Mark Pearse

That's worth a post. It's a striking looking model already.

The lego sorting is finished and the eye is Ok for some low dust workshop activities (I wore a pair of goggles just to be sure). Yesterday and today I recommenced work on the hull.
 
The following three pictures show internal views of Cangarda.


In the accommodation spaces the hull frames are hidden behind the internal cladding. I assume that space between the cladding and hull is full of insulation.  The only space where the framing is left exposed is in the engine room. 
 
In the accommodation spaces I decided to use balsa to create the walls. 

This was installed in the fashion of barrel making - the balsa only being slightly thicker than the depth off the webs on the frames. An internal view might make this confusing remark clearer. The internal surfaces will be sanded flat and clad internally when Cangarda is removed from the building board.

With the circular saw being out of action the cutting of the balsa was done with a razor saw.
 
I was distracted from the balsa work when I realised I had mistakenly made the prop shaft casing 18mm diameter when it should have been 14mm. I started carving it back but decided I needed a guide, so I turned up the guide indicated by the white arrow.

Positioning the guide in the casing allowed me to roughly carve the casing to approximately the correct size.

I then shaped a sanding block to the correct external diameter and finished the resizing by sanding.

It will probably take another week or so to finish the balsa work. The walls of the engine room will be devoid of the balsa filling.
 
 
 
 
 

Steven: You need to stretch the SilkSpan, wet it with water alone first and let it dry to make it drum-tight. Then, when you re-wet it with dilute acrylic, it will initially sag, but re-dry tight and smooth again.  

I have never painted silk span before, but I imagine you would want to stretch it while wet to make sure it drys taught. You could take a look at this video where the person doing this doesn’t use a frame, but stretches it while wet so it dries flat.
 
 
It is also potentially you could be painting the layers while the previous layer is still not fully dry. This is a big no-no in acrylic painting as you reactivate the previous layer and make your surface less smooth.

I have installed the waterways both sides.



Cheers
Dick

Mark, thanks for the concern. No, the fires are around Beaufort, about half an hour's drive away - in fact people from there have been evacuated to Ballarat. And though the fire's still going strong, the weather's cooled down (it was 36 degrees here yesterday - about 100 degrees F - but today was only 18 (64 F).
 
Tony, thanks for the suggestion - I'd heard that, but so far haven't come across any at a decent price - or at all, to be honest.
 
Steven 

Hi Steven,  I hope you aren't in danger with the current bushfires in your area. Best wishes on that.

Hi Steven,  I hope you aren't in danger with the current bushfires in your area. Best wishes on that.

Silly posts or not, it would of course be possible to do the tail piece using a lathe and controlled bed. It would take two clear passes with the dovetail bit. The pins, not so much because you get a rounded inner surface.
Anyway, I only have a wood lathe and no usable index table (and no dovetail bit of mini size) so hand tools it is.
The coaming came out pretty neat. Here it just sits in it place, not glued in. Two coats of water base matte lacquer applied to the sides. 


And finally a perspective picture of the build. As usual with all the debris in the background 😄 

Pax et bonum!

This vessel did not have lodging knees but lodging planking, this would save money. Knees are made from grown compass timber ( this grain follows the shape of the knee) and for a humble merchant vessel would be expensive overkill. Hanging knees however were used and presumably grown.


Dick

Thanks everybody for the likes and thanks particularly to Liteflight, Glen, Banyan and Roger for the replies.
 
I got hold of an old picture frame from an op shop - 3 bucks - much easier than making my own and it still had the glass in it, which I expect to have a future use for.
 
Liteflight, I echo your hope that I'll find a source of boxwood.  Looking forward to seeing if it's as good for carving as people keep saying.
 
Regarding kick-back on the tiller, I expect that's a factor, and also the bracing of the feet. Normally I have them fairly well spread apart anyway (it helps them stand up on their own without a stand), but I'll certainly take this on board (sorry!) when carving them. Legs and feet are usually the last things I finalise.
 
I don't have any information regarding whether there were one or two steermen - I expect it would depend on the width of the ship  at that point. I do know that when Tim Severin re-enacted Jason's voyage, his 'Argo' had only a single steersman working two rudders simultaneously, but that was a fairly small narrow vessel.
 
Dammit, Glen! So I'm immortalising myself? I know some artists did that kind of thing, inserting themselves into their paintings, and Alfred Hitchcock used to appear in cameos in his movies . . .
Yep, trakkie daks and a flannie and a sloppy joe and a koala jacket*. Can't be too warm. but this is Ballarat. And I really hate the cold. I usually rug up more than other people anyway.
Thanks, mate. I think I'll use masking tape to hold the silkspan in as well - less likely to tear it.
 
Steven
*Gym pants, flannelette shirt, loose jumper, fleece-lined zip-up jacket.

I've been a bit distracted by my other build, the Golden City paddlewheeler, but I've also been working on crewmen for the San Marco ship. Here are a bunch I've already finished and have now painted,

and two of them I've also shaded. I've exaggerated the light and shade as otherwise they look bland.
  
 

And two new crewmen letting go and hauling on the shrouds as the ship tacks. (Big lateeners had to move the yard to the other side of the mast every time they tacked, and to do this the shrouds had to be loosened off - after tacking the lee shrouds would be somewhat loose and the weather shrouds tight.)
 
Crewman hauling down on (new) weather shroud.
  
And opening up the gap between his arms
  
And the legs . . .
  
Normally I'd do his face early in the process, as if I got that wrong there'd be no point in continuing - but in this case I couldn't get at it until I'd opened up the arms
  
And the hands and fingers . . . (I'm getting better at fingers).
  
  
And another crewman, belaying a shroud.
 
   
Looks a bit like Sir Ralph Richardson at the moment, but that will change. Now more like Noel Fielding . . .
  
Or perhaps Richard Harris?
   
Yep, Richard Harris . . . 

I've decided to discard the two helmsmen (in the top picture - one in yellow and one in green) in light of the Black Sea discoveries about tiller location on quarter rudders, and I'll be making new ones. So I had to get some photos taken to base their arm positions on.
 

And here are the two helmsmen just started:

 
Steven
 
 
 

Hi Craig
 
I hadn't seen this log before, I clearly need to browse the forum a bit more.
 
She's very nice. Is that a heavyweight sharpie?

fascinating stuff, thanks for posting it
 

fascinating stuff, thanks for posting it
 

fascinating stuff, thanks for posting it
 

Tool rants and sailing discussions aside, I said I was about to do the rudder.
Did I?
Erhm, no.
After painting the hull a couple of times it didn't appeal to me to do the rudder (too simple). Instead I've opted for somethinge inherently much harder and more complicated - the coamings for all the deck openings! Truth be told, I have never done a fish tail corner in full size and now I attempt them in 1:30.. sane? No, not really. Buth then, amongst the kids I'm not known for being sane all the time 😄 
So far, so good I must say. Only about 19 or 23 more corners to do 🙂 


And here is my setup with tools to accomplish to work.

Now a brake to watch some cross country skiing.
Cheers!

Thank you Håkan, that's a lovely yacht, & thee S & S dna is evident. I have been lucky enough to do a motor boat cruise through the Finnish SW archipelago, & we went as far as Åland (Avenamaa), so have some experience of the rocky aspect. It was slightly shocking that some rocks 1m or less deep can be unmarked.....but I suppose you get used to it. Avenamaa of course has historical ties to Australia, being the home of the last sailing trading ships between Europe & Australia, as late as the late 1940s, I think.
 
all the best & thank you for the minor detour

Thank you Håkan, that's a lovely yacht, & thee S & S dna is evident. I have been lucky enough to do a motor boat cruise through the Finnish SW archipelago, & we went as far as Åland (Avenamaa), so have some experience of the rocky aspect. It was slightly shocking that some rocks 1m or less deep can be unmarked.....but I suppose you get used to it. Avenamaa of course has historical ties to Australia, being the home of the last sailing trading ships between Europe & Australia, as late as the late 1940s, I think.
 
all the best & thank you for the minor detour

Thank you Håkan, that's a lovely yacht, & thee S & S dna is evident. I have been lucky enough to do a motor boat cruise through the Finnish SW archipelago, & we went as far as Åland (Avenamaa), so have some experience of the rocky aspect. It was slightly shocking that some rocks 1m or less deep can be unmarked.....but I suppose you get used to it. Avenamaa of course has historical ties to Australia, being the home of the last sailing trading ships between Europe & Australia, as late as the late 1940s, I think.
 
all the best & thank you for the minor detour

it would be nice to hear what sort of vessels you can & like to sail on, your part of the world has a rich maritime history

Thank you Håkan, that's a lovely yacht, & thee S & S dna is evident. I have been lucky enough to do a motor boat cruise through the Finnish SW archipelago, & we went as far as Åland (Avenamaa), so have some experience of the rocky aspect. It was slightly shocking that some rocks 1m or less deep can be unmarked.....but I suppose you get used to it. Avenamaa of course has historical ties to Australia, being the home of the last sailing trading ships between Europe & Australia, as late as the late 1940s, I think.
 
all the best & thank you for the minor detour

it would be nice to hear what sort of vessels you can & like to sail on, your part of the world has a rich maritime history

it would be nice to hear what sort of vessels you can & like to sail on, your part of the world has a rich maritime history

Hi Steven,
 
I can confirm it works, I used acrylic paint (tinted to suit the colour I was after) plus 10-15% PVA, then rolled on with a 100mm roller. There's some more details starting from about post 344, linked below. I used a 6H pencil for seams & finished with clear matt spray finish. 5 years later & there is no sign of any delimitation or discolouring.