Canons

The cannons finally all finished and fitted, just 6 carronades to fit at a later stage.

You can also see the breeching ropes that have now been attached.

The canons in position with the rigging in position, the ropes have been threaded through a hole in the deck. Later on in the build I will coil some rope and position them over the hole in the deck where the rope goes through. This will give the impression that the rope has been coiled on the ship.

Anything that can be done off the ship is well worth doing, I attached all the blocks to the eyelets on the ship, as well as the eyelets on the canons prior to fitting.

All the canons lined and up fully assembled.

A cannon finished, with the eyelets in position for the rigging of the cannon to the ships walls.

As there were quite a few canons to make I felt it was well worth the time making a jig to assemble the carraiges, this would make the process much faster and more accurate.

Spiral Staircases

They were not as hard to make as I thought they would be, they were fitted to the deck and then varnished, I decided to leave them of the deck until I was ready to fit the canons incase one got in the way of the other.

The finished staircases looked very nice when completed, I used some brass rod for the handrail which again turned out great.

These turned out better than I hoped, and machined very nicely using a 2mm router cutter.

I worked out the size of the treads and designed them using CAD based software, as I am lucky enough to be a CNC operator at a joinery company I then machined some treads from my CAD drawing out of solid walnut.

I was looking forward to making the spiral staircases although it was a daunting task.

After reading various posts on forums about the best method, I decided to make them around a piece of cicular plastic tubing.

I put 3 elastic bands around the tube and then slide the first layer of lime 3mm x .5 planks under the elastic bands until the plastic tube was covered all around the circumference, I then done exactly the same again using 2mm x 0.5mm planks walnut planks.