lamarvalley

Using water and ammonia may help.
Ammonia reacts with the lignin in wood, which is the adhesive material holding fibers together. After soaking the wood in a strong ammonia, bend it to the shape desired. As the ammonia evaporates the water in the air replaces it in the lignin and restores to original glue strength. This is smelly and some people do not like the smell.
In an industrial / commercial operation, wood is placed in a strong vacuum resistant chamber and the air withdrawn. This takes the moisture with it. Anhydrous ammonia is then introduced and allowed to penetrate. The wood is then bent and allowed to replace the ammonia with the water from the air.

Thank you Randy,
I believe that sometimes a person should go through the process of starting from the beginning and work on simple projects such as this whaleboat. I know that many people like the elaborate works of full ships and wind up neglecting simple things like a ship's boat but If a person masters the simple things, than when it comes time for something truly amazing there will be no issues.
Ray

Beautiful detailing. I often wondered if I should buy this kit and give it a try and after seeing your build I think I will. Yours is an excellent example of how to do it. 
Well done sir!

Hello everyone,
Yes it’s been a while since my last post due to the fact that the majority of the main construction of my whaleboat has been knocked out of the ball-park. Now is the time to actually go through the ordeal of constructing the whalecraft and minor details. The minor details were oar locks, steering oar rest, compass box, waist and stern tubs, lantern keg, lantern, water keg, piggin, bucket, and coopered drogue. I’ve also tweaked the mast and oars to include the steering oar and tiller. These items are small and a person can easily finish them without realizing it. I should point out that there were a few items that I did not follow religiously from the guide. The guide book states that you can add the hoops to the buckets, etc… made from copper which I did not. What I used was 1/16 wide strips of card stock that I painted black with a sharpie and am happy at how they came out. The guide book also points out the details for the mast as follows, “mast hoops are usually a permanent feature of the mast and so should be present. After the hoops are on, add the wooden cleat for the spritsail tack”.  Keep in mind that I stressing the important fact that the hoops go on before you place the cleat. My hoops are not made from copper but rather from a piece paper. What I did was wrap a piece of wax paper a few turns around a dowel of similar dimension in order to get spacing between the dowel and the soon to be made hoops. I then glued a strip of paper about 4 inches wide around the wax paper and let it dry overnight. Once dry, I slid the paper off of the dowel, cut it down to the size I needed and finally took a sharpie to it. The finished result looks quite convincing as the photos below will show. I still have a few more items that need to be made before I can finally dress up my whaleboat and call it good.

Beautiful detailing. Always a pleasure to see what you produce next. 

Hi,
 
A bit more progress on the deadeye strops and chains.
 
After soldering all the links from the post above, I tried my hand at brass blackening using Birchwood Caseys Brass Black from the local gunshop.  They initially looked very good but as soon as I started handling them the black flaked and rubbed off.  I knew this was down to insufficient cleaning of the links as at the time I just gave them a rub with a brass bristle brush.
 
I found it easier to just snip all the rings off the supplied photo etch chain plates (to keep and reuse) and bin the links and redo them all again.  I didn't mind as I was enjoying the soldering and also used the opportunity to replace the large 0.7mm strops with 0.5mm as decided they looked better.
 
Once I re-soldered all 40 assemblies (again)and pre-bent to shape it was time to sort the blackening.  I bought a small bottle of Hydrochloric acid (Please be careful using the acid if you try this) from Bunnings and soaked them all for a minimum of 10 minutes occasionally agitating them. After rinsing in water I dropped them into a 50:50 solution of blackening and water varying the times between 2 and 4 minutes (never noticed any difference).
 
After rinsing again and drying I used a soft bristle paint brush to rub them against a cloth.  I inserted the deadeye and did a final squeeze to shape.  The blackening seems to have worked but still get left with black fingers when handling but at least it doesn't all come off.  I found the black was easily scratched though.
 
Picture shows all 40 assemblies.  From the 80 solder joints I had 2 failures when I gave them the final squeeze. Not to bad really.

 
 
Picture shows the 3 different sizes used.  Top is the mizzen mast shrouds, middle is the Fore and main mast back stays and bottom is the fore and main mast shrouds.

 
 
Also been working on other bits and pieces   I did the binnacle tie downs which was an exercise in frustration.  I used a thin Gutermann thread from the local Spotlight store to try seizing (thanks Shipaholic for pointing me there).


 
 
Also alternating between the chains and cannons.  All the carriage parts are from a walnut ply sheet which after cutting free and tidying up they don’t look to bad.  As Caldercraft use CNC for cutting there materials I need to use a small needle file next to remove the round bottoms of the slots on the axle parts and the carriage sides so they sit flush.  I think the 4 pounder barrels look very nice although can’t vouch for size or accuracy but looks good.


 
Cheers
Slog

That's fantastic work on the blocks/pulleys.  
 
 
However, I'm pretty sure this may be an indicator that you are crazy. 

Last but not least a picture of the blocks with 2 and 3 pulleys.
 
 

 
 
Bye Joachim

Amazing how one can get side-tracked during a build.  After completing the first cannon I wanted to measure the length of breeching rope needed.  This made me wonder if any of the bulwark-end eye-bolts will interfere with the pin racks.  While fiddling with the position of the pin racks I started wondering if all the running rigging will actually run clear of my tops – since I planned to scratch build mine.  So instead of just cutting a piece of rope I ended up making the whole fore mast, top and caps.
 
Making the top

 

 

 

 
I took more than one attempt to finish the first cap.  Lesson learnt – first drill all the holes and then shape the cap.  Else, keep some Band-Aids ready.

 
Fore mast with everything dry-fitted.  I can see that one would need to be very careful that nothing ends up crooked when you glue it all together.
 

 

 

 
I finished some more deck fittings and the stern gallery some time ago.

Hello and many thanks for warm words! Now it's time for litte update. Firs the last hanging knees in the cabin, I have decided to make them a little compass:
 

 

 

 

 
Then completted fore bulkhead of captains cabin, I leave the doors half open as in the rear bulkhead:
 

 

 

 

 

 
I hope I will have more time for modeling now...
 
Alex
 

Hi Guys,
 
Just a quick update to let you know how things are with the Aggy.
 
I haven't been totally idol but the progress on the ship has slowed slightly, the rigging continues and has seen all the breast ropes and backstays completed on the Foremast, all 4 anchors are made up and ready to be fitted when the time is right and I have made a new stand for the ship.
 
Oh ya, I also got some new toys, a swivel vice and a Clarkes Belt and Disc Sander.
 
All that remains for me to do now is, fit the Main Mast Breast Ropes and Back Stays, all the Braces and Sheets, some Cluelines and all the Tacks. Fit the anchors ( already made ) and the ships boats ( already made ).
 
I have the glass for the case so that needs to be assembled, once that's done I can take the inside measurements and get the base made up. So I would say in all about 2 - 3 weeks work left. Cleaning the ship will take some time before she goes under glass so I will have plenty of band aids and glue on hand for that task
 
OK enough said, time for some pics, rigging pics will follow soon.
 
My new belt and disc sander
  
 
Vacuum base swivel vice

 
The start of the new stand, all pieces are pegged with no glue used at all
 
 

 
Here's the finished base with a coat of Rosewood stain
  
 
I do hope guys that that will suffice as a quick update. There will be more to follow soon.
 
Be Good
 
mobbsie
 
 

I concur with Rich, sapele is a unforgiving bender although a good soak and heat will do it as long as the curve is not too extreme. Sapele is a form of mahogany and the grain is somewhat coarse and prone to snap suddenly. It's always a downer to be at the last tiny bit and about to breathe a sigh of relief for a great bend when a unsatisfying snap occurs. 
The walnuts from the kit looks darker and more evenly grained than the black walnut and that stuff should smoothly bend if needed… again with moisture and heat. Walnut also finishes so nice. 
Cherry is a fun wood too and the more the heartwood is exposed to light the darker it gets until it has a nice rich natural brown. Natural cherry is gorgeous when aged and clear coated.
 
But at this point it doesn't  matter what you do with it cause it's always a necessity and a pleasure to have excess wood… always.

I concur with Rich, sapele is a unforgiving bender although a good soak and heat will do it as long as the curve is not too extreme. Sapele is a form of mahogany and the grain is somewhat coarse and prone to snap suddenly. It's always a downer to be at the last tiny bit and about to breathe a sigh of relief for a great bend when a unsatisfying snap occurs. 
The walnuts from the kit looks darker and more evenly grained than the black walnut and that stuff should smoothly bend if needed… again with moisture and heat. Walnut also finishes so nice. 
Cherry is a fun wood too and the more the heartwood is exposed to light the darker it gets until it has a nice rich natural brown. Natural cherry is gorgeous when aged and clear coated.
 
But at this point it doesn't  matter what you do with it cause it's always a necessity and a pleasure to have excess wood… always.

Update time !
 
Am I on the right log ???? yep !
 
The first two sail's are on it   
The Mizzen royal sail and the Mizzen topgallant sail.
Attention please.....only the sails !
Not the rigging of that...
I know I should do furled sails but I found out that I have a few more sails then I thought.
There are also stay sails ( never knew that that exist )
So, the Fonz gonna have full sails !
Also the spanker boom and gaff are done.
That one gonna have the sails ( I hope ) this weekend otherwise next week.
Picture below all this nonsens...
Then ( yes there he is again ) question.
On the mizzen mast there is no Mizzen topsail.
There is the yard and that's it !
Does anyone knows why ????????
 
Sjors
 
 
 

Hello,
 
No words but deeds, so for today more pictures than talking. I am busy with all kind of (paint)jobs and the ship is approaching its completion
 



















 
Regards, Kees

When last we saw our intrepid little boat, the subdecks had been glued, but no fairing had been done.  Since then some progress has been made in that department.
I began by doing a 'rough' fairing to see where I needed to add any shims.
 

 
Because of adding all of the shims to the bottom of the bulkheads prior to mounting them, I found that no shimming was needed except for about half a dozen extensions that were not going to touch the planking without causing a 'dip', or needing to remove far too much material from their neighbors.
 
Once again I dipped into the 3/64ths basswood deck planking, and cut pieces for the extensions.  I used a second piece of basswood in the clamping so that the alligator clamps I used wouldn't leave divots in the shims where I didn't think I needed to sand very much material away.  Here you can see my clamping system so that I could use regular wood glue to hold the extension shims in place.
 

 
I made some blocks to reinforce the mast mortise, and placed them.  I made them overly long as I didn't want to apply a lot of glue right around the mortise.  This is also why I added a 'shim' to the edge of them, to get more glue surface away from the mortise opening.
 

 
I cut out bow fillers to a rough size with a hand scroll saw (I see a nice power band saw in my future I think, every time I use the scroll saw I see how useful of a tool it would be where I could guide a piece with both hands or a fence) and then did all the shaping with my Dremel and a drum-sanding attachment.  Once I had them nearly right I glued them in place before the final fairing, as I wanted them fixed in place to do the final shaping against the bulkhead, keel, and deck.
 

 
I did another run with a rough (120 grit) sanding block and reduced all of the bulkheads until I was seeing 'kit bulkhead' material on all the higher bulkheads, so that my mass shimming didn't cause the hull to be too 'fat'. 
 

 
I also realized that I had never beveled the stem, so I finished that, and trimmed the excess wood from the keel that extended aft beyond the sternpost.  At some point I need to make a tiny filler for the hole where the sternpost and keel connect that was left because of the keel being the wrong length.
 
And a couple test plank runs.  Very happy with how nicely they lay all the way from the keel up to the top of the bulkheads.
 

 
Still need to do a final pass with a 250 grit sanding block, but I am going to build out the stern and get it faired up with the hull before I do that.  Looks like the stern should occupy quite a few hours to get it right.
 
Fairly amazing to think that on the Carmen I was at this point in the build within a few hours of starting, since I didn't know any better, and did pretty much none of this early preparation work!  Then again, the planks didn't lay anything like this when I started working on them.

So this is really much easier than I expected it to be.  I measured along the longest bulkhead from keel to deck level with a tick strip, and set my chopper to that length and cut up one of the 3/64 basswood deck planks.  This made 9 pieces of the exact same width as the bulkheads.  I threw these into water to soak for a while, and then got after it.
 
I started with bulkhead F, which was the one that had the bad laser cut, with one side lower than it should be.  It's also the '3rd' bulkhead in the previous photos that didn't reach the bearding line, so I shimmed the top and sanded it down, and then shimmed both sides of the bottom.
 

 
The wet basswood is really amazingly easy to bend.  All of the terrible time I had with the planks on the Carmen made me think this was going to be a giant frustrating mess, and instead, they just bend right around the bulkhead, no problem at all.  I went ahead and bottom shimmed G, and double bottom shimmed H.

 
Couldn't ask for anything better than the result.

 
Based on how easy this was, I'm going to use more of the deck planking (since I'm not going to plank the deck with it) and shim out every bulkhead that isn't touching the bearding line, even if it's very close.  That way I should have a much easier time fairing, as I'll not run into a low spot that makes me have to shim a bulkhead that is already glued to the keel.
Thoughts on extending the shims up the bulkhead extensions?  Is there any point to that, or will I just need to sand them all down like I did on bulkhead F already?

During September 26-28, 2014 in Kiev the All-Ukrainian competitions "Cup of Kiev — 2014" in bench models of a class C were held (on classification of Naviga). Except the classes C1 - C7 (on the classification of Naviga existing now) held the second year competitions in the class C8 "Models from kits ". The class C8 consists of three subclasses:
C-8-1 – sailing vessels and similar to them, without the main mechanical engine;
C-8-2 – vessels with the mechanical engine;
C-8-3 – models of ship installations or parts of the ship, stages of construction of models.
The Montanes model participated in these competitions and received the first place in the class C8-3, a silver medal (gold in this class nobody was awarded) and the Cup of Kiev.

Well respectfully Steve I have to disagree with your assessment.
 
Depending on whether the tree branch grew slowly or fast the sapwood could be quite thin, and there are always opportunities for small blocks of wood on our models. There is a great satisfaction knowing that you looked after preparing the wood. The difference between air dried pear wood and Kiln dried pear wood is significant to quote James Krenov (Google him if you are unfamiliar)
 
"I don't get kiln-dried wood because I think that kiln-dried wood has been killed. This is not a pun,but a fact. The process of saturating wood with steam and getting it all wet, cooking it, you might say, is a chemical process that changes and dulls the color of the wood, and the fibers are affected so that wood which has been kiln-dried feels different to me. Its got a different ring, a different texture; it isn't clear and fine. Its like a poorly developed photograph--one that was taken well but just didn't come out. besides, kiln-dried wood is brittle. many people don't realize these truths because they have never been close enough to real wood, beautiful wood in its natural state. They've seen veneered surfaces; they've lived with wood second hand, and they are just not aware of the richness that is to be found in individual pieces, logs and planks."
 
Not everyone sees wood quite the way Krenov sees it, but I find his way of looking at it rather refreshing.
 
Please do not misunderstand I am not suggesting that Jeff's wood is inferior far from it, all I am trying to suggest is that there can be wonderful benefits to working with a small piece of wood that you prepare for yourself.
This tiller made from a very small branch of White Lilac is what I mean, and the curved piece of cherry was cut from the wood around a knot.
 

 
So Louie definitely coat the ends of the wood with wax melt some paraffin wax (sort used in cooking) in a pan and paint the ends with it leave it for a few years in a cool dry place.
 or cut it up into sections slab or quarter sawn and sticker it as already suggested.
 
Regards Michael 

JAX Chemical company sells a blackener called Pewter Black that works real well on brass, copper, and solder.  I apply it with a paint brush, and when the metal is dark enough I rinse the part with tap water.  It doesn't seem to get a scale like blacken-it does.  I've tried painting it onto wood and then rinsing it off with water, and there is no residual stain.  This means you can use it to blacken (or touch up) a metal part that is already in place without staining the surrounding wood.  It's what I'll be using from now on.  It even blackened the stainless ferrule on the paintbrush!
 
http://www.jaxchemical.com/jaxshop/shopexd.asp?id=61
 
Frank

Wow Sjors, beautiful job! 

The next job was the netroll. I started painting and weathering and after this I placed the net on the roll. Voor netting I use bathsponges wich have nice netting if you cut the string holding them together. I also painted and weathered the trawldoors wich are made from aluminium so no rust this time.

more work done today - I am actually quite pleased with the way things are progressing, oh and as it is Sunday, a trip into sunlight
 
please click on photo's for better image

Copperplates are done !!!!!
Not at the bottom of the keel because they don't do that at that time.
And when she is standing on the cradle, you don't see it.
For a while she goes on the shelf and I go back to the Fonz.
I hope to see you there also when there is an update to report....
 
Sjors
 
 

Time for rudder gudgeons. According to the kit plans, their pins should be created using 1mm wire drilled right into the rudder and bent 90 degrees. That would be hideous, so I decided to solder them to the outer side of the gudgeons creating a gentle toe like this (Proxxon butane torch rules)
 

 
But then the pin appeared to me too thick, so I replaced the 1mm wire with thin brass nails. 
 
I don't have good experience with blackening brass, so I painted the parts using metal primer, tamyia acrylic and semi-matt Nelson varnish to protect the paint. There is a bit of silver paint to add the shiny metal effect, but not on the photo. 
 

 
 
Almost finished rudder