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civilian

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  1. Most of the time in Mamoli kits, frames are not laser cut. It was going through the transition before the fire hit. Since Flying Cloud is one of their earlier kit, I doubt you can find a laser cut one. Also, even though the frames are laser cut, they are most likely a direct tracing from the original plan, but not a result from 3D modeling. As a result, laser cut frames may also need fix here and there as the non laser frames. Hope this helps.
  2. Good start. I am currently building the Constructo's Cutty Sark, and I will follow you along.
  3. Hello my friends, It has been a while since my last post, so it is a time for an update. First, I made the bowsprit. Since the front of the hull does not have a precut hole for the bowsprit and I figured it would be too difficult to drill a hole now, so I sanded the bottom of the bowsprit at an angle. Then, I worked on the three masts. The finished masts are shown in the picture below. Yards are first roughly cut to shape by a hobby planer, and then sanded according to plan. Then I tied blocks on the yards using the scale rope provided by the kits. I just did a simple overhand knot and a added dap of CA glue to secure the string on the block and on the yards. I think the scale of this model is rather small and seizing is not absolutely necessary. I am satisfied with the result. Here are the all three sets of yards for the masts. I also installed the handrails and extensions on the yards. Finally, I made this small string holder to facilitate my next step of rigging the ship.
  4. Finally, Photo Time! First I want to apologize that I did not took any photos while I did the hull planking, as I was not really sure if I should open a build log. These are photos of my progress till last week. I will update my progress this week very soon.
  5. First I will do some kit review. The kit is manufactured by the toy company Constructo in Spain. The scale is 1/90. However, this kit is no longer in production. Instead, a newer 1/115 scale model is available where the whole model is about 2 inch shorter and there are some minor changes on the deck fittings. Plans: There are five sheets of plans on three sheets of paper, including one sheet of plan & section, one sheet of elevation, two sheets of rigging and one sheet of sail patterns. All of them are hand drawn, so some inaccuracy can happen and some times you really need to figure out what is happening in the drawing. Instructions: Even though it seems like you have a good booklet of instructions, it was actually not the case. The instructions was written in 6 different languages. Thus, in the English section only contains five pages, in which two pages are actually part list. The drawings in the booklet is also very diagrammatic and sometimes do not have a scale. Materials: The materials supplied by the kit are generally of good quality. The hull is a die cut sheet of 3-ply wood. and other wood mainly consists of strips of dark-colored mahogany and light-colored ayous in different sizes. The kit uses 2mmx6mm mahogany wood as first layer of planking and 0.5mmx6mm mahogany wood as second layer of planking. As you can see, the material for the first layer of planking is very unusual as mahogany is a relatively hard wood. According to the manufacture, skilled model makers can eliminate the need for second layer planking. Well, I am not one of them...LOL. Luckily, the hull shape of the Cutty Sark does not have dramatic curvature, so the whole planking procedure did not present too much of a challenge to me. The cast fittings are made of brass and cast iron (?), I left brass parts as their original color and painted the cast iron parts from gray to black.
  6. Hi everyone! This will be my official build log for Construto's Cutty Sark 1/90. I am already about 5 weeks into the build and finished the hull planking, deck cabins & decorations and is currently working on masts and rigging. I start my build log this late because I do not want to end up not finishing the model at early stage and everyone knows about it. While I was building the ship, I tried to stick to manufacture's plan with no side work of sketch builds. I will also not paint or stain my model as I think the original dark and light wood color scheme is quite nice. First is a little bit history of Cutty Sark form the Manufacture: "The Cutty Sark is a clipper ship. Built in 1869 for the Jock Willis shipping line, she was one of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest, coming at the end of a long period of design development which halted as sailing ships gave way to steam propulsion. The opening of the Suez Canal (also in 1869) meant that steam ships now had a much shorter route to China, so Cutty Sark spent only a few years on the tea trade before turning to the trade in wool from Australia, where she held the record time to Britain for ten years. Improvements in steam technology meant that gradually steamships also came to dominate the longer sailing route to Australia and the ship was sold to the Portuguese company Ferreira and Co. in 1895, and renamed Ferreira. She continued as a cargo ship until purchased by retired sea captain Wilfred Dowman in 1922, who used her as a training ship operating from Falmouth, Cornwall. After his death she was transferred to the Thames Nautical Training College, Greenhithe in 1938 where she became an auxiliary cadet training ship alongside HMS Worcester. By 1954 she had ceased to be useful as a cadet ship and was transferred to permanent dry dock at Greenwich, London on public display. Cutty Sark is one of three ships in London on the Core Collection of the National Historic Ships Register (the nautical equivalent of a Grade 1 Listed Building) – alongside HMS Belfast and SS Robin. She is one of only three remaining original composite construction (wooden hull on an iron frame) clipper ships from the nineteenth century in part or whole, the others being the City of Adelaide, awaiting transportation to Australia for preservation, and the beached skeleton of Ambassador of 1869 near Punta Arenas, Chile." There are some photos of the packaging.
  7. I am working on the same model as you do! It is nice to see some other people working on the same model. Currently I am working on the masts and rigging now. I will also put on a building log soon. Good job on your build!
  8. Hi Everyone! As I read some of kit review posts on the website, one thing caught my eye: more and more kit manufactures are in transition from the old CNC hull pieces to LASER CUT hull pieces. And many reviewers think laser cut pieces are better. From a manufacture's perspective, laser cut is definitely a time saving strategy and allow to produce a kit in a relatively short period of time. As a result, more kits means more money. However, from user's perspective, I cannot see significance advantages of laser cutting over traditional CNC pieces. Indeed, laser cutting can be very precise, but it leaves annoying burn marks on the edge of pieces, which sometimes can be not only aesthetically unpleasing, but also prevent rule from forming a strong bond between pieces. One other problem I notice is that some manufactures does not set up the laser cutter correctly. As an architecture student myself, I have access to some large scale laser cutter at school because we need to make lots of architecture models. Thus, it was not a surprise to me when I saw some kits have very think cutting lines and burn marks on the surface as a know the problem is out-of-focus lens or wrong power settings. With thick cutting lines, the goal of more precision does not exist any longer. With burn marks on the surface of pieces, I am sure you will leave your finger prints everywhere around your work station. So in conclusion, I am not a huge fan of laser cutting. I think some manufactures (such as Corel & Mamoli ) have its reason to not switch production method. Please let me know if you have any thought on this topic. I have attached a photo of a architecture model I made at school using laser cutting. Usually, I will only lightly score the pattern on the page and cut out pieces using a X-acto knife. So I get both accuracy and cleanness. However, for this one I ran out of time and used laser cutter to cut out pieces directly. Although I paid much attention and test cut many times, there still annoying burn marks on edges.
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