thibaultron

I'm going to use some shims for leveling. More on the mods coming. I do plan to reinforce the legs, again in the coming mods. I may add a plywood back later, will see how the stability is as I begin to use it.

Part 01 After many years of wanting one, I finally bought a Harbor Freight Hardwood Workbench! Actually this is the second one I bought, the first one was in my truck when it was stolen last year! This workbench is designed to be used while standing, not ideal for me, or my knees! So I’m going to kit bash it so I can use it while sitting at it. As it comes the work surface is 34 inches high, I prefer a 27 inch height. Also I need to delete the drawers and the front shelf support bar and shelf board of the lower shelf. I’ll save the drawers and slides for a future project. The legs below the horizontal shelf board on the sides are 7” long, so cutting the legs off at the bottom of this will get me the height I need. The first step was removing the screws that held the feet to the legs, and taping them off the legs. Thankfully the manufacturer did not do a good job of gluing them together! So the first problem is that I will need to drill the shortened legs for a new 1” dowel to mate with the existing hole in the feet, more on this later. I will not be regluing this joint when I reassemble the legs, I will add a couple screws from the foot into the horizontal shelf board to add the needed stiffening. The pins on the end of the legs are turned not a separate dowel, and are slightly larger than 1” anyway, with a matching larger hole in the feet. When I shorten the legs the cut will bisect the lower shelf bracket hole, so I clamped a scrap piece onto a leg, and drilled through the existing holes to make a jig. Next I drilled new upper holes using the jig, then opened up the inside with a larger drill to match the existing holes. I used a piece of duct tape on the larger drill as a depth guide. Sorry that some of the pictures are a little blurry. I had to balance the part on my knees while holding it in one hand and using the other for the camera. I broke out my miter saw to cut the legs. I adjusted the stop on the end of the table so all the legs would be the same length, and cut the first leg. At first I was going to cut just below the hole, but then decided to cut it flush, allowing the foot to rest on the cross piece. This should be more stable. To cut the other leg, I had to remove the square piece, which originally held the slides for the drawers. It stuck up past the top of the leg assembly, and interfered with the stop, when I flipped the assembly over to cut the other side. After the legs were cut I re-installed the piece, as it also stiffens the assembly.Here are both leg assemblies cut. As this picture shows the new end of the leg has this nice divot in it from the original shelf support hole. This is not very conducive to drilling the end for a dowel! So I build another jig to guide the drill for the new dowel hole. It was at this point that I discovered that both my old spade bit and even older Fosner bit were both dull and wandered while drilling!. So I tore the jig apart, and will buy a new drill bit, when I buy a piece of 1” dowel.

I was watching a video of a car show from a couple of years ago, where Ford had a machine that was 3D printing a plastic 1:1 T-Bucket body and another robotic one that was sanding the finished bodies.

I tried, and tried, but failed, to hold it in! "I guess, the yokes on us!"

Following along, neat build!

In short, no. Having the sails in place would greatly complicate attaching the shrouds, and ratlines, due to limiting the space near the masts, and risk snapping off or breaking the yards.

Good "Out of the Box" thinking.

Light colored floor, to make the task of finding dropped parts. Room for display cases, as it sounds like you don't have room in the rest of the house for displaying your models. Depending on your location, AC. Shop Vac that can be hooked to your saw sander, etc. Or at least clipped near by. Piece of plate glass for your workbench. One from an old china cabinet should be cheap or free, if you can find someone getting rid of one. Small bench top drill press.

Agreed. Looks great!

Thanks!

What are the flaws, or at least the major ones?

Got the Sinagots book scanned , converted to text, and translated. bad news, really bad translation. The OCR I used is 20 years old, and while it did catch most of the words, it missed a lot of the French accent marks! It is readable, but not for technical details. I have found, though, how to set MS Word to spell check the OCRed French text, before translation, so I'll work on that, then re-translate. The spray booth is presently hidden behind building supplies, so not much progress has been made. This weekend, I'm going to be cleaning, and rearranging the renovated portion of the shop. Hopefully next week, I can continue the build.

How about a Catalina, in the markings of the one that spotted the Bismarck, and thus allowed the Swordfish to attack her?

Patrick; You are probably the only one who will ever notice any distortion in the shrouds, they look great!

Just to put my 2 cents in, a few things I learned about derusting tools while rebuilding a milling machine. Take your average new steel bar. The surface you see is not the steel, it is an oxidized clear surface that is preventing further rust! If you dip the end in a rust remover, pull it out and clean the chemical out, the entire surface will start to aquire a light rust coating. You have to polish it to restore the very fine surface oxide surface. I found this out through reading after trying both electrolysis, and rust removers on the milling machine parts, only to have the parts start to get this light rust as soon as I pulled the parts out of the electrolysis tank, or removed the chemical cleaners. The rust converters, do leave an un-removable coating, as such, I'd worry about using them on critical surfaces, like slides, measuring surfaces, like the tips of micrometers, etc. My final solution was electrolysis followed by a lot to hand polishing with steel wool for the sliding surfaces, and fine sanding on the cosmetic ones. Or wire brushing for lightly rusted areas. I did not end up with a new looking machine, but everything worked as it should, and it cut accurately. For the electrolysis tank I used a large plastic storage tub, the kind you can buy at any major store in the US. The supply was a battery charger I built for the batteries (lead acid seal ones used in emergency lights, motorized child cars, etc.). It had an Amp meter and as the part became less rusty, the current would drop. Any low voltage DC supply would work. Be sure to kill the power before you stick your hand in the water! It has been 20 years, so my memory is a bit vague, but I think I used Washing Soda (not baking soda) in the water. This is available in the laundry detergent aisle, here in the US. In the end, if I had simply gone over the sliding surfaces with some fine steel wool, and wire brushed the rest, I would have been better off. So for just fin rust, a wire brush, or steel wool, with maybe dental picks for the bottom of the knurls.

Beautiful model!

Great tip! Looks good.

Picture of diagram?

Frank; The Willie Bennett rigging diagram, also shows a single block for the topping lift, as shown in the Kathryn drawings. I don't know why, but maybe the crew were in better shape than we are.

Looks great!

The handle position may have been changed for display purposes. All the photos I have of them in use show them setup opposing. I am also sure that the powered winder was well received! Here is my drawing from SketchUp for the 1/32 scale 3D print.

The ties would more resemble a fresh telephone pole. Primer red would be too red. Think more the brown of standing rigging, a brown, almost black.

I keep de-bonder and acetone around for just such reasons.

I'm on board too! I have the "visible" 1/48th version kit, with the clear skin. I'm looking forward to your build! As a side note to you cat lovers: One of the German "crewmen" rescued from the Bismark, was the ship's cat. He was adopted by the British ships crew. Later that ship was sunk, but the cat once again survived. He was then the ship's cat of a British merchant ship, that was also later sunk. He once again was amoung the surviving crewmen. After this he was moved to an old sailor's home, where he lived out his days. They called him Unsinkable Sam. (Yes, this is a true story, he was quite famous in Britain.)

If you have a scanner, scan the one side, use a graphics program to mirror it, and print out a template for the unmarked side. A good free graphics program is GIMP.