4/19/25 to 4/25/25
Stained the mast rings and glued them in place.
I have gone back and forth on how I should paint the cannons and have landed on the following:
Chocolate brown
Main body of the carriages
Sides/ “spokes” of the wheels
Black
Tops of the carriages
“Tread” of the wheels
Cannon barrels
Gold
Banding of the cannon barrels
Dark brown
Stool bed & Quoin (hope these are the right terms)
I started by cutting out the carriage pieces and gave them a light sanding. They will be easy to put together, but in addition to the paint scheme above, I plan to upgrade them by adding recoil ropes and drilling out the cannon barrels.
The kit came with two distinctive styles of cannons; eight are full cannons with carriages while the other four are “dummy” cannons (just the tips of the barrels).
The two cannons have quite unique styles of barrels. In addition, I am adding two chase guns to the stern which ended up being a third type of cannon. The ones I added are the black “dummy” cannons. They look like the other, kit supplied “dummy” cannons but are a bit longer. I am assuming the length means it is a bigger/heavier cannon or the ones that I purchased are just a different scale.
Can someone tell me the difference between the cannons?
Time to give a quick shout-out to my mother-in-law, Alice, as she gave me some cash for my birthday with the express request that I use the money to buy something for my ships. While I will not get to show her the finished model as she recently passed away, I was able to show her pictures of what she got for me as well as pictures of where they would go. She also got me the metal gunport lids and frames that I will be adding later. Thanks Alice. You will forever be part of the Molino.
All the cannon barrels are metal and require a little sanding to remove the parting line. The lines were minimal but visible.
I painted all of them with a primer and remembered that I do not have any matte black paint. For many of us, and even myself when I am at home, this is not much of a problem as paint is available. Here in Mexico that is not always the case. I remember seeing a store a couple of years ago not too far away that had a limited selection of paint. I knew the general direction of where it was but could not located it on a map. So, I just walked up and down the streets for a while until I found it. Their selection was even less than what I remembered, but they did have a black that they said was not shiny. The 50 pesos (~$2.50 US) price was not bad, so I buy it and surprisingly “Negro Intenso” does mean “matte”.
I use a toothpick to paint the gold of the bands on the barrels.
I fashioned the stool bed & quoin out of a thin strip of deck planking and painted them a dark brown.
With everything pained, I put together the carriages and added the wheels.
During the painting process, I painted the lifeboat with primer followed by two different shades of brown. It still needs more detail, but it is coming together.
0.02mm eyebolts are added to each side of the carriages between the wheels for the recoil rope.
Given I have not yet done any rigging I reached out to a friend back in Denver from the Rocky Mountain Shipwrights and asked what knot he recommended that I use to attach the recoil ropes to the eyebolts. Phil is one of our go-to members for anything rigging related and he said to go with an anchor bend knot (also known as anchor hitch and fisherman’s bend), at least if the eyebolts are big enough to allow the line to go through it twice AND if the eyebolts are not yet attached to the bulwark. Otherwise, he said to go with two half hitches (also known as anchor as a double half hitch and clove hitch).
It was not super easy, but the line could fit through the eyebolt twice, so I researched anchor bend knots and got to work. A while back while researching knots for The Scuttlebutt (our club newsletter which I write and edit), I found the site 101knots which I hope everyone knows about. Great pictures of many types of knots along with when and where they are used. And then YouTube was great for videos.
I decided to make life a bit easier by making two of these recoil ropes per cannon, with them attached under the button/breech. I feel this will be easier and look better than one line with eyebolts on either end. Easier as I will not have to worry about the cannon & carriage while tying the second eyebolt and will look better as I will have more control over the length of the recoil ropes making them all similar in length.
In this manner I created sixteen eyebolts with line.
As with most things, I got better and faster the more I did, but it still took me about 3 hours. The biggest take-a-way is that do not be stingy on the length of each line. In fact, it was a lot easier to tie when the line was about 6” to 8” longer than the ~2” that was needed.
Each line was then cut down to about two” and each eyebolt was cut in half.
To lash up the cannons, I fed a line through the eyebolts on the carriage sides, making sure that the lines both had about the same length extending past the front of the carriage.
I put three dots of glue (one on each trunnion and one on the quoin - again I hope these are the correct terms) on the carriage, followed by a line of glue around the button/breech.
I then wrapped each line around the button/breech and tucked the tails up and under barrel of the cannon where they would be held in place by the glue.
As the glue dried, I drilled holes in the bulwarks for the eyebolts of the recoil ropes.
I put the cannons in place and glued the eyebolts into the bulwarks.
Once the eyebolts were dry, I gently picked up each cannon and applied glue under the wheels.
The Molino is armed.
Time for this portion: 13 hours
Total time to date: 191 hours
By
VallartaHugh ·
