dcicero

All: A friend's son is working on his Eagle Scout project. He contacted a local VFW hall and asked if he could clean up the gun outside the post. Here's a picture. There's a nameplate on the gun which identifies the carriage as a 4" carriage, Mark XII, Mod 1. It was built by the Goss Printing Press Company of Chicago, IL in 1918. The gun was moved to the VFW hall a long time ago from a park in Aurora, IL. No one has any information about it. The project is finished now. The base was cleaned and painted. The old paint was scraped off and the gun repainted. All the brass has been shined. All the weeds have been removed, new flower beds cut in and mulch laid down. The gun looks much better than it did. To finish the project off, the new Eagle Scout is going to make a presentation to the VFW Post. I'd like to help him put in some information about the gun itself. Anyone got any ideas what this gun is? Where might it have been used? (I'm thinking it might have been a coast defense gun.) Dan

Although it's been a while since I posted an update, I have made some progress on the Long Boat. First, I installed the transom. As everyone has said, there isn't much of an attachment area, so reinforcing it with some scrap wood is pretty much a necessity. Here are a couple of pictures taken before those reinforcing strips were installed. Echoing, again, what a lot of people have noted, after installing those first four planks, things get a little easier. The bends on the planks are a little less severe. There's more room to work. And the transom is held in place by those planks. Here's a view of planks five and six in place. There are some tiny gaps between the planks close to the stern post. I'l going to fill those with some wood slivers when the planking job is done. I haven't sanded anything yet, figuring its best to wait until all the planks are in place before doing that. The bow turned out a lot better than I had anticipated. A little experience goes a long way in this case. (And listening to experience helps too. Thanks, BobF!) I've been using the Magic Tape method, putting a piece of tape on the model, stem to stern, and tracing the outline with a pencil. (Note: Don't use a pen. The ink comes off on the plank!) Take the tape and stick it to a piece of card stock. Cut the template out and fit it against the model again, just to check its fit. I've taken to trimming the plank down to its greatest width before bending it. Just seems to work better that way and saves time later. Get the plank wet. (No more microwave ovens for me!) And it'll bend to conform to the template without buckling (mostly). Let it dry and then do it again. Seems like two trips to the template will do it. Once the plank is bent fore and aft -- to conform to the sheer of the hull -- wet it again. It doesn't take much water at this point. Bend it athwartships to make the bend around the bow. That can take a little time to get it right, but it's not difficult at all. Finally, the tricky part is carving the angle in the end of the plank to conform with the rabbet. I take it slow on this, sanding very lightly to get the correct angle and bending the plank a little bit as I go along. When gluing it, I really press it into the rabbet ... and that, of course, is how I snapped off the stem! (Everyone warned me. I thought I could avoid it. I saved the little piece and will glue it back on later...) And here's how the boat looks from the side and bottom. I've got a few more planks installed since I took these pictures. I'm very pleased with how they went on and how the model looks. I was a little nervous, when these pictures were taken, that the planks looked wavy. Now that I have a couple more in place after these, it's apparent that that was an optical illusion. Those planks bending around the turn of the bilge and conforming with the sheer of the hull ... there are a lot of angles involved in all that. I think I have another four or five planks to go. Got to say, this planking job is pretty tedious and time consuming. I'm confident the result will be worth it, but I'd really like to be through this part of the construction! Dan

That looks really good, Bob. Dan

Real quick update... The weekend was busy and I had very little time to work on the Long Boat. I did manage to clean up the after ends of the planks. It's important to do, I now realize, because doing this kind of work with the transom in place would be tricky indeed. Dan

Very nice model, Maury. Dan

Yep! A whole lot happier! Dan

Thanks, Bob! A little more progress was made last night. I got the third strake in place on the port side. I actually had to do it twice because I got another little gap like I got on the starboard side. I'm convinced this was caused by the wet glue swelling the plank. There was no gap when I fitted the plank into the rabbet, but when the glue dried, there it was. On the second attempt, I benefitted from the plank having been in place for a while and the bend being well established. I really jammed the plank into the rabbet, too. The port side looks a little better than the starboard. So now you can see both sides of the boat. The strakes lined up nicely athwartships. And I was very pleased that everything came together at the stern. Both sides lined up at the notch where the transom will be installed. As you can see, I have to trim the ends off the planks. I'm back to where I was last week Sunday, but I'm much happier with the result. From what everyone's been saying, the rest of the strakes should be a little easier to fit than these first three ... and I'm looking forward to that. Dan

Small progress over the weekend. I decided to just goof around with a plank that was pretty well destroyed, trying to get the bend right without ruining another plank in the process. As I worked, I found that that ruined plank wasn't quite as ruined as I thought. I made it a little narrower than the broad strake below it. I think the broad strake is a little wider than it should be at the bow, so, in the end, everything worked out. I'm going to have to see if I can replicate this plank on the other side of the boat. Just as Bob says, wetting the plank is enough to soften it and allow it to bend more easily and I was just bending the plank around my thumb after a while, avoiding the bottle-cap-and-hair-dryer technique shown in the instructions. (The hair dryer was needed elsewhere. I used my heat gun, which is capable of reducing one of those little plastic clamps to a pool of polymeric goo in short order!) The reason I narrowed the plank was to avoid buckling, which had happened with the wider ones I'd tried. In the picture, there is a gap between the plank and the rabbet. That's real, but it's really small. When I lightly sanded the whole thing, all the little gaps disappeared. I might have to fill a tiny bit on the end, but nothing major. Progress continues! Dan

From the Two Steps Forward, One Step Back school of ship modeling, here's another update! Just getting the plank wet and clamping it to my glass plate, I edge-bent the broad strake. I left it sit overnight to dry and here's the result. Then I started sanding and carving. I found that the end of the strake fit a lot better into the keel rabbet. And I did two bends: the edge bend in the photos above and a bend around the curve of the hull. That bend was pretty subtle, but it made a big difference in how the plank fit. I'll add, too, that some of the edge bend went out of the plank when I wet it again to form the bend around the bow. Don't know how to minimize that. So here's the broad strake fitted to the rabbet and the garboard strake. When gluing the strake in place, I concentrated on the bow. I held it in place while the glue set, avoiding the use of clamps altogether. When it was almost dry, I put some clamps in place on the frames to just hold it in place. That avoided marring the surface of the plank with a clamp. On my last attempt, there was a low spot between two of the frames. I know now why. The forward end of the garboard strake is a little low. Fitting the broads strake so that it lined up perfectly made that strake a little low too and formed the low spot. I let the broad strake lie where it's supposed to be this time, so there's a very, very slight difference in height at that point between those two strakes, but that will sand out, I'm confident. Had I done what I did last time, that dent would have needed filling. I only applied glue to the first six or so frames and the edge of the plank that far back. The bend around the stern still needs to be done. I think I'll be in good shape just wetting the after end of the plank, bending it around the stern and clamping it in place. I've made a lot of sawdust out of basswood planks... I think I'm going to have to order another bundle of them from ModelExpo because I doubt I'm going to be able to finish the planking with what came in the kit. There was plenty there to allow for mistakes, but not quite enough to allow for my mistakes! Dan

Time for another update... Toni and Bob had a look at my Long Boat at Saturday's meeting of The Nautical Research and Model Ship Society of Chicago and provided some great guidance. Here's the thing. The last two strakes are distorted at the bow, as you can see here. If I were to continue planking, that distortion would just get worse and the end product wouldn't be to my liking. Just my personality, but that's the kind of thing that would bother me to my grave, so I made the decision to do some deconstruction. That started on Sunday. Because I'd secured the planks with white glue -- good call in retrospect -- wetting the joints softened the glue and allowed me to remove them without too much trouble. To be sure, there was some clean-up needed, but, in the end, everything worked out fine. Looking at Toni and Bob's garboard strake, they look a lot like mine. (Toni recommended I cut the garboard back some more. I'm thinking I can just thin it a little bit to reduce the amount the next planks need to curve.) Now it's time to give it another try. Here are a few things I'm going to do differently: Just wet the planks rather than cook them. I know heating them in the microwave makes them as pliable as noodles, but the consensus was that it's overkill for what I'm trying to achieve. Take the edge bending slowly. After one bend, mine would snap back into shape. Bob tells me it can take a couple of attempts before the plank keeps the desired shape. Carve the plank to fit. I was under the impression that I could just bend the planks into shape. Now I know I have to do both: bend and carve to get the plank into the proper form. Just hold the plank in place while adhering it to the frames. I was using too much clamp pressure and deforming the planks. I think this will help avoid the problems I had before with putting big divots in the planks. Let's see how this works!

I see what you mean, Toni. Your garboard strake runs true, fore and aft instead of curving like mine does, which forced me to bend the other planks around it. I think the only way to address this is to remove those three strakes and start again. I'd rather not, but I want to be happy with the result -- because I'm going to have to look at it for a long time -- and replacing just these few strakes isn't, in the grand scheme of things, a big deal. Dan

Time for another quick update... I've got three planks installed on both sides of the model. As you can see, I still need to trim the after ends of the planks off. That'll happen next. If I wait, it will become more difficult with the transom in place. To fit these planks, I've come around to the method of getting them close to the final shape first, sanding them roughly to the right width with my disk sander and then finishing the sanding using a sanding stick. Finally, I cut the tapered end to fit in the rabbet. Then I get them wet, put them in the microwave and bend them on to the model, securing them with clamps. When the plank dries, I remove it. Here you can see the extreme bends in a plank after being fitted to the model. Then I apply glue and put the clamps back in place. It takes no pressure at all to hold the plank in place at that point. It just lays right where it belongs. I'm happy with the final result, but concerned that I'm going to have to do more sanding and filling than I had hoped. At the bow, there is no way I've found to avoid crushing the end of the plank. I think it will work out alright, but it'd be nice if I'd found a way to avoid that. I also put a dent in one of the planks, getting it to align with the plank next to it. I'm wondering, if I just wet it a little, if it will expand and get rid of the dent... So there it is! Time to do some trimming and install the transom. Dan

Just stunning! Dan

Jerry: Your Constellation is looking great. I'm following your progress with great interest! And your wargame collection -- visible in the background of several of your pictures -- looks great too. Lots of overlap with my collection. Dan

I remember getting to this point too. Drilling the hold for the rudder post had me scratching my head for a long time! Ended up drilling one hole down from the deck and one hole up from the stern post and hoping they met in the middle. (Worked like a charm, by the way.) Your model's looking great! Dan

The garboard strakes are in place! Here's a quick shot of the starboard garboard strake held in place with some clamps. I used Maury's technique to bend the planks. I put the shaped planks in a wet paper towel and put them in the microwave at high power for two minutes. The first time I did this, I was a little apprehensive, but it worked out really well. The plank softens up and can easily be bent into place. Here's the biggest benefit I've noted using this technique. The plank can be held in place as shown in the photo without any "horsing." I left it as shown overnight and, in the morning removed the clamps. Nothing moved. I pulled the plank off, applied some white glue to the mating surfaces and put the clamps back on. When the glue dried, the plank was securely in place with no distorting force on the model. That's really cool. One thing I learned was to be judicious with the pressure put on these planks. As everyone here has noted, basswood is very soft and it's easy to dent it. There are a couple of little dents in the planks, but they're so small I doubt they'll be noticed and once the whole hull is faired, I think they'll disappear. Only time will tell on that. Dan

Parallel to the waterline would be correct. Think of it this way, if it was perpendicular to the mast, anyone standing on it would constantly be sliding aft. Here's how I got that angle right. Step the mast as it will be on the finished model and mount the platform such that it can tilt a little. Make sure the model is sitting level and then use a level on the platform to set it parallel to the waterline. It'll look great. Dan

And here's the corrected table. I think it's interesting how consistent the widths are from Frame A aft. You can see my progress on the two garboard strakes here. The starboard one took me two building sessions to complete. The port one? I worked on it while the kids were running around. Took maybe an hour, total. Seems like that happens a lot. The first time you work through a problem like this, it takes forever and the results are just okay. The second time, it goes a lot faster and the results are better. The moral of the story? Like the Nike ads used to say: Just Do It. Dan

Thanks, Bob and Paddy! Found my first error in the tables today. I was measuring from the tops to the bottoms of the frames. For the after frames, the correct measure is from the top of the frame to the bearding line. There's not a great deal of difference, but the after parts of the planks will be a little wider as a result. Luckily, I hadn't put anything in place permanently when I found the error. Dan

Yes, it was from the Artesania Latina kit, but pretty heavily modified. Hull construction followed the kit closely, but fitting, masting and rigging was almost all scratch built. The rigging diagrams provided were pretty awful, so I made heavy use of Rigging Period Fore-And-Aft Craft by Lennarth Petersson to get the rig correct. The diagrams for fitting out the masts and spars were qusetionable too. I learned by experience to go with more reliable documentation -- like Petersson's book -- to save a lot of time, frustration and effort. Dan

It's been quiet around here lately! Here's an update on my progress ... slow, but steady. I used the tick strip method described by Bob. For each frame, I measured the distance from the bearding line to the top of the frame. Then, laying the tick strip on the plans, I shortened that length by the distance from the top of the frame to the wale. Then I measured the length of the tick strip and recorded it. I've decided to go with 13 planks on each side, so I divided the total width by 13 to get the width of each plank. (At the bow, forward of the end of the garboard strake, there will be only 12 planks.) Initially, I measured out those plank widths on the tick strips with the intention of transfering them to the frames, but I found that really tedious and I wasn't sure that it would help me all that much with the actual planking. This differs from Bob's process ... which means I'll probably pay for my errors later! Now that all that measuring has been done, I've developed this table, showing the widths of the planks at each frame. Next step: cutting some planks and fitting them in place. Dan

I'm watching your build with great interest, Fraser. Earlier this year, I finished my Scottish Maid and it's nice to see another one coming along. Dan

Thanks, Toni and Bob! I decided to go the "strips across the top" method. Here's a picture of the model with the last two strips strapped down in place. I checked it this morning and everything is nice and stable. This'll make fairing the bulkheads less stressful. Dan

Just a quick update. Got all the bulkheads in place. I started installing the spacers in between the bulkheads last night. I was a little concerned about them pushing the bulkheads out of true. I didn't force them between the bulheads, but I made them out of basswood which expands when exposed to the glue, just like the bulkheads did. I'm thinking I like the idea of just running some strips across the tops of the bulkheads to provide stability rather than putting the spacers between them. Probably doesn't make much difference because the goal is just to stabilize the bulkheads and give them enough rigidity to withstand the fairing process. Dan

Can't say anything about the model because I haven't gotten that far yet, but I would think the floorboards would be flat. If they curved, I would think all the gear in the boat would slide to the center. Dan