Chuck Seiler

Foxy, Hey, no...not upset. Sorry if I gave that impression. I am jumping from one swamp to the other, keeping the gators in check. I pop in to MSW from time to time, so if I am a little curt, I apologize. Keep the observations and comments coming. Philadelphia is a strange bird...designed by army guys, built in a hurry with full knowledge that it would not last very long. There are alot of things that don't make sense about it. As mentioned, the instructions do not even call for planking the bottom. I have addressed the reason why I chose to do it with Steve in an IM, and I will re-post that in my build log when I get to that point. Depending on how it is mounted, it will not be widely viewed (if at all)..

Money is probably negligible, depending on what you use. You could probably get away with pencil dots. Time is the issue. At this point he is probably raring to get started on the model...goofing around with this underside is less than desirous. Of course, one could always use the underside to experiment with nail techniques....if one had a mind to.

There are a couple things I want to do with this model that are not in the instructions (as far as I can see). First, I want to plank the bottom of the bailing well, second I want to plank to bottom (underside) of the hull. There are other things that I will discuss as I get to them, but these are on the agenda before anything else happens. The bailing well is a depression in the deck where water can be removed-all wooden vessels leak; scoop water from well into a bucket, toss water over the side. An elaborate man-powered bilge pump, as it were. PHILADELPHIA's bailing well is in the aft cockpit (the lower deck area between the aft and middle platforms). The floor of the bailing well is actually the bottom planking. This planking is not represented in the model. It is now. I could have planked the false floor itself, but decided to insert a 'section' of planking. We shall see. A piece of the false floor is cut out. I made the cut before gluing the two sides together. False planking section inserted and sanded (somewhat). More sanding required. We shall visit this area at a later time.

Rgr, thanks

Like this?

I do NOT use wood conditioner, since I am working with hardwoods such as box, maple, holly, etc. I'm not sure if a wood sealer is needed with basswood in order to get a good finish. Check out Chuck Passaro's CONFEDERACY or WINCHELSEA. I believe they were both in basswood. If somebody doesn't provide an answer in a day or so, post the question on my build log, I know you will get an answer there.

Absolutely, non permanent mounting is definitely an option if you don't plan on moving the case around. If that is the situation, there is no need to screw/nail/bolt/duct tape/super glue the model to the base. I strongly endorse your plan for a case.

Yeah, it's not like I haven't had time to think about this, eh? I still think it will be an issue of experimenting with things to see how it looks before actually 'going live'. I am going to try a couple things...probably Septemberish. I will let you know what I come up with, but in the meanwhile, I am still working on mounting and planking. Have you decided how to mount it yet?

Foxy, The rules for 'nailing' planks varied from country to country, depending on date and size of ship, as well. Sometimes 1 nail (normally a wood treenail) between butt ends, sometimes 2 staggered. All that gets thrown out the window with Philadelphia (along with alot of other things. Check out my scratch Philly to see other areas where their building practice went counter to what we normally think as being correct.) They used alot of iron nails to hold these gunboats together. The structural stresses from the 12 pound gun forward and 9 pounders amidships had to be significant.

Steve, I would not go with nails for the underside at this point. Nails in th ehull and deck are going to be a pain in the @$$ enough. For my scratch Philly I used pencil point (very sharp #6 hard) with some success. Based on some research, I am thinking of using a grayish monofiliment. I will be doing experimentation to figure out which I like best. The problem with the pencil is that sometimes the stain caused it to run (such as on the rudder). Bottom line; subtle is where you want to go....nails that are TOO obvious tend to detract. ....and there are alot of nails. For the hull, there are four nails per main plank (the ones below the wale) per frame. I forget how wide these were, but I think that equates to 1 nail for every 6 inches of width. Since the real Philly had twice as many frames as the model, you would have nails at the existing frames PLUS halfway between them. The above picture gives you an idea where and how many nals there were onthe hull. For the deck, the number of nails were similar, particularly on the forward and middle platforms, due to the guns. The replica uses treenails because it has to worry about corrosion, but the original did not have that problem.

I am about at that point as well. I will be dribbling that out later this week. I look forward to your post.

Thanks Joe. You can kind of get away with waiting until the last minute when you have a ship with traditional keel. This flat bottom makes that alot harder.

Pops, I found they have 6's, 8's and 10's at bolt depot. You can order them individually or by the box. I will look into that option.

Two alternatives to mounting. 1. Use the pedestals I have and wood screw them directly into the keel. If that is done, both sides of the keel adjacent to the screw hole should be beefed up for support. 2. Use an existing brass pedestal. I had a spare Model Shipways 1 3/8" brass pedestal with 5/32" slot that worked okay. It is a little short for my tastes, but that is a personal preference. Perhaps ME has larger ones. ......or, hanger bolts.

Pops, The ones pictured are a bit large, but it gives me some ideas to work with.

It is time to start, so let's start at the end. What did he say? Yeah, you heard me. <Oh dear, Seiler is into the magic mushrooms again.> Before I begin in earnest, I wanted to cover an area that I don't think is in the instructions and that I did not get to until almost last with my scratch PHILLY. Mounting the model. It is easier to worry about it now than later. so we will...... Good ol' Mike Lonnecker taught me to plan on how to mount your model early on and build accordingly. I MAY have done that with PHILLY 1, but obviously not very well. The support infrastructure I THOUGHT was there was not, so I ended up putting a couple big gobs of glue in the holes and gluing the model to the base for all eternity. My plan is to use wooden pedestals like I did before, except slightly larger. I want to run a machine screw up the middle and screw it into a nut already mounted in the false keel. Mounting these nuts just forward of the forward cockpit and aft of the aft cockpit seems to me to be the most logical choice. Here is how it will kind of look once mounted. As with Philly 1, I used a base board which will eventually be mounted to a larger board (which will be the base of the case). Aft pedestal just aft of the cockpit. Forward pedestal just forward of cockpit. I would have preferred having the pedestals closer to the center but that would put them in the cockpits. I didn't think the cockpits were deep enough to make this work well. In retrospect, I may be wrong. Once I figured out approximately where I wanted the pedestals, I drilled the appropriate holes in the bottom of the hull. (Hey!!! Your hull bottom pieces are already glued together so you are NOT starting at the end. Okay, you got me.) For me, it is easier to mark/cut the false keel based on the hole in the bottom that it would be to drill the hole based on the slot in the keel. I also want to take this opportunity to drill the holes onto the base board I will be using. If I use the holes in the hull as a template, I should ensure the holes are lined up. I will eventually have to drill a hole up the center of each pedestal. The screw will run up through the base, through the pedestal, through the 'floor' of the model and into a nut embedded in the false keel. As it is, I will need to either cut away a small portion of the keel to accommodate the top of the pedestal, or sand the top of the pedestal to make it flush...probably the latter. I will then have to cut away a portion of the keel to allow me to embed the nut and leave room for the screw. I won't do this until I have the hole in the pedestal and can ensure everything lines up. I would have preferred flathead screws, but Home depot didn't have them that long. I am investigating other sources.

Yeah, I have had problems with the stem creep. I learned alot from BobF's Longboat build.

That's true, but the area to be planked is defined by the wales on top and garboard strake on bottom, not keel.

Shouldn't you wait until the garboard strake is in before you insert your battens?

3/16 sounds about right. In reality, I doubt if ANYONE will see the center strip and almost nobody will actually see the underside planking. The ME instructions did not call for planking the underside (that I saw) nor is it addressed in Kurt's article. Some people may wonder "Then why plank it?". As I expressed to you seperately in an IM, I think planking the bottom is important because (1) Just because, ( b )To demonstrate that it really is the bottom of the boat and not a waterline model. Hi Kurt!.

Steve, My strip on the underside is as wide as the centerpiece/false keel, whatever that is. It is 3/64 thick, as are all the other planks. In reality, it would stick out a little prouder than the bottom planking, but not much-only scale inch or two. However, that makes it unstable when it sits on a flat surface, so I make it all the same.

Steve, Looking good! Rumor has it ME has PHILLY on sale for $119. Maybe we will get more builders. Sounds like a 'community build' project, eh?

We shall be watching your build log as well.

I didn't know they had video back in 1776.

<Orchestral overture, waiting for the curtain to rise> Getting ready to start the build, let me make a few points. --Before starting the build in earnest, I strongly recommend checking the parts list and ensuring you have all parts before you begin. It is frustrating to get to a certain point and find you are missing something. Model Expo is very good at replacing missing parts. Likewise, review the instructions/plans to see what parts you are going to need first, find them on the parts sheet then mark the numbers on the actual parts wood sheet, preferably on the part itself. Kurt Van Dahm, in his “Ships in Scale” article, recommends marking ALL parts before starting. --I will occasionally be referring to Kurt’s series of articles on the building of the PHILADELPHIA. For copyright reasons, I cannot reproduce the articles, but I can point out helpful hints (I hope) and make occasional smart@$$ comments (Hey Kurt, your Haas painting is backwards) without fear of reprisal. If you don’t already get “Ships in Scale” magazine and would like copies of this article, I believe they can be purchased directly from the magazine. The articles are quite informative. --The glue that I normally use is a yellow wood glue, normally Titebond. White Elmer’s glue works well also. There have been raging discussions about the value of one glue over the other, which I will not get into here. I just find these glues to be the best overall. As Kurt points out, if you mess up, 70% isopropyl alcohol works well to get it apart. I will use other glues (CA or other) throughout the build if necessary. I sometimes use CA as a tack-weld to hold something until the glue dries. There will be other places where I am gluing metal to metal or metal to wood.