His Majesty's Armed Cutter Alert (1777)

[Quimp Slattery]

This process of posting a build log is a lot more difficult than I had expected. The photographs were taken on a phone, transferred to laptop, uploaded ... but of course you know this already. Doubtless it will become a matter of routine within a few months and so to business.

 

I began to build this model at the beginning of the year in a distracted kind of way. I'm certain that a person with more concentration than distractions could have it finished by now but this person alas, is not me. My progress has been halting and slow until quite recently when the smouldering embers of my enthusiasm flared up at the end of the long wet winter. I'm positively blazing along now so I'll show you how things stand at this moment.

 

 

This was taken outdoors today for the light to show off the various woods in use. 

 

The model is constructed from a laser-cut plywood false keel crossed by some nine bulkheads. The shape of the hull is then achieved by laying limewood strips across the bulkheads from stem to stern. You can see this layer of white wood best at the foot of the stern post to the left of the photo and behind the bulwarks on the far side above the deck. 

 

 

Here is a close up of the second layer of wooden strips outboard of the lime. Starting from the top you see three strakes or lines of walnut planking laid carvel fashion, butt jointed edge to edge, on top of the limewood foundation. This is my own choice of wood. The kit provided cherry, I think, with the intention that it be painted over in blue. I have discovered that it was actually treated with transparent 'rosin', a varnish made from pinewood and so decided to use the prettiest wood I had available, and in a variety of shades, to stress the woodiness of the cutter and of the model.

 

Below the walnut bulwarks lies the main wale, a thick (2mm) piece of lime which will be painted black, the only touch of decoration on the boat, and doubtless a heavily tarred form of paint. The stem, stern and keel will also be black.

 

Below the wale, the kit advises butt jointed planks but this is a simplification as the original had a clinker-built, or lapstrake bottom with overlapping planks held together with nails whose ends were turned over in the manner of rivets. I have simulated this by hand profiling each plank as seen below. I haven't yet finished the surfaces for varnishing and I probably won't trouble with the nailing.

 

 

Each plank is knife edged at the top and this slides into a rebate which I have been cutting into the preceding plank after fitment to the hull. This made a tidy joint and assisted with location and clamping.

 

 

Once I had progressed below the waterline there was no need to bother with simulating clinker building as the cutter was sheathed in copper within two days of delivery to the Navy at Deptford in 1777. I have some copper ready sheet for this but must first lay the second layer of cherry planking down to the keel for dimensional reasons. It will be well hidden from view and is consequently attached in the simplest way possible, carvel laid and carelessly.

 

 

It was when I had begun the fitting of the carvel section of cherry that I made the discovery which blew bright life into the fire of my keenness. I have built simple furniture in my past lives and am accustomed to glueing up the joints, assembling wet and waiting for the glue to dry overnight. If only I had made finer furniture I might have realised that planking a hull at this scale is no more than applying a veneer of 1mm thickness. Veneering does not make a lot of use of wet glues and clothes pegs.

 

I discovered by trial and error that Titebond Original may be applied to the hull and the plank, LEFT TO DRY (ten seconds under a hairdryer) and then the two parts brought together at leisure before being INSTANTLY and ACCURATELY attached with a brief touch of a hot iron. There's no need for clamps, no drying time, no glue squeezed out to require cleaning up later. Unlike contact cement or superglue, there are no harmful fumes. It also makes laying short planks easier and long planks possible. Finally, if the plank should go wrong, perhaps breaking unexpectedly, a further touch of the iron will remove it. The iron I use is the Model Craft Plank Bending Iron which was always to hand, since it was used moments earlier to shape the planks to fit. It was there all the time, just waiting for me to notice it.

 

This method has accelerated progress from one strake per side, per evening to at least ten. A fivefold increase in the speed at which I complete the most tedious and time consuming part of a kit like this means that the entire build time from start to finish is cut dramatically, perhaps in half. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that I joined this forum in order to tell someone, anyone who would appreciate the value of this simple change in technique, which I have seen described nowhere else (though undoubtedly, I won't have been the first to stumble on it).

 

 

In earlier months when enthusiasm for planking burned low, I kept going by building my twelve six pounder guns (and a spare from a remaindered barrel). Note that the brass cap squares have been appropriately blackened since the pictures were taken.

 

 

They are sweet little things which will one day have to be rigged with half a dozen ropes each.

 

So that is the state of play with this toy of mine tonight, Sunday the fourth of August. I will be very happy to finish this one by midwinter and yet how often have men tempted cruel fate by declaring that "it will all be over by Christmas"?

 

 

 

 

[Abandoned Project]

9 minutes ago, Quimp Slattery said:

They are sweet little things

Indeed they are!

[Quimp Slattery]

8 minutes ago, Abandoned Project said:

Indeed they are!

 

Unless of course, one happens to be standing in front of the little darlings. 

[stevehnz]

Not the sort of thing I've any desire to model but definitely the kind of build I'm keen to look in on. The 6 pdrs look brilliant, how big overall is this, they are quite tiny? I guess the question should be, "how long was the Alert?"

Steve.

[Quimp Slattery]

15 minutes ago, stevehnz said:

"how long was the Alert?"

 

Only twenty minutes from the first Warning until the All Clear’. Oh, I see what you mean…
 

The hull is currently 37cm long and 13cm across the deck. 
 

If she is ever completed the dimensions over the spars will be:

length 63.7cm

height 51.7cm

width 25.6cm

 

 

Edited August 4, 2024 by Quimp Slattery

[Steve D]

Nice start and excellent work on the guns.  I started this kit over 30 years ago but never completed the hull, let alone anything further.  I still have all the fittings in my parts drawers if you are missing any or need replacements, just shout, you are welcome to anything I have left over

 

Cheers

 

Steve

[Quimp Slattery]

10 minutes ago, Steve D said:

Nice start and excellent work on the guns.  I started this kit over 30 years ago but never completed the hull, let alone anything further.  I still have all the fittings in my parts drawers if you are missing any or need replacements, just shout, you are welcome to anything I have left over

 

Cheers

 

Steve

Thank you for that pat on the back Steve, and it’s very generous of you to offer your spares. My shipyard is all present and correct right now, but who knows what I might break or lose before the launching. I shall bear you in mind as a reserve chandler. 
 

I understand that this kit has had some revisions over the years, the introduction of resin gun barrels being one such. I’m not sure that I favour introducing plastics into a wooden model but this set are quite nicely done. Perhaps I’m entering my fuddy-duddy-dom already. 

[Quimp Slattery]

12 hours ago, Steve D said:

just shout

May I shout for advice too? I know that you are very experienced with bonding metals to wood…

 

I plan to move to the coppering of Alert quite soon. I have thousands of thin copper plates to glue into place on the cherry wood planking and am forced to accept that superglue (gel) will be the best adhesive. I will key the surface of the copper with coarse abrasive paper. The wood planks are reasonably smooth without being polished. Would you recommend that I seal the hull with a thinned coat of marine varnish or simply apply the cyano directly to the wood?

 

——————

Tuesday 6 August
 

Steve, please don’t trouble to answer my question, which was wholly unnecessary. I believe the sensible solution is for me to take a few moments to prepare sample pieces of wood and copper and find out for myself what works best by experimentation. 

I wonder what led to yesterday’s lapse in initiative.

 

 

Edited August 6, 2024 by Quimp Slattery

[Steve D]

14 hours ago, Quimp Slattery said:

please don’t trouble to answer my question,

Seriously Quimp, please don't ever worry about asking anything.  I also work by experimentation, trial and many errors.  You should find your own way but I'm happy to share my experience on a topic that I have also spent much time ruminating over.

 

For my own models, I used sanding sealer on wood (better than polyurethane varnish) to close the pores and help develop the smoothest surface possible.  Flaws in the wood (and filler, I used a lot of filler...) will show through thin aluminium or copper, thin copper especially.  I also prime wood after the sanding sealer to help visually identify flaws in the surface, (normal car primer) but mostly sand that layer away.  Recently I've been using cyno to apply the plating, mostly the yellow top Gorilla glue which has a brush applicator to allow even distribution of the adhesive.  It's also a viscous glue to doesn't stick fingers to everything in sight (much).  For the flower however, I'm going back to contact adhesive, a better, more reliable method, but tricky.  Again you need the brush applicator tin and work fast to reseal the pot as over time more air will start to prevent the glue from flowing smoothly and any slight build-up of partially dry glue will show through the plating and ruin the finish.  The only early ship model I copper-bottomed (over 40 years ago now) I used contact adhesive, cyno not being so available in those days

 

Best of luck with it, as you rightly say, run some tests first.  Just like painting, the preparation of the substrate is the key, really smooth will help massively. 

 

One question I have back if I may.  Are you going to pin wheel the edges to indicate (or give an impression of) the nails that were used in the full scale practice?  At 1/64th they may not be scale, but a slight impression of the non-perfect edge these plates have may create some added realism if done with a light touch.  I've seen it over-done and it draws the eye and distracts from the finish, the copper nails are flat headed so pinwheel on hard wood not a softer cutting mat, they aren't like rivets.  Really, it's not the nails you are trying to show, more the resulting slightly wavy nature of the edge.  Anyway, another great experiment to try, there are some really fine pin wheels available from Tamiya (from memory)

 

Cheers

 

Steve

[Quimp Slattery]

I have very good news to report. In a single day, or approximately three hours working time Alert has progressed from this...

 

 

...to this.

 

 

No less than 24 individual pieces of cherry were cut, shaped and attached using the iron-on method, to complete the planking of the hull. Had I been using my old wet glue method, my beginner skills would have necessitated cutting the strips into smaller pieces perhaps 40 in total, and attaching them would have occupied at least a fortnight, assuming that I worked two shifts per day, every day. Progress achieved yesterday also included sanding the lower hull smooth and knocking back a couple of over-thickness strips, an easier job than usual because the construction turned out so much better than my previous efforts.

 

I must admit that, as you may plainly see, I wasted no time making the planking pattern authentic, since it will imminently be concealed behind a wall of solid copper. In normal practice I would take more care but even so the increases both in work rate and the quality of the finished product is astonishing. I estimate that with the improved technique I could have brought the model to this stage in less than a single month rather than the demoralising six that it has actually taken.

 

I would judge that an equivalent leap forward in the world of plastic models would be a modeller's simultaneous discovery of capillary action polystyrene cement AND masking tape.

 

 

 

[Steve D]

15 hours ago, Quimp Slattery said:

this kit has had some revisions over the years,

Not to make you jealous Quimp, but I went and checked and my gun barrels are metal, standards are not improving....

 

Cheers

 

Steve

[Quimp Slattery]

On 06/08/2024 at 09:45, Steve D said:

You should find your own way but I'm happy to share my experience on a topic that I have also spent much time ruminating over.

 

Thank you Steve. I find that experimentation not only helps to solve the particular problem at hand most of the time, but often leads to unexpected discoveries, such as this iron-on planking. That said another mind may lead to another method.

 

Sanding sealer, of course. I had forgotten about that. I think it is alcohol based? I remember using it on balsa aircraft projects as a youngster. I would not have thought of using primer though; that is something to investigate, thank you.

 

Will I simulate nails in the copper? The copper plates I plan to use are actually 1/72 scale for the Napoleonic period which might be a little underscale, even for 1777 when I'm assuming that smaller plates would have been in use. (Assuming!) There is not a lot of room for nails on these tiny plates. They actually have a nail pattern etched into one side but it is ludicrously oversized and so I will apply them inside out. 

 

 

There will be many of the tiny things, at least thousands [Edit: That guess was way out. It’s going to be about 600.] and embossing them individually would be a major operation. Remember that they were nailed evenly across the surface as well as around the edges. No, I think that I will probably leave the nailing off in this scale. I will give you a more definite answer after I have carried out my adhesive experiments and can see how a few plates look in situ. Authenticity, practicality and considerations of scale currently sit in a three-armed balance.

 

Metal guns? I would have preferred turned brass for the 'feel of the thing' but as I would have painted them, the resin ones are adequate. I believe the latest version of this kit, and I regret using that word to you, have a printed deck. What a horror! Next year it will likely have moulded plastic shrouds/ratlines.

 

 

 

Edited August 13, 2024 by Quimp Slattery

[Steve D]

20 minutes ago, Quimp Slattery said:

have a printed deck

The world is going to the dogs, proof positive....

 

There is a benefit to that etching, using it backwards will create a slightly uneven edge effect, nice

 

BTW, garden centres sell cheap self-adhesive copper tape for slug prevention (doesn't work) however, it would make great copper plating in strips with the cross edges marked 

 

Cheers

 

Steve

[chrisr57]

Hi if you want metal guns go get a length of Brass and turn them up, put a small hole down the end not all the way obviously they were muzzle loaders. you have a template there already 

That type of model is not my cup of tea, I'm not good in wood, but I envy the skill both Steve and you have. brilliant, well done!! 

keep going 

Chris 

Edited August 6, 2024 by chrisr57

[Quimp Slattery]

1 hour ago, Steve D said:

self-adhesive copper tape

I am aware of this alternative. Model Shipways package it with their kits. Should the plates fail to live up to expectations, the tape is my Plan B.

 

 

[Quimp Slattery]

1 hour ago, chrisr57 said:

go get a length of Brass and turn them up, put a small hole down the end not all the way obviously

Thank you. This is an excellent suggestion for an interesting way to develop my hobby skills and knowledge. Tell me, which lathe do you use for turning 1/8” brass bar stock? It’s been above sixty years since I last used a metalwork lathe so I dare say they have improved somewhat. 

[chrisr57]

Quimp  I have a few to be honest, but for that I would use either a sheerline or a unimat 3 or even a jewlers/watchmakers Lathe, belive it or not the older they are the better quality of the make especially in UK/German toolmaking. 

Like I said that small stuff and working in wood has got me beat, my eyes are definitely not what they used to be, glasses and mag glass on some parts and I build in 72.

your workmanship is excellent I have no doubt you will fit right in here. great work 

 Chris

[Quimp Slattery]

6 minutes ago, chrisr57 said:

your workmanship is excellent

You are far too kind. I have just taken a quick tour of your carrier and must say that your workmanship is a Lobster Thermidor compared to my slightly stale cheese sandwich. 🙂

[ArnoldAmbrose]

20 hours ago, Quimp Slattery said:

Steve, please don’t trouble to answer my question, which was wholly unnecessary. I believe the sensible solution is for me to take a few moments to prepare sample pieces of wood and copper and find out for myself what works best by experimentation. 

I wonder what led to yesterday’s lapse in initiative.

G'day Quimp, one of the great advantages of being a member of a modeling forum is the SHARING of knowledge and ideas. 🙂 Therefore, ask away, of any of us. Why re-invent the wheel, as the saying goes. One potential problem in trying out things instead of asking is that a solution might work short term but in the long term something might fail. By asking members who have experienced something like this you can avoid it yourself. 🙂 Of course, there's nothing wrong with trying something yourself, particularly if it's new or different. 🙂

       That planking you've done is very nice to look at. Not being a wooden-ship modeler I wouldn't know what is accurate planking or not, but I agree with your attitude of not worrying about accuracy of planks if it's all going to be covered with copper later. It's a beautiful job. Regards, Jeff.

[dnl42]

I'm sad to say I cannot see any of the images. Looks like onedrive is throwing some error. ☹️  Hm, turns out it was a Chrome problem as Firefox shows them fine. 

Nice work! 

 

I took a look at the Vanguard Models site. These kits look quite outstanding! 

[Quimp Slattery]

53 minutes ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

It's a beautiful job. Regards, Jeff.

 

Thank you Jeff. 

 

I totally agree with you about the sharing of ideas. That was why I was so keen to mention the iron-on glue technique. However, had I waited for someone else to share it in my direction, I might have been too old to make use of it. Nor would I ever have asked, "Is there a way to make Titebond Set immediately?" Sometimes sharing is optimum and sometimes building a test sample or two might be the best way forward.

 

I have done exactly that today to discover how best to attach the copper plates which I wish to use on Alert. Not only have I answered the lazy question that I posed to Steve yesterday but I have tested a variety of options, some of which are very promising.

 

 

This is my first trial sample photographed in direct sunlight. The raking light shows how poorly the copper has adhered to the varnished wood. They remained in place through several tests, providing useful information, but finally they flaked away. The cyano had stuck fast to the varnish but the varnish itself failed in tension. The cyano also needed to be held in place for up to ten seconds to set which was too long for my comfort.

 

 

On the bare wood, the superglue gripped almost instantly when pressed into contact. Any surplus glue must have been drawn into the wood fibres because nothing squeezed out to pose a threat to my fingers.

 

Further to the adhesion question, I was able to freely experiment with different ways to weather the copper.  In the beginning I tried various ways to sand and otherwise texture the plates. In photographs of USS Constitution and HMS Victory, the old copper is often so mangled that it resembles wet leather instead of metal sheet. I couldn't get anywhere near this effect, despite wounding the surfaces with a range of tools. Finally, as you see on the top row, I annealed the copper with a soldering torch. Heated to a dull red and allowed to cool naturally, the copper softened so that it could be moulded over the substrate with only finger pressure.

 

 

The crumpled, draped effect is enhanced by a swipe fram an abrasive sponge.

 

 

In this shot the plates have been lightly treated with an antiquing fluid and then re-polished. Now the buckled and toolmarked surfaces are really apparent, even my attempts to make nail marks, though I'm still of the opinion that they are over-scale and I don't intend to bother with that on the model.

 

 

The toolmarks are even clearer with the light reversed. This is a happy consequence of using real metal rather than copper coloured paint; it changes so dramatically with the light.

 

 

One last test on the sample was a trial of strength using pliers. I think the adhesion question is settled to my satisfaction and in passing I may have found an interesting way to reveal the wood below the metal in the form of reef or harbour damage, even perhaps battle damage?

 

Despite not touching the model so far today, I've had a most constructive session and I'm very happy about the work to come.

 

 

Edited August 6, 2024 by Quimp Slattery

[Quimp Slattery]

11 minutes ago, dnl42 said:

I'm sad to say I cannot see any of the images. Looks like onedrive is throwing some error. ☹️

 

I took a look at the Vanguard Models site. These kits look quite outstanding! 

 

The posted photographs are showing for me on both my laptop and phone. Perhaps it's a passing regional issue?

 

I am enjoying the kit although I am not building to the letter of the instructions, nor am I necessarily using the materials supplied. The kit was a very good starting point and I think it is a good thing that the modeller can make it his/her own in this way. One can of course say that about any model kit. 🙂

 

[chrisr57]

Quimp this might sound crazy but to get rivets in a Litho plate  I actually use clock wheels, there different size teeth make for different spaced rivets ,I put it on a green cutting matt dull face down then run the clock wheel along the edge and depending the pressure you use they look ok .

I would use a Heidelberg GTO litho plate as the thickness is thinner than the bigger plates. just a thought..

Probably not the best photo to show it but the edges of the hanger door is litho plate and clock wheeled to get the rivet effect 

cheers 

Chris

[Quimp Slattery]

4 minutes ago, chrisr57 said:

to get rivets in a Litho plate  I actually use clock wheels

 

Thank you Chris, that is a good idea. I used a small saw blade to impress the lines I made today. Unfortunately the hardness of the copper made that quite difficult and by the time I had annealed those last three plates, the idea of making nail marks had slipped my mind. Clock gears might have a useful combination of fine marks and wide separations. I might well ask whether our local jewelers have any spares available.

 

[Dave Swindell]

3 hours ago, dnl42 said:

I'm sad to say I cannot see any of the images. Looks like onedrive is throwing some error. ☹️  Hm, turns out it was a Chrome problem as Firefox shows them fine. 

 

3 hours ago, Quimp Slattery said:

 

The posted photographs are showing for me on both my laptop and phone. Perhaps it's a passing regional issue?

Not showing any photo's i Firefox or Edge 😞