1/700 Bretagne-1855 scratch The largest wooden wall warship

[pascalemod]

When I have to finish my Turenne, this thread will by my bible.

Jim, the deck of Bretagne - was it really so grey even as wood (and depicted weathered) or this is just shadows of the sails making it look desaturated? It quite changed its appearance in some photos from the earlier images. May be just the angle of the photo.

Love the progress, I guess we will never truly appreciate how delicate this is unless we see it in person. Which is kind of a goal now on some event!

[Frank Spahr]

This is mindblowingly high class work, Jim. I can but admire your skills, dedication, patience and self-control.

Thanks for sharing the images of your trip to get your Xmas tree with your Ford T - excellent, even though a bit nippy!

Cheers

Frank

[Iceman 29]

I'm impressed by the density of the rigging, which you've done brilliantly. If you zoom in very close on the photos, you can see the scale of the work and the amount of patience and dexterity needed to achieve such feats. Keep warm, Jim.

To drive a Ford T in winter, you need the right vintage equipment for the driver!

[marijn van gils]

Simply awe-inspiring! I'm loving every bit of this!

An appropriate quote from Donald McNarry's 'Ship models in miniature' from 1975, while describing his 64' to 1'' model of the Royal Charles:
'I have never the least doubt in my own mind that very small-scale models like this are of much greater worth than a similar model say, 16' - 1''. If the normal amount of detail is to be included it requires a great deal more care and skill to produce this and a totally different standard of work is involved.'

[JIM BAUMANN]

Thank you Gentlemen for encouraging words--

progress is relentless, if slow

The French ships carried a lot of boats-- stowed on davits in a most innovative way !

Bretagne followed this pattern

noteworthy is that covers were fitted to some of the boats when slung in davits

this would also add a bit of variety to the model;

The boats duly had covers made ( as in previous post) and were installed to the davits
( with a dot of ( thinned ) white glue for initial high 'grab' , followed up with CA drops

and tuned to be level with the sheer-line and the inner boat

These boast were strapped up in real life, black boats had black straps--

these fine models( Soldeferino and Gloire ) ( Musee de Marine-

-which illustrates it well

I made the straps with sprue--but before drawing sprue -the molten had a sideways ' swipe' on the card

( see me step by step)

here==> viewtopic.php?f=4&t=37536

then drawn with medium speed--this resulted in FLAT black sprue

This was attached inboard on the davit, (with Revell professional liquid glue) and left-


-thereafter a bit more - fresh-glue on the keel-
-which ensures a sharp kink as the strap passes under the boat--and then drawn up to terminate on the davit

Onwards to anchors--

these were 3-D printed for me and are very good, however they were fragile to seperate...(!!)

Luckily I had plenty of them to end up with 4 anchors (!!!)






the ships had " skids frame" at the fwd shroud channels--discernible in the plans ( if you REALLY enlargef the plan !)

I made mine of PE

with a pile of fiddling , a few hours and copious swearing I had 4 anchors 'catted up '

In the ' black and white ' era--the anchors and ancillary equipment was painted so to not interrupt the flow of the black and white stripes!!!

before getting involved with head-sails I tuned my attention to bow-sprit netting. I was using Paint filter mesh

a template was made ( folded paper and test-fitted)

this was eventually cut out

and installed to the vessel
( all that is delicate and fiddly on a partially rigged bow-sprit !!)

Headsails... I made fresh ones--that were lighter--

these were installed with the vessel perpendicular to its usual stance

( nerve wracking !-one slip and all masts would be gone!!)

This was done...

as they need to be not close-hauled ,
but rather as the ship is on a broad reach the headsails also need to be 'sheeted out '

To allow this to happen (and unload and preserve glue joints,)

the sails are ' propped out ' using thin stainless wire
to simulate the lazy not-in-use-windward sheet

Before install--I had to measurer the luff lengths of the headsails accurately

after some VERY nervy and hyper tense modelling.... they were on !

for light relief after this--I added some of the Leechlines-- these inhibit the luff collapsing if backwinded,

clever eh ! ?! --

( modern yachts Spinnakers are flown at max efficiency with the windward leech ' curling ' ie just about on the point of collapse

( now they could do with leechlines deployed by to a virtual mast!!

[Iceman 29]

A lot of risk, but well worth it.

Sometimes you have to be reckless (T�m�raire ).

[SG1]

Beyond-excellent progress and great entertaining/learning .
Question about materials: where have you found the 0.05mm stainless steel wire? Any brand/seller to recommend? I am desperately looking for something like that (foldable but stiff enough) for my SLC-project tubing

[JIM BAUMANN]

This will do the job nicely

https://wireandstuff.co.uk/product/0-05 ... UWb6p2Ptt8

I also shop here
https://www.scientificwire.com/acatalog/tc-wire.html

for skinny copper wire tinned 0.05
I always buy a sample ( short length - for 0,05 uits 10 meters)

not cheap but one roll does last a looong time!

Hope to help
JB

[Pieter]

Beautiful work as always on the rigging. One question though, how do you paint the sea after adding all these yards, boats and other protrusions? If would be doing that my nerves would give in almost immediately out of fear of knocking some of that precious rigging into my resident Black Hole.

[SG1]

Hope to help

Thx so much!

[JIM BAUMANN]

Good day all

The Christmas period has allowed me to to make tangible progress in daylight !

The rigging was ( seemed like anyhow) to be endless---but there was an end--
when I realised I could not add all the rigging and threw in accepted I had rigged
and added what I physically could in this small scale.!

One of the remaining outstanding tasks was the aft anchor racks/ skids
There were cut from 1/350 Pom-pom railings from an old ( historic! ) set from 1998)

suffice it to say it was chunky enough for my purposes !

These were bent into the shape I believe they should be

Installed with matt varnish , and a drop of CA...

Once painted they were furnished with folded stocked Admiralty-type anchors

The Figure head... was another challenge
( portryaing the Germanic heroine Veleda )
( noy quite sure how that became identified with Bretagne)
but there is is

quote;

" The figurehead figured the prophet Veleda, an important character in the folklore of Brittany, with a sickle in hand and a wearing an oak leaf crown "
I made two of these figureheads...

O blamed on initially being misled by a contemporary drawing from an article
about Bretagne; only problemwas .... that the ship was still on the stocks...

so the drawing was somewhat subjective ( / wrong )
( but
the figure head I had made ...was quite good ! )

I was fortunate to have a high res version of the ship in build and launched;
when zoomed in very much
( thanks to high quality res of the original
plate glass negative--probably around 10 x 8 inches)

I could make out that the arm was a different angle--the sickle was the other way round and its prientation was different.

I believed that the figure heads on these ships was plain white
similar to Napoleon and Valmy ( below)

but in the photo image .... the oak leaf crown and the (toga/tunic armbands were picked out in contrasting colour)

To make this figure head I used a L'Arsenal ( French company ! ) cast 1/350 figure

suitable chopped and altered;
I chopped off the arms ( ouch )

I drilled through the shoulders and made new wire armature arms

then bent the arms and thickened them with thinned white glue;

then made the sickle which was too big

and then made a smaller one...

and then installed it to the figure head

Once installed on sticky varnish, the CA glue and then extend with thinned white glue

after making some differing sizes of flags

the model is essentially finished aside from from completing the sea-scape and flat-coating;

ero--- leaving me with still plenty of opportunities for a catastrophe...!!

[wefalck]

WOW �

[wefalck]

One day I have to look for an opportunity to see her in real life!

[MartinJQuinn]

WOW �

Yeah, what he said...

[SG1]

WOW �

Yeah, what he said...

I second that

[Stefano Salesi]

"we are not worthy, we are not worthy"

cit. Waine's World.

[pascalemod]

Curious about those hammock rails being just plain gray color, is that a certainty? Not canvas dirty beige, but actually grey? Im sure your research is top notch, they just jump out quite a lot on the model, so I was curious and surprised of the way they appear on an otherwise coherent looking model.

[JIM BAUMANN]

Ahoi Pascal !

You are quite correct in that many of the sailing Navies used bleached white canvas on their hammock stow
as well as some preserved ships-- the Danish Jylland for example.

HOWEVER

I did do some research and agonised about it at length!

In the absence of colour photos...(!! ) we rely on paintings of that era.
and the conclusion I drew ( ha ha ) was that the artists of the time....
would have rendered the hammock covers in white if they had been so;
- grey, indeed , being an incongruous colour

I am fortunate in owning a large colour large print of this painting,

a detail which is below--showing the covers to be grey.

I did seek corroboration on other French ships that overlapped the era of wooden walls....

herewith a selection;

the daguerreotype of Bretragne

oh... and a b/w imnage of Bretagne in her schoolship days; the canvas does not appear to be white;

( though could be beige--but never seen that)

and the preserved ship HMS Gannet ( though I have seen images with white canvas as well)
but this look greyish / grubby....

[JIM BAUMANN]

Hello all again.

I am now on the final run--the seascape is well under way ( images soon!)

Interestingly;
I received an e-mail this morning from a ( wood) sailing ship builder in larger scales
( around 1/64 etc)
whose models looked very very good indeed !
He 'chastised' me for the lack of brown rigging and hemp coloured lines etc.

He had a point...( to a certain degree )

however his models--most fine as they are --
are in full hull dockyard / builders style on brass finials.

They are beautifully built--but also somewhat ..errr... sterile.

now (....my personal opinion and hence disclaimer!)
.....................................................................................................

I feel that often the ' correct' colours in small scales can often look
overpowering to the sum total of a model
(-maybe even slightly -err ....garish...)
I cite also small scale WW2 warships that have ' white' signal lines
...whilst undoubtedly correct-- -- seem to glare...


...............................................................................................

I put it to him that my ship was around 11 x smaller,
--and I was,.... in effect
.... trying to produce a 3-D atmospheric painting.


and as such-( in my view ) -
against a light background( like sky !! )
-- all rigging appears 'black.' ( as was much of it was the tarred rigging !)

Kind of as herewith in images below;-
But it got me thinking....

- what are the thoughts on this from you fellow modellers?

[wefalck]

That has been a discussion raging for several years now in various fora - since people discovered that 'Stockholm' (i.e. pine) tar is not the same as coal-tar. Most people today are not familiar with pine-tar, as it is not used on ships anymore, except in a restoration or artisanal context (particularly in northern Europe).

Coal-tar became available in large quantities from around the mid-1840s, when cities became lit by gas produced by coking coal. As a waste product it was a lot cheaper than pine-tar from Scandinavia, the Baltics or Russia. I gather the availability for maritime use is related to the spread of gas-lighting in the various countries, Britain maing a start here. It would be worthwhile researching the availability of and use by the French navy of coal-tar in the mid- to late 1850s.

From a modelling point of view, there are various aspects to consider:

- both types of tar, tend to weather rather quickly, turning pine-tar into a dull greyish brown and coal-tar into a dull dark grey. After a few month at sea and unless being re-tarred the aspects tend to converge according to what I have observed.

- at a distance, rigging tends to look dark regardless, whether its body-colour is dark brown or black; the eye cannot process the high contrast of the dark rigging against the sky and adjusts more to give definition to the sky than to the narrow lines of rigging.

I have considered this aspect in my budding sailing project and think that I will go for either an burnt umbra-wash on black or black toned down with some burnt umbra. However, this is for a scale about four times bigger (1/160 vs. 1/700).

In summary, I would not give these comments too much weight.