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DonInAZ

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About DonInAZ

  • Birthday 04/29/1964

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Phoenix, AZ
  • Interests
    Model Building (Wood Ships, Plastic, Rockets, Trains and Radio Control), Wargames, Photography, Travel, Music, Movies, Sci-Fi, History and Literature

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  1. Well I'm finally getting around to doing another wood ship (boat in this case...lol!) model. I finished my Chesapeake Bay Crabbing Skiff some time ago and as I have stated in other posts, my intention was to work through some of these small Midwest kits as a starting point to obtain the skills necessary to tackle larger modeling projects in the future. So for my second model, I've selected another Skill Level 1 kit. The Chesapeake Bay Flattie. This one will have slightly more rigging and an additional sail from the crabbing skiff. It is my sincere hope that this build will not take anywhere near the 5 years that my first build took. Hopefully with a dedicated model building room and fewer interruptions, this build will be "smooth sailing"! As always, I'm sure I will have many questions and I look forward to engaging the tremendous pool of talented builders on this forum once again. OK, first up is a parts inventory. Stay tunded for that!
  2. Thank you. It was my intention to hide that joint inside the hole. It must have worked it's way out while I was working on the other bits. I'll get that corrected before she goes on display. I upload most of my pics straight from my phone and often times, I miss little issues like that until I see my post on an actual monitor. That dog hair that showed up on one of the pics in my rigging posts was another example of that.
  3. On March 18, 2015, I posted my first entry in this build log... Just a few days shy of 5 years later, the project that was supposed to be my basic intro into wood model ship building is finally completed !!! A lot of things happened in my life over the course of this build...some good...some not so good, but I enjoyed every minute I spent working on it. Many times it was a refuge from those life events. I have also immensely enjoyed my interactions with this community of amazing modelers and I want to thank each and every one of you for your advice and support!
  4. Quick update: So for the last few days I've been working on coiling up the loose lines for the mainsheet, the halyard and the downhaul. I was very surprised at how difficult a task it is to get these lines to look "right" as they are laying on the deck or hanging from a stanchion. I actually ended up removing and re-threading the mainsheet entirely after 1 failed attempt to get to lay down in a way that looked natural. I'm still not 100% satisfied with how it looks but I'm not sure I'm going to try and change it at this point. I think I might have mentioned in a previous post that I suffer from "essential tremor". This makes fine work EXTREMELY difficult and it was particularly frustrating when working with these lines as I'd get something just where I wanted and my tremor would alter or move it before I could let go. Anyway my point is not to make excuses, but wanted to share with those of you following this build why this last (seemingly minor) step is taking me so long. As it stands this morning while writing this, I have only the downhaul line left to set in place so it should not be much longer. Of course I'll post some pics when it's completed.
  5. Ok, so I just did a simple block with a piece of black wire for this build. I may try to do the whole thimble thing with the brass tube at some point down the road but I need to get this one in the books...it's only been 5 yrs since I started this build log after all 😕. So in the above picture you can see the mast is glued in place and the sprit is attached. All that is left to do is coil up the lose rigging lines and glue the tiller on (it was only a friction fit thus far) I bought some small bits to try scratch building a couple of crab traps for detail. We'll see how that goes.
  6. I tried last night to make a couple of thimbles... failed miserably! I was trying the hole punch method but I suspect the tube I was using has walls that are too thick. I need to get some smaller tubing and then I will try the method of filing half the tube off and bending it around as Bob showed above. When I get something worth showing, I'll post some pics...
  7. That's a really nice looking block Bob! I hope mine looks at least half that good... I went to Hobby Lobby last night and purchased some brass tube to try my hand at making some thimbles. We'll see how that goes.
  8. WHOOPS!!! How embarrassing... My block in the above pic is COMPLETELY WRONG! I will be re-working it to look more like this: Should really have checked some references first... another lesson learned. 😳 Update forthcoming...
  9. Just went through your log Dave... Wow! You did a fantastic job. What a nice little introduction to the mysterious art of planking. I am also intimidated by that and am working through a few of the Midwest small boat kits as a way to build some of the skills I will need to tackle a full on 2 or 3 masted tall ship model. Anyway, congrats on this little beauty. She is going to be a fantastic display model.
  10. So I am quite pleased with the results from the fabric stiffener. It definitely added the rigidity I wanted to make the lines from the block to the sprit appear to be under a slight load. Also the loose end appears to hang down.
  11. Well this one is almost in the books but one of my primary goals when building my Chesapeake Bay Flattie is going to be solving the riddle of gluing rigging line. In fact there will be some experimenting on some scrap pieces happening very soon. I'll give the Liquitex a shot as part of that effort.
  12. Working on the sprit block and cleat assembly. What I've done here is to place some tension on the line to remove the slack and then I applied some fabric stiffener to it to hopefully encourage it to hold its shape.
  13. This is looking very nice. I was thinking of doing a cross section on my way to tackling a fully rigged ship. Am quite interested to see how yours turns out and your thoughts on the build and what it taught you.
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