Launch!

Done! Didn't take a progress pic of black undercoat, but I trust you can picture it. Also, decided to skip rigging. Couldn't get my fat fingers in there. The next one, I'll maybe do the rigging before attaching the masts. Anyway!

HMS Essence, 56
Psyche-class
4th-rate Frigate
280 men
Lower gundeck: 28x 24pdr
Upper gundeck: 28x 32pdr carronades
Broadside weight of 784lbs

HMS Expeditious, 32
Psyche-class
5th-rate Frigate
250 men
Upper gundeck: 28x 24pdr
Forecastle:           2x long  9pdr
Broadside weight: 336lbs

Bases made from some house siding.

Well, the fit and finish may not be the best in HM's Navy, but I'm darn pleased with these. I had fun, and they taught me a lot that will go into future builds.

Developing Civily

Finally back at the ships. I've more-or-less decided not to paint Essence, the gunports are just too much of a mess, but Expeditious is going to be my painting guinea pig, probably tomorrow. In the meantime, I've started work rigging Essence.

And with that drying, I set myself polishing up Electryone's lines a little bit.

The bow still needs a little work, but I'm much happier with her overall shape.

After that, I wondered what I could make of the first, failed Electryone, and just started sanding and sanding until I had a pleasing shape.

Say hello to HM sloop Civil, late the French flute Civelle. As I said, I just sanded and sanded away, and then took the measurements, did the scale, and went looking for a real ship with matching measurements. I came across the French Dromadarie class transport. But, several of them did serve as warships, either as sloops or frigates. Initially armed with 20 French 6pdrs, the Royal Navy have rearmed her with 18 24pdr carronades.

Now, the shape is not exact, since I haven't found plans for the class yet. But it's close enough that with quarter galleries and maybe a little more work on her lines, I'm not too concerned.

The shipyard at the moment.

The line is starting to form.

Sailing onwards

Just a housekeeping progress shots of Essence's sails. Not a lot of progress to report otherwise since all that's left is painting and rigging, and painting will be much easier before the masts are fixed.

Witty and ship-related pun

Finished Expeditious's masts, and figured out how to do the little...front... sails. Whatever they're called.

And also added the spanker to Essence. It is hilariously oversized, so I trimmed Expeditious's down a bit.

And for the hell of it, put the masts in Expeditious! They're a bit askew because I had problems with the holes, and now, of course, the holes are too big and things wobbly. But they will all be glued eventually anyway. Oh, I also glue both bowsprits in today.

Essence-tially Done

His Majesty's Ship Essence, with all guns, masts, spars, and sails. Except all the sails I didn't do and the couple of spars I haven't attached because I'm not sure how. Now all that's left, aside from that, is "deck furniture", if I do any, rigging, and paint!

Mast-erfully done

Or at least pretty okay-ily done. (Oak-ily done?)

Masts on Essence, guns on Expeditious. I found the cardboard too hard to work with, so I switched to paper for Expeditious's guns.

 14 British 24pdrs a side. A broadside weight of 336!(Or do you give both sides together for weight of metal?) Plus two long 9s for bow chasers.

And Expeditious's dear surprise - two long 12 stern chasers! You get abaft of this ship, you're asking for it.

I was all set to drill some holes for the masts, and then I realized, oh god, I don't want to do that. So instead I just used a small pin and wedged the masts in. And since the masts were made the same height (whoops), I just set them at different depths to somewhat counteract that. The bowsprit will need to be glued but the rest are solid.

And this doesn't look like much, but I've got the spars attached to the masts. There may be a better way to do this, but I'm fine with this so far. The next step, I'll make some notches in the spars and glue them to the masts. The sails are still just plain paper, at this point, and honestly, they may stay that way.

Sails, spars, and guns

Back at work, so work has slowed at the dockyard. Two sets of sails and all their spars have been cut.

 I honestly don't know if I have cut all the right ones, and I'm not sure if the size is right, but it seems like I have enough to at least look... mostly good. The next step is deciding if I want to try and build a curve into them before assembling them on the masts, or if I just want to force a curve when I put them ON the masts. They're just heavy paper, and I think I probably want to reinforce them. Possibly white glue, possibly varnish, maybe even plasti-dip, if it comes in matte. *shrugs*

I realized I forgot a piece of the bowspirt, so I added that to both of them, and did an experiment with gunports. I'm not sure I like that, mostly because they're uneven, but I'm not sure I'd want to paint them on, so I'll probably stick with the cardboard, for now.

Mast-ive Attack

Not a whole lot of visible progress today. Mostly just a day waiting for glue to dry.

I made more masts, tried to correct yesterdays, which were indeed too long. And I gave the paper railing another coat of white glue to stiffen and seal it up. I toyed with cutting out some stern galleries out of balsa, but honestly they just looked huge and out of place, so I'll just paint/carve them on, and try to plan them a little better on the next ship.

A Cutting-out Expedition

Work's begun!

The Royal Navy made up some kits in Chatham to be sent to Kingston during the War in 1812. They got as far as Montreal before the Admiralty went "screw it" and sold them, but the plans reached Kingston and one of them was built. Sort of. The frigates were designed with 32 guns, the plans have 42, and the only one ever built had 56.

Psyche was built, and I intended to build her sister, Prompte. But, knowing I would not be able to make things exactly accurate, I intended to build my own ship. Based of the plans for the Psyche and Prompte, thus, the Psyche-class, I decided to call my ship Expeditious, to honour the real ship, and also because it sounded painfully British.

The first step was scaling. Boy. I hate math.

The instructions I'm sort of following are for 1/1200th scale, but I decided to build in 1/600th.  After a lot of "what the hells" I got it things figured out and printed off plans.

Then came the cutting. As the instructions were for 1/1200th and I was doing 1/600th, I upsized from 1/16 inch balsa to 1/8th inch. Rather than glue the plans to the wood I simply traced, figuring that would save some paper for later, if I need the plans for any reason.

Can anyone spot the mistake yet?

Quite pleased with myself I then set about gluing and clamping the decks. I didn't worry too much about any roughness, since I knew I'd be sanding, anyway.

Once the glue was hard enough I removed the clamp, very pleased with my work so far. Until I realize I forgot to cut out a piece! And with wood glue in there, I'd never be able to carve it out.

So I made a another ship!

Whoops!

Initially I figured I'd used the botched one simply for practice, but then I realize that, for Psyche to have carried 56 guns (even if half of them were carronades), she had to have been converted into a two-decker - and likely a flush-decked ship, at that. Even if she wasn't actually, mine could be, and that was enough justification to not scrap it.

Ah but then I've a second ship, so what to call it? Well, I would have liked something Greek, but I wanted it to start with an e, so I went with Essence. Sort of close to Psyche... in a way.

The next step, carried out the following day after the glue had fully cured was simple sanding.

I may have messed up the proper lines a little during this step but hey, they're fictitious ships anyway! After the sanding, I was going to try and follow the instructions and print out the side profile to stick on, but frankly, getting it small enough while still being visible enough was going to be too much work for too little reward, so I just experimented with paper strips and white glue for a while until something came together.

The crinkly paper on Expeditious's port side looks bothersome, but it dries straight. The tips need trimming once dry, as well.

This deprives me of exact locations for gunports and the like, but I'll figure that out when I come to it.

I also spent some time today on the masts. Again, I had to deviate from the instructions, since I couldn't be bothered with music wire, and decided I didn't much mind if each section was the same width. Ergo, toothpicks.

Everything's curing now, and I'll get back to the hulls tomorrow. As well as figure out if the masts are hilariously too tall or not. I suspect they are.