usedtosail

Your instructions are showing you to drill four holes in the end of the cathead, straight down through the cathead. You then can make it look like two slots by connected the front and back holes at the top and bottom surfaces of the cathead. On the real ship this would be two parallel slots with sheaves in each one. Now, you could also do that if you had two very small sheaves and a way to cut the full slot, but that is a lot harder to get right. I have always used the four hole method to simulate these sheaves. Also, the holes should really be drilled at the angle that the cathead will be mounted on the model, so they are perpendicular to the water line. You can see this in the first photo from Edward. I have not done this on any of mine, but will on the next one. That sheave in the instructions (155) goes on the outside of the cathead in the wooden holder. I can't tell what the line that goes through it is used for.

I have been able to work on this a bit more now that the admiral is back teaching for the school year. Here is the thwart risers after soaking, bent in place and clamped to dry. I used some heat on the fronts of them to get them to bend easier, and used strips of scrap wood to get the right spacing from the sheer clamps. I have also shaped the winch supports and glued them in since this picture was taken. Now I have to trim these risers to fit around the supports. I received an airbrush for my birthday in April and had not used it except to practice with it until now. I was worried that the spray would be pushed through any slight gaps between the planks, so I figured this was the best time to try it out and see what would happen. I mixed up some diluted primer, about 50% paint and 50% airbrush medium, and gave the hull about 5 coats of the primer. It took me a few times to get everything right, but then the paint flowed nicely. The mixture was very thin so it took that many coats to get complete coverage, plus there were areas that needed to be sanded and repainted from the initial attempts. Overall, I am very pleased with the result and there was no primer that made it to the inside of the hull, which I am also very happy about. This picture is after three coats of primer. I decided, like others on this forum, that I did not like the thwarts with the holes in them, so I decided to remake them. I reached into my box of spare basswood sheets and could not find any that were close to the thickness of the other thwarts. I could have used a thicker piece and sanded it down, but then I thought to look at the left overs from other sheets that came with this kit, and sure enough there was one that had enough extra on it to make the three thwarts that I needed. After cutting out the new ones, I had to add the notches for the fore and main masts in two of them. Last year, I bought a few end mill bits to use in my drill press but this was the first opportunity I had to try it. I had bought an XY table for the drill press because I could not for the life of me drill multiple holes in a straight line, like for pin rails, so the XY table makes that a breeze now. I chucked a 1/4 inch end mill bit into my poor man's (more like middle class man's, that XY table was not cheap ) mill, and put the thwart in the vise on the XY table, then slowly fed the wood into the side of the bit. It worked very nicely to get a preliminary cut out. To finish the notch, I used the old thwart as a template and clamped the old and new thwarts together in a vise, then used a round file to get the new notch to the same size as the old one. And here are the old and new thwarts. That's all for now. Thanks for watching.

Really nice work, Steve. Especially without using a magnifier

Thanks Brad. More progress to show. I soaked and bent the strips for the sheer clamps and glued them in. I used some nippers to cut the frames flush with the clamps, so only had to do a little sanding to finish them. I also made a thin paste of wood filler and smeared it onto the outside of the hull, to hopefully seal the areas between the planks so that when I spray the outside of the hull the paint won't bleed into the inside. I gave this a good sanding but I may sand it a little more before priming it. I also filled some gaps on the keel and stem pieces. And here are the sheer clamps stained to match the inside of the hull. The thwart risers will be added next.

Thanks Bob. I really like the clean look that the white styrene gives to the trim details, so when I get to this model I am really leaning toward using it.

The copper is looking great, Max. I like you use of the tape to line up the plates. Mine were a bit wavy as I tried to go free hand.

Bob, that saw and the gunports look great. My question above was about what glue you used to glue the styrene strips to the hull, not the copper plates.Thanks.

Is it hard to get the paper backing off those tiny plates? I found that using the half width strip and cutting each plate so that only the copper was cut (not the paper) made it easier to separate the plates from the paper backing.

And the new transom is finished. All the plank ends are now flush with the transom. I scribed some plank lines into the outside of it. The stain bled through a bit, but the outside of the hull still needs to be sanded, primed and painted. Here is the inside after staining. I ended up staining the whole inside to get everything to match, sort of. On to the sheer clamp.

Nice work so far Henry. You are doing great detail at such a small scale.

Bob, this is a really nice build of the Constitution. Thank you for reposting it. I will use this build log when I get to starting mine. I do have one question - what adhesive did you use when gluing the styrene strips to the wood? I saw a bottle of Titebond in a couple of pictures. I really like the nice lines you obtained with the styrene. Thanks.

Thanks Cap'n. Your build log is what inspired me to build the launch. I especially like all the details you added. Brad, your Launch is great.That is pretty much the way I'd like mine to come out. Thanks for the pictures. No pictures today. Glued more of the planking to the new transom and clamped to dry. I have glued it back in roughly thirds, so I still have the top planks to glue on.

Beautiful boat so far, Bob. I look forward to following this build.

Thanks Bob and Keith. Bob, your Malabar is beautiful and Keith I just love the Dark Side version of the Swift.

Yes, Bob's work is exceptional too. Thanks for the pointer.

I will be enjoying this build as well. Looks like an interesting project.

BTW Brad, the Bounty Launch in your avatar looks really nice. Do you have any other pictures of it?

Thanks Brad. If it wasn't for the plank ends I probably could have lived with the transom as is, but it was bothering me too much, so I decided to bite the bullet and replace it. I used alcohol to loosen the white glue and acetone to loosen the superglue in the few spots that I used it. I was able to gently pry the top planks off the transom, then used an X-Acto knife to get under the remaining planks. For the stern piece, I used an X-Acto chisel to pry the transom loose after loosening the glue with alcohol. The transom then popped out with no damage to the planks. Here is the old transom with the wording showing through: Here is the outside of the old transom as the alcohol was doing its work: Some pictures during the removal process: Success: I scraped and sanded the insides of the plank ends to remove the old glue, then used the old transom as a pattern on some basswood sheet. I used a thicker piece of wood for the new transom so that I could get all the plank ends close to the edge. After I glue them down, I will sand the whole transom thinner to the correct thickness, which will also sand the ends of the planks to be flush with the outside of the transom. After sanding the transom to fit, I glued it to the stern piece and the bottom two planks on each side, forcing the plank up to the transom with clamps and scrape wood pieces. I adjusted the angle of the transom to be more perpendicular to the keel, so the plank ends fit better on both sides. I will let this dry overnight, then I will glue the rest of the plank ends to the new transom. I am quite pleased that I was able to perform this exchange without much trouble and I feel much better now.

As promised, here are the results of the finish test. I used a pre-stain and then a cherry stain on the test piece, and it had just the look I wanted: I then stained the inside of the hull, a third at a time so the pre-stain did not dry too much before the stain. I am really pleased with the results, as it has that old work boat look that I wanted. I was really concerned that the basswood strips would not be dark enough, but I think they are just dark enough without looking muddy. The whole time I was staining I was thinking about the transom, which I am not happy with. I already showed one of the problems, where the planks are too short on one side. But, there is another problem that got worse with the staining. There are laser etched letters on the outside of the transom to mark it as the Transom, I guess to not confuse it with the building jig molds. I can deal with covering the letters on the outside as this area will be painted. The problem is that the lettering goes all the way through to the inside of the transom, so when stained it is very prominent. I can't sand it off because it goes all the way through the wood, and I don't know how to cover it up on the inside of the hull without looking bad. So because there are now two problems with the transom, I think I will replace it. Hopefully I can do it without messing up the planking.

Some more progress to show. I glued all of the pre-bent between frames into the hull. I was able to find frames that fit pretty well in all the spaces between the existing frames. For the cant frames, I used the building jig to pre-bend three frames for each side using the three molds at the front of the jig. These did not have any frames bent to them when the hull was planked, but I found they are close to the bend needed for the cant frames. I let them dry for 24 hours, then fit them to the hull. The two outer frames fit very nicely, but the middle frames were high in the middle, so I re-soaked those two, bent them with my plank bender, and clamped them into the hull to dry. When they were dry, I glued them into the hull. Here is the finished framing: I am still cleaning up the insides a bit and scraping the outside of the hull. I think I am going to stain the inside of the hull next so I can get between all the frames before adding the interior details.I haven't decided on the finish for the inside yet, so I made up a little test strip with cherry strips on a basswood plank to test different finishes. I should have results here sometime next week.

That is a very nice planking job. It looks so much better than the supplied scored sheet. My Phantom is also in a sad state but it servers me as a reminder to do better next time.

Adding the between frames to the inside of the hull. I had bent all of these previously on the jig before I started planking the hull and they fit pretty well between the other frames. I think this was easier than trying to bend new frames into the hull after it was built, as I did not find a good way to clamp the frames near the keel inside the hull. I glued the bottom half of the between frames first, let them dry overnight, then positioned the top halves and glued them in place. I did use a small drop of superglue on a couple of frames to hold them in place at the turn of the bilge, but I didn't want to use it on all the frames as I would like to keep the interior finish unpainted and didn't want a lot of glue spots to deal with. You can see the pre-bent frames for the port side in the tray on the right in the first photo.

Thanks for reposting your work here and your progress to date looks great. This kit is the next one on my list so I will be watching and learning from your build. I have already learned quite a bit.

I gave the outside of the hull an initial sanding while it was still on the planking jig, then popped the glue joints between the frame ends and the jig, and the hull came right off. I sanded and scraped the outside of the hull more and added some wood filler in a few spots. I was really glad to read about using an X-Acto knife to scrape the hull instead of sanding in another build log, as this worked really well and the results look better than with sand paper. I then gave the inside a first sanding and removed some glue spots.I need to give it a finer sanding before adding the rest of the frames. The hull seems quite fragile at this point, but it is holding up to the sanding and scraping well.

Thanks all for the comments. The basswood planks that came in the kit are all cut from three sheets, which I suspect all were one sheet at one time. They are all very even in color. The rough planking is just about finished, as the glue is now drying on the last plank. Some wood filler and first sanding is next. Here I have attached the next to last plank on the starboard side. I used a variety of alligator clips, hair clips, and small binder clips to hold it in place while it dried. The alligator clips held the plank tight to the previous plank, while the hair clips held the two planks flush with each other. I made a cardboard template for the new shutter plank using the old one as a guide, widen it where it needed to be bigger. When I was happy with the fit, I traced it onto some basswood sheet and cut it out, then soaked and bent it to the hull. I used clips along the keel with rubber bands to hold it in place while the wood dried to shape. The clothes pin under the rubber band at the stern put some extra pressure on the plank to fit tight to the transom. The next day I sanded the plank to fit the opening and glued it in place, using more rubber bands and pieces of wood to hold it in place while the glue dried. I have since used the same procedure on the port side.