usedtosail

Nice work kmart on the gun port sills. If I may provide some guidance, those headers near the bow need to bow out in the middle so you have a nice curve of the planks there. Otherwise you will have a flat spot between the deadeyes. i can't tell from the third image above if there is enough curve on the header between the first and second gun bulkheads. Something I had to learn as I went.

Time for a weekly update. First, thank you for the likes. I have been mostly working on getting the jack stay lines and studding sail booms onto the topsail and topG yards, and the horses and stirrups on the lower and royal yards. Here are the completed yards and spars so far: And here are the others in progress: I made up all of the stirrups I will need for the rest of the yards. These are a doubled piece of line that I put around a drill bit and add a seizing to make a small loop: I think there are 24 of these in this picture, with 3 different size lines. Here I am using them on the main royal yard. The mizzen lower yard doesn't have any stirrups, so that is the other small yard. The three topG yards are shown in progress in this image too. I am hoping to finish up these yards soon so I can move on.

Had to laugh at all your medicine bottles. I also keep a good supply of them. One day my brother in laws were visiting and they saw them all and said it must take a lot of drugs to build these ships. They are not too far off, I think.

Looking good, Popeye. More cold weather on the way, but not as bad as last week, eh?

Thanks for the likes folks. More progress on the lower yards. I have successfully added the studding sail booms to the main and fore lower yards, after a little rework. I went to slip one of the fore studding sail booms into the inner bracket to use it to align the outer bracket, but it had a double bend in it like an S shape, which it did not have when I stained it. So, I had to make and finish a new one, which took a few days. It is all installed now. I took a bit of a short cut on the outer brackets, which on the real ship are two straight pieces that meet at a 90 degree angle. For mine, I just bent a single piece into a 90 degree angle. I have also been adding the horses and stirrups to these yards, and have started adding the jack stay to the main topsail yard. The mizzen lower yard, or crossjack yard, does not have a jack stay since it does not carry a sail. For the yards with jack stays, the stirrups are tied to the eyebolts and hang down the back of the yard. For the crossjack yard, I first made the stirrups as loops around the yard, but I didn't like how they hung down. So, I went a different route here by adding small nails to the back of the yard, leaving the heads above the yard slightly so I could tie the stirrups to the nails. I then pushed the nails further into the yard. Here is how it came out. I still need to shape the stirrups so they curve around the yard so the horses are hanging down, not straight back. A little white glue and some clothes pins should take care of that. Speaking of jack stays, the MS plans specifically say to only put jack stays on the fore and main lower and topsail yards. Since I plan to put a sail on the three topsail yards, I was wondering how to attach the mizzen topsail to that yard, which I figured would be to just loop lines around the yard to hold the sail. But, I have the plans from the 1929 restoration, which clearly show jack stays on all the yards except the crossjack yard. So, I am going to add a jackstay to the mizzen topsail yard and possibly the topgallant yard too. I am not putting jack stays on any of the royal yards as the eyebolts I have would look way too big. I will have furled sails on the topG yards and maybe the royal yards too, which would cover them anyway. I will have jackstays on the fore and main topG yards. Keep this in mind future Connie builders that the plans may be misleading here. I have also started planning for making the topsails and the furled sails. I have sail plans from the restoration that I have pulled each sail out from and scaled them to model scale, so I can make paper templates for each sail. This will be done in parallel with finishing the yards. Have a great weekend all.

It was pretty cold last week - hovering around 0 most of the week. Up to 40 degrees today, though.

Damn, why didn't I think of that Dave. I did use a small scroll saw and it was real pain taking the blade in and out for each layer.

I agree Popeye, a model this size with all the studding sails up would be very impressive. For me, a few sails is all I am going to add, though. I leave it as an exercise for future modelers to tackle that one. It has been a while since my last update. With the holidays and the extremely cold weather we have been having here I didn't get as much time in the work shop that I would have liked, but there has been some progress. I blackened the studding sail boom brackets with Birchwood Casey blackening solution, which did a great job even on the solder joints. Then I tackled the stropping of all the blocks I need for the yards, spanker boom, and gaff, which was a lot. It seems like I have been tying seizings for weeks, which I have been. These little jars contain between 6 to 10 jars, one jar for each yard. I then started adding the details to the spanker boom and gaff. This included the various blocks, some bands and eye bolts at the ends, and the stirrups and foot ropes on the boom. I also started adding details to the lower yards, starting with fore and main yards. I glued in all of the eyebolts for the jack stays, except for the eye bolts at each end. This was a little tedious but once I got into a rhythm it went pretty smoothly. I did have to clean out each hole with a drill in a pin vice, as the finishing process closed up the holes somewhat. The tool shown is a needle holder, which I have to say is the BEST tool I have used by a lot for working with these tiny eyebolts. They can be used like tweezers to grip them without them flying off around the room, but they also have a locking mechanism when you squeeze the handles together which holds them very tightly, so they don't want to twist when inserting into a hole, like they do with tweezers. This tool that I bought was one of the inexpensive versions you can get on Amazon or eBay (I forget where I got this one), which works great, but I may invest in a more expensive professional version since I like it so much. I have also used it for its intended purpose, when pushing needles through things like glue hardened strops on blocks. It works great for that too. Once all the eyebolts were in place, I seized a piece of line into another eyebolt and glued it into one of the end holes. I then threaded the jack stay line through each eyebolt. For the small blocks that fit on top of the yard, I had stropped them with small loops, which I threaded the jack stay line through at the right locations as I got to those points. When all the jack stay eyebolts were filled and all the blocks in place, I seized another eyebolt to the end of the line and glued that eyebolt into the other end hole. I left the seizing loose, and pulled the jack stay tight when the glue on the eyebolt was dry, then fixed the seizing in place. The two larger blocks on each yard were seized around the yard, as they hang underneath. You can see the inner studding sail boom brackets have also been added, so the next step is to line up the outer brackets, bend them so the booms will be at the right height, then glue them into the ends of the yards. Then the stirrups and foot ropes will be added, and I will move onto the crossjack and topsail yards.

Like Jon I just discovered your log. You are off to a great start.

Screw up club? See my build log. The good news is that by the second or third time I do something I am usually pretty happy with it.

Thanks Dan. Another term I was confused about. And thank you Geoff. I am enjoying working along side you as you rig your Conne too.

Sure Geoff, that's what I love about this site too. I am glad you were already thinking ahead. For the main stays, I didn't have trouble running them along side the fore mast since the pin rails are mostly behind the mast. I used some large eyebolts that I glued into the bulwarks on each side of the bow sprit using medium CA. I didn't have to put much tension on the stays so I don't fear that the eyebolts will pull out, unless of course I inadvertently hit them hard while rigging something else. The plans show a more elaborate fixture at the bows for these stays, but they are hard to see when the stays are in place. Whoops - I think you are asking about the main topmast stays. I also glued eyebolts into the deck at the bottom of the fore and main masts. They also seem to hold well in the deck. Threading the lanyards between the bulls eyes on the stays and the eyebolts was not as hard as I thought it would be.

Thanks for the likes, guys. I have stained all of the yards and stunning sail booms with oak stain, except for the yard arms, which will be painted black. The spanker gaff and driver boom will also be painted all black. While waiting for those to dry, which seems to take a few days, especially for the parts made from dowels, I have been making the stunning sail boom brackets that go on the fore and main lower, topsail, and topgallant yards. I am making these from brass tubing and round and square brass rod, and in the past I would have CA glued these together. But this time I was determined to make them correctly by soldering the parts together. Now, I have never been able to solder very well, so this was going to be quite a departure for me. What was different this time is that I had xKen's excellent instructions from his build log on how he made these, and I have been reading his Modeling in Brass book, which also has some great instructions for these kinds of parts. In the course of building these parts, I ended up using many different power and hand tools, so I will try to describe the process and tools that I used. The first task was to drill holes in the tubing for the rod, which I used the mill and sensitive drilling attachment with a very small center drill bit to do. I found that the mechanics vise on the mill was the perfect vise to hold the tubing without crushing it, and I used it for other operations too, like cutting the slices from the tube. After drilling the starter holes, I used a pin vise to enlarge the holes to fit the rod I was using, which was round for the inner brackets and square for the outer brackets. I then put the tube back into the vise and sliced off individual pieces using the jewelers saw shown in the above picture. This saw was fantastic for this operation, which I have always had trouble doing in the past. I have tried rolling the tubing under an X-Acto knife, but could never get it to stay in a single line all the way around the tubing. I have tried other saws too, without too much success. Also, in the past I never had a good way to hold the tubing steady while cutting, like I can in the mechanics vise. The next step was to assemble the pieces for the brackets and hold them down for soldering. The inner brackets were made with one larger piece of tubing in the center and two smaller pieces on the rods, then cut in half after soldering. Here is one of the ready for soldering (left) and the one on the right has already been soldered. . The soldering board is a piece of something that is very light but fire proof (although not burn proof as you can see from the burn marks from previous soldering efforts using silver solder and a butane torch). It is soft enough that those push pins go into it easily. I bought it from Micro Mark a while ago. For a soldering iron, I have tried to use cheap or old ones in the past that I had laying around, but then I bought this soldering station which I am coming to really like. It has both a soldering iron and a hot air blower, and you can set the temperature of each. I am using Stay Bright solder and flux, which I can't recommend enough. It melts at about 200 degrees C, so I set the soldering iron to 350. The flux is a liquid so one drop on each joint gets the job done, and once the part is hot, a light touch of the solder flows nicely into the joints. I have been trying to use other soft and hard solder that I had with very little success, until I tried the Stay Bright and flux. I still had some issues with too much solder getting into the small tubing, but I was able to drill these out with a pin vise, then ream them out with a pointed grinding bit in the Dremel tool. When I sliced off the tubing pieces, I made them oversize on each side of the hole. So, the next step was to thin the brackets to the correct thickness. To do that, I used this disk sander which I keep permanently on the work bench, mostly to square up wood parts before gluing. It worked great on the brass though too. You can see some of xKen's pictures from his build log that I am using as instructions in this picture too. To sand the parts thinner, I held them in a heliostat and carefully touched them to the sanding disk. The first few times I was leaving them on the disk too long and they would get hot enough to melt the solder. So I learned to use quick light touches and let the part cool between touches. Once thinned, I cleaned up the rest of the parts with files and they are now ready for blackening. The pieces with the square brass rod on the single loop are the end brackets. The ones in the last picture had not been thinned yet. These will be bent and inserted into holes in the ends of the yards later. I won't bend these until I have the inner brackets in place and I can gauge the height of these end brackets so the booms will be straight on the yards. There are metal strips on the yard arms that hold these end brackets, but because the yard arms will be painted black, I am going to use the same technique I used for the mast bands and wrap paper strips around the yard arms before painting them to simulate these metal bands. I could have tried making these out of brass strips, but I think I will quit while I am ahead. That is actually the next step after giving the yards and stunning sail booms a coat of wipe on poly, now that the stain is dry.

That's a great technique for the netting, Jesse.

That is a nice spacer Geoff. Just be careful at the deadeyes towards the rear of the channels as they have a pretty severe angle to the mast, so the spacer may be a little short for those deadeyes.

Nice work on the bow filler and framing. I found this area to be very challenging, and you did a great job.

Jay, I'm glad you find my build log useful. Don't get too hung up on what I did, I was pretty much flying blind at that point. You can't go wrong following along with xKen's and other's logs here too. I am currently building the stunning sail boom brackets following xKen's excellent instructions. No Legos? Well, PM me your address and I'll send you some. We have a big tub that the kids don't want (they are too young to have their own kids yet).

Great start on the gun deck. That is always a big step to take, but you will not regret the decision.

Thanks for the info Jon. Not sure how they would be used for reefing, but they look like they would be used to keep ropes maybe being used for leverage from sliding along the yard? Art, there are some great Connie builders and build logs on this site, which is the only way I could be where I am. Feel free to use any ideas and ask questions if you need to. I will definitely follow along with your build once you get started. After the yards were turned, I turned the stunning sail booms. These were pretty simple lathe turned with just files and sandpaper to shape them. I also turned the two fore lower booms that sit on the channels. These still need some wooden parts, like chokes, added. I also turned the spanker gaff and boom. The kit supplies laser cut pieces for the jaws, but the holes are too large and too near the edges. They do match the plans pretty well, s I am using them as templates for the outside shape of these and making my own from strip wood. You can see the supplied jaws and the first one I made in this picture on the left. Here is (a pretty lousy picture of) the setup I used in the mill to drill the two holes in the inboard end of each stunning sail boom. I indexed off the edge of the V block so for each boom, I just lined up the end with the edge of the V block and drilled the hole. I just have to finish up the jaws and glue them to the gaff and driver, and add the other wood parts to the lower booms, then I am going to add the finish to all the yards and booms. I am going with an oak stain for all of them, with an overcoat of wipe on poly, and the yard arms will be painted black.

Nice work Dan. Those railings look very tricky to do and you did a great job.

I continue to work on the yards. As I mentioned before, I continue to refine the process as I have been going along. One big improvement I found was these V Blocks that I had in my father's stuff. They are a much better way to hold round or octagon stock on the tilting table, as shown here. I clamp one block down tot he table, then slide the other block along the yard as I drilled the holes for the jackstays, so I could support them under where I was drilling. This worked really well. After each yard is turned and drilled on the lathe/mill, I then added the other wooden features so they would be in place when I put the finish on the yards. Once that is done, then I will add the other items like blocks, stirrups, etc. I added battens on the lower and topsail yards, as shown in the last post, and the sling cleats, which I made from strip stock using a file to remove material. The mizzen or crossjack yard also had stop cleats, which I added. These are small pieces so I cut them larger, glued them on, then finished them on the yard with files. The topsail yards have coxcombs on the yard arms, and I have no idea what they were used for. If anybody knows, please let me know. I made them from very thin strip stock using a razor blade to cut the "spikes". The topsail, topG, and royal yards have parrel saddles, which are all a different size, but the plan that came with the kit only show one yard and then give the dimensions of the others. so to make the saddles I first copied the plans for the one yard and then re-copied it at the scale for each of the other yards. I cut these out and glued them to some folder material, then cut them out as templates that I traced to a piece of wood, cut them out roughly and then did the finish shaping with files. Here are the lower and topsail yards ready for finishing, and the topG yards that just need the parrel saddles added. I still need to turn the royal yards, stunning sail booms, driver boom, and gaff. Getting there, though.

Thanks Dave. No problem at all. I have trouble keeping track of what I have done on my own model, let alone what others I have seen. Now its your turn to take up the challenge, no?

You want carronades with screw posts, see my build here: https://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/5003-uss-constitution-by-usedtosail-model-shipways-scale-176/&do=findComment&comment=384050. Have fun with those.

Nice job on the frames. I like your struts. Those filler pieces took me a lot of time and I ended up doing the same as you - making the top part as a separate piece.