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.

Deck Fittings

A general view of the side of the hull with all the chainwales in position. The time for the forseable future is to be spent on the deck fittings. Although there is still plenty to do on the hulls exterior including the gun ports.

Another view of the coloumns with the doors and windows in place.

It was now time to finish the chainwales with the brass support brackets, these were checked for shape and angle and then glued under the chainwales and fixed on the other end with a brass pin to the hull.

The finished chainwales in position along with the newly cut brackets, I was very pleased with how these worked out.

The small triangular brakets were made using a CAD drawing, I then routered them out using my CNC router at my work place. Three different types were made each with a varing amount of angle to allow for the curverture of the hull. The correct one was then selected depending on where it was positioned on the hull.

The chain wales were then constructed, I used the 3 butt shift pattern on the top face with walnut planks (3x.5), the edges were then pianted black.

The 2 centre coloumns in position.

I decided that the vertical columns that stood against the rear doors and windows would benifit from having a brass dowel (pin) inserted in the top and bottom. This proved to be an excellent choice and made the installation much easier while making the construction much stronger than would have been without the dowel.

Dummy Canons

Royal Entrance Doors And Rudder

A couple of overall photo's of how the hull looks at this stage.

The stern almost complete just some canons and gun port lids to add.

The rudder in position, I was thouroughly pleased with how this turned out and it works just as good as it looked !

The hinge nearly finished, the sides had to be cut for length and the sides drilled ready for the pins o hold it in position.

The sides were then bent over a piece of timber the same thickness that was on the stern/rudder of the boat.

It was then opened up and flattened on the bench with the pin still in position to make sure the hole did not close up.

It was then bent over a brass pin held in a vice.

I decided it was time to start the rudder on the stern, I also thought I would make my own hinges to suit exactly what I needed, I started with a piece of brass strip 3mm x 0.3mm, this was planed with a block plane to a with of 2.5mm.

The royal entrance door finished along with its canopy,steps and handrail.

The hole for the royal entrance doors was achieved by using the same technique as the gun ports, when I glued the royal entrance door into position I put a piece of masking tape through one gun port and out of another, this was to stop the door being pushed to far and being lost forever in the bottom of the hull !

Bow Decoration

The headrails totaly finished along with the cat head and support bracket, the head rails turned out a lot better then I thought they might, but as with most things the only way to get something looking nice is to have plenty of patience !

The cat heads were held in position with 2mm x 0.3mm copper strip.

This is also a good view of the triangular brackets that I fabricated to support the figure head deck, it also shows the gammoning (decorative moulding that runs up the stem)

Here are the 3 finished headrails in place on the portside, I am really pleased with how they turned out, although to get to this stage on both sides I estimate that the headrails alone took me about 30 hours.

That was the easy bit, it now had to be bent in the other direction, I found it also had a twist at either end. This really was trial and error to get it looking right. After about 2 evenings worth of work 1 was finally ready to fix to the hull, just 5 more to do then !

When I was happy that the cuvature followed my drawing I then filed the end to form a flat area that will be used to fix the head rails into place, (you can see that I have this also drawn this on my template)

The method of bending brass in this direction is explained earlier in my blog (Ballustrading And Side Rails)

The next stage was to attempt the head rails; this was always going to be very difficult having to bend the brass in 2 directions. I took a tracing from the plan and offered it to the hull. It was about 17mm short this was because the plan does not show the 2 dimensional aspect of the curvature so when you start to apply curves the opposite way to the drawing above it starts to lose length.

After I had worked out the correct length that was required I drew the 3 head rails on a drawing program (Autosketch) they could then be printed out at a scale of 1:1 and used to check the bending process of the brass. It could also be flipped for the opposite side very easily by the press of one button.

Stern Decoration

I would hate to have to guess any many hours work have been put into the model at this stage, and I doubt I'm halfway through the build yet.

A lot of time was spent very early on in the build making sure that all the decoration etc was going to fit, I can not stress this enough it is far better to spend another week if needed to get things right at the beginning, than have to start taking things apart or altering things at this stage. Before gluing something in place have a look what fits to it or how it effects other things around it.

Take for example before gluing the brass moulding above the windows on the stern I checked to see that the coat of arms and crown would fit into place.

Various close ups of the stern galleries, as with all things on ship modelling there really is no quick way of achieving a clean look, other than patience and even more patience.

The decoration along the top of the coat of arms is actually cut into 2, the slight gap is under the coat of arms so as not to be visible.

I decided after looking at other peoples examples of the San Felipe to paint the coat of arms in red and white, it also adds a little colour to the model.

The openings under the gallery where the rear canons will be are to be blacked out at a later stage.

Now I painted the bottom gallery blue and started to fit the cast decorations, I started in the middle and worked either side. Four or five of the corner ones had to been curved in both directions, this was done over a shaped block of wood and gently hammered into the correct shape.