jwvolz

Thank you Joe

The adhesive is very strong. I have a build that is over 20 years old and there is no sign of any peeling. It is still best though to put a matte or dull coat over the plates to avoid fingerprinting. I use Testor's Dullcote. 

The adhesive is very strong. I have a build that is over 20 years old and there is no sign of any peeling. It is still best though to put a matte or dull coat over the plates to avoid fingerprinting. I use Testor's Dullcote. 

The adhesive is very strong. I have a build that is over 20 years old and there is no sign of any peeling. It is still best though to put a matte or dull coat over the plates to avoid fingerprinting. I use Testor's Dullcote. 

I put the ship's boats aside for a while and went on to the deck furnishings.
 





 
They look so plain (especially the forward companionway) that I am tempted to try to do better.  @Tim I. did such a great job on his interpretation of the cabin and companionway in Philip Reed's book (Period Ship Modelmaking - An Illustrated Masterclass) that I will try to do similarly.
 


 
Just started on that process
 
 

While awaiting my order from Crown Timberyard, I used what I could from my remaining stash of boxwood strip to plank the inner bulwarks. I used 1/16" strip for the spirketting and 1/32" strip for the remaining planking.This was fussy work because of the need to fit the planking around not only the gunports, but the numerous sweep ports as well.
 
After the planking was installed and sanded, it was painted, using four brush coats of Vallejo carmine red, lightly sanding between coats. Since I still don't have the wood for the exterior hull planking, I'm going to plank the deck next.
 
Bob

Many  builders want a POB look with individual planks visible, but most double planked kits have too big a span between bulkheads to be easily single planked. Double planking also offers those that prefer a "second chance" to rectify errors on the first planking. 

Hello,
the topic sort of says it all.
My father has been building a modell from scratch for the past 36 years. The scale is 1:38. He is 78 years old now and is starting to suffer from dimentia. Before Chirstmas 2017, he was at a point where he had stopped building for about 1 1/2 years. The standing rigging was about 1/4th of the way. The problem way, he was stuck and could no longer make any sense out of what he was reading in his books.
That is when I stepped in. We have now completed the standing rigging together. He can still make ropes, make thimbles, blocks, you name it. But he gets confused when he tries to atach ropes on his own so I am sort of the one who decides what we do next and then we do it together.
He can help when I tell him what needs to be done, but that is the problem: I do not know, either. So I am reading, doing research, we even did a trip to the original ship in Portsmouth in January together.
His background is electronic engineering and he has been doing woodwork as a hobby as long as I can think. I am a teacher and quilter - which sort of helps with the rigging, as I am good with thread work.
One goal is to get it done. Someday. Maybe. The more important goal is to challenge his memory and his manual abilities.
 
I think we have every book on the planet about the ship. The one thing I cannot find is a precise description about the size of the sails. You know - being a quilter, I sort of like patterns ;-) . Any suggestions?
 
Barbara

I have now sanded the second planking and applied a coat of polyurethane.  To my pleasant surprise it has turned out well.  In the following pictures the parallel planks are the only ones which are of relevance, and of those, only a few at the bow and the stern will be seen.  The rest will be painted.  I have yet to do the waterline.
 

 

 

 

 


 

 
 
 
 

Thanks guys. Other pictures I found had some of the plastic models I built as a kid - mostly funny cars, but there was also the Visible Body, if you guys remember that, and a V8 engine model kit. It did bring back memories.
 
Work has continued, mostly on rigging the topGallant yards. First a picture with just the lower and topsail yards, adjusted to my liking.

Of course, with all the subsequent work they have come out of alignment somewhat, so I will wait until all the yards are installed before tweaking the lines to get them to all line up, if that will be possible. He the topGallant yards are all on but are hanging only by the halyards. The lifts have been seized to the yard arms, but are justing hanging for now. The sheets are also installed, but these are on the topsail yards.

The reason the lifts are not rigged yet is because I have been having trouble tying the double blocks they go through to the thin topGallant shrouds. They keep wanting to slide down the shrouds. I think they are good now, as I used a thicker line to tie them with which I think gives the glue more surface area to adhere to. We will see when I start threading the lift lines through them if they stay in place. I am not sure what I will do if they keep slipping.

It is also getting very crowded on deck, especially aft of the main mast. It is getting hard to get my hands in there to attach lines to the belaying pins along the deck in this area. I just ordered some longer tweezers today so we will see if that helps get in there. I have some other long rigging tools that I made with dowel and large needles that help.

I have already had to make some repairs to installed lines, mostly due to blocks coming out of their stroppings because of pressure I have put on the lines. It is a challenge which I am ready to accept, though. This puppy will be completed this year, despite the upcoming move. I have designed a crate that I will build to hold the model in whatever state it is by June. Now I just have to build it. Of course, I'll include that in the build log.

Work continues on the lower and topsail yard installation and rigging. I tried to take some more detailed shots this time to show some of the details as I have been adding them. The mizzen topsail yard was the latest to be added, with its simpler halyard arrangement than the fore and main topsail yards. I have these rigged with the tackles down to the fore and main channels. Most of the lines for these yards are now wrapped around a belaying pin or cleat, but nothing has been fixed yet so I can adjust them to all line up right.
 
Here are some shots of the clew lines and sheets for the topsail yards. I used hooks on the sheets and hooked them into the hooks on the clew line blocks. I doubt they used hooks for the sheets on the real ship, but I wanted to have a secure connection, since I am using the sheets to put some downward pressure on the yards to counteract all of the up forces on these yards, like from the lifts.




Here is a shot of one of the parrels, showing the beads that I used. These are brown seed beans, which are about 1.5mm.

Here is a shot of the truss lines with their tackles on the fore top. The tackle lines are tied to cleats on the top. I found this very frustrating getting these lines secured to those cleats. I could wrap the lines around them fine, but getting the loops twisted to secure them was a bit challenging. I was able to get them all done correctly though, although I could have just wrapped and glued them in place. I like doing them the right way because I can easily undo them to adjust the tension on the lines, although getting them back around the cleats is no fun.

Here is the other ends of the truss lines at the back of the fore mast. Getting these knots tied in the right place so the blocks on the other ends were in the right place was also fun, but it was doable after a few attempts.

Here is the tackle line for one of the fore halyards. The blocks sit up pretty high in the air because I have these yards in the lower position, since they do not have sails. I am curious how they lowered these yards to the deck, as there does not seem to be enough line to get them all the way down without the lower block on the halyard hitting the block on the mast. I wonder if they lowered it part way with this line then tie on a different line to get to the deck?

Here are the mizzen crossjack and topsail yards, still in the process of being rigged.

And is an overall shot of the model so far.

 
 
 
 

Young America - extreme clipper 1853
Part 278 – Completing the Main Yard
 
The first picture shows the main yard temporarily connected to the mast.  Most of the ironwork has been fitted.
 

 
At his stage the yard was ready for the copper ironwork to be blackened.  The brass-containing boom irons were pre-blackened before fitting.  The next picture shows the removed yard and the ironwork being cleaned with isopropyl alcohol using a cotton swab.
 

 
The wipe-on poly base coat resists the alcohol and allows any smudges to be removed and the copper to be degreased.  The next picture shows the yard after the liver of sulfur blackening process.
 

 
The blackening was done at the kitchen sink with tap water running.  The yard and its fittings were liberally brushed with liver of sulfur solution and immediately rinsed under the tap. Any unblackened spots were re-brushed while wet and again rinsed.  The yard was then allowed to dry.  The next picture shows a closer view of the dried yard, taken the next day.
 

 
The straight, black wire shown in the last two pictures, is the jackstay rod.  This was next slipped through the stanchions as shown in the next picture.
 

 
Straight .020" brass wire was used for this for its relative rigidity.  It was pre-blackened using full strength Brass Black®.  The eyebolts were spun from 28 gage copper wire.  The fit is tight enough to keep the wire in place.  In the last picture the jackstays have been inserted and clipped off.
 

 
The outer boom irons have also been fitted and a finish coat of satin wipe-on polyurethane applied, using a foam swab shown in the picture.  The finish was "wiped" using a dry foam swab.  The finish was applied to wood and iron alike.
 
 
Ed

Good Morning Everyone,
A little progress to report. I next turned my attention to the cheek rails. For some reason, these were causing me more trouble than I've had on other builds. The plans include only one poor picture, with no indication of their size or shape and the plan didn't really match my model very accurately in any case. After several unsuccessful attempts, I tried this approach: I edge-glued a piece of 1/64" x 1/8" stock to the stem, bending it to follow the contour. Once it was in place, I sanded it, leaving it at almost full depth where it meets the hull, down to almost nothing at the tip of the stem. I then added the cheek knees. This is by far the best result that I think I can achieve.



I've also been working on some of the deck furniture. It's all just sitting in place for the pictures - not attached yet, so everything isn't necessarily sitting square. I've had to rely on several sources other than the plans for some of the details. The plans give no real indication of how the cabin and companionway should look, so the result is a combination of ideas from others' builds and my own interpretation.




That's all for now. I'm just about ready to paint the exterior of the hull above the waterline.
 
David

ANCHORS AWAY….
Worked over the weekend rigging and attaching my anchors. I decided to bring the anchor cables through my forward hatch, and to do that, I had to so some surgery on the grate. The grating material supplied by Model Expo is a hardwood.  Trying to cut through that while placed on the bow of a crowded deck was a challenge. My exacto knife was not up to the call, so out came the Dremel. My original plan was to carve out a square in the front corners and insert a chafing block. While I was able to white knuckle the cutting, I could not get it square or clean enough to suit my taste, and decided to install the chafing blocks on top of the cut.
Obviously, this is another task that I should have done sooner. I could have easily added chafing blocks to the grates before installing them.
I also stropped the big triple blocks, and fabricated a hook with some coated black wire. The coating on the wire gives the surface some texture to simulate an iron look. It took me a while and about 10 tries to twist up a hook to look right.
I then rigged the block, and attached the anchor.  I ran into another snag. Realizing the anchor and cable weigh tons, I could not get the cable to lay flat on the deck, or get my lanyards on my triple blocks to tighten. The Brittania anchors just don’t weigh enough.  I therefore glued the cable to the deck. I stretched the lanyards on the triple blocks by attaching a small weight, and coated the ropes with a mixture of water and white glue. That froze the ropes straight.
I then tied off the haul ropes on a bulwark cleat and tied off the lanyards on pins.
My bow is just about complete.

Getting a little tired of trying to figure out how to load the photos in the right order. All of the remaining photos kept loading in reverse order.
 
Come on guys, I spend more time trying to figure out how to post photos of the things I build than the time I spend actually building the darn things.

What great progress. Nice work Daria!

What great progress. Nice work Daria!

What great progress. Nice work Daria!

What great progress. Nice work Daria!

What great progress. Nice work Daria!

Installed decorative keel "tabs", that was easy:

 
Drilled the rudder hole (this was too scary to give to Daria), but she filed that hole to shape:


 
And she made an "eye"

 
Previously I was filing all tabs for her (they are oversized in the kit), but now she is doing it herself. Though I am keeping an eye on a file angle, this is quite tricky for her, so far. But improving slowly. This is also the only photo in this update done by me

 
Stem and stern dry fitted. Note the ebony piece, fantastic quality!
And she is proud of the composition of this photo  Will go pretty far on Instagram!
Quote from the author: "I wanted to make a fun photo for you , to have a photo with more colours. Other photos have very few colours - brown, black, that's it. This one has more!"
 

 
 

Thanks, greenstone!
 
In a meanwhile, we had a bit of delay because of another project: this took a bit longer than expected - the manual is 400 steps long, but the result is amazing - pneumatic cylinders work, fantastic!

 
Back to ship modelling - we started fitting the deck. It was an exercise in an endless cycle of "sand a bit - try again - make some pencil marks - sand a bit more".
The deck is laser cut to separate planks that are tied together by a few tabs. They are probably supposed to be installed separately, but we decided to cut some corners and install the deck as a single piece. 
 

Daria had no problems sanding thin veneer, but I helped a bit every now and then - the process is too repetitive for a child. 
The glue-up was simple in the beginning, but turned into a nightmare quite soon - planks swelled because of the moisture in the glue, became wider and started to push each other out. I ended up cutting off some planks in the middle to leave the room for expansion. It was a mess and the glue dried to quick, so no photos. While I was loosing a battle against the glue and moisture and swelling planks - Daria decided to cheer me up and made a cute drawing of us working on a model  
 
 
That helped!
 
Resulting deck:
 
 
Fitting few parts around transom to close it off, I let her use the disk sander, which made her super happy - using some real adult tools, yay!

 
Then we did a bit of scraping:

 
A lot of sanding:

 
And - finally - finishing! Used some Danish oil. Might be a bit too shiny, but it is the easiest finish to apply and dries relatively quick:

 
Final result. Kind of blotchy, unfortunately. Maybe we should have sanded the deck more. 
The wood is not monotonous and have a bit different texture in different places. 
But it's good enough for the purpose!

 
 
 

Looking great Steve. 

The rear panels were fitted and installed one piece at a time onboard. The bottom strip of each panel was slightly edge-bent to follow the curve above the cockpit seats. I skipped making the template and jumped right into this. I think the single panels change it up a bit.
 
The panels really should be somewhere in between 1/16” and 1/32” wide in my opinion. Unfortunately, mine are not. ;-)
Steve

Helmsmen seating completed. This task was trickier than I thought, but that’s to be expected at this point.
Steve