dcicero
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By the way, those bulkheads are perpendicular to the keel former. I couldn't get a good picture showing that and the depth to which the bulkheads extended. What's one to expect from any iPhone? Dan
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Thanks to everyone for all the encouragement! Bob, I hear what you're saying about the glue swelling the basswood and making the bulkheads fit too tightly. I found the same thing. I'd dry-fitted the bulkheads and they were snug. I didn't want "snug," so a loosened them up a little. (Putting any pressure on these tiny, fragile parts seemed like a recipe for disaster, so I thought it better to have a little wiggle room in there.) When I applied the glue, the wood swelled and the fit was snug again. I took my time with the alignment ... a necessity, really. In getting the third and fourth bulkheads in place, I broke a cardinal rule: never work on a model when the kids are around. My two boys -- ages six and eight -- require a lot of attention. Better to just work on the models after they've gone to bed and avoid the mistakes that happen when one is distracted. Anyway, I fit the next two bulkheads and helped put together a Lego model and helped with some other little project. Here are the results. When I got a quiet minute to look at it, I thought: "Holy c*%^!" Those bulkheads don't extend down to the bearding line! How am I going to plank that? I should have deepened the notches on the bulkheads! Then I looked at some of the other builds. Bob's had some really good pictures of this phase of construction. And I now see that the bulkheads should be this high. This, I guess, is one of those things that come with experience: the ability to see how something's going to look before the actual construction is completed. That's one of the things I really enjoy about building. Dan
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That is a great tip! Dan
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Tonight, I tapered the keel former to make the aft end 1/32" wide. (Thanks, Bob!) The operation was successful and nothing was snapped off in the process. I tried to get a picture of that, but it was hard to get one that really showed anything. Then I started fitting bulkheads. The first seemed to go just fine. The second ... well, I had a question. It fit fine and I got it aligned. I applied a little glue and slipped it into place. That's when I noticed this. The top of the keel former is higher than the bottom of the frame. When it comes time to snap off the inner portion of the bulkhead, isn't that going to be a problem? Then I looked at where the bottom of the bulkhead meets the bearding line. That looks normal. Am I over-thinking this? Or do I have to adjust something? By the way, I also drilled the holes for the mounting wires. You can see them in this photo. Dan
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Hi, Bob. Nope. You're seeing what I did accurately! I just tapered from the bearding line down to the bottom of the keel former. If I have to taper the bottom of the former aft down to 1/32", then I need to do a little more work. Thanks for letting me know before I made a mistake I couldn't correct. I think I can do that taper without ruining anything in the process. Dan
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Just beautiful, Mike! Dan
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Yesterday, I pinned the scarf joint. That worked well enough, but there's not a lot of room to work with there, so you need to be careful to make sure the drill bit goes in straight and plumb. Mine was off a little bit and you can see some deformation in the groove formed between the keel former and the false keel. I doubt it's going to make any difference, but it just a warning. I also drilled holes for the mounting posts. That operation went fine. No pictures of that, but maybe when I get back to the workshop a little later in the week. Dan
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Fitting the false keel required some sand-fit-sand-fit too. I really made an effort to get the two pieces to fit together without forcing them. I figured the last thing that little joint needed was a torque that was going to force it apart. In the end, it worked out really well and was glued together using the glass plate again.
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Then it needed to be glued to the stem. I used the glass plate to get the alignment, port and starboard, perfect. There was a lot of sand-fit-sand-fit to do before that stem piece, when put up against the false keel, showed no daylight between them. When that was done, a little glue and some clamps and that was all there was to it.
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According to the instructions, the keel former needs to be tapered from 3/32" down to 1/32". I was pretty nervous about getting this right, but it really wasn't that difficult. I extended the bearding line all the way around the stem and then, using a sanding stick, slowly and carefully sanded the taper that would form the rabbet into which the planks will fit. As others have noted, the stem is very weak and a lot of care is needed to avoid snapping it off. Again, calling on Bob's knowledge, I got myself a Bob Filipowski Autograph Model glass plate. This is a 12" x 12" x 1/4" piece of plate glass, bought from The Glasshopper in Aurora, IL for $8.00. In this photo, you can see the taper. I didn't find that 1/32" to be so narrow that I worried about a good joint with the false keel and stem.
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The bearding line needed to be transfered from the starboard side to the port side. I took a series of measurements with my digital caliper and transfered them from one side to the other. Then I connected the dots.
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There are a lot of burn marks on the basswood sheets that, like others have said, need to be taken off. Because I don't have scrapers like Bob used, I used regular old sandpaper, taped to a sanding stick with double-sided tape, a technique I learned from Bob Filipowski.
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Here's the completed building board, with the keel former in place.
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Then mark a line parallel to the groove in the stem block. Glue a wood strip along that line. Then use the basswood sheet as a guide to place the other strip, parallel to the first, forming a groove within which the keel former will sit. Weight it down until the glue sets up.
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Mark a centerline on the board and mount a stem block square to the end.
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The path I'm on with the longboat is well-worn by now. This may well seem redundant to those who've been following the progress others have made. As I said at our Nautical Research and Model Ship Society meeting last Saturday, I've been stealing shamelessly from others here, mostly from fellow Tri-Club members Bob Filipowski (BobF) and Toni Levine (tlevine). I started with the building board. Kurt Van Dahm, President of the club, provided the materials to everyone participating in the group build. First step: find the center of the building board.
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It's time I got around to working on my 18th Century Longboat. I'm about six months behind my fellow Tri-Club Members. (I'm a member of the Nautical Research & Model Ship Society of Chicago.) My excuse? I was finishing up Scottish Maid. This was my first model -- since I was a teenager, anyway -- and it took me eight years to finish. Granted, my wife and I had two kids during that eight years and there were several years when nothing got done, but still -- start to finish -- eight years. I think it turned out really well, though. I entered it in the 37th Annual Model Ships and Boats Contest and Display. On May 18th, it was awarded a Gold Award and I got received the Best Novice Builder Award. I'm still walking on air. It was the culmination of a lot of work. The ship was judged by people who really know what they're looking at and the contest was held in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. I grew up near there, in Green Bay. It was like being recognized by the people of my native land. (For those who don't know, life in Wisconsin, is very different from life in Illinois, where I live now. I live near Chicago, a city of 2.6 million, about 8 million in the metro area. Green Bay, when I was growing up, had a population of 47,000. There is no metro area ... unless cow pastures count.) Anyway, while others in the Tri-Club were making progress on their longboats, I was toiling away on Scottish Maid.
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I agree on the base: looks great. I like the longboat too! Dan
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Hi, Ryland. Just wondering ... Where did you get those little true squares in the pictures from February 27? Those look really handy, but I have no idea where I could find them. Enjoying the build very much! I've just started my longboat, so I'm watching all the activity here with great interest. Dan
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I've been warned so many times not to glue the masts in that I'd be scared to do so! For alignment, I use the little jib described in Mastini's Ship Modeling Simplified. It's just two small dowels of equal length, placed parallel to each other and pinned together at one end. It's a little bipod. With the two ends placed against the bulkheads, the pin should be right in the middle of the mast. It's really easy to check alignment as you work. On my Scottish Maid, the foremast alignment was a little tricky. I used the shrouds to hold it properly in place and checked as I progressed with the "mast alignment tool." Worked out just fine. Dan
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Furled , unfurled or no sails -Preference
dcicero replied to Canada Steve's topic in Masting, rigging and sails
Generally, I like the looks of a ship model without sails for many of the same the reasons people have posted here: sails on models are often out of scale and distracting; sails on models displayed on pedestals just don't look right; sails on models obscure the rigging. That said, I do think sails look good on models of small boats. It's easier to get the scale right. The sail plan is simpler on these vessels, which means the sails can actually be rigged completely and properly. Dan -
Another quick update... Practice may not make perfect, but it sure does make "better." Here are the port ratlines. They turned out better than the starboard ones. I was able to go back and correct some of the errors on the starboard side and they do look presentable now. Next time I have to do this, I'm installing the ratlines when I step the masts rather than after everything is in place. Working in the tight quarters around the main yard was nerve wracking. Dan
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Just a quick progress report... I finished rigging the ratlines last night and applied some dilute white glue (50/50) to the whole thing. I still have to trim the excess thread from the first and last knots, but that will take just a minute tonight. The shrouds look a little wavy in the pictures. In real life, they're less so. As I went along, I checked alignment against the templates and found I had to push and pull them around a little bit to keep them even. Overall, I'm happy with the results. The process did speed up as I went along because I got really fast at telling when I'd tied a knot incorrectly and could correct the error before it became a problem. The starboard side is done. Now it's over to the port side to finish this part of the model off. Dan
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I'm building Scottish Maid right now. Why did I buy it? Well, I wanted to learn to build ship models. This one didn't look too complicated and the price was right: $40.00 from Model Expo. (How big a mistake can a guy make on a $40.00 kit?) I've been building for a long time now. (I hate to admit how long...) And am almost done, but I wouldn't recommend AL kits to anyone and I think this will be my last one. A lot of people complain about the quality of the wood in the kits. I didn't find that to be a problem. I used it and it worked out okay. There wasn't enough wood in the kit, though. I had to buy more walnut dowels for the masts and spars. The instructions are horrific ... and there aren't enough of them. They come down to a series of pictures of the hull being constructed. Essentially, "build it so it looks like this." There are no rigging instructions. The plans for the hull are okay, but the rigging plans were terrible. Not only were they technically incorrect, they were also contradictory. For instance, if you rigged any spar in accordance with the plan, you couldn't complete the rigging because almost all the attachment points, block types and whatnot were wrong. I used Rigging Period Fore-and-Aft Craft by Lennarth Petersson to get me through the rigging. I think another reason for the popularity of the AL Bluenose is that a lot of modeling books use it for instructional purposes. The best of those books is Frank Mastini's Ship Modeling Simplified. I've used that book extensively, even though I wasn't building the Bluenose. When I look at the amount of time I've spent on this kit, it makes buying a quality Model Shipways kit look cheap. Scottish Maid has turned out well, but the quality of the documentation in the kit really made the process a lot harder than it needed to be.
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Jan: I found that too. I had the picture of the knots next to me as I went along. After a row or two, it was second nature, but how those knots are tied ... well, the forgetting curve is a lot faster than the learning curve. One thing I left off my last post... I tried using dilute white glue to hold everything together after completing a row. I can't figure out if I'm diluting too much or too little. Seems like using the glue actually loosened everything up. The ratlines in Box 3 have no glue on them. There is glue on those in Box 2. (The ratlines in Box 1 just need to be replaced...) Dan
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