Landlubber Mike

Another question on adding mast and capstan partners. Hopefully Alistair sees this post - I'm not sure if I'm going to build the partners like you did (they are a cool little detail to add), but I read up on them last night and was wondering how you constructed them. Did you build them per TFFM where the bottom middle section was a little deeper and the bottom ends sat a little higher to sit right on the deck (it's hard to describe in words, but it looked like the partners sorta slotted onto the deck). Or did you just build it flat and sit it on top of the deck? The latter seems much easier, and the difference probably wouldn't be noticeable anyway. Also, any sense as to whether the partners were the same wood/color as the deck? To build them, I think I would need slightly thicker wood than used for the deck planks, but I didn't think ahead to order thicker sheets of maple from Jeff. If I went ahead and added them, I might use the same wood that I used to build the hatch coamings and other deck items. Thanks!

Hi folks, I've been doing a little thinking and research on planking the upper deck. I plan to plank a portion of the lower deck under the fore hatch ladder in the waist using the kit supplied tanganyika, since it will barely be visible. Otherwise, the upper deck, the quarterdeck, and the forecastle will be planked with maple. I don't think I'm going to try and precisely line up the butt joints with the supposed locations of the frames from the NMM plans. A big thank you to Ulises and AEW for putting together the deck planking practicum and calculator (available at the link below). Now I understand what a four-butt shift of 1324 means http://modelshipworldforum.com/ship-modeling-articles-and-downloads.php I had a few questions on the proper deck plank dimensions. The build is at 1:64 scale, and I'm planning on using the four-butt shift from the template in the Ulises practicum. Width of standard planks. I was planning on using 4mm wide planks. At full scale, this results in planks approximately 25 cm wide (or about 10 inches). Length of standard planks. I couldn't seem to find the general range for standard plank lengths. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain I recall that planks were something like 12-25 feet in length, but I could be off. The Excel scale planking calculator on the list of resources here suggests using 3.75" long planks (or 95.3mm), which would scale to a length of 20 feet/6 meters. The Bob Hunt practicum says to use 4.5" long planks (or 114mm), which would scale to a length of 24 feet/7.3 meters. For simplicity, I might just go with a length of 100mm. Margin planks. I think I read this information in Goodwin last night, but it sounds like the margin planks are 1.5 times the width of the standard planks. That results in margin planks that are 6mm wide. King plank. I didn't use a king plank on my Badger, but for that kit, the deck template was one piece. Given the Pegasus deck template is in two pieces, putting historical accuracy aside, I'm thinking that a good reason for adding a king plank will be for the mere need to cover the seam between the two halves. Does anyone know if the king plank is generally wider or longer than the standard planks? I read last night (in TFFM I think) that the king plank was a bit taller than the other planks, but at this scale, I don't think that getting into such detail would be visible or otherwise worth it. Do these measurements seem reasonable? Does anyone know if the king plank tended to be wider/longer than the standard deck plank, and if so, by how much? Also, do any of these measurements need to change in planking the quarterdeck and fore deck? Thanks very much in advance!

Those rails are really sharp. Very nice work! Thanks for sharing the technique!

I think like everything else there are trade-offs. I bought Jim's table saw, disc sander and thickness sander earlier this year. Are they essential? Probably not if you like building models straight from the kit. I'm moving more towards scratching/bashing, and each of these tools have been of immense help to me thus far. I especially love the disc sander, which is one of those items where I wonder how I could ever do modeling without it. Once you decide if you have have the need for a tool like these, then there's always the price/quality factor. You pay a premium for these tools (in my opinion, not too high relative to comparable machines from Proxxon and Micromark), but I have to say that they are built like tanks and should be the last tools like these I will ever need to buy. Plus, Jim provides incredible customer service. Case in point, I sent him an email asking a few questions a few months back, and he called me over a holiday weekend, without prompting, to walk me through things. It's really hard to find that level of customer service these days. I don't know if these tools will make me a better modeler, but now I can't blame my tools (or lack thereof)

We'll see how it all ends up Martin. This painting with wood thing requires you to think ahead quite a bit. Jeff's redheart has been very nice to work with, as it has similar workability to pear. I'm curious, though, to see what it looks like when it is finished with tung oil or wipe-on poly. Interesting about the Fly deck. It seems most people like Spyglass have found their Fly kits have had a single piece. Having it in two pieces didn't bother me, especially now that I've reinforced the centerline. I'll have to keep track to make sure it's symmetrical on both sides though, thanks for the heads up!

Very nicely done Nils. Love your metal work!

Thanks Spyglass. I started dry fitting the mast dowels last night. It's a nice snug fit, but you're right, better to get it sorted out now!

I should mention the color scheme that I decided for the build. Essentially, the overall color scheme will be very close to the colors used on the kit box: - Pear for the visible upper hull planking and some of the deck items - Boxwood for the masting and rails - Maple for the decks, upper masting and studding sail booms - Redheart for the bulwark planking, forecastle and quarterdeck supports, cannon carriages, and some of the deck items - Bottom of the hull will be coppered and aged, using Alistair's, uh, natural formula - For items that will be black (like the mast tops, spars, capping rails, etc.), I plan to use the kit's materials as much as possible. The black stain from General Finishes seems to work very well and evenly across different woods. - For the small boats, and possibly the window frames, I might try scratching both by using holly. I'm not a big fan of white paint on models (too bright, usually have to add many more coats to get an even color), at least the way I paint I haven't figured out whether I want to add a different color (like blue or red) to the upper hull planking. For the frieze decorations along the hull, I think I'm going to try to use a combination of washes, lowlights and highlights to get more of a darker, patina'd look. I haven't figured out what I want to do with the figurehead or the stern decorations. I might try and paint them to match the boxwood used in other areas of the build.

I decided to go ahead and reinforce the upper deck template with a few pieces of plywood. Essentially, what I did was test fit the template, and figured out which areas could use a little reinforcement. From what I could tell, the template needed reinforcing near the main mast (as Spyglass and others have pointed out), as well as in the waist (between the stair hatch to the lower deck and the big grating in front of the main mast). The pictures below hopefully show what I ended up doing. Around the main mast, I constructed three relatively narrow supports - essentially, because of all the holes in that area, I couldn't do a longer piece. In the waist area I added a fairly long support. I wanted these to perfectly align with the supports along the spine of the keel, so I sanded the width of the supports to 5mm to match the width of the keel. As you can see in the first picture below, I ran a wooden ruler along the spine as a guide for where to position the new supports. The ruler is slightly above the lower deck so that the extra glue didn't run onto the ruler and glue it to the lower deck as well The supports seem to really help the stability of the deck. If you were really worried about the stability of the supports themselves, running pins between the support and the lower deck might be a good idea - but I just glued them on with plenty of glue. Spyglass - my upper deck templates don't seem to be as crumbly as yours. They did start to splinter when I sanded them against the grain, but nowhere near the issue that you had. The next bit of business was to get the two halves of the ply templates to sit properly on the bulkheads. I had a slight issue in the beginning with the pieces overlapping in the center by about 1-2mm. Most of that was probably due to my new bulkhead extensions being slightly wider in some cases than the kit's extensions. After filing the template bulkhead notches slightly deeper, the two halves fit much better. I also sanded down the front and back of the templates very slightly (maybe taking off 0.5mm or so) to also improve the fit. As you can see in the picture below, the two template halves are fitting very nicely when dry fit. Once I pin and glue them, the seam will pretty much go away. I'm not having any of the bubbling issue that I think some other builders experienced (though, that might have been on the Fly and not the Pegasus), and the new supports actually seem to do a very nice job of maintaining a consistent camber across the deck. Next up I'll go ahead and stain the new supports, and will add some planking on the lower deck for the stair hatch in the waist. Even though I plan to use a different wood for deck planking (maple from Hobbymill), I'll probably just use the kit's tanganyika as the planking will not be very visible. Before I glue down the deck template, I'll probably go ahead and figure out the planking pattern and what details to add (scarpf and hook joints along the perimeter, mast partners as Alistair added, etc.). As an aside, according to the NMM plans, it looks like the hatch under the quarterdeck near the capstan is a stair hatch, whereas the kit has you construct a grating. I'll probably just do a grating as I expect that either won't be visible.

Nice save Frank - I'm sure that was a bit of a stressful situation!

Sjors, for the fore topsail and jibsail, I installed the sail (cut to a much smaller dimension) to the related line and then furled the sails by pulling them down the line and adding the creases, etc.

Thanks guys. Spyglass, I remember you pointing out the bitts issue. Mine is bigger than the plans also Martin, I bet I end up cutting out new bitts out of pear or redheart. If I'm replacing most of the other visible wood, I might as well go all the way and replace all the ply and walnut where visible

Thanks for these thoughts Spyglass. Just out of curiosity, I saw that some of the holes around the main mast match up with holes just below on the lower deck. I forget if these are for the bitts or whatnot, but are there pieces that need to extend through the holes on the upper deck down into the holes on the lower deck?

Thanks Chuck, that makes sense. I haven't tried spiling yet, but that's good to keep in mind about having wider planks to work with.

Thanks Martin - it sounds like reinforcing the upper deck makes a lot of sense. It shouldn't be too hard to cut out two or three pieces of plywood to fully close off some of the bulkheads in the middle. The big concern is to make sure you get the camber of the deck right, but I think I can figure that out. Even if I'm off by 1 or 2mm, it probably won't make much of a visible difference once the planking and deck items are on. I'm probably not going to add blocks between the bulkheads on this build. I did so on my Lyme build (see link below), as the bulkheads in that kit are plywood and have a lot of flex. The Pegasus kit uses MDF which is incredibly strong and really can't be flexed at all. http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/6223-hms-lyme-1748-1760-by-landlubber-mike-kit-bash-of-corel-unicorn-scale-175/?p=220346 It might be hard to get close-ups of the extensions with the bulkheads on the model, but I can try tonight. Here are some that I posted on my log earlier (prior to sanding and finishing them). http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/7267-hms-pegasus-by-landlubber-mike-amativictory-models-scale-164/?p=238373

Thanks for the warning Spyglass. I am planning to make the adjustments where the templates meet the bulkheads, rather than the middle. The two-piece upper deck templates are fairly flimsy as you say. Looking at the set up now, I wonder why the middle bulkheads weren't built as full supports across the full deck. I might think about adding some supports at the middle, but I worry that I might affect the camber of the deck. I'll have to think about that a little more. When I planked the deck on my Badger, I used long thin pins along the length of the plank to keep the plank straight and butt hard against the plank next to it when gluing it down. It worked very well on that build, but I wonder if that approach might end up collapsing the deck at the center. Interestingly, the kit instructions call for you to plank the first third and the last third of the upper deck, and then leave the middle part for later. That would leave an odd planking run, which maybe is mostly covered up by all the deck items, but I still think it would look odd. I could be wrong, but I think the instructions also say to plank the templates off the model. I think it would be hard to fit the planked templates and bend them to conform to the deck camber. So, I'm planning on adding the templates, and then planking the deck in full.

Thanks Alistair. I was wondering about whether to plank the lower deck under that hatch. You probably can't see much with the stairs in the way, but it probably wouldn't hurt to add a few strips down there.

Some more steady progress. I ended up adding the bulkhead extension supports using spare plywood - I figured the extensions may experience some significant lateral forces during the fairing of the bulkheads, so hopefully the plywood supports on either side keep the extensions in place. I also ended up using the GF "black" stain to darken the lower deck and other parts of the keel. I'm not sure if that was necessary, but I thought it might help ensure that the light MDF color from the keel and bulkheads didn't pop out when looking under the quarterdeck and forecastle. Next up is to glue on the upper deck. I need to modify the pieces slightly as the two halves of the template overlap by 1-2 mm. I'm also going to start pinning the gunport templates, as I think it might take a few sessions to get the ply templates to fit the way they should.

Thanks Brian. I've cut some pieces for the keel of my Lyme build on the saw, but I need a lot more practice. That thing scares the crap out of me, especially having some kickback when I first started using it (which went away after I pushed out the back end of the fence a tad). I bought one of these with the 1/8" leg attachment to see if it makes things a little safer and easier. I'll post my experience with it after some trial runs. http://www.microjig.com/products/grr-ripper/index.shtml

Brian, I have a Byrnes saw John, thanks very much. I sorta figured that things would be case dependent.

Hi everyone, This might seem like a silly question, but I was wondering how people approach cutting planks from wood sheets. I ordered a bunch of sheets from Jeff at Hobbymill, which are 3" wide and I think 18-24" long. When cutting planks from those sheets, is it better to cross cut the sheet to the length of the planks I will need, and then cut the individual planks from that piece? Or should I cut planking strips from the full sheet, and then cut them individually to size? I can see the benefits of both approaches, but wasn't sure which would be the most efficient use of the wood. Thanks in advance!

Really nice work Nils. Your build is definitely an inspiration for my Pegasus as I go forward with my build. I agree about the rigging too. With my Badger, someone told me after building the hull that I was 2/3 of the way done. I almost felt like the rigging was equal to, or more than, the hull work -- though I did add sails to my build. It probably would have been shorter had I not in my clumsiness been constantly bumping into the spars and busting off blocks and lines

Thanks Martin - I had a similar thought about the bear, but wanted to keep my thread family rated Thanks Ian. The Unicorn is a bit longer, taller and wider even at the smaller scale as you can see in the pictures below. I should have added the stem to the Unicorn (which as you know is a beakhead ship so it probably looks a little shorter at its front at the moment), and the Pegasus will extend a little further back by an inch or two after the stern extensions are added. I dry fitted the upper decks to get a sense as to the height differential. Interestingly, I thought the Pegasus was going to be a lot smaller when I first started on the build, but it seemed to get a lot bigger once the bulkheads and stem were attached.

Exciting development - I now have the skeleton of the hull. And yes, that is one of my daughter's pink teddy bears in the background (too lazy to move it for the picture) I think I mentioned this before, but in terms of its "bones," this kit is very impressive. The MDF for the keel, bulkheads and lower deck is flat and very strong. Even more impressive is the fact that the fitting of the bulkheads and lower deck to the keel couldn't have been more perfect, as everything fit together like a glove. I probably didn't need to glue the assembly together it fit so well, but I did end up gluing the bulkheads and lower deck onto the keel, and then added glue into all the seams between those pieces. Other kit manufacturers could probably learn a good lesson from this kit. After dealing with all the issues on the Corel Unicorn kit, I almost felt like I was cheating in only having to cut out the pieces and stick them together without needing to check for flatness, symmetry and conformity to the plans, fit, etc. Oh, and Jeff's redheart was milled to a perfect 5mm in width. Despite the very snug fit between the 5mm bulkheads and the lower deck, the lower deck slipped over the new extensions without any issues at all. Thanks Jeff! Next up I'm planning to add plywood blocks over the bottoms of the redheart extensions to help secure the joints. I think the instructions call for one to add the upper deck template as well, so I'll be working on that. I also need to take a look at the NMM plans to see if there are any modifications to the kit that I would like to make regarding the deck layout (like converting hatches to stairways).

Hey guys, thanks for chiming in. It's funny, after I wrote my post, I was thinking that maybe I should have let the grain run vertically on the extensions. Really, only four of the extensions will be fully visible (the ones at the rear of the forecastle and the ones at the front of the quarterdeck). The others will still show the red color, but with limited visibility as they will be under the decks. I'm not too concerned about the integrity of the material for these pieces, as really there will be no work done on them on the visible side - but definitely, point taken as I create other pieces, thank you! Ian, I agree on keeping all the same colors. I was thinking that I might be able to use stains on different woods, but each wood comes out a slightly different color with the same stain (with the exception of black). So, I was stuck using the same wood for all the pieces. I thought I could substitute walnut on some of the pieces, but in my kit, the walnut is in a variety of shades. That meant that I could have used pear and stained it, or I could just use redheart. The nice thing about Jeff's wood is that he matches the wood in your order, so you don't end up with various shades like I found in my kit. Martin, I picked up the GF "Cranberry Red" over the weekend. I might test that out on pear for my Lyme build, though I've really liked working with, and the color/grain of, the redheart. Jeff mentioned that when redheart is exposed to sunlight, it turns an orangish color. So he recommended a sealant with a UV protectant. The guys at Woodcraft told me that those sealants break down over time anyway, so all you end up doing is delaying the inevitable. Since I'm not expecting the expose the model to direct sunlight, I'm not too worried. But, I thought that I'd pass that along.