Landlubber Mike

He's back! Good to hear from you Martin - really nice update on your Fly. It's coming along beautifully. I love the little touches you're adding.

Really beautiful work Ulises! Love the colors you are using - all are working very nicely together for a really nice antique look.

Looks great Jason. Love the rudder, and I think you're right to spend the extra time on the stern. I feel like the stern is one of those areas that makes or breaks models. You've given me a few ideas to think about how to approach the stern on my models, so thank you for the timely tips!

Cool to see more of these big PE-enhanced kit builds coming on MSW. More and more I see of them, the closer I come to wanting to try one (the tiny PE parts must appeal to my masochistic side). Good luck with the build, looking forward to the updates!

I came across these tweezers from one of my ship-in-bottle books (or maybe it was one of the Phillip Reed books on miniature ship model making). Very expensive, but incredibly precise tips. Some of the tips are so small that if dropped, you probably ruin the tips. I bought a few to try out when I get down to very small detail work - given the price, I'm probably going to use these sparingly, as the larger, less precise tweezers are usually fine for most modeling purposes. https://www.dumonttweezers.com

There is a Byrnes adaptor thread on here somewhere. I have a Fein shop vac which is in a metric size. I had to use two adaptors, one inside the other, for a tight seal. You might be able to get away with one adaptor and some gaffer tape. The thickness sander is awesome by the way. I don't use it nearly as often as the table saw and disc sander, but when I do, I am thankful I have it.

Nice work EJ - you work quickly, yet very precisely. This is coming along really beautifully. Just saw you started the SR - signed up for that one too

Love it - very nice subject. Cool to see small scales being built too. Any particular reason you went small? After reading the Phillip Reed books, it's amazing to see what kind of detail you can get at such small scale, yet have a model that doesn't take up as much space as a 1:64 or 1:48.

Gorgeous work on a gorgeous subject Mark. Really inspiring! Have a great 2017!

Thanks very much Joe, really appreciate the kind words. Any luck on your Morgan?

Really amazing work Greg. I'm not sure that I could keep my sanity with all those tiny PE pieces. Hard enough with the ones in a wooden ship kit! Just out of curiosity, for these plastic models, do you use CA or some other kind of glue? I seem to recall doing plastic models as a kid with my dad and using something other than CA. For whatever reason, I can't seem to get the hang of using CA, so I don't think doing a plastic kit is in the cards for me (as incredible as these models with the add-ons are).

Next up is the planksheer, which sits on top of the waterway. This is a critical piece to get right, as it helps form the shape of the hull and it extends past the outer hull planking making a decorative pinstripe or "rail" on the outer hull. The planksheer is ochre inboard, and white on the outside of the hull. It's the lower white stripe in the picture below: To make the planksheer, I'm using yellowheart with a thin piece of holly for the outbound portion to represent the white stripe. Yellowheart is a tricky wood to work with. It is a hard, yet splintery wood, kinda like walnut. It machines pretty nicely, but I notice a bit of char at times when cutting it on my table saw. It wasn't too difficult to construct the planksheer, which I did out of three pieces. The first was the bow section, followed by two long strips that run the length of the hull to the stern. Here are some pictures, along with the start of the main rail which similarly is going to be yellowheart, except with both an ebony and holly strip laminated to it. Right now I'm in the middle of adding the stanchions. Not including the knightheads and timbertheads, there are 44 stanchions to add to the ship I'll post pictures later this weekend when completed.

Happy holidays and new year to all my friends! It's been a while since my last update, mostly because of work and other issues, but I did manage to make some progress the last couple of months. As per usual, most of it was planning, with only a little on the actual building. The approach of avoiding paint on the model has required a lot of careful planning, but so far so good. I spent a good part of a week making sure that the bulkheads and bulkhead stubs were level with one another, and that the stubs were equidistant from the center line of the hull. Unfortunately, the stubs weren't crisply cut and weren't identical on each side in most cases, which required some shims, etc. - to be expected I suppose from using basswood for the bulkheads This was a pain in the posterior, but worth the time I think to ensure that the deck planking and hull are symmetrical. The Morgan has white pinstripes running along the hull, so the bulkheads and stubs need to be in a smooth line or the pin stripes will look wonky and ruin the look of the hull. This kit is a little different from the Caldercraft and Amati kits in that you don't have bulwark/gunport strips. Instead, you have to frame out the bulwarks which is a completely new approach for me (but good practice when it comes to scratch building I suppose). A good picture of what is involved is below which is taken from the plans (actual picture is borrowed from John's website): After setting up the bulkheads and the counter block and stem and stern filler blocks, the waterway is installed. The waterway helped to draw water down through the scuppers out of the ship. It's tricky in that it runs the length of the hull, sits against the bulkhead stubs, and has a bevel cut into it. The thickness supposedly varies as well. Here's a picture from the actual Morgan: I decided to go with pear stained with General Finishes Antique Oak to get a nice dark brown color. I originally tried cutting the waterway into three sections, but it just didn't look right as I wanted a nice smooth line for the waterway along the hull. Eventually I settled on cutting the waterway as a single piece on the Byrnes saw, sanded a bevel using the Byrnes disc sander (first time I used the angle adjustment on the table which made things really easy), soaked the strips, and then clamped them overnight. Pear is a really great wood in so many aspects. I forget the exact measurements, but the waterway strips were like 3.5mm x 4.25mm or so. When soaked, the pear holds the shape very nicely and I was very happy in the end with how it came out. Here are a couple of pictures:

My first build was the Caldercraft Badger, and I moved onto the Amati Pegasus. If you have the TFFM books, I would think about either the Pegasus or Fly, or scratching your own. Lots of great logs on here, and the TFFM series is top notch.

Really nice Mark. Are you using ebony for the black areas? Just out of curiosity, is yours jet black? It looks like it might have a little brown in it which I really like. The ebony I'm using for my Morgan build is solid jet black, and I would probably prefer wood with a little more color variation.

Are you adding masts and rigging? That will make for a really tall model at that size

Thanks JP. It should be a fun ride whichever flag ends up on the ship. I've been a little busy with work and family stuff the past few months, but recently turned back to my Morgan build to get that going. I'm still trying to figure out the color scheme for the LAR. I'm toying with the idea of using holly to simulate the white stuff. I bought a bunch of holly from Jeff from his close-out, but didn't get any pieces thick enough for the keel and stem, which I think comes out around 7mm in thickness. So, I'm trying to decide whether to go that route, and then buy milled stock that not only is in that width, but whether I would need extra for the hull so that the holly is all the same color. I might end up going with paint on the build, particularly with the ornamentation, so I could always paint on the white stuff. I'm not a fan of white paint because it usually requires a number of coats to cover, which then looks thick. I found a whitewash stain from General Finishes that goes on nice and thin though, so that might be an option.

Very cool! Nice of you to donate it too. Is the model going to come in a little over 5 feet in length?

For some woods, and depending on the size you need to bend, it doesn't seem like you need boiling water. Most of the time I just run hot water from the tap. Usually, by the time I get the piece situated, the water is room temperature. I boiled water for my first build's planks, but haven't noticed a difference just going with warm water on my current builds. If you were bending tricky woods like ebony, you probably do need heat. One thing to remember is that the wood may expand a little when soaked. So, if you glue it right away when wet, by the time it dries, it might shrink leading to gaps. I've been a little more conservative these days in soaking, pinning and letting the piece dry overnight before gluing just to be on the safe side.

I just did this last night in using a long shallow cooking tray to bend some extra long pear - I'll keep your secret if you keep mine

Wow, that's beautiful Jason. Very clean look, and love the color of the coppering! I was re-reading your issue on the stern lights. I would think about doing them from scratch, as I think you are going to be annoyed going with the kit parts. The stern is really where a lot of the character of these ships comes out (at least in my opinion), and I think many a model suffers when things are slightly off there. Plus, your model is coming along so nicely, no sense in settling at this point. If you don't have a table saw, maybe try either by hand or getting a friend to help? I could always try cutting/milling some pieces if you want. I was planning on scratching the quarter galleries and stern on my Pegasus, including the lights in holly, so depending on how that goes, I could similarly cut some pieces for you if you want to go that route.

Great decisions Chris. If I had the space you had, I would do something similar. The workstation desk in particular is going to be nice with its depth. I think you'll like the Fein and JET system. The Fein is a bit of a pain when it comes to attaching to the Byrnes dust ports, but I think there is a thread here where I came up with a solution (essentially involved pairing two adaptors, which I include on each of my tools so that I just have to move the vac hose from tool to tool). A bit of an added expense, but pretty easy. Think about getting the dust deputy cyclone system. It works very well. Another pain to attach to the Fein, but use some gaffer tape and you'll be fine.

Looking good Jase. I was going to suggest sanding down the stern area of the keel down to 1mm as well, given that you need to run two layers of 1mm planking to the stern post. Sounds like you already got it figured out

Beautiful Russ! Very nice job!

Hey Rob, I'd also say you should go for it! I think the most important thing is that you find a subject your heart is into, given that these are very long term projects. I saw the Morgan in person a few years ago, and knew it was a ship I had to build. I just started the Morgan, and it certainly is a little more complicated than many of the model kits that are out there. But, the good news is that there are a lot more Morgan build logs going here than there used to be - so, you have a treasure trove of resources. Just take your time on it, study the plans, ask questions. For me, building these ships is more about the journey, and not the destination anyway.