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Captain Al

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  1. So I took the plunge and made a management decision: I decided to ignore the ports on the transom and plank the full ZZ on the diagonal, planking right over the etched squares for the ports. I intend to attach two home made ports over the planking. Or not. It will be determined at a later date and depend on how I like the outcome of the full hull planking and whether or not I decide to stain and varnish the undersides or to go with the the white paint below the wales. The sample port I made yesterday came out OK and it could be even better. My little MicroMark cheapo cutoff saw was very useful. Its a $50 investment and isn't the most sophisticated device, but you soon learn its limitations and drawbacks and adapt to them. Overall it is a great time saver, cuts angles more accurately than I ever could (with my wobbly miter box), and saves my tennis elbow from getting sore. Not a whole lot to describe; the pix tell the story. I highly recommend pinning a 1/8th inch strip down the center where the rudder post will go. Allows you to cleanly butt the planks up against something creating a perfect (well we shall see how perfect when the rudder is installed) rabbet for the rudder post. Eliminates lots of filing or sanding. And it aligns the 45 degree plank pretty well on the diagonal. Without it, that line is not easy to make straight. So nothing ever goes according to plan. I had some pencil lines drawn on ZZ and along with the strip down the center the planks were going on quite well -- symmetrically that is. I did one plank on one side then its corresponding plank on the other. Started in the upper center corner and worked down. Long about the 4th plank down I noticed that the planks had fallen out of alignment with its corresponding plank on the other side. Not horrible but unsightly given what I'm trying to accomplish with this fully planked transom. I think I fixed it pretty well by shaving a wee bit off the next two planks on the starboard side. Instead of 1/8th inch (3 mm) I cut off a little less than a mm. After these were placed the rest were back in alignment. Finished up the top section with little sweat. Those don't really line up with anything. I made my planks longer than necessary and I won't try to cut them back and fair them to the hull until I'm laying the hull planking. I needed to squeeze a couple tiny bits of plank into the bottom and top corners. I don't know if the design and size of the model, if faired perfectly, would result in a perfect fit of X number of planks, but it didn't for me. I suspect that when all is done, the hull planking will cover those areas enough to make the tiny planks unnoticeable. I am gone for a week. Off to Texas for some R&R. When I return the real fun begins (planking the hull).
  2. Okey doughky. I won't belabor it but to me its alot of white paint where it need not be. I owned boats for 30 years and the idea of putting anti fouling paint above the water line is hilarious. I just wish Chuck had not mentioned that this white stuff was used for the purpose of warding off underwater critters. Then I would have just accepted the painting scheme for what it is; a painting scheme. I'm now almost sure there will be no white paint on my Mayflower. I'm going for the artistic and fine finish down below.
  3. Still not sure though why that area would be painted with the anti fouling white stuff.
  4. I got a PM back from Chuck with a photo showing that the ports are well above the water line. And yet the white paint still covers them and goes up the transom pretty high. I'm still weighing whether to make this model authentic or visually appealing.
  5. I like seeing you back at work and I like what you've done. Lots of char left indicating lots of fairing to go. I can't offer any advice on this except what I've already noted on my log: don't be surprised at how much wood needs to come off from various bulkheads; especially toward the stern and bow (and particularly #5). And take it slow and keep going back to areas you may have thought were already done. Use those bulwark templates as battens as well. I'd suggest that you put in the eyebolt now before you put a lid over the hole. I wish I'd painted all at once. I used the only black paint I have which is Rust-o-leum. Its a cleanup pain much worse than any acrylic. I have to start thinking about paint and brushes and all that sometime soon. I see ZZ on there. Looks pretty square. Is it perfect? Did you use spacers to glue them on or just eyeball it? The 'graceful curve' looks very nice; shouldn't give you any planking problems. I would not accentuate the camber of xx, yy and zz any more than necessary. The more curve there is the more issues with the planking later.
  6. I'm wondering about the white paint job. Richie's comment about painting over the nice diagonal planking made me think. I haven't yet paid much attention to the painting scheme for the ship, and I thought that most (if not all) that diagonal planking was above the water line and therefore not going to get a coat of that "white stuff" as Chuck calls it. The white stuff in reality was a form of anti fouling paint (which probably contained a ton of lead and is not legal any more) and was only necessary below the water line. So I'm looking at my stern/transom and comparing it to the pix in the instructions. Yeah, Chuck shows the entire ZZ painted all the way up to the start of the curved counter. And yet there are these two ports which would therefore be below the water line. I find it hard to believe that there were ports that opened that were below water level. I'm starting to get my head back into trying to do a great job of planking all the way down to the keel and then staining and finishing it. Like the example I posted above.
  7. Hey Joel, these look fantastic. I take it when you say 'knocked off the corners' that you mean beveled the outside edge just a tad.
  8. No excuses to delay the second planking of the counter now. I did the tiller hole and sanded the first planking to as "graceful" a curve as I could. I'll probably go with Tiger's suggestion to put the planks on first cause I don't have any decent stain on hand and don't know when I can get some. Anyway, here's the counter ready to go:
  9. So on close inspection of that build I just posted, there are significant differences to our MS kit that make doing anything too elaborate with those stern ports kind of superfluous. First off ours is painted below the wales and this other one is finely planked, stained and probably finished. So the ports are important to not detract from the hull's look. Ours are painted and no matter what I do it won't show very well. Its also interesting to note the difference in how far up the transom the diagonal planking goes on this other example. Not nearly as far as ours. So the ports are part of horizontal planking while on ours the ports fit in the area of diagonal planking. Anyway, I need to stop thinking and do some work on this ship. Time now to cut out the tiller hole.
  10. Whoops. I should have said the instructions have no further mention of these ports.
  11. I've been pondering this for several days now; ever since i turned my attention to the aft end of the boat. It never really sunk in (bad pun?) what those two squares of horizontal planking on either side of the tiller opening were supposed to be. Now that I'm planking around these squares I decided to look into it further. This link makes it clear that they are supposed to simulate ports. So why aren't we doing something a little more detailed, real, authentic or at least like the gun ports on the hull? I've looked over the instructions and there is further mention of these ports after the stern planking section. So I am considering at least some molding around them and some hardware. Before I go further with planking though I'm thinking of building two little boxes and gluing them on instead of just the three horizontal strips. They'd look like a framed port hole closed. Then I'll plank right up to the edges of these boxes. Sort of the same as putting molding around the square; just a bit more realistic.
  12. How'd you do that Willis? How'd you take my black and white screen shot and color in those strips? Pretty neat. Thanks for the suggestions. Either way better than starting in a small corner; I'll consider both and pick one. What do you think about the temp rudder strip?
  13. Today and probably tomorrow I'll be second planking the counter. I've been reading the instructions and looking closely at the pictures. A couple things came to mind which I will throw out for discussion. First, is it safe to assume that the photos in the booklet replicate the end product in terms of how many planks it will take on each side and, what the angle of the end (middle) of each plank is. Second, it appears that Chuck would have us plank to the line, and leave an opening for the rudder post. I've done this before and its pretty hard to get the cuts and placements so perfect that when you put in the rudder post there are no gaps. Now it could be that there will be moldings between the post and the planks which will cover any imperfections. But I was thinking that maybe I would temporarily pin in a strip to simulate the rudder post and would then have something to butt the planks up against. Do you guys think this is a good idea? Then there's the question of the best place to start the diagonal planking. I think I would have started at a corner with a small plank and worked my way down or up getting longer and longer and then shorter and shorter til I finished up at the bottom or top. But my wife reminded me of how a tile layer lays down tiles for a diagonal pattern on a floor -- they will start at the middle and work toward both ends. The reasoning is that when the time comes to narrow the last plank or two its less noticeable in the small corners. How would you proceed? And finally, since this is the second planking I'm going to have to make some color decisions today. This area is above water line so it should be stained. I have to check what stain i have, I think only American Walnut which I'm guessing is too dark. I don't want to just lacquer the basswood; too white. Thinking about an oak stain. I'll take a look at some pix on line and see what other's have done. But the question I have is: should I stain each plank before gluing it on? Or glue them all on taking care not to get glue on the surface, then sand and stain the whole surface at the same time.
  14. Thanks Joel. By "solved" I guess I would say yeah, I solved it by gluing in the last plank as best as it would fit and today I'll put a bit of putty into the cracks on each side. But for the second planking I am going to work out the sizes (widths) that will let me use 7 planks and I'll try to cut that last one most carefully.
  15. Interesting day in the shop. First layer of planking the counter was not as simple as I thought it was going to be. Three issues came up. First I had to decide whether to work right side up or upside down. Note the slight convex shape of the top edge of piece ZZ. Its humped in the middle when the ship is right side up. If that were going to be the first plank laid I would have to be super careful to get it perfectly level on each side; i.e. balance perfectly on the hump. There are only three small spots to glue to. If I turned the ship upside down and did the last piece first it would lie flat along the edge of piece YY. Even though YY is also contoured slightly, the plank would be length bending along its contour. Easily done. As the plank going on to ZZ would have to be edge bent (or balanced as I said) I chose to do the ship upside down. So all's going well. Cutting strips and gluing on. On the first one that had the convex curve I used a spot of CA to glue down the center and used pva for all the other glue points. After this first plank I applied glue to the edge surfaces that made contact with each other. I know, I know; overkill again. This is only a first planking. Gaps can be filled. But I did it anyway. I knew that when I got to the last plank it would just barely fit in. I expected that I'd shape it a bit to conform to the contour of YY. I started playing with the plank and here's where I discovered issues two and three. So the second issue is most critical; make darn sure when putting transom piece ZZ on that it is perfectly aligned at 90 degrees to the BF across its full width. If not (and you guessed it, mine was not) the last plank will not lay flush to ZZ and there will be problems laying down the second layer of planking. To make the plank lie flush, I put a shim on the stern frame to bring the plank out about a mm. The opposite side was not a problem cause it could be sanded flush. I would suggest that when putting on these xx, yy and zz pieces, that spacers are used to assure they're perpendicular to BF. I was off by 1mm and it made a difference. The last issue I played with was that as I worked my way up the counter (actually down the counter but I'm still working upside down) the planks get wider. The top plank is about 10 mm wider than the bottom one. But the stern frames do not get wider. So when I got to the top one and centered it over the 3 frames, the outboard ends seemed very flexible to me. So I glued in two little backing pieces on the previous plank out at the ends. Once again, I opted for strength when appearance is not at issue. This gave this last plank 5 glue points instead of 3 and now it rests firmly with no flex at the ends. Still needs to be sanded smooth to the nice contour shape of the counter and perhaps a bit of putty put in up at that last curved plank. After all the futzing with it a gap remains at the outboard ends of the plank where the planks original width (1/8th inch) was just not enough to cover the frames. The second layer of planking is going to use thinner wood strips which should edge bend around this contour shape. But to make that work I'll need to use 7 planks 1/8th inch wide and shave a little bit off of one or two of them. That's for another day. My thoughts have now turned to cutting the hole through this first planking for the rudder. Hope these pix do justice to the way I went about solving the problems.
  16. I knew someone would remark about that gap between D and E. So here's the thing....when all I had was faired bulkheads I thought the slope from D to E was pretty "fair." It seemed fine; battens lay flat on both. Then I put in the balsa filler. When I began to fair it to its final shape it left this indent on D. I looked at it for a long time. I laid longer battens across C, D and E and even all the way back to A and B. They lay down really well except for this indent along bulkhead D. I concluded that D had earlier been faired too much. It didn't seem like a good solution to try to fair down the balsa block to match the slope of the narrow bulkhead. This would have resulted in a radical dip that would have had to be carried onto the smaller block between D and E and also more fairing of bulkhead E. So maybe, like I mentioned in an earlier post, the problem wasn't that bulkhead D was too low, but maybe C and E were still too high?? You gotta pick one or the other. I decided to go with bulkhead D was too low and to leave it alone (also decided not to even fill it in with putty since I have all the rest of the blocks as surface). The worst the can result is that my bow is a little fatter than someone else's. Joel, as far as the stern is concerned.... have you ever considered just widening a bulkhead by gluing on a curved strip (precut on scroll saw) to just say the outer half inch of the bulkhead? This seems doable and sure would reduce the amount of labor involved in adding filler.
  17. This morning I glued in the six balsa filler blocks I spent the last two days sculpting. I hope the pix do justice to them. I'm more than pleased with the smoothness of the curves all the way to the stem. I'm debating whether to fill in the small gaps with putty. Considering that this is a foundation for a planking, and not a final surface for painting, I think maybe filling those small gaps is an exercise in overkill. Obviously I've put in 95% more gluing surface than I had before, so what difference do the small indents make? If I fill them I just need to sand them. Considering this is balsa, even light sanding on an area that I now consider finished could create a small indent there. I think I will not fill any gaps unless maybe those that are likely to be at the far end of a plank. Its hard to tell in the pix, but the batten I'm holding against the filler really sits nicely. I'm thinking that the first planking should go pretty smoothly. As for the stern; not going to do any filler blocks. Unless, JB, you can convince me otherwise.
  18. Not much. Just a couple generalizations and a 'not to worry' cause it'll be painted anyway down below. Actually I guess great minds think alike. I have always been planning to fill those small areas between E and the stem. I've just been trying to take care of the big ones first.
  19. I hadn't considered that there would be a second planking that would somehow interact with the first and with this rabbet to create a real rabbet. I have a lot to learn. I'm actually hoping to do as nice a job as I can on the first planking, then paint it and forget the second -- other than above.
  20. Thanks for joining this conversation about rabbets, Joel. I agree that working with shorter planks is much easier; I intend to use 3 for the full length. When doing so though you have to be careful that the end pieces have not been tapered at their mid ship (or inboard) end. They have to butt against the middle plank and that one will probably be full width. I think Chuck suggests starting a taper about 3 inches from the bow and stern. Whatever it may be that is the point I will end the middle plank so the butt joint is equal in width. I doubt I will fully understand the issue of what the rabbet is supposed to do and if there is a difference between its function in real life and its semi-function on this model. I do know that in real life a groove or rabbet is chiseled into the keel at varying angles to the keel. The angle gets steeper as it moves toward the stern. The garboard plank slots into this rabbet and obviously holds it more secure than if it wasn't there. On some models and most good scratch builds this same process is done, albeit in mini scale. The garboard actually slots into the keel. But on this Mayflower kit the "rabbet" is not a groove really. Its more like....well its just a narrower strip of wood placed exactly down the middle of the keel (false keel or bulkhead former if you will). What I envision is that when the garboard plank is laid it will butt against this strip. Since the angle of the butt changes as you move forward and aft, the edge of the plank will have to be beveled cause the rabbet is at 90 degrees to the keel. Now I was once told that I'm the only one who would think about beveling a .8mm plank to conform to the angle of the previous plank laid, nonetheless this is how I envision it if its necessary. Laying down the garboard against the rabbet and then running more planks up the bow and stern to meet the rabbet, does not leave me with a vision of tucking or slotting these planks into any groove. At best this rabbet provides a tiny bit more glue surface when the edge of the plank meets the rabbet. And that is if you work from fore and aft and make this butt joint. If you go the other way and don't cut those planks damn precisely, there isn't even going to be that. Now take all this with a grain of salt. I may be way off base. I may have missed something along the way. Misread and not followed instructions well. So please, correct me if I'm wrong and there should be a real rabbet created on the keel for the planks to secure into.
  21. Taking the sage advice of jbshan I've gone ahead and started building fillers for the space between bulkheads C and D. Using a completely different technique and generating a whole lot less sawdust. I'm using two pieces of 3/8 th inch balsa laminated together. Fits perfectly into the space needed to fill. Cut square to about an half inch greater than the widest part of the larger of the two bulkheads. Then, with this rectangular piece fitted into the space, I traced the outline of the larger bulkhead (C) onto the wood. Then I took the piece to the Dremel scroll saw and cut that outline. This leaves me just a little to sand and fair. Important to cut scroll it the the larger bulkhead. If you mistakenly trace the outline of D (smaller) and scroll to that, its all wasted cause there will be no wood up against the upper edge of C to fair down to D. Anyway, it worked well on one and I've got the second lamination drying. Tomorrow is another day. Both of the bow fillers are taped on. I think they look pretty symmetrical and "fair." Any opinions?
  22. Been thinking the same thing. Also looking at the stern where filler may be even more critical. Thanks for keeping an eye on my build.
  23. Today I plan to 1st plank the counter. But before getting to it I thought I'd bring the log up to the minute. After much contemplation I went ahead and faired fram 4b all the way to the width of the forward edge of the poop deck. It just didn't make any sense not to. There was no reason why these bulkheads should extend out 1.5mm on each side. The fairing took awhile but came out smooth. And as I suspected, it allows the bulwark template to go on with less of a curve or angle back to bulkhead 5. I filled in some gaps between bulkheads and BF with Durhams water putty. I love this stuff. A powder that can be made to any consistency needed. Dries fairly quickly and quite hard and can be sanded. As I was doing this I looked closely at the space between bulkheads D & E (I could have the letters wrong) up at the bow and recalled how it was impossible on Bounty to plank around the curved bow without putting in some filler for gluing surface. So I started fiddling with what balsa I have on hand and ultimately got into the zen of wood carving. So now I have a filler block on one side and I think I will do the same on the other.
  24. I didn't think that you could 'tuck the plank into the rabbet', I thought (and observe so far) that all you can do is butt the plank up against it. I don't see how that holds it down or keeps it in place. Like you said, time will tell. The rest of it is spot on -- get the butted end on first (maybe a spot of CA there to hold it down) and then work toward the stern. I still can't decide if I will try using one full length plank or two or three planks, but which ever is easier, the last one can surely be run off the stern and then cut back.
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