H.M.S. Bounty

I'm deeply flattered, but I personally wouldn't spend much of my limited time on the Orb searching for copies of those 35-year-old magazines. Most of the text is covered by the posts in this thread, and the photos in this thread cover just about everything that the B&W ones in the magazines did. And of course I'll be more than happy to answer any questions.

By the way, just to prove I had these, I remember you made the furled sails by mixing them with glue, which I thought was an ingenious way to get their detail in scale.

Thanks, I'll see if I can find them. The hobby store was in New York around 37th Street in the early 1980s. I didn't realize they were English. Again -- a beautiful model.

TrioGio, I'm not quite sure what magazine articles you're referring to. I've never published an article in FSM. (Maybe one of these days....) I wrote a series about the Bounty that was published in the old British monthly Scale Models, in the fall of 1978.  As I remember, it was in three parts - but there may have been four.  A picture of the model was on the cover of the issue that carried Part I.  The printer somehow got the picture out of focus; the editor felt awful about it and ran a short extra article consisting only of color pictures, either three or four issues later. I can't remember whether that additional article was Part III or Part IV.

Scale Models was a fine publication in those days.  It was still being published in the mid-1990s, but for some reason it started really going downhill - especially when it came to subjects other than aircraft and armor. For a while it had the title Scale Models International. I don't know just when it ceased publication, but it's gone now. (I guess I should be careful with statements about that. I haven't seen a copy in the U.S. for years. Maybe it's still available in England. Or maybe it morphed into another title. The British have quite a few good modeling magazines.)

I have no idea where my copies of those articles are - let alone where to buy them. Sorry.

I saw this in a magazine in the early 80s in a model shop  (I guess "Fine Scale Modeler" magazine). I bought the 2 issues but they fell apart over time. I been looking for the issues ever since. Do you know the issues the articles appeared in, so I can search for them?

By the way, I know the size of this Revell kit. It's small. The detail and workmanship are absolutely spectacular. I also like the fact that you went for realism. Most "plank-on-frame" models are super clean with pristine walnut planks, not like these ships probably looked only five years after being built. Sailing was a dirty and sometimes bloody business. SUPERB JOB!

That helps a lot, I've got the book and I will check the plans to see what I want to do.

Actually that's a good, accurate description.  To make it simpler - the knee of the head is the flat plastic piece that sticks out from the forward end of the hull.  (On the kit it's cast integrally with the hull.)  It winds up under the bowsprit, and the figurehead is mounted on the end of it.

To see the mistake that Revell made, you'll have to have a copy of the plans of the ship.  A good way to get them is to get John McKay's Anatomy of the Ship:  The Armed Merchant Vessel Bounty.  (I may have garbled the title slightly.)  In addition to Mr. McKay's own superb drawings, it contains photos of the Admiralty draughts.

If you compare the side view ("outboard profile") of the plans with the Revell kit, you'll see the difference immediately.  There's supposed to be a subtle S-curve to the forward edge of the knee of the head (that "handsome serpentine line or inflected curve" in the definition above) that Revell just plain botched.  I have no idea why that happened.

As I remember, I cut my replacement knee of the head out of either .060" or .040" styrene sheet, and scribed the edges of the various component pieces on it to match the "planks" I'd scribed on the hull halves.  (As I said in the first post in this thread, I'm not at all sure that using the plastic hull saved me any significant amount of time.)  

Replacing the knee of the head wasn't a huge job.  But if you leave it as is, I don't think anybody will mind.  I certainly won't.

Hope that helps a little.

I can't seem to understand the problem with the knee of the head that you mentioned. I'm not quite sure what you are referring to do to my ignorance of nautical terms. One guide I found lists it like this:

KNEE OF THE HEAD.

The large flat timber fayed edgeways upon the fore-part of the stem. It is formed by an assemblage of pieces of oak coked or tabled together edgewise, by reason of its breadth, and it projects the length of the head. Its fore-part should form a handsome serpentine line, or inflected curve. The principal pieces are named the main-piece and lacing.

which doesn't help a whole lot. I've examined the bow of your photos and the same on the hull of the kit and can't figure it out.

Cheers Arnie, I'll get one started soon.  

Bikerbuster;

Don't hesitate to post a WIP here, especially if you are new at this. There are tons of people here that would love to help you figure out things along the way. It's not the results so much as it is the processes. You can save your self a lot of frustration by getting feedback from the experienced builders here.

Beautiful work !

I'm surprised all that work only took a couple of years....

After seeing comments that information on the movie versions have been published, I'll need to check on the first 1930s version.

Wow! All that rigging is insane!! Outstanding job!

@ Jtilley, here is where I got to with the hawsers, I am assuming the recirocal hatches were for crew access to the rope locker and I am assuming the hawsers got there by way of a pipe?  Beside the access hatches?

Yes, I know the deck is an awful colour, it was the cream as described in the instructions and I haven't as yet learned to weather..

i226.photobucket.com/.../2014-01-19180524_zps5f91412e.jpg

Well :

    See , you are darned good at those sailing thingys .Now where were you when I needed a friend to b.s. with , (and maybe help ) with all those thread thingys ? No , really Proff .that's a nice looking Bounty and thank you for showing her here. You have exonerated this old salt who built one of the wood kits years ago and coppered the Bottom .

    Everyone that saw her said " No  ! you got it wrong , she didn't have any coppering !" There was a model of her in the museum of antiquities in Liverpool that did have a copper bottom and that's where I got the idea . Tis' true though . She did have the " White ( almost a rich cream color ) Lead " bottom when privately outfitted  ,as the private shipowners of the time really couldn't afford such niceities .

   Now , one question .Whe you describe Cap'n Bligh's face you talk about his upper and lower eyelids . .Good gosh man , did you use a jewelers loupe to build her ?  Gees , I thought I was bad .He! He! Just for your information , the wooden kit didn't have any hawse holes marked or shown either!

I had to put my eyes back in my head, nice build.

I recently discovered an interesting Bounty resource.

There was an article in the Chronicle about a Seventh Day Adventist institution called Pacific Union College in Angwin CA in the Napa Valley.

The SDA church considers the missionary effort in The Pitcairn Islands a significant of its history.

At the College there's a Pitcairn Islands Study Center that has significant documents and artifacts from the history of the mutiny and subsequent settlements.

http://www.library.puc.edu/pitcairn/index.shtml

The anchor hawsers pass through the hawspipes (which will have to be added to the old Revell kit), then around the windlass barrel, then down the forward hatch.  One of the photos should show this reasonably clearly.  

Good luck!  And don't hesitate to show the Forum your work!

Oh No!!!

I have just found this and I feel so incredibly amateur.

I have recently started building the Bounty, but alas my skills are more of the take it out of the box paint it and build it.

This is my first attempt at a kit in about 35 years so I don't expect much, but seeing this build just kills me.

I was looking as to what to do with the anchor cables, they come through the hawse holes onto the deck nicely, but where from there? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I was going to start a WIP thread but after seeing this I think I'll just get laughed at.....

Here is a larger section of the hull.

Thanks Professor, I appreciate it and I will start a thread when I do get around to building her.  Here is a picture of the hull so GM can see the detail.  I have a couple of others if more are requested.  I feel I have too much paint on the hull so when I do start it, I will strip the paint first and start from square one.

Steve

And, if we think about it, "modeling the Bounty" is actually a complicated thing.  We have the original HMV Bounty, and we have the movie versions, too.  With the one of those being lost at sea.  

But I have the bias of having McKay's book, which also discusses both of the ships used in the movies.

Steve, you didn't hijack the thread.  This sort of thing is exactly why I started it.  If it turns into a discussion of building a model of the Bounty, so much the better. 

If you start a new thread of your own, though, I'll be most interested to read anything that's on it.

Prof Tilley,

I apologize for highjacking your thread, it was not my intention.  I took a couple of pictures of the hull for comparison and I will start another thread of my WIP at the time I seriously start working on her.  Your model is exquisite and should be admired on it's own.

Steve

All I can say is WOW. Fantastic job you have done.....Cheers mark

For some reason or other Revell didn't put "copper sheathing" detail on the Bounty kit - despite the fact that the 1/192 Constitution, released the same year, has it. 

Apparently the Revell designers didn't actually do much research.  As I mentioned earlier, they followed the wrong set of plans - the one drawn just after the ship was purchased.  Actually the situation is a little worse than that.  That first set of Admiralty drawings includes "certain contrivances" - including the capstan and the gunports - that were being considered for addition to her.  On the original drawings, those "contrivances" are drawn in red and green ink - and the colors don't show up in black-and-white reproductions.  Revell included them.  So the kit is actually a mixed bag - part Bounty, part Bethia.

Revell was by no means alone in making that mistake.  There's an amusing moment in the movie The Bounty.  Anthony Hopkins is sitting in his cabin, with a big Admiralty draught of the ship on the bulkhead behind him.  It's the wrong drawing - the first one.

The reason for the lack of  "copper" under the bilges of the Heller Victory has to do with the limitations of the injection-molding process.  (The kit dates from before the days of slide-molding.)  If the master had had those raised plates in those positions, it would have been impossible to get the molded plastic parts out of the molds without damage.  That problem has always plagued designers of ship kits with sharp turns to their bilges.  (Once you know what you're looking for, it's interesting to see how various companies have handled it.  If you look closely at the "copper-sheathed" Revell kits, you'll see that the plating detail sort of fades out at the turn of the bilge.  The transition is done very skillfully and almost imperceptibly.  The "planking" on the Revell Viking ship is especially ingenious that way.  Airfix was good at the trick too.)

Another, more old-fashioned (and less time-consuming) approach to the problem of sheathing the Revell Bounty would be to sand off the planking detail below the waterline and represent the copper with paint.  That can be done quite effectively - especially if you go for a "weathered," rather than new copper look.

As for sheathing the model with real copper - all I can say is that it wasn't as difficult, or time-consuming, as I expected it to be.

A couple of other points about the Revell hull.  Revell left out the hawse pipes.  Adding them is just a matter of drilling a couple of holes just above the deck.  Revell tells the modeler to tie the two anchors together and drape them over the knee of the head, which obviously is ridiculous.  And Revell somehow botched the shape of the knee of the head.  That entire part can be replaced easily with plastic sheet.  (I think the reason may have had something to do with the fact that the figurehead is too small.  I'm not satisfied with the way the figurehead on my model fairs into the knee of the head - but the figurehead is such a superb casting that I didn't have the heart to junk it.)

So I admit to a great deal of curiosity and a little bit of skepticism about the copper plating endeavor.

Is the molded on detail not so good? I don't have the kit and the one I ever built is 40 years gone.

My only point of (questionable) comparison is my recently purchased CW Morgan kit from RoG.

It has sheathing detail that while not strictly accurate (raised panel lines) is so exquisite that I could never imagine even getting close with. My choice there will be to paint it with a good copper lacquer.

Where these projects get tricky, in my very limited experience, is around the stern posts, the rudder and the keel.

I did this once, on my big Victory, and I was quite pleased with the results. In that case I burnished the tape right over the detail, where it even existed. Actually the whole thing even came about because Heller for whatever reason omitted any detail on the flat underside of the hull.

This obviously was not a top tier cop peering job, but my rationale is that it's after all a plastic kit.

Again, just an opinion. I don't have that Bounty, and the CWM is at home( I'm in the doctors waiting room for a routine visit) but I think it's plates are about 1/16" x 1/4".

Well, the first step in coppering the bottom obviously is to sand off all the planking detail.  If (gawd forbid) I were doing it again, I'd use the copper tape sold by Model Expo and Bluejacket.  It obviously will need to be cut into much smaller pieces, but it has pressure-sensitive adhesive on the back.

The process of laying the copper is spelled out in lots of books.  Essentially, on a ship like this there probably would be two "gores."  Start by drawing a horizontal line around the hull about halfway between the keel and the wale, and another horizontal line at the waterline.  Then start laying the copper at the lower of those two lines, working up to the waterline.  (The Royal Navy, unlike many other ship-owning institutions, seems to have laid copper with each row slightly overlapping the row above.)  Then start again at the keel, working up to the area you just laid.  Where the two gores intersect, cut the plates in the lower gore so as to form a nice, straight, horizontal line.

If I remember right, mine took two or three evenings - not bad.  There is, by the way, no room for doubt:  the Bounty was copper-sheathed as soon as the Royal Navy acquired her.

The Anatomy of the Ship volume is excellent.  Mr. McKay is one of the best draftsmen I've ever encountered.  I do have two small quibbles about it.  One - the drawings of the ship's internal structure (framing, etc.) are pure speculation - which is fine, but that point should be acknowledged.  Two - the photos of the replica "movie ship" are irrelevant.  That ship only generally resembled the prototype.  (Among other things, it was built about twenty feet too long - to accommodate the Cinemascope cameras and Marlon Brando's ego.  And most of the deck fittings are pure fiction.  And the overall blue color scheme is the odd product of somebody's imagination.)  But the drawings are exquisite.

Good luck.

Recently returned from the Duluth Tall Ships 2013.  Sure missed seeing the Bounty.  This is the first time Tall Ships has come to Duluth since the loss of the Bounty replica.  Sure regret that I did not get any good pics of the ship on its previous visit to Duluth.

Professor T,

I have the Revell Bounty in my stash waiting patiently.  I had started painting the hull tallow but when I saw these pictures a couple of years back I stopped until I could make a good go with it.  I would like to copper the bottom when I get back to it but I do not have a clue on how one would do that.  Any suggestions?

Steve

I did pick up the Anatomy of the Ship - Bounty for reference.