, to include a system of diagonal bracing of the frames. Seppings' diagonal bracing was widely adopted thereafter, and I was looking forward to incorporating something like it in my model to straighten her out. I'm not enough of a historian to do unnecessary hidden work though. 😀

 

At the same scale as the Zulu I'm building (more or less) and about the same length, Beagle is a tiny ship. She  was 90 feet long with a crew of about 90 on a five year voyage (to boldly go and carry out a hydrographic survey of South America and make a chain of chronometrical observations stretching right around the earth in order to determine its true shape.) There was not a lot of room!

 

 

This morning I laid my 2mm thick hornbeam planks on the forecastle. This is the smallest piece of decking so seemed a good place to start. I used impact adhesive to avoid wetting and possibly warping the deck with a lot of wood glue, and to speed things up. In the photo the planks are laid out in order with the king plank for the centreline made easy to find. They are retained on a strip of masking tape, side to side. I will space them out next time because they stuck to each other when I painted glue over them which was inconvenient. I brushed the glue on with a disposable paintbrush. Though it came in a tube, it was very runny and soaked into the wood easily, drying very fast.

 

 

Planked. 2mm at 1/60 scale is about four and a half old-fashioned inches and that's about right for man of war decking, possibly a bit OTT for a little brig. Some of the Victory's decks were six inches thick when new. They were only 5 when she retired due to years of holystoning them - scraping them with sand and blocks of sandstone to keep them looking new. As you know, I'll be sanding them down, and in any case, you won't be able to see the thickness so I'm just waffling on for no good reason really, as usual.

 

 

Only the round hole for the foremast needs to penetrate the decking. I'll drill that once the sanding is done. Ideally the deck will finish up with a subtle saddle shape, or like a Pringle if you prefer It will be convex from side to side to make water run off to the sides and to gain the strength of an arch AND it will be concave fore and aft because that's the way boats go (it's called sheer). I highly doubt that I can do this with only 2mm of material to work with but let's find out eh?

 

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

 

Tools for the task.

 

 

It took an hour but I think I made the curve I was looking for.

 

 

That'll do. I couldn't get the fore and aft curve though. I might try again later.

 

 

I think the wood looks lovely.

 

 

And I'm happy that it's as close to the reference as that.

[ColonelKrypton]

56 minutes ago, Bertie Psmith said:

And I'm happy that it's as close to the reference as that.

 

It does look good. A few shorter planks with some cross wise joints might have looked good too - might add a bit of extra visual interest. Hind sight is nearly always 20-20. How long and wide would the foc'sle have been on the full size Beagle?

 

Sandpaper? Probably would have been my first choice too and it certainly got the job done but I would have thought with your newfound prowess with fine wood working tools that you might have tackled job with a freshly sharpened scraper with the piece held still on a suitably small planing board.  I wouldn't have thought of doing it that way except that just this morning I was truing up the surface of a cheap laminated dollar store bamboo cutting board and started with a piece of gritty sandpaper but quickly realized that it was job better suited to a hand scraper - a 10 minute job instead of 20+ minutes with a couple different grades of sandpaper and a nicer finish too me thinks.

 

cheers, Graham 

 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

2 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

It will be convex from side to side to make water run off to the sides

Gidday Bertie, I think that downward curved shape across the deck is called 'camber'. That first bit of decking you've done looks very good. Regards, Jeff.

[Bertie McBoatface]

4 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Bertie, I think that downward curved shape across the deck is called 'camber'. That first bit of decking you've done looks very good. Regards, Jeff.

 

That's the word that I was struggling to remember - "think" 🤪

 

Yes of course, camber athwartships and sheer for and aft. And the good news is that after a break, I've just managed to improve both of them. See below.

[Bertie McBoatface]

23 hours ago, ColonelKrypton said:

 cross wise joints might have looked good too

 

I haven't finished yet, Graham. 😉 See the experiments on the last page. I'll be faking the plank end joints because the variations in plank width (all hand cut, remember) would have made butt joints very difficult.

 

23 hours ago, ColonelKrypton said:

How long and wide would the foc'sle have been on the full size Beagle?

 

Assuming that this model is reasonably accurate it scales up to 18 feet wide and nine long. However, a lot of that is occupied by the windlass which appears to have been indoors and the bowsprit. The headroom was only four or five feet and it wasn't a space used as accommodation. In fact the bosun and Darwin seemed to engage in much banter as to whether ship's stores or collected samples should take precedence in there.

 

The original 10 gun brigs had flush decks but when they were converted for mail packet delivery service (I said they were the vans of their day) a low forcastle and a tiny poop were added for weather protection. Beagle had hers enlarged for the first of her three great voyages and then enlarged again for the second. No plans of these changes are extant but there are some drawings made by PG King, a midshipman on the voyage.

 

 

 

 

23 hours ago, ColonelKrypton said:

 

a freshly sharpened scraper with the piece held still

 

 

Quite so. I didn't find a suitable way to hold my 'potato chip' of a deck until tonight. Double sided tape was the answer and using scrapers I have achieved a much better camembert (Thanks @ArnoldAmbrose) and some sheer too. 

 

 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday Bertie, Camembert? I prefer Brie myself. I can see this thread degenerating into cheezy jokes, which makes a change from ladies bottoms and translucent undergarments I suppose. Doesn't quite conjure up the same images in my mind though. Oh well .   .   .

Regards, Jeff.

[Bertie McBoatface]

3 hours ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Camembert

Darned auto correct! 😂

[Kevin Aris]

thats a very good start to the build

[Bertie McBoatface]

1 hour ago, Kevin Aris said:

thats a very good start to the build

Thanks Kevin. I’m really pleased with the forecastle  deck now, satisfied that it’s worth the bother of making camber, that my wood is more interesting than the lime supplied, and that my method is good enough to continue with the main and poop decks. 
 

I have a drawing of the poop cabin, where Darwin slept and worked and I’m very tempted to try to build it. I think I could make it visible if I made the skylight removable. 
 

What do you think? You are ‘Mr Interior’ when it comes to ships.

[Kevin Aris]

2 minutes ago, Bertie Psmith said:

Thanks Kevin. I’m really pleased with the forecastle  deck now, satisfied that it’s worth the bother of making camber, that my wood is more interesting than the lime supplied, and that my method is good enough to continue with the main and poop decks. 
 

I have a drawing of the poop cabin, where Darwin slept and worked and I’m very tempted to try to build it. I think I could make it visible if I made the skylight removable. 
 

What do you think? You are ‘Mr Interior’ when it comes to ships.

I started adapting the CAF HMS Enterprise  in my signature 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

1 hour ago, Bertie Psmith said:

I have a drawing of the poop cabin, where Darwin slept and worked and I’m very tempted to try to build it. I think I could make it visible if I made the skylight removable. 

Gidday Bertie, if you can do that I think it would be very interesting. Of course, the follow-on to that would be each and every deck of the Billy Ruffian. 😁

Regards, Jeff.

[Bertie McBoatface]

5 minutes ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Bertie, if you can do that I think it would be very interesting. Of course, the follow-on to that would be each and every deck of the Billy Ruffian. 😁

Regards, Jeff.

 

Because the poop was an add on to the real thing, it was a separate module to the rest of the ship and, I think that makes it possible for me to build a limited interior. 1/60 is quite a small scale so it would only need to be a suggestion rather than a replica. There would be some changes needed to the false keel which would have been easier before I glued the bulkheads on, dammit, but it's still fairly accessible and easier to conceptualise* when it's semi assembled.

 

And wouldn't it be cool to be able to see Mr Darwin in his hammock feeling seasick!

 

 

 

 

* first time I ever needed to use that word!

[ColinChipmunkfan]

Wow Bertie, going boldly where I've never been before- I am following this with great interest.🙂

Colin

[Bertie McBoatface]

2 hours ago, ColinChipmunkfan said:

going boldly where I've never been before

 

On a five year voyage of exploration too. With a great naval captain and a remarkable science officer. Don't tell me Gene Roddenberry never read about this trip.

 

That's five years for Darwin, six months for me. However, he only expected to be gone for two years. Some things have a way of running late...

 

[Faraway]

On 17/06/2022 at 03:15, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday Bertie, Camembert? I prefer Brie myself

Stilton, with a small glass (or two) of Port for me.

Jon

 

[Faraway]

‘ere we go again, Does your expertise know no bounds ?

Jon

[Bertie McBoatface]

15 hours ago, Faraway said:

‘ere we go again, Does your expertise know no bounds ?

Jon

 

No.

[Bertie McBoatface]

 

It seems ages since I actually did anything to my lil dog Beagle. However, I am continuing to be a good citizen and have been diligently cleaning up the poop. 

 

It's exactly the same as the foc'sl. Pl'nks m'd of hornbeam with acrylic p'nt on the edges. Ho'bm is devilish hard wood and has blunted my scraper to the point that it needs the full 'draw filing sharpening from scratch' technique which is a pain and might drive me back to the power sander pro tem.

 

 

I have drawn pencil lines across the planks which helps me see exactly where I've taken material away. I restore the scraped off lines every few minutes. 

 

 

The belaying pins in the kit are very bulbous so I experimented with ways to reduce them to an acceptable diameter. First I withheld their biscuits but that didn't do it so I clamped this one in my Proxxon rotary tool and sanded it spinning. It's fiddly but no worse than AFV tracks and made an improvement, as you see. I'd like to get them even thinner, so I'm going to aim for breaking point and then back 0.01mm.

 

 

I'm also experimenting with my treenails (or trunnels - sailors apparently have very poor diction, despite what they say about a girl in every port.) Its how the old tyme ships were held together. They are almost invisible on the real thing from any distance but ship modellers argue endlessly about the best way to simulate them on the decks. Rather like riveting over here, methinks. 

 

So, not much actual progress but I have been busy, firstly having a rest after the Lady Isabella. I'm getting on now and three months with my hands on the Lady every day has exhausted me completely. Secondly, and you ain't going to like this, I've been two timing you with Model Ship World. Horrors! 

 

I didn't like it over there when I was doing the Zulu, but with hindsight, I was a bit reticent. I was in awe of people who had built even one of these wooden things, and didn't put myself forward at all. Now, I have lost my cherry to the Lady, I have the confidence to blather on over there as here and I'm consequently getting lots of banter, and lots of help. And with the much more complex Beagle on the table, I need the help. There are six Beagles under construction over there so it's a kind of group build atmosphere too.

 

Here on BM I have a brilliant laugh and lots of encouragement but I don't get warned in advance to pay attention to my butt spacings or enjoy hours of debate about the best sequence for rigging a square rigger (it's 'inside out, front to back and bottom up, but always spars before fitting', if you are interested). So, instead of making my daily posts here and updating there once a week, as I did with the Zulu, I'm doing it with them daily and saving you for the weekends. It's like moving in with the mistress and still seeing the wife on Sundays for 'the roast dinner'.

 

I won't link to my build over there because that seems disloyal to @Mike and everyone here. However, you know where to find me if you really want to. I'm not Bertie elsewhere but you will easily recognise the style and the build.

 

I'll be back here as soon as the decks are pl'nk'd and tr'n'l'd. 😉

 

 

 

 

 

[ColonelKrypton]

32 minutes ago, Bertie Psmith said:

I'm also experimenting with my treenails (or trunnels - sailors apparently have very poor diction, despite what they say about a girl in every port.) Its how the old tyme ships were held together. They are almost invisible on the real thing from any distance but ship modellers argue endlessly about the best way to simulate them on the decks. Rather like riveting over here, methinks. 

 

Ah, trunnel counters

 

The pictures of belaying pins had do a quick search. Seems you can buy ready made belaying pins in various sizes and made from either wood or brass but not plastic interestingly. There are even those modellers who make their own from those same materials. Perhaps in the world of model ships the use of wood and brass are traditional where plastic is not very welcome just as it seems that in the plastic model world, plastic (plus resin) and brass are the norms and wood so common. Different mindset, different set of working tools, each biasing the builder one way or the other.

 

I have been enjoying following along your build here and others over on model ship world. The subject matter interests me only from historic and techniques points of view.

 

I have no real interest in building an old sailing ship or even a more modern naval vessel bristling with guns and whatnot. For some reason I find tugboats appealing but will I ever build a model of one? Never say never.

 

For now I will just vicariously indulge in the world of model ships through builds like yours and other who graciously share their experiences on the forums.

 

Rrrrrr, matey!   ( perhaps if I practice my pirate speak it may push my hand to having a go at such a model )

 

 

cheers, Graham

 

[Bertie McBoatface]

2 hours ago, ColonelKrypton said:

 

Ah, trunnel counters

 

The pictures of belaying pins had do a quick search. Seems you can buy ready made belaying pins

 

That's not as much fun as sanding down thousands of the little beggars! Like tank tracks, it's a Zen thing. 😉

 

2 hours ago, ColonelKrypton said:

in various sizes and made from either wood or brass but not plastic interestingly. There are even those modellers who make their own from those same materials. Perhaps in the world of model ships the use of wood and brass are traditional where plastic is not very welcome just as it seems that in the plastic model world, plastic (plus resin) and brass are the norms and wood so common. Different mindset, different set of working tools, each biasing the builder one way or the other.

 

That's true for some shippies, me included. I hate using modern materials and prefer to try to imitate the great model builders who were the contemporaries of the ships themselves. The ones whose work you see in museums. Of course that's not practical but I do my best, while making use of resin glues and even CA etc. Other model shipwrights use GRP hulls, 3D printed windlasses, plastic deadeyes, and even build plastic ship kits - with stunning results. 

 

I think I'm in the brilliant position of being fairly fluent in aircraft, AFV's and dioramas, figure painting and now wooden ships. This may open new avenues of exploration. There are few weathered wooden ship models out there, or with figures or with highlights and shadows on their equipment. What about a sinking ship? Or one in the scrapyard? 

 

2 hours ago, ColonelKrypton said:

I have been enjoying following along your build here and others over on model ship world. The subject matter interests me only from historic and techniques points of view.

 

If you are enjoying, I'll keep writing. The history and details of technique will be 'over there' in much greater detail though.

 

2 hours ago, ColonelKrypton said:

I have no real interest in building an old sailing ship or even a more modern naval vessel bristling with guns and whatnot. For some reason I find tugboats appealing but will I ever build a model of one? Never say never.

 

For now I will just vicariously indulge in the world of model ships through builds like yours and other who graciously share their experiences on the forums.

 

Rrrrrr, matey!   ( perhaps if I practice my pirate speak it may push my hand to having a go at such a model )

 

 

cheers, Graham

 

 

I have a state subsidised (?) Chinese boat kit on the way for £9.97 including postage. It may be little more than a toy but it's plank on bulkhead, all wood construction so I thought I'd check it out for suitability for those wavering on the edge of the ship modelling abyss in which I now find myself. I'll report back when/if it arrives. I'm now an evangelist for the cause.

 

_{Wood is Good!} Wood is Good! Wood is Good!

[psdavidson]

3 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

I have a state subsidised (?) Chinese boat kit on the way

I have one of these in the stash. If you are lucky, it will arrive intact.

Mine came in a poly bag inside an unpadded envelope. A lot of the parts were detached from the frames. No idea if any of them are broken

At the time I bought it, it was only about five quid, which explains the cheap packaging.

I also have, somewhere, one of the paper cut-out kits as well

 

/P