napoleonicfrigates

 

The waterline is the first thing I want to address and can I firstly say urk. Initially I followed the books instructions. I made the ship level and built an impromptu waterline marker out of triangles and a pencil. This worked badly. The pencil rapidly blunted and made a wavy line. The line drawn did not seem appropriate at all. Things were not going well.

I then made the huge mistake of following some advice seen on a web site somewhere. That advice said place the model in a bath, fill with water, then scatter talc around ship. The talc will attach to the sides of the ship giving you a perfect water line. Brilliant! I thought and propped the ship up in the bath after getting it level. When I started filling the bath problem 1. The ship floated. Nice though perhaps I shold have though of this. So the next step was to weight the ship down which knocked the supports away. I eventually got the ship stable with the water at the correct level and got the talc to scatter. With an enormous puff the entire ship was instantly covered in talc which naturally went into every nook and cranny. Plus the bit near the water just formed globules and floated. A total waste of time. I now had to dry out the ship before repainting as the talc refused to be brushed off.

Irritated beyond measure I then hit a saviour solution which is cheap and efficient. Buying a coving measuring laser for around £15 I placed the ship upside down on a carpet and then adjusted the height of the measuring laser to hit the 2 points on the stern and bow that matched most closely the points on the plans. This instantly gave me a nice line to drawn along. I finally had my waterline. The problem with all the other methods is that the ship must be level but ships of this nature had the keel lower at some points than others so you cannot rely on the underside plus at this point the deck will angle and possibly have some deck furniture on so you cannot rely on a spirit levels interpretation. Go with the laser, it worked for me.

The coppering itself was enjoyable and the use of actual copper plates is to me a big improvement on painting or other disguising methods. Once started I rapidly became thankful I decided not to attach all the deck fittings according to the instructions as I found it easiest to plate the hull upside down.

 

Another 'adjustment' I would do is to not attach the rudder either as it needs coppering itself and that is easier done when it is free. If you do do this then please remember to leave gaps for it to be attached as the copper plates themselves deform easily.

Gluing wise you need an all purpose glue I found it best to enter some at one end and then push the plate on towards its slot which spread the glue nicely. Keep wet tissue close to mop up the odd spillage.

Other things to watch out for are that when the glue comes in contact with paint it will dissolve the paint. Fine in principal but watch out for black stains when you reach the black painted section.

 

For cutting use a sharp wood chisel (at least I found that easiest). When doing the rudder either spilt the blocks up or start that way and then use solid. Either way works.

I am not quite done on the coppering yet, I still need to tidy up the waterline using copper paint but that job can wait until I organise the remaining black section of painting.

 

 

 

Next up Attaching the Chain Plates