jack.aubrey

Many thanks to all of you for your encouraging messages . . This morning, Sunday, April 24th, after nine days, the situation is as follows: - image 01 shows the solution just after its preparation on April 16th; - image 02 as it is today, after I removed some steel wool and added some new vinegar, - image 03 shows the second sample I made with the discarded steel wool from first sample and using apple vinegar (remember that the color of this vinegar is darker). Something seems to be happened, the solution is not darker but is more cloudy, but it will be enough ? In a few days I'll try to stain some wood . . may be it works. 01 20160416_113430.jpg 02 20160424_131704.jpg 03 20160424_131721.jpg

Friday, April 23, 2016 It's now more than seven days that I put the steel wool in the vinegar but the solution does not seem yet ready: the color looks roughly the same the vinegar had the first day and the steel wool does not seem to have rusted or oxidized at all. This makes me tempted to say: it is no longer the steel wool than once. . . or it is not the vinegar than once. Really I don't understand what is happening. I tried to reduce the amount of steel wool in the solution and I put the discarded wool in a solution of apple vinegar . . . so now I have to tests pending. Maybe it's ready and works perfectly but at the moment it is not known whether this is true. Vinegar of bad quality or incorruptible steel wool (such as stainless steel)? Or maybe that it will take some months as the cited website article wrote ? Regards, Jack.

Sunday, April 17, 2016 While waiting for the weathering vinegar solution becomes ready . . . I think it will take some days, here are some elements of the superstructure completed and positioned (but not yet fixed) on the deck . . The model begins to take its beautiful original form . . Cheers, Jack.Aubrey. 01 20160416_110156.jpg 02 20160416_110144.jpg 03 20160416_110123.jpg 04 20160416_110116.jpg 05 20160416_110035.jpg 06 20160416_110127.jpg 07 20160416_110136.jpg

Saturday, April 16, 2016 As the ingredients necessary for the kind of weathering suggested by my friend Andrea (Vass) does not require special ingredients or alchemy, I decided to proceed immediately to a field test and, if positive, to proceed without delay to weather the Viking ship deck. Below the properly prepared solution, and now I've just to wait long enough to get the appropriate color to proceed with the tests. 01 20160416_113430.jpg However, I surfed a bit on the internet to learn more about this weathering method and I discovered that it is a very common practice to produce an antique furniture, often adopted by many restorers. I found a good explanation on http://www.wikihow.com/Age-Wood-With-Vinegar-and-Steel-Woolsite that I propose below in detail. Happy reading, Jack. Part 1: Preparing to Make Your Stain 1) Gather your materials. This is a fairly simple process that requires minimal supplies. You may already have them at home. If not, you should be able to find everything you need at a dollar store, grocery store, or somewhere like Target or Walmart. White distilled vinegar. Any brand will do. Steel wool. Fine graded is ideal because it disintegrates best, but any grade will work. A container of some sort. This can be a bucket, a jar, a pot, a bowl, or whatever else you have on hand. If you dislike the smell of vinegar you may want to opt for a container you can close while the mixture sits, particularly if you want it to get quite dark, as this will involve letting it sit for a while. Rubber gloves. These are optional, but a good idea if you are concerned about cutting your fingers on the steel wool, or if you plan on making a particularly dark solution that might stain your fingers. A strainer. This is also optional, as you can apply the stain straight from whatever container you made it in. This will come in handy if you want to transfer the liquid to another container to store and use again later. A paintbrush. 2) Make sure you are staining an appropriate kind of wood. Some woods will work better than others. You don’t want to go to the trouble of making a stain only to discover that it won’t stain. Wood with bifurcated grains is best, particularly where the wood grain is layered in hard/soft layers, so the soft layers are affected by the process but the hard layers are not, causing the wood to look old. Softwoods are easier to work with than hardwoods. Southern yellow pine, western cedar, and fir are excellent candidates for aging. Red oak, maple, or other slow-growing, tightly grained woods are not. Hardwoods with a distinct grain, such as hickory, white oak, elm, or ash, can also work well. This method is not appropriate for laminate flooring, as the vinegar will likely cause the glue holding the layers together to fall apart. 3) Decide how you want your wood to look. Stains made with steel wool and vinegar range from a reddish, rusty brown, to a very dark, burnt brown. They also range in intensity from very subtle, to very intense. These factors are influenced by the ratio of steel wool to vinegar, and by how long you let the mixture sit. Before you begin, decide approximately color stain you want to create, and plan accordingly. The color of the stain is determined by how long it sits. Stain soaked for just a couple days will have a dark, burnt tone. The longer it sits, the rustier in color it will become. The intensity of the stain is determined both by how many steel wool pads you use, and how long you let the mixture sit. 1-3 steel wool pads to a half-gallon of vinegar should work for most projects. If you want your stain to darken faster, try adding another steel wool pad. If it becomes too dark, simply dilute it with water. Part 2: Making Your Stain 1) Break up your steel wool. This step is not strictly required, but it will help the disintegration process and speed things up. You will want to wear plastic gloves to avoid cutting your fingers. Break apart the steel wool pads, and put the pieces in the container you are mixing your stain in. 2) Combine your materials. This is pretty straightforward. Just pour the vinegar over the steel wool. Give it a good mix, and put the cover on. 3) Let it sit. You can create a very subtle stain in just 15 minutes or so, but you will probably want to wait longer. 2-4 days will make a stain suitable for most projects, but you can let the mixture steep for months at a time to create a more dramatic effect. 4) Strain the stain. This is an optional step, and is more important if you plan on storing the stain for later use. When it reaches the color you want, you can pour the mixture through a colander and into a new, sealable container. You can also use it straight from whatever container it is in. Part 3: Applying Your Stain 1) Stain a test surface. Without knowing what your stain looks like when applied, you might not want to brush it onto your furniture just yet. Brush some onto a scrap piece of the same sort of wood, or a part of whatever you are staining that is not usually visible, and wait an hour. If you don’t like the color you end up with, make adjustments to your mixture; add more steel wool or wait longer if you want it to be darker, wait longer if you want it to be redder, or dilute it with water if you want it to be subtler. 2) Sand the wood. Sanding your wood down before painting it can give it an even more dramatically weathered look. This step is optional, and your stain should look good with or without it. It’s just a matter of what effect you want to achieve. 3) Brush the stain onto the wood. There is no particular technique necessary for this. Brush in the direction of the grain, coating it evenly, and let it sit to allow the stain to penetrate the wood. Then just let it dry, and sit back and admire your work. 4) Wax the wood. You can choose whether or not to do this based on how you want the final product to look. For a polished sheen, wait for the wood to dry completely, brush on the wax, let it dry for an hour, and polish it with a towel. If you want a more natural, weather-beaten look, skip this step.

Wednesday, April 13, 2016 It seems it has been months since I had inhalations of cyanoacrylate glue as now !!! I feel a bit dazed but now the shields are almost finished, lacking only a coat of matt transparent paint to hide the small but inevitable glue smudges. 01 20160413_111636.jpg

Many thanks for the many likes, Jack. Monday, April 11, 2016 Going forward with the shields . . 01 20160411_162901.jpg

First of all I have to thank Grant, Yves and Mark for their messages . . Thursday, April 7, 2015 I started the building of the shields. 64 in total and luckily, thanks to Mr. Dusek, they are laser precut otherwise should be a great pain to make all of them so perfectly rounded and equal to each other. The background color is golden yellow, while only the shield side facing the outside of the hull will receive a second color: I'm thinking to dark red. To achieve this kind of task should be perfect the usage of a airbrush: I have it but it is in my main workshop, 350km far from me . . To facilitate this painting task, I fixed the shields of an adhesive "bed". In this way I'm working quietly and easily. Regards, Jack. 01 20160407_162553.jpg 02 20160407_162559.jpg

Saturday, April 2, 2016 I finished to cover the deck with veneer, I think with pearwood or cherrywood, without facing any particular problem. I'm attaching some images of the work done. Anyway this deck finishing seems to me a little too "perfect" and "clean" to be realistic on a ship of this type. I do not think Vikings kept him like a pearwood "parquet". Now I need to imagine, think and implement a proper ageing process . . but it is a task I do not believe I can perform here in Pisa, for lack of suitable materials and equipments in my local workshop. However, it is not a task to be performed now . . I can wait more. Cheers, Jack. 01 20160403_095554.jpg 02 20160403_095547.jpg 03 20160403_095614.jpg 04 20160403_095623.jpg 05 20160403_095602.jpg 06 20160403_095607.jpg

Many thanks to all of you for the likes and positive appreciations of my work. Thanks again, Jack. Tuesday, March 29, 2016 Having finished the hull, at least regarding the general appearance, I started the covering of the deck. Task without any particular difficulty, requiring only patience and precision. Below the images of the model when I reached one half of the deck planking task. Enjoy them, Jack. 01 20160330_103606.jpg 02 20160330_103556.jpg

Thursday, March 24, 2016 Today I finished the outside of the hull: sanding, individually made on each strake, followed by a coat of the same stain I used for the interior. To highlight: although to a lesser extent, the same problem facing the inside emerged also here, due to the excesses of glue that I wasn't able to clean completely. Also because this glue excess was simply completely invisible before applying the stain. It worked, in this case, as a highlighter. So again one or two coats of matt transparent paint will be needed to obtain a uniform background. Regards, Jack. 01 20160325_094013.jpg 02 20160325_094024.jpg 03 20160325_093805.jpg 04 20160325_093823.jpg 05 20160325_093757.jpg

Tuesday, March 22, 2016 Today I have finished the shell and the ribs inside the hull. I rounded the tips of the ribs after having levelled them to the upper edge of the hull. At the end of the session I applied the "special" color prepared some time ago to simulate the tar finishing. The main fact to point out is that, despite having made many efforts to clean up the glue in excess during planking, it is still somewhere present and, there, the appearance of the stained wood is semi-gloss, while when the glue is absent it is rather opaque. This means than one or two coats of matt transparent will be, at the very end, mandatory to achieve an uniform finishing effect. Now it is time to work outside the hull, to complete the refinement of the external side and apply the same painting scheme. Next steps . . PS: I found serious difficulties to take pictures in which seeing something interesting in these very dark hull sides, result of the treatment with dye; for this reason I had to modify the original images with Adobe Photoshop to highlight details otherwise invisible. I humbly apologize for this manipulation. See you soon, Jack. 01 20160322_161618.jpg 02 P1100494.jpg 03 P1100495.jpg

Many thanks to all of you for the positive comments . . . included the several likes. Jack.

Saturday, March 19, 2016 Apart from changing the color of the carpet, from green to orange, there is nothing different from the pictures of my previous message unless the new (and third in the series) building board which will accompany me in the coming weeks (or months) until completion of this model. Taking advantage of the fact that the protruding sides of the hull keel are quite high, I thought at a solution of building board able to clamp firmly it. It is also much more light and easy to handle compared with the first version. Simple but effective, I believe that from now on it will be very useful and functional. 01 20160320_102923.jpg Below the new pictures with the model clamped by the new building board. Enjoy the show, Jack. 02 20160320_102755.jpg 03 20160320_102823.jpg 04 20160320_102739.jpg 05 20160320_102811.jpg 06 20160320_102802.jpg

Pictures are all in chronological order. Initially I thought to stain dark brown all the pieces before installing them. But then I realized that it was a useless work and therefore the only pieces treated in this way was the keel and the frames. Now, during the finishing tasks for the bow and the stern, after the planking, I decided to cover the keel with veneer. Anyway, at the end, all the outer hull will be stained dark brown. Regards, Jack.

Many thanks to all of your for the likes. As I wrote sometime ago this is a new, challenging experience in planking and I'm happy of the result, being it my first attempt. Here below some add'l pics of prow and poop details, were I made the bigger work. 01 20160318_141140.jpg 02 20160318_141121.jpg 03 20160318_141128.jpg 04 20160318_141136.jpg Regards, Jack. PS: At the time I purchased this kit I bought also another kit, the Viking Knarr, 1:35 scale, that isn't a warship but a merchant ship. But the planking is always clinker (or klingon as i named it) and i'll make use of this first experience.

Friday, March 18, 2016 First I worked a little inside the boat: I added an element not present in the kit, but I found listed in the Nicolaysen monograph, the archaeologist who in 1882 discovered this ship. It is a reinforcement on the last strake which also implements a small gunwale. On the model it is, in practice some 1x3 strip clips inserted inside, between a frame and the other. 01 20160318_141156.jpg Finally I filled with a mixture of glue and wood dust the inside of the bow and stern, in proximity of the keel, to provide a greater reinforcement to the strips bonding in this area. Then, to better hide this I applied an "ad hoc strip" of veneer that hides everything. . 02 20160318_141205.jpg 03 20160318_141202_HDR.jpg Then I worked to refine the exterior of the keel area, particularly at the bow and at the stern, where I made a little mess during the planking. Here too I used veneer that allowed me to settle for good the areas subject to the treatment. Don't care about different types of timber used because you will not see any difference when it will be dyed. . 04 20160318_141117.jpg 05 20160318_141020.jpg 06 20160318_141048.jpg It may seem little thing, but it took me four 1.5-2 hours working sessions each to come here. I also planned and I am now preparing a further building slip, more practical of the first I built, for the continuing of this build. But this is not yet finished. A friendly greeting, Jack.Aubrey.

Hi, I've no new progresses on this model since a while . . . I'm not at my house in Milan since December and I'll not be back before May. So I can't work on this brig . . In the meantime, while I'm in my 2nd house in Tuscany, I'm building a Viking ship ( http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/11957-gokstad-viking-ship-jackaubrey-dusek-shipkits-135-scale/ ) Cheers, Jack.

Wonderful job, FAM. Really fantastic!!! Jack.

Thursday, March 17, 2016 A few weeks ago I purchased from the Royal Museums in Greenwich the sheer and body plan of HMS Guadelupe, to finally understand what represents the figurehead and some other details at prow and poop. Today the plan is finally in my hands and as soon as possible I'll post an explanatory message on the subject. Salutoni, Jack.

Friday, March 11, 2016 I finally finished the planking laid down with the "Klingon" method. I have to admit it was a really great experience, from which I learned many things: first to proceed slowly. From the three-four strakes per side that typically I can apply during a working session with the "carvel method"", with the "clinker" it was a success when I was able to apply one strake per side every two days. Probably, if a strake should be made with a single strip rather than by two probably I would have needed half the time I spent. A possible idea for an improvement to the author of this kit. However it was a considerable good exercise for my patience, property I think to own a lot. In addition, as I proceeded away from the keel, the initial errors grew, so I had to spend time and efforts to fix some things . . if you watch closely the attached images you will see some frames where I had to insert some wood to get a proper curvature, without "valleys or hills". Now that the laying of the planks is over, a phase of arrangement of the whole complex begins, starting from the two hull ends but also from the reconstruction of the modified frames where I had to add wood. But all these tasks worries me much less than what I have done until now. However the shape of this boat is spectacular . . Now that I came out from the "Klingon planking" tunnel I plan to keep my diary updated regularly. See you next time, Jack. 01 11032016 P1100483.jpg 02 11032016 P1100489.jpg 03 11032016 P1100484.jpg 04 11032016 P1100487.jpg 05 11032016 P1100490.jpg 06 11032016 P1100485.jpg 07 11032016 P1100488.jpg

Many thanks Yves for your comment . . Many thanks for you too . . I plan to finally seal the planks (when I installed them I always glued them together) after the staining will be completed. I'll do it by applying two coats of diluted vinyl all over the hull. It will fill the small grooves between a plank and its adjacents still remaining practically invisible, being totally absorbed by the wood. It's a trick I experienced many time always with good results. Eventually may be useful a final sanding before matt varnish or wood oil. I printed all the book about the Gokstad ship from Nicolaysen . . I decided to be totally informed about what I'm building, hoping to discover additional details: at a first overview, for example, I saw the existence of a gunwale non planned in the kit . . I'll start soon its reading. Regards, Jack.

Monday, February 29, 2016 As I already mentioned in a previous post, before continuing with the installation of the last three planks it was necessary to start some new, but preliminary activities. In the days between my last post and now, I proceeded to perform these following tasks: 1) - Clean up the upper end of the frames from some waste material produced during the task of detaching the hull from its board: the removal had occurred using a mini-drill power tool with a cutting blade; the finishing, instead, was done with abrasive pads. 2) - Installation of new segments on many frames in order to continue with the necessary framing structure for the next planks; in particular this activity, apparently simple, needed to adapt these new parts to shape the correct bevel angle, otherwise they couldn't be applied as suggested by assembly instructions. 3) - Finally, with more in mind the objective to test the goodness of my approach with the colour scheme than for a real need at this stage, I proceeded to stain the interior of the planking and the visible part of the frames. This to make sure that the dye was properly distributing on the wood, also when there are some glue residuals, due to the non-easy task of removing the glue in excess during the planking. To achieve this goal, I modified the dye, prepared some time ago, by adding a good amount of alcohol to the mordant: this trick has meant that the soaking ability is now higher and, above all, it also worked in the presence of underlying glue. From the proposed pictures below, it seems to work perfectly . . . 01 29022016 P1100480.jpg 02 29022016 P1100481.jpg 03 29022016 P1100478.jpg 04 29022016 P1100482.jpg 05 29022016 P1100479.jpg Obviously this mordant fluid, that should primarily simulate the caulking that was run all over the hull by the Vikings by using tar, is no doubt dark, but it was so made, so it's right . . One last point: this really dark colour helps very much in hiding any defect of construction. I believe that once I'll apply some coats of transparent paint, rigidly opaque, everything will seem perfect and also the gloss and opaque areas that can now be observed, especially in the last picture shown, will disappear completely. Although I'm wondering if the realism rules would suggest to keep partially gloss/opaque as I don't think tar produces an nice and clean effect . . probably the opposite . . At this point I should be able to continue with the installation of the last planks . . Regards, Jack.

Monday, February 22nd, 2016 After twenty days from my latest update, I'm publishing, more due to desperation than anything else, the photos of this Viking ship model, stressing the fact that during this time I have not made much progresses. The reasons were many, but certainly one is mainly related to the greater complexity of the planking with the clinker system. Now I nicknamed it as "Klingon" system, named after the alien race in the Star Trek saga, so much hard and "time consuming" this system is: between the installation of a half plank and the remaining half (remember that a strake is made of two pieces, one of about 2/3 the total length and the other the remaining 1/3) it's necessary to wait that the glue will dry very well before to proceed further. Due to this fact I'm more or less forced to work with short sessions of one hour or less at a time and it may happen I can not always apply an entire course per side during one day. Hence the long lead times which certainly do not stimulate the wish to continue. At the time, I reached the point illustrated by the pictures below: three courses per side are still needed to finish the planking, but before their installation it's necessary to clean the top of the frames, over which there is some waste material coming from the removal of the hull from the overturned building board, and apply new elements to complement the existing frames. Let's begin with a vertical overview image, where you can see that the hull curve trend is pretty straightforward, with some few exceptions still remediable: with the "Klingon" system some advantages also exists and one of them is that if a course does not fit perfectly or has a bad curve trend, you can easily mask it with the next course, provided it is correctly installed. 01 25022016 P1100465.jpg A detailed view of the bow area . . here I have not yet fully completed the installation of the last course: it remains to glue the plank on the last three frames and on the stem, but because of the curve that takes up rather strongly, I prefer separate the work in two steps. 02 25022016 P1100466.jpg An overturned hull view of the midship area . . 03 25022016 P1100477.jpg Overal view of three-quarters and detail of the stem, where you can watch the significant mess I made with the length of the individual strips; and this happens also at the stern. An issue I'll pursuit when the planking is off . . 04 25022016 P1100464.jpg 05 25022016 P1100468.jpg Finally, the stern area, definitely resulting better than the bow . . here the curve trend of the strakes is much better and did'nt create any problem . . instead the bow was, in my case, very different !! 06 25022016 P1100470.jpg To the next step, Jack.

Hi dashicat, what you highlighted is a small imperfection of that frame, that I corrected when applying the next two planks, but I did not refer to it when I wrote: "The poop is smoothly evolving, except for some points to be finished after the stern wheel, while the bow is much more tricky: its evolution is different than that of the stern and the strips must be forced a bit more to follow the water lines. According to me the prow strips had to have a different shape for this zone, not equal to that of the stern. But for now that's fine too." This sentence had a different meaning: the bow is much more high than the stern and in my mind this means that the strakes in the bow area should have a different shape the the strakes in the poop area. But in the kit they are exactly the same and this fact makes more difficult to apply the strake in the bow area, forcing you to curve the strip in an "non-natural" manner using a totally different process used for the poop. As the shape of all the strakes is probably obtained by a 3D CAD software, I think the result should be different. About this last matter I'd like to know the opinion of Daniel Dusek, who seems to follow this build log, to define if my assumption is right or not. Rgds, Jack. Sunday, February 21st, 2016 Just a brief update on this build: when I installed the deck I made a small but unrecoverable mistake, that anyway most probably will be corrected more in advance. But this fact had a negative impact on my enthusiasm with the result I did nothing for a while. When I was ready to resume I got a problem on my right shoulder that stopped me for another week. So I restarted only yesterday, continuing with the planking. But I cannot proceed as fast as I'd like and I can install only a plank per side each day. As soon as I'll have something showable 'll resume the log with new comments and images. Kind regards, Jack.Aubrey.

Monday, February 1st, 2016 The photos here below are obviously not so great, being them shot using my smartphone in low light conditions, but still give an idea of how the hull looks like when the model was detached from its building board. 01 20160201_165033.jpg From this moment it's possible to reuse the first building board I made, although theoretically the hull does not deform anymore, but it makes easier working inside. Later today I finally installed the internal deck, after having applied a coat of glue inside the shell. With the deck installed this coating cannot be seen and then I took the opportunity to further strengthen the planking of the hull. 02 20160201_164938.jpg 03 20160201_164930.jpg 04 20160201_164923.jpg Regards, Jack.