Jump to content
New Publication - Ship Modeler's Handbook - They're back in stock! Thank you for your patience. ×
BlueJacket Shipcrafters 10% off sale-April14th to 25th, all the kits we offer will be 10% off. No need to use special codes, it will be automatic when you place your order by phone, web, email, snail mail or in person. Put your tax refund to good use! ×

usedtosail

NRG Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    2,357

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by usedtosail

  1. usedtosail
    Thanks for the likes all. With all the crazy time at work this week, I did manage to get some therapeutic time in the shop. I glued the new bow pin rail in place and added the belaying pins. I also glued the baffle plate that I punched from copper sheet to the galley stack. I glued two pieces of wire to the sides of the stack, touched up the paint, and glued the stack into the hole in the deck. It is hard to see in the pictures but if you look really closely to the third picture you can just see the wire. I then made three ladders. One will go in the open hatch I left aft of the open waist, and the other two will go in the open waist openings at the bow. I first made a jig for the table saw from some scrap plywood and basswood strips. There is a thin strip of wood on its side in a slot that sticks out a bit from the plywood base, and a slot for the saw blade that is the distance between steps from it. I used it to cut a slot, then place that slot over the raised piece to cut the next slot, until I had seven slots in each side. I have two boards as guides for the ladder sides, at the same angle but in opposite directions for the two different sides. Here are the results: I then glued strips into the slots for the steps, sanded the ladders and gave them one coat of oak stain. I will give them another coat of oak stain and add hand rails and ropes before gluing them into the openings. Next up are the binnacles.
  2. usedtosail
    You are doing a great job so far Matt. I look forward to following along with your build log. One thing to look out for on the plans that I have been finding out the hard way is that a lot of the drawings are not symmetrical. My advice is to trace out half the piece and flip that side over over to get a symmetrical part. The wheel supports are one example of this.
  3. usedtosail
    Sal, those anchor buoys are tough to rig. You did a fine job. I will also have to remember how you did the puddin. I find that hard to do too.
  4. usedtosail
    I got in a little time today on the ship after working most of the rest of the weekend. I remade the bow pin rail and gave it a couple of coats of oak stain. It is still drying but here it is ready to be installed: I enlarged all of the holes in the pin rails to fit the belaying pins. I think they closed up a little during the staining process. I then put belaying pins in all the rails. I am working on making the baffle plate for the galley stack. I punched a round piece of copper from some sheet and blackened it today. I'll have pictures of it next time.
  5. usedtosail
    Thanks Greg. I was trying to visualize where they are in the real ship in relation to the gun deck, and thought they looked a little too high on the plans.
  6. usedtosail
    Thanks George, and for the likes too. No progress to report because work has been crazy, and we were away over the weekend. I am embarrassed to point out that I completely screwed up the bow pin rail, as it is supposed to be a single piece that goes over the bowsprit. I made it in two pieces that don't connect at the bow. So off it will come and a new one will be made. I am also attempting to add the baffle plate to the galley stack, using some thin copper sheet material. I'll let you know how it turns out.
  7. usedtosail
    Happy belated birthday, Bob.
  8. usedtosail
    Thanks so much Jim, and the rest of the likes. I finished installed the belaying pin racks. They are all held to the bulwarks with wood glue and wire pins that are CA glued into the pin rails and bulwarks. I used Blue Jackets Brass Brown on the brass belaying pins and they came out pretty nice. I used a 10:1 dilution with distilled water and let them sit in it for about 30 minutes, then rinsed them in water. When they dry I will add them to the pin racks.
  9. usedtosail
    I have also been discovering the plans leave a lot to be desired.
  10. usedtosail
    To continue with the pin rails, I added wire pins to the back of the rails to provide a more secure attachment with the bulwarks. I sure don't want any of these pulling away during rigging. I used a pin vise and a very small drill bit for the holes, then CA glued a piece of wire into the holes. To attach these to the hull, I made a small jig for each one from some scrap wood. I used slight pressure to indent the scrap with the locations of the holes for the rail, then drilled holes for the wire. I fit the rail to the scrap wood then centered the rail between the gun ports. The scrap wood provided a consistent distance for the pin rail from the underside of the cap rail. I then removed the pin rail from the scrap and drilled through the holes in the scrap into the bulwarks. Sorry I have no picture of that process, but I didn't have enough hands. Here are all the starboard aft pin rails dry fit. I then removed them one at a time and used wood glue on the backs of the rails and CA on the pins and put them back into place, with a clothes pin to clamp them while they dried. I think these will be pretty secure. I have to blacken the belaying pins for the rails and add them later. I am going to try some brass brown for the pins instead of brass black. I have tried it before and the brass still looked black, but I am going to try more dilution this time.
  11. usedtosail
    Nice!!!!!
  12. usedtosail
    Michael, that is a really cool modification you made to your old saw. I have the Proxxon saw that was in the link and I use it a lot. It is a bit noisy and I still have trouble getting the tension on the blade correct when changing blades, but other than that I like it. I do have an old treadle sawing machine in the basement however, so now you have me thinking on how I could repurpose it.
  13. usedtosail
    Thanks John, George Richard and Popeye, and for others who hit the like button. Before tackling the capstan I have a few other things I want to do, starting with the pin rails. The supplied belaying pins are OK but are a bit too long, so I will snip off about a mm or so from the bottoms. I made a simple jig out of a piece of wood with a hole to put the pin in and the right amount sticking out the other end to snip off. I am using the XY table on the drill press for the rails. I drill the holes for a few rails at a time using the whole span of the vise. I am staining them with two coats of oak stain. Here are the rails that will go aft of the open waist. I am going to put two pieces of thin wire into the back of each one to give them more support in the bulwarks.
  14. usedtosail
    Sal, your rigging looks great. What are the odds that those two blocks would line up perfectly. If you had to rig them like that it would probably have been nearly impossible, ha ha.
  15. usedtosail
    David, your deck and deck furniture look great. Nice job.
  16. usedtosail
    And here is what I have been doing today. Actually, first thing I did was finally add all of the flat rope coils to the starboard side spar deck guns., so the gun rigging is all finished now. I glued the supports to the wheels after first determining the best part of the wheels to have at the top. I test fit these to the deck while the glue was still wet to make sure the whole assembly sat flat on the deck. To cover the holes in the supports where the axles are, I made a handful of small disks from thin mahogany, using a hole punch. I temporarily glued these to a piece of plywood using a glue stick, then thinned them a little more. I then used a tiny brush and painted gold stars on each one. When the paint dried, I picked the best two and glued them over the holes in the support. I also wrapped six turns of line around the drum and secured it with some white glue. Here is the completed wheel assembly on the deck. I am going to wait a while before gluing it in place because I am wherry of breaking off one (or more) of those spoke handles. I am suprised I havn't broken one yet, especially when I dropped the wheel while staining it. Next it is on to the capstan.
  17. usedtosail
    Thanks all for the compliments. I really wasn't sure I was going to be able to pull this off. Yesterday I started by thinning the sides of the wheel supports, using mostly a curved file. The thinned version is on the right and the original is on the left. After I thinned the other support, I made the two feet to hold up the supports. I marked the location of the slots by tracing the ends of the supports on the wood, then milled them out using a 1/16" box end mill bit in the drill press. I cleaned up the slots with a very small square file. When the supports fit into the slots, I filed the bottom of the feet between the slots, and the tops along both sides of the center slot, to match the profile on the plans. I then cut the ends to a 45 degree angle and dry fit the wheels: I then test fit the whole assembly on the ship. I had to file down the ends of the feet a little bit so they didn't extend beyond the end of the raised planking, but other than that the fit was pretty good. I glued the feet to the supports, then pre-stained and stained all the pieces with some Walnut stain and let them dry overnight. I'll show the results of that and the work I have been doing today in the next post.
  18. usedtosail
    More work on the ships wheels. I finished the second wheel spokes using the same process as the first. Here are the two wheels side by side: I then turned the drum that fits between them from a piece of dowel. I put axles on each end for the wheels, and I made these long enough to fit through the two supports that I am making now. I am making the supports from some 1/16" mahogany that have. I did a test on the boxwood and basswood that I made the wheels from with some walnut stain, and I think they will look good with the mahogany supports. I traced a template from the plans, but it was quite clear that the drawing on the plans is not symmetrical at all. To overcome that, I used one side of the template only, traced that side onto the sheet wood, then flipped the template over and drew the other side. I put two pieces of the sheet wood together and cut out the outside shape on the scroll saw. I cleaned that up with some files and sandpaper, driled the holes for the drum axles, then used an X-Acto knife to cut out the center sections, again using some files to clean them up. I filed in the design on the center leg. I still need to make the outside shape a little smaller, which I will do this weekend. I also experimented with cutting slots in a piece of strip mahogany to place the supports into. I used a 1/16" end mill bit in my drill press with the XY table, and cleaned up the slots with a small square file. You can see the result in the last picture, but I won't be using that one because I cut the legs of the supports down a little bit after making it and now the slots don't line up with the shorter legs. I should have time this weekend to finish these up and stain them.
  19. usedtosail
    The only thing I remember buying at the stage you are at is more planking strips for the spar deck, mostly because I used the kit supplied strips for the gun deck. I don't remember the size though, but you can easily measure off the plans.
  20. usedtosail
    David, don't be afraid to change the sequence to your liking. If it makes more sense to you to do it a certain way, it is probably a good way to do it. I spent a lot of time thinking about this because I am not using the practicum and the ME instructions don't have much of a sequence. So far, so good.
  21. usedtosail
    Thanks Al. I don't think the supplied dowels are basswood so you will probably be OK with them. They seem much harder, like birch. The other basswood is OK to turn for things like mast coats, but you have to be careful because they break along the grain easily. They also have some fuzziness to them when worked but that may be a function of the tools I use.
  22. usedtosail
    OK. Thanks
  23. usedtosail
    JS - I can't access that web site - I get a Sucuri warning. Pressing on, I drilled holes in one of the rims for the spokes, then placed wire into the holes like I did for the first attempt. Here you can see the first one on the left and the new one on the right. It is much thinner and looks much better to me, so I am happy so far. I then turned the spokes using the Dremel and a draw plate. I made the thinner part of the spokes first to fit in the holes in the rims. I then turned the part sticking out for the handle in the draw plate and cut them to length. Here is how it looked at that point. The spokes were glued into the rim by sliding them out slightly then placing a tiny bit of glue on the end and just under the handle, then pushing them CAREFULLY back into the rims before the glue set, which happened pretty quickly. I broke a few in the process but they were easy to remake. The next day I used a small round file and a small flat file to shape the ends into the handles and here is how it came out. A few of the spokes don't line up across the inner hub, but other than that I am pretty happy with the look, compared to the metal supplied wheels. I then used the same process on the second wheel, but this time I was more careful drilling the holes at the inner hub. I started making the spokes last night and they are just set in place for now. Rounding and trimming the ends for the handles is next to do. I may redo the inner hub on the first one and make new spokes or I may remake a whole new wheel, but first I will see how the second one turns out.
  24. usedtosail
    Superb!
  25. usedtosail
    Thanks Al and JS, I think I remember seeing that build log a while ago but I will go back and take a look.

About us

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

SSL Secured

Your security is important for us so this Website is SSL-Secured

NRG Mailing Address

Nautical Research Guild
237 South Lincoln Street
Westmont IL, 60559-1917

Model Ship World ® and the MSW logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,929,264 & No. 6,929,274, registered Dec. 20, 2022)

Helpful Links

About the NRG

If you enjoy building ship models that are historically accurate as well as beautiful, then The Nautical Research Guild (NRG) is just right for you.

The Guild is a non-profit educational organization whose mission is to “Advance Ship Modeling Through Research”. We provide support to our members in their efforts to raise the quality of their model ships.

The Nautical Research Guild has published our world-renowned quarterly magazine, The Nautical Research Journal, since 1955. The pages of the Journal are full of articles by accomplished ship modelers who show you how they create those exquisite details on their models, and by maritime historians who show you the correct details to build. The Journal is available in both print and digital editions. Go to the NRG web site (www.thenrg.org) to download a complimentary digital copy of the Journal. The NRG also publishes plan sets, books and compilations of back issues of the Journal and the former Ships in Scale and Model Ship Builder magazines.

Our Emblem ®

Modelshipworld - Advancing Ship Modeling through Research

Nautical Research Guild ® and the NRG logo are Registered Trademarks, and belong to the Nautical Research Guild (United States Patent and Trademark Office: No. 6,999,236 & No. 6,999,237, registered March 14, 2023)

×
×
  • Create New...