Armed Virginia Sloop by GuntherMT - FINISHED - Model Shipways - scale 1:48

[dgbot]

Fantastic job.

David B

[GLakie]

Nice work on the sheaves Brian, and the mast. First crack on that is great. Must be a pure pleasure working with Pear. 

 

Cheers

[DocBlake]

Nice work, Brian!

[Mahuna]

Hi Brian

 

Very clean cuts on the mast.  I'm impressed (as usual(.

[GuntherMT]

Thanks all, appreciate the encouragement.

 

Nice work on the sheaves Brian, and the mast. First crack on that is great. Must be a pure pleasure working with Pear. 

 

Cheers

 

I have no idea what it's like working with Pear, I'm using Boxwood.  

[mrshanks]

Really nice work Brian.  Your tenon cuts are very clean.

 

Mike

[GLakie]

Sorry Brian. I know you said you were working with Boxwood, and for some stupid reason, when I saw the reddish color of the wood, Pear stuck in my mind.  (Sometimes, a mind is just a terrible thing)   

 

Cheers

[mrangus]

Brian when I see work like this it convinces me that if I ever give another ship a go, I'll have to invest in a few real power tools. Everything looks so precise....

[GuntherMT]

Brian when I see work like this it convinces me that if I ever give another ship a go, I'll have to invest in a few real power tools. Everything looks so precise....

 

You can get similar results (or better) with hand drills and files - there are plenty of examples of that on these forums - but I'm lazy and impatient, so I like the power tools.  

[aliluke]

Really great work Brian

I can quickly nip around the corner from my computer to look at my AVS and you should be confident that the ropes cover up many things. The sheaves on my jib boom were drilled holes and a slight etching to mimic the sheave. Even that small effort is lost to the eye when the rope is threaded through. None the less your work on the mast and spars is much better than mine was and I think it'll shine through in the finished ship. Probably said it before but when that sprit and main mast goes in the dimensions of the overall ship make you go WOW!

[GuntherMT]

Good to see you around Alistair, and yea, I've stuck the bowsprit assembly and main mast on already, it's pretty awesome the size jump.

 

I continue to put off doing the chain plates on the port side, and have done some experimentation (failed) and various small bits.

 

First, I decided to continue on my route of replacing most of the cast pieces in the kit by making my own mast hoops out of wood.  Unfortunately, this didn't work out so good, as the wooden hoops are just too fragile, and I can't get them cut off without breaking them.  This is partially because of their small size, and partially (or maybe mostly) because I was using a dowel as my wood, and the grain is just too big for this sort of thing.  I have an idea on how I could make it work using multiple pieces of boxwood laminated together with the grain all going the proper direction, but in the end I decided that the effort just wasn't worth it for these pieces, and the kit hoops have been primed (and now painted as well, but no photo of that).

 

The next cast piece to get trash-binned was the strap that holds the foot of the bowsprit.  This piece doesn't fit the bowsprit properly as I completed it, and it's kind of ugly anyway, so I made a new piece out of brass.  This is 5 pieces soldered together, which was quite a trial, as the pieces are so small I couldn't heat one joint without breaking another one.  In the end I got it done, it's not perfect, but it will do.  I drilled holes for brass pins that I will make to pin the strap to the deck, and to the bowsprit.  I then blackened it with Birchwood Casey Brass Black, as I can no longer get Blacken-It at the local shop.

 

I got the mast wedge filed to fit the mast, and rounded the outside edge.  Haven't decided yet on any detailing for this piece.

 

And finally, tossing the cast swivel guns into the bin, I started work on the replacements.  First I soldered the trunions in place, and began to form a 'yoke' to support the gun.

 

I then soldered the yoke to a rod, drilled holes for the trunion, and stuck a gun on to see how it will look.

 

Pretty happy with how these look.  Worth the effort and expense.  Opinion time - should the yoke drop right down against my existing post mounts I've made, or should the rod stand them up slightly from the mount base?

 

I will also be adding a handle to the gun.  I sort of completely forgot to do that.  Doh!

 

Another question.  The yoke is so small, that I don't think I'll be able to solder the trunions to the yoke without breaking the existing solder joint of the yoke to the rod.  Thoughts on 'fixing' the gun in place?  Super glue should work I suppose, but I'm not sure how easy that will be to make invisible, and would need to be done after blackening.  I'll play with some ideas, but more than open for suggestions on this!

Edited July 31, 2015 by GuntherMT

[aliluke]

Hi Brian

An alternative method for the yoke is to use PE brass hooks straightened out. I just think it looks a bit cleaner and more realistic than what you have done. The method is well explained in Blue Ensigns Pegasus log and I attach a picture of my go at it for my Fly build (will delete this in a few days time to avoid confusion). It is bloody hard to do! The barrel is one of Chucks and is blackened but the yoke is painted. Although I haven't touched my model for nearly a year it is one of those repeat processes that I don't look forward to. I just used the white metal kit supplied swivels on my AVS but wish I had upgraded them now. The kit ones for the Fly are truly bad - an upgrade was definitely needed!

 

Another wee trick I did on my AVS was to wrap a bit of rope around the joint between the mast and the mast wedge at the deck. When painted this looks authentic as I believe this item was covered in canvas to seal the junction and the rope wrap covers up any gaps in the joint.

 

Cheers

Alistair

 

P.S. I think I have enough PE brass hooks for yokes to send you some if you want to go down this route...

Edited July 31, 2015 by aliluke

[GuntherMT]

Thanks Alistair, good idea, but the brass rod I am using is sized to fit perfectly into the brass tube that I've inserted into the pedestals to mound the guns, and using the PE would probably not fit properly (although who knows!).

 

I think for this build I'll work on refining my yokes by shaping the tops a bit.  I plan to blacken all of the assembly when done, which should mute the entire assembly to the human eye a bit.  That PE yoke does look great though, definitely going to file that away in my head for the future!

 

Feel free to leave the photo, it's fine for people to get other (better) ideas when reading through the log.

 

Thanks also for the rope on the mast wedge trick.  I haven't ever seen that done, but looking back at your photo's, it looks good!  I even have dark brown rigging rope to use for that, since I was planning to leave the wedge natural walnut like all the other walnut on the boat.

[Mahuna]

Hi Brian

 

There's a product called Kool Jool that is used to protect precious stones while soldering.  I'm thinking that if it was put on a joint that was already soldered it would protect the joint.  I actually have had a jar for a while, but haven't gotten around to testing it.  You're welcome to borrow it to try it out.

 

https://contenti.com/kool-jool

 

Another little trick that has worked for me is to wrap the soldered joint in a piece of paper towel that has been soaked in water.  It normally protects the joint long enough for the soldering of the adjacent joint to be completed.  Of course, this all depends on how much room there is between joints.

[GuntherMT]

Thanks Frank.  Once I get back to this I'll see what I can work out, and maybe borrow that stuff from you.  I don't have a big rush to finish the guns, since they wont' be put on the ship until it's complete anyway, as I'm sure I'd break them all!

 

After looking at Dan's Vulture build today, I may try to make rounded yokes like he did, they will probably look more realistic than my squared off one.

[donrobinson]

Looks real good Brian, You certainly have the eye for detail. Are you sure you only built one boat before this? LOL

 As for those wooden mast hoops, it really helps if you give them a good douse of ca before cutting them off the blank. I had the same problem when I tried making them out of wood.

Enjoy your Saturday\

 

Don

[GuntherMT]

Finally at a point where I am getting to 'visually' see how big this little (not so little) boat is going to be when it's completed.

 

First I finished up the bowsprit by affixing a bunch of little cleats and sanding them to shape, and affixing the rings that support the jib boom.

 

Bowsprit & Jib Boom:

 

Next I mounted the cheeks and cross-trees on the main-mast, then put two of the chocks in, and made the third chock. After playing with the fitment of the third chock, and looking at the plans, I realized that the base of the topmast wouldn't fit through the round fitting at the top of the main-mast, so I removed the third chock and will place it after the topmast is placed permanently later on. I then made the topmast and cut the little hole in the base where a piece of wood called a 'fid' goes through it to rest on the cross-trees. I drilled a sheave slot in the top-mast, but haven't drilled the hole and placed the sheave yet.

 

Here is how the main-mast and top-mast will fit together.  Really happy with how this came out.

 

And finally, dry fitting the complete bowsprit and mast assemblies to see the overall size (minus the main boom which will extend behind the ship by several inches too).

 

It got big all of a sudden!

[GLakie]

That definitely added some size to her Brian. Nice!!

 

Cheers

[HIPEXEC]

Wow! Really really big

Nice work

[donrobinson]

Looks real good Brian, I like that boxwood, are you leaving it natural?

[GuntherMT]

Thanks all.

 

Don - I don't plan to paint anything else on the model except for fittings and such as needed.  All the boxwood will be given the wipe-on poly treatment just like the bowsprit has already received, but no paint.

[thomaslambo]

You can get similar results (or better) with hand drills and files - there are plenty of examples of that on these forums - but I'm lazy and impatient, so I like the power tools.  

 

Brian,

 

I'm glad you made this comment. Even though I have many power tools I rarely use anything other than my lathe and power drill on occasion.

 

I much prefer using hand tools as you mention.  I have over 50 precision jewelers files, many hand drills, a myriad of X-Acto knives and blades, razor saws and miter boxes and good old sandpaper to make almost all my detailed parts 

 

Every tool has it's place (power and hand)....but many of us just prefer to do it by hand    

Edited August 6, 2015 by thomaslambo

[GuntherMT]

Thanks Lawrence.

 

It's not installed (neither is the mast), I just stuck it on and held the base with yellow tack to take the picture.  I'm not going to actually mount it until I have to.  The jib boom isn't actually affixed to the bowsprit yet either.

 

I'm going to make the yards, boom and gaff, and rig as much as possible before I start the assembly to the hull.  Currently working on an actual display stand, and sidetracked a bit on a very small, cheap plastic tank kit that I'm doing as part of a group build (first plastic model in 30 years, should be hilarious).

[GuntherMT]

 

hello Brian ,you can reduce the file size without affecting the picture quality here

http://www.simpleimageresizer.com/

 

http://resizeimage.net/

 

 

I have no re-sizing issues, I have a number of different image manipulation programs depending no how much quality I want, but thanks for that tip.

 

The problem I was having way back in that post in November that you are quoting was that the forum was doing some sort of compression after I uploaded the images, it wasn't my source images.  This hasn't been happening in a long time, it seemed to be a fairly short-term issue with the forum.  All images that I have checked recently are the same size here as they are in my source.

 

I crop and re-size all my images for the forum, since the forum would choke on 6000x4000 RAW format images and even a HQ Jpeg is 8-12mb.  

 

I reduce everything to 1200x on the long side, and use fairly high quality settings on Jpeg.  As with any form of image format that uses compression, there is some quality loss whenever an image is manipulated, as that is the nature of image compression.  However, said image compression allows a site like MSW to store huge numbers of photo's without needing a Peta-byte storage array to keep them all!

[GuntherMT]

I was looking for the rest of your pictures at magetower.com but can't find anything,do you have link for them?

 

Thanks, Zoltan

 

Not really, they are all in the same directory, but they are all linked to my build log here.  If for some reason you wanted to look at them there instead of the log, you could pull the file names from the build-log here and append them to the same path name as the one I provided the link for.  I don't have an html index set up, nor do I have the directory open for ftp browsing.

 

If there is some particular file that you wanted to see in giant size, I could probably get it for you, but I'd have to go back and find the original DSC image from the camera in the RAW directory and then put it up and give you a link.  I've got 760 photo's from the Nikon in 6000x4000 and another 408 photo's from the prior POS Canon in 2816x2112.  Of those, over 600 have been copied, cropped, sized to 1200x and uploaded to this build log.

 

Many of them that aren't uploaded were the same images with different exposure settings, or just shots I didn't like for some reason (focus, exposure, bad composition, etc.).

[GuntherMT]

In non-picture news, I got some actual ship progress done today.

 

I have completed the main-mast.

 

 

And the Gaff.

 

 

I've got the Main boom shaped, with a working sheave installed instead of the 'hole' the instructions say to use, the jaws mounted and strapped.  Tomorrow I'll get the chocks and cleats installed and hopefully get both the yards made and fitted out, and then I'll be ready to start rigging!

[dgbot]

Looking good Brian what did you use for the boom?

David B

[Mahuna]

Hi Brian

 

I'm impressed, particularly with the sheaves you've been putting in.  Are the sheaves wood or brass?

[GuntherMT]

Thanks for all the likes!

 

Looking good Brian what did you use for the boom?
David B

 

All the masting is boxwood.

 

 

Hi Brian

 

I'm impressed, particularly with the sheaves you've been putting in.  Are the sheaves wood or brass?

 

I've done them both ways as experiments Frank.  The 'axle' on all of them is brass.  The larger sheaves (catsheads, bowsprit, boom) I used .032" brass rod with a brass tube that fit perfectly over it or a small piece of drilled dowel for the pulley.  The smaller sheaves (jib-boom, top mast) I used the brass nails from the Carmen kit which are about .020", and nothing for pulleys to keep the slots smaller.

 

The axles are secured by applying a small drop of CA on the brass axle and then pulling it into the sheave.  Once it's dried for a while I trim the brass with end cutters and then file it smooth with a #4 barret file.

[GuntherMT]

Masting is done!  Well, I still need to attach one side of the parrels to the gaff and boom, but I'll just call that part of rigging.  

 

The main boom with sheave.

 

The topsail yard and spreader yard.  I did have a do-over on the topsail yard when I cut too deeply into it after I was all but finished.  Oops.  Oh well, only 1 do-over for all the masting (not counting the multiple bowsprits I made prior to switching to boxwood), I'll call that a win!

 

 

And everything all lined up together ready to start getting rigging.