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SawdustDave

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  1. SawdustDave
    Yep.
  2. SawdustDave
    Build a carriage - turn a long gun..... build/turn.... etc, etc.... Actually, after wood carving, my second favorite "sawdust thing" would be turning wood. Seen here, the next 24 pound long gun turned in hard rock maple - I don't suggest you try this with any of the softer woods like the dowels we use to create our masts and spars. The big challenge is getting that little ball down to size before the turning pops out of the lathe. So far, I'm batting about 500 on that. If all goes well, this is how each turning should come off the lathe.... Cheers
  3. SawdustDave
    Never had to build and rig so many guns in all of my previous builds Patrick. Thirty on the gun deck, then 22 demi's on the spar deck. This is gonna take a while..... no hurry. Cheers
  4. SawdustDave
    PROGRESS UPDATE.... Since I haven't posted anything lately, I guess this is mainly to say howdy to all, and show evidence that we're still toiling away in the ship yard every day. Since finishing the copper plates and turning her upright on her new base, I began adding most of the fixtures to the spar deck bulwarks, which were created off ship in order to do all those little bolt heads. So here's where we are on that task.... Forward end - both sides: Aft end - both sides.... The belaying pins were turned from the end of tooth pics.... I am still not ready to install these bulwarks at this point because I still need to add a few more planks to the spar deck and fill in the forward decking around the bow area. And.... before doing any of that, I must return to the gun deck area where EVERYTHING needs to be worked on.... beginning with 30 cannon installations. So.... Here I am building cannon carriages because I refused to build a few each week along the way, as planned. Looks like I'll be working on gun deck cannons for a long while. Cheers
  5. SawdustDave
    Mom 99!! Wow! My Mom would be same age if she was still with us. The pedestals and the custom shaped top shoulder pieces are oak (taken from a piece of hardwood flooring scraps). A mixture of a couple of different dark stains I had laying around. I think one of them was dark walnut. Trimmed poster paper to a snug fit to the hull shape, then traced the shape onto the shoulder pieces and cut out with band saw. Result was very solid base which allows me to handle the ship often while continuing the build.
  6. SawdustDave
    Thanks DDude / Jud.... Good to hear from you Pete. Hope all is well with you these days. Prime shop time has been disrupted since returning from "Baastin" due to an intensive yard work project. After completely ignoring my lawn last year whilst fighting my ear infection, I have a lot of catching up to do. The hurricane did a lot of damage to my turf throughout, especially around the trees and landscaped areas. All this comes in the form of large "wash-out" areas and dead spots. Then, of course, there's the weeds! So, the painful solution is top soil dressing.... 40 pound bags of rich black top soil spread around my entire yard (front / sides / and back). Since I can only work outside during early morning and late evening hours due to 90 degree heat here in N.C..... followed by cold showers and long rest periods, the Constitution progress has had to suffer. What little time in the shop has mostly been creating pinrails and quite a large number of belaying pins from tooth picks. I just finished raking out bags number 250 this morning (each bag handled three times).... looks like about 60 more bags will about do it. Racing to get seed spread into the new soil before the rain comes this weekend.
  7. SawdustDave
    BACK TO WORK.... After our incredible visit to walk her decks, I'm happy to be back in the shop.... now having a little case of self doubt that I have the required skills to do justice to this great ship. First.... I finished up the new display base. Since there should be no reason to work on the upside down hull, the base is firmly attached to the keel with two 4" long wood screws.... passing through the 1/2" thick base and through the two (two piece) turnings and 3/4" deep into the keel. The stained base has three coats of satin poly. Next, I added the rigging hardware to the bulwarks and began creating pinrails and belaying pins....(one result of my visit was seeing how thick her pinrails are) The pins are each turned from wooden tooth picks....
  8. SawdustDave
    Wish I could say I'll be back Tom. While possible, not likely any time soon. Maybe after I eventually finish the build. Yes it was great walking her decks but disappointed she was so stripped down. BTW.... We did manage to get really choice box seats right beside the Sox dug out for Saturday's game against TB. Got to admit a day at Fenway was the highlight of my trip. After spending 8 years in Cincinnati during the era of the "Big Red Machine I only THOUGHT I had experienced the best baseball had to offer.... NO WAY! Now I know, Baseball at Fenway is like no other. Good to be back in the ship yard.
  9. SawdustDave
    Enjoyed meeting Tom (Usedtosail) on Friday.... we talked about all of you over great beers. Waiting for him to post the photo evidence. Not the best time for our visit to the ship because all guns were totally removed while she's undergoing major "spruce-up".
  10. SawdustDave
    Ship Ahoy! Man the cannons! I definitely feel a carving coming on.
  11. SawdustDave
    Long as the white stuff is gone, I can handle "kind of chilly" Tom. Looking forward to getting to tour this great ship. Any chance you might be able to join my son and I for a beer Friday or Sat.?
  12. SawdustDave
    New Display Base.... Thank you Greg. Plenty of gray hair here as well. Actually, it's the messing around with air port terminals that I mostly hate. Did enough flying around the world in my work career for a lifetime and have enjoyed not having to do that any more. With the additional thickness of the copper plates to the keel, the temporary mounting base no longer works, so before proceeding with work on the gun decks etc. I decided this morning to take a few days to create a solid new display base. Pretty good idea what I want to do.... Looks like this will be a sawdust day.
  13. SawdustDave
    Leaving Friday for Boston. Man! I hate flying!
  14. SawdustDave
    Rudder Installed.... It seems really good to flip her back to her upright position. Back to work on the gun deck.
  15. SawdustDave
    Copper Plating Completed.... First this shot of the copper plated hull.... And the rudder with pintles .... And the gudgeons.... I created the straps from vinyl strips (1/16th" wide) because I found that I could press the bolt head dimples from the back side. Then painted the straps with brilliant gold metallic enamel. Finally, each bolt head was touched with a tiny dot of black 3D Fabric Paint.
  16. SawdustDave
    Welcome back Vivian. Love your beautiful work.
  17. SawdustDave
    Thank you Pat....and for the friends who continue to drop in. I think we can all agree that the task of copper plating a large hull is similar, in my mind, to tying rat lines. We really have a special celebration upon final completion. I'm looking forward to the day when I can get back to building out the gun deck and begin making her tall.
  18. SawdustDave
    Thank you, as always Greg. Another failure not mentioned here was my attempt to create plates from sheets of copper with no adhesive on the back.... posting #143.... also turned out to be a train wreck. Dave.
  19. SawdustDave
    A tale of success.... followed by failure.... followed by success: The first tale of success to report being the completion of the hull planking. I did use the 1-1/2 wide by 1/4" thick vinyl lattice strips purchased at Lowe's. Ripping down to 1/4" wide by 1/8th think planks on my mini table saw took about 8 hours because the feeding is extremely slow and tedious. The result is well worth the effort with perfect planks that can be bent to extreme shapes and easily smoothed to a great surface with a palm sander. Some areas were touched up using "Bondo" (auto body filler). Next - The tale of failure.... Dave's Copper Plate Riveting Tool - First I must say, the single reason I have put off building the Constitution for years is because, after two Vics, The Syren, and a large Pirate ship for my old coaches, I swore I would NEVER build another ship with copper sheathing. So here I am, once again, the dreaded copper plates. First, I created a ponce wheel from a fabric marking tool purchased at WalMart. Played around with rivet patterns and decided I wanted to use three rows of rivits on each plate.... seen here in the pile on the left. Not happy with the accuracy and consistency of the rows as they lined up end-to-end, I had the bright idea of creating a tool that would give me an exact pattern for every single plate. After several hours of trial and error, the tool was a disaster! Getting perfect alignment of the rivet patterns was much harder than it seemed, plus, the individual rivet dimples were just too fat for the scale. Three days of effort seen above had to be pulled off and scrapped.... bad day in the ship yard! Back to the ponce wheel. The final tale of success comes with developing a method of getting three perfect patterns of rivets that line up consistently end-to-end from plate to plate. I needed a visual reference to follow with the ponce wheel. I first marked and cut the copper tape into lengths of ten plates (3/4" long). I then created a couple of simple jigs used to mark precise lines on the back of the copper strips. And here's the result I am going with.... Note that I also decided to give the hull a coat of flat black spray enamel in order to improve the adherence of the plates. Well on my way....
  20. SawdustDave
    One more note.... I have decided not to add the gun port lids to the transom area at this point because they are very fragile and I will be handling the hull extensively as I now proceed with more planking and copper plating. Also...I'm thinking seriously about using vinyl material to plank the entire area of the hull that will be copper plated. Two reasons..... 1. I purchased two rolls of self adhesive copper and tested them on wood and on vinyl, discovering that they adhere to the vinyl surface much better than the wood. 2. Some of the bending of planks around the aft area of the hull is rather severe. The vinyl strips will be much easier to cut and bend in those areas. Dave
  21. SawdustDave
    I've said numerous times, the primary reason I take close shots of areas in progress is to allow me to examine and flaws and try to fix what I can. The camera really is our most reliable critic. A good example in this case.... I have gone back and tweaked the tops of those little columns to even out the alignment. Also, I didn't like the two undersized "N's" in the name plate lettering, so I removed them and re-carved replacements.... Still not perfect, but much better now.
  22. SawdustDave
    Hi Jon: All excellent questions.... Really tiny carvings such as the stars and the nameplate lettering are most easily handled by gluing a printed image directly onto the wood surface. I simply used a photo from the actual ship.... scaled it to the size needed (200 dpi), and printed a few copies to go with. In this case, the nameplate letters were a little more difficult than the stars, with some of the letters being more difficult than others.... "I" and "T" and "N" were much easier than the others having curved shapes... i.e. "C", "O", and "S". The nameplate.... I painted a piece of white card stock black and trimmed out the shape of the nameplate. The thin white border you see is actually the edge of the card stock which I revealed by trimming the edge at a slight angle. Hope this helps. Thanks for the visit Jon, and others. Dave
  23. SawdustDave
    THE EAGLE HAS LANDED.... Real pleased to see the eagle carving take it's place this morning....
  24. SawdustDave
    Glad to see you say "tricky" Tom. Thought it might just be me. Thankfully, the port side is going much smoother. As usual, things like this have a definite learning curve. Ain't gonna re-do this starboard side!
  25. SawdustDave
    QUARTER GALLERIES PROGRESS.... Port side installed......

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