HMS Surprise conversion--back on track

I'm going to show some pictures now that I'm a little embarrassed about, due to what feels like poor craftsmanship on my part.  I won't dwell on this, other than to say that I'm putting these out there in the hopes that others learn from this, and that I can benefit from the advice and counsel of more experienced members.

Anyway, as I mentioned above, I messed up the starboard hull cuts but good, and could not come up with a good recovery plan (prior to glue up) that I wasn't scared would make things worse.  I tried a little "shaving" of the high spots, but that went poorly . . . and I had not yet read (and comprehended) the notion of draw-sanding the hull on a certifiably flat surface, such as a pane of glass.

So, I made the decision to glue up, which lead to a gap on each side of the hull.  This was due, I believe to the fact that the "high-spot" on the starboard side was at the keel and this created a gap sufficient to pull the port sides (which otherwise mated up nicely) apart.  

Here's the starboard side, prior to filling:

It hurts me to look at that.  Here's the port side.  You can see that, even though there's a gap, the cuts are much more aligned:

Starboard side filled, acetoned and sanded.  This photo is a few days old at this point, and I've made further runs at it:

And port side filled.  Much cleaner line, although the wide wale is slightly off.  I've since gently filed this till it looks better:

I'll update later with more current photos.  Essentially, I haven't really moved the process much beyond this, other than to continue to try to get the seams more flawlessly filled and sanded.

Charles

I see what you have there. Actually not too bad, and you have three options as far as I can see.

1. Fix the seam.

2. decide to make the ship a little shorter and try again with what you have.

3. Try another hull.

I can't say which you should do. here's my advice. You have the goal of something really special here. I would think it'll take you a couple of hundred hours of bench time, minimum.

It will be a once-in-a-lifetime project. You'll be as proud of it as Tilley is of his little Hancock.

And frankly, this most likely won't be the last time on this model you'll wish you'd done it better. Having extra deck, ships boats, guns etc. just may come in handy

GM--

You're the devil . . . and I say that with a smile on my face.  

This is good advice (and the bit about extra pieces/parts had ABSOLUTELY crossed my mind), and I'll think it through over the next few nights.  I'm torn between starting over versus overcoming this bit of adversity in a convincing manner I can be proud of. 

Serious thanks for the input . . . and I'll update when I've figured it out.

Charles

I have to second Mr. Morrisons suggestion on getting another kit, especially for the spare parts.

I have three JR kits, 1-  that I'm building as a Continental Frigate - no conversion work per se, just adding a few parts from kit # 2 (& a Revell Constitution kit) and kit # 3 that I want to build OOB.

I lucked out and found a really inexpensive (cheap) one on ebay and the third at Hobby Lobby marked down due to 'missing parts' (1 - cannon) for $5.99.

So if you're unhappy with the seam lines, I suggest getting another kit and using the flat sanding technique to get the cuts nice and level.

If your interested, drop me a line; I'd be willing to send you a set of hull halves.

If you get a second kit you can replace them, if you don't get a second kit, consider it an early Merry Christmas.

Let me know.

Hope this helps.

Adrian

Adrian--

You're very kind, and I truly appreciate the gesture.  I've decided tonight that I WILL get a second kit, and give this another try.  Since a Surprise conversion will require quite a bit of scratchbuilding, which I have little experience in, I think it will be useful to have the first kit as a "test-bed", while treating the second kit as the showpiece.

Thanks guys, for the feedback and encouragement.  I'll update here shortly.

Charles

Charles,

Have you tried adding sheet plastic supports to the inboard side of the hulls at the seam? If you were to provide a surface that could help align and support the hull at the cut, it might make your job a little easier.

Bill Morrison

Bill--

Yes, I put 2mm evergreen strip across the cut at the turn of bilge and clamped it securely, to even out the slight existing misalignment there.  Then I put 1mm strip along the cut above there.  I didn't try to cover every inch of the cut, but when I put the first load of putty in, I did use masking tape to back all of the little spots where there was no styrene . . . I didn't want to spend all my time pushing putty thru the seam with nothing to stop it.  

Here's an in process shot, before I put the final strips on the inboard port side:

Interesting build,way beyond anything I would attempt,but I definitely will be watching

Thanks Tojo.  This is gonna be a long, meticulous process for me, and I'm sure this won't be the last time I need help.  

Quick update:

• I've purchased a second Jolly Roger kit, and will basically begin all over again, taking extra special care with the hull surgery.
• I intend to continue to tinker with the existing hull, both to practice my own skills, and to use it as a testbed for some of the scratchbuilding I'll need to pull off to make this conversion something to be proud of.

Not completely gone, at least visually.  To the touch, it is darned hard to feel anything (and where I mostly can feel it is at the turn of bilge, which looks different than the rest of the seam), so I'd be curious to hear from more experienced members about whether this is caused by the surface disparity between dried putty and molded plastic, or if there is still sculpting work to do.

It's academic at this point, since I'm starting over with the new kit . . . but I'm eager to learn more about possible solutions to these types of situations.

Charles

Here's a quick update . . . I began work on the second set of hull pieces over the weekend, and I think things are finally on the right track.  Following the process culled from reading the forum discussions here, I carefully marked the cut lines at both the keel and the bulwarks, carefully taped from point to point, and then sprayed a coat of primer in the "scrap" area:

Then I made two cuts, each "proud" of the line, so that I could sand slowly to the line.  FYI, after getting started on the aft piece in the picture below, I realized that I had cut a little more proud than strictly necessary, and sliced another 1/8" off of the forward piece .  Otherwise, I'd have spent the entire day sanding:

Here's my sanding setup . . . a sheet of 220 grit (with a tacky back) taped securely to a large piece of glass:

I got carried away at this point, and didn't take any process photos, but here's what I did:

• carefully sanded to the line, testing for fit between each set of fore & aft hull pieces along the way
• when I had the fit I wanted, I temporarily clamped/taped up each aft piece to each other and each fore piece to each other, and tested for overall fit.
• with the pieces temporarily joined, I gently sanded each set until all was level and the fore pair fit clean and fair with the aft pair
• I glued a roughly 3/4" square of styrene sheet to each aft piece, just below the gun ports.  
• I also glued two styrene strips lengthwise at the turn of bilge to the fore pieces

Charles

Beautifully done Chales! Huzzahs for your perseverance and penchant for "getting it right".

Thanks Arnie!  Almost every bit of this project will be new ground for me, so it felt appropriate to get this piece right.  As I've always heard it said, it's important how things begin . . . 

This continues to be a solid learning experience for me.  Since I now have two hull assemblies, I'm using the first one as a test-bed for the further scratchbuilding I'll have to execute.  In no particular order, here are the tasks I've identified so far (there are probably more I haven't realized yet):

• Close in and fair the bow, to remove the beakhead structure and give the Surprise her bluff bow.
• Stern and quarter galleys.  Good grief is that gonna be a lot of work.  Fortunately, Sumpter250 posted some outstanding pics of his work, and I'm simply going to copy like a fiend.  The only tweak I may try is to introduce a slight curve to the stern gallery.  It seems doable (he says), so we'll see.
• Build up the bulwarks
• Scratchbuild a new spar deck, placing the masts appropriately, adding the step up, building and placing all the deck furniture and hatches/grating.  Also railings.
• I need to figure out how to place the bowsprit properly in this conversion, since it appears an OOB build relies on the beakhead for that.  Plus, I believe the angle is slightly different on the Surprise.

Why not just take my file and square off the opening, so the styrene pieces just need to be trimmed for length?  Which it's obvious, ain't it?

You've got me there. Bluejacket and Model Expo both sell gratings, but the ones I've seen are too coarse for your scale. Bluejacket used to make some really fine cast Britannia gratings, but the company catalog doesn't show them any more.

As I remember, that Lindberg kit is on a scale somewhere between 1/16" and 3/32" to the foot. That means those gratings would be mighty fine. Somewhere there probably is an etched set that would work. You might check the catalog or website of Walthers, the big model railroad supply firm.

The late, great Donald McNarry made his gratings out of some synthetic mesh fabric. His looked great - but using a McNarry model as inspiration is a double-edged sword. When I study such a model I have an almost irresistible urge to give up.

Thanks Professor.  Walthers sounds like a good tip.  And I agree about Mr. McNarry . . . his work certainly shows you the art of the possible, but it's humbling in the extreme.

Charles this is nice work.

I was wondering- are there any "drawings" of Surprise available?

I'd like to pass on some tips if I may.

If you plan to upgrade the insides of the ships sides, bulwarks etc., the time is now to grind off everything in there you don't want, before gluing the hull halves together. I've done just that on my current project America. Looking closely, there was bad wood grain, incorrect bulwark stanchions and lots of those ejector pin marks, Made it all nice and smooth for future attachment of new parts.

If you are planning to plank the decks (you really could!) you need to take into account the wood overlay thickness. Using the plastic decks as a base works well, with a little planning. There's probably a ledge or some lugs etc. in there to position the deck, those go. But before you do that, test fit the deck and draw a line where it meets the sides. Then cut off the supports and glue them or substitutes back on using a little spacer made of a strip of wood plus a piece of plastic from the deck to hold under your mark and glue the support below. Or, just trust your eye and measure.

Adding some camber to the deck if not molded in is good. I do it by getting some 1/8" square brass tube and bending a curve into it. Make three or four following a template drawing so they are reasonable the same. Glue to the underside of the plastic and clamp it to follow the bend. If there's cast on coamings (looks like there are), shave them off so it will bend easier, plus those things should be level on top usually. Plug the holes if you are moving/ deleting where the hatches go.

Then a little thought about how the mounts attach to the keel, are there mast steps, and shes ready to seal up.

Blue Jacket makes wood laser cut gratings but probably too big. They have an online catalog.

The Surprise was built in France, but when the British captured her they prepared a standard set of "Admiralty Draughts." They're reproduced in the Lavery book that I mentioned earlier.

The Bluejacket laser-cut gratings have 1/16" holes, which are way too big for this scale. Model Expo's "grating strips" are great, but even the smallest ones would be pretty coarse for this model.

i won't go so far as to say what a modeler "should" do (especially on his second ship model), but if you do want to try wood deck planks I'd suggest looking at the .020"-thick basswood strips from Bluejacket. They're the thinnest I've found, and they come in widths as narrow as 3/64".

Now for a totally unsolicited but not deliberately insulting opinion. Charles, it's not for me to tell you how to build your model. But as this thread continues, what I see shaping up is a project that will take years to complete. When you talk about cutting hulls in two, rebuilding bows, planking decks, etc., etc. you're getting into some real heavy-duty modeling - which, let's face it, won't produce a real scale model of HMS Surprise.

Several other Forum participants have started "Jolly Roger"/ Surprise conversions. So far as I can tell, none of them has come anywhere near being finished. (I personally wouldn't do it; I think it would be simpler and quicker to start from scratch.)

In another Forum thread, an experienced modeler offered a magic acronym to be born in mind by relative newcomers: KISS, for "keep it simple, stupid." I've never had the nerve to use that expression myself, but I'd hate to see the hobby lose a skilled, enthusiastic, and highly articulate modeler because he bit off more than he - or I - could chew. 

Earlier I said something like "if you're sure you want to do this, don't let me or anybody else talk you out of it." That still goes, but please be sure you go into the project with eyes wide open.

GM--

Thanks for the comments!  In order:

• Yes, there are drawings of the Surprise available.  The question is, WHICH Surprise?  As has been discussed on other threads, the Surprise (ex. Unite) was a real ship, and O'Brian's version was a fictionalized, inconsistently-described creation based on this historical Surprise.  
• The HMS Surprise on-screen in the Master and Commander film was the former HMS Rose, converted for use in the film.
• The book, "The Frigate Surprise," contains new renderings of the Admiralty drawings of the HISTORICAL Surprise, which Geoff Hunt used extensively in his own cover paintings for the Aubrey/Maturin series.  He also did (and continues to do, I believe) paintings that are not for book cover use.  These collected paintings, in turn, were referenced extensively by the filmmakers.
• The book is chock full of these paintings.
• In terms of what I'm shooting for, I'm most interested in the film version, since this ship actually exists in the real world, and there is a photographic record of it.  I suspect I'll rely on Hunt's work for some of the rigging if I can't find a good photo to confirm my plans

Professer & GM--

You answered my question about planking before I could ask it!  

Thanks . . . Charles

jtilley

i won't go so far as to say what a modeler "should" do (especially on his second ship model),

John,

I have modified KISS to mean, "Keep it simple, students!" in my class room.

Bill

I like that, Bill. Makes the point just as effectively.

To clarify what he's talking about: I referred to the acronym KISS when I edited an earlier post, four up the line from this one, after I'd thought about it for a few minutes.

Professor--

Thanks, of course, for your thoughtful comments.  I take them to heart, and in the spirit I believe you intended them.  My commitment to myself is this--when it stops being fun, and starts being work, then it's time to consider a new approach.

And so far, I'm still having fun.  I'll admit, when I mulligan'd the first hull surgery, it gave me pause, and I basically decided that if the second attempt wasn't a significant improvement, that would be a sign that I needed to step back and stay in my skill range.  

Also, I'm doing ALL of this . . . to learn how to do this.  I'm pretty comfortable sharing mistakes and being transparent about my learning process, in the hope that somebody somewhere might derive some value from it.

Anyway, I just took a lot of words to say that I'll be sticking with this for the nonce.  If I get to the point where I have to set this particular project aside--and work on some other ship--until my skills catch up with my ambition, that's fine with me.

Thanks again for the thoughts . . . and keep them coming.

Charles

PS--I slightly edited the next to last paragraph for clarity

That's an excellent attitude. The world won't come to an end if you set a model aside; I can think of four that are waiting for me to get back to them. If I never do, that won't mean the end of the world either.

Speaking of keeping one's eyes open - be aware that the ship in the movie doesn't really look much like the real HMS Surprise - or HMS Rose either. I went on board it once, when it was in Rhode Island. I wish I hadn't spent the money. The spaces between decks are way too high, and the gunports are too far from the deck. (When I saw it, the guns were mounted on silly too-high carriages, so the barrels could stick through the ports.) It has a full-length spar deck, instead of an open waist. There are all sorts of other goofs - most of them resulting from the limited budget of the original owner.

The movie makers did an amazing job of picking their camera angles to hide the anachronisms and mistakes. For instance, the viewer isn't conscious of the full-length spar deck. (It sort of shows in one overhead shot, during a funeral scene.) My understanding from folks who've seen it recently in San Diego is that it's "a real mess." I have no idea what plans the good folks at the San Diego Maritime Museum have for it, but they've got their work cut out for them.

I'm not knocking the movie, which I really enjoyed. (Prepare for heresy: I liked it better than the O'Brian novels. I'm a Forester/Hornblower man myself. That fact has gotten me into a couple of rather emotional FSM Forum arguments.) The ship does what it was supposed to do: look like an eighteenth-century frigate from a distance. That's about all.

One person preferences are not the same as those of another, of course. I confess to never having fully replicated a set of tackle on a big gun.

I could also be over zealous here. It's likely that the cast detail on the deck looks pretty good, and just needs a patient paint job. Thats how I always go with smaller scales.

IF you are so inclined, pick up a bundle of wood strips from Blue Jacket. They're handy to have around.

The ones Tilley mentioned scale at 6" for you, which is fine. Naturally down on the gun deck you can be pretty loose, as long as you keep the visible part in the waist nice and straight. But no need to get fancy around the edges in places no one can see.

There are a couple of tactics for the gun deck. You can go to the trouble of lowering it 0.020" as I suggested, or just work with what you have. The bug is that the guns get up a little high in their ports. I've seen folks chop the bottoms off the trucks, with no ill effect. Or just plank in the waist and chop those trucks a little only.

GM--

The cast detail on the decks is pretty awful, to be honest.  And thank you for the insight on deck heights--since the decks have to be cut for length anyway (and the gun deck in the kit has its own open waist, oddly), I was planning on cutting a new one out of styrene sheet anyway.  So, I can plan for height accordingly.

Professor Tilley--

Thanks also for the insight on the resemblance of the Rose/Surprise to the real Surprise.  That's an interesting insight, and impacts the way I view the project.  I may want to rely more on Hunt than I was planning to, and there are substantive differences between his version and the film's.  As a fairly large f'r'instance--Hunt fairly consistently represents ship's boats off of port, starboard and stern davits, and I don't believe the ship in the film ever displays those.

Also, the ship in the film has an anchor lining, and I don't recall ever seeing one of those in a Huntt rendering.

Plus, if I don't have to figure out how to build that dang stern lantern at this scale, that'll be okey-dokey with me.

Charles

So, I'm still working steadily away on this.  I'm basically teaching myself how to scratchbuild on this project, and having fun doing it.  My focus has been on

• filling in and fairing the beakhead bow.  So far, I've developed what I think is a workable plan for filling in, and the fairing will come after that work is complete, of course.
• building new quarter galleries and a new transom.