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JSGerson
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At this point I said to myself, “awe what the hell” and added a couple pieces of 1/64” plywood to each side of the stove to simulate side door panels and some eye bolts and rings. I also added a thin whitewash to the surface of the tray as well as to the surface of the tray inside the stove. This again is to reflect what I saw in the photos. Unless there is a strong light on the stove, most of these minimal details will be lost to the viewer in the completed model. Final mounting of the stove to the gun deck will after I have constructed and positioned the chain bitts and their associated accouterments
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The stove tray dimensions were eyeballed and guesstimated from photos of the stove. The construction was simple enough. I used 1/64” plywood as the base and 1/8” x 1/8” basswood stock for the sides. I finally got to try out my clamp for making square frames for the first time after having purchased it so many years ago. All my other attempts to use it were failures because as small as it is, it was too big for most of my constructs I was attempting. I got a nice result but trimmed off 1/32” from all four sides because the walls just looked too wide to my eyes. Based on the photos, I first painted the tray black, then used copper tape I got at a crafts store, to plate to top of the tray walls and partially down the sides. This copper tape is much thinner than the copper tape supplied by the kit for the hull plating.
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What will added is the tray in which the stove sits. Surprisingly, the US Navy arrangement drawings do not show on their plans. At least I haven’t been able to find any.
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I might add some other details such as eye bolts and rings. However, considering that the whole stove is going to be painted black and place in a dark area below the spar deck, the effort to add more handles, a rod railing on the stove top, rivets which just can’t be seen, among other doodads is not worth the effort.
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Once the plates were formed, I had to think a bit as to how to make their handles. I elected to use thread. It’s strong and easily handled. With a No. 80 drill, two holes were carefully drilled into the plates and then threaded to form a loop. CA glue was applied on the underside which was drawn up through the hoes. The thread became solid when the glue set. The excess thread below was cut off and the bottom surface was sanded smooth. Finally, the stove top was glued into place.
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The last section to be completed was the forward-facing stove top. This was made from a piece of 1/64” plywood with beveled edges sitting on top of a piece of 1/32” plywood. Shown on the Navy plans and seen in the photographs, there are three oval and circular plates with handles. These things are exceedingly small and difficult to hold and shape. I tried slicing a thin dowel, but tiny pieces kept breaking off because the grain of the wood was perpendicular to the sliced flat surface. After numerous attempts only one survived. I ended up using 1/64” plywood filed to shape. The results were a bit ragged.
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The hood slipped into place.
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When I went to make the tent looking hood, I realized that BlueJacket’s stove didn’t match the stove on the actual ship, so I had to redesign the back plate.
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The edge of the tray was formed using card stock. It was initially glued on with CA glue and then lightly covered with addition CA glue to solidify it. BTW, most of the gluing was with PVC glue as it gives me a chance to make final adjustments before it sets. I also added some posts as a gluing surface.
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In addition, I found a computer-generated image of that stove based on those parts. I now had a simplified image from which I could work from. Using my highly sophisticated CAD program, MS PowerPoint (that’s a joke), I worked out how I was going to construct my stove. At the core, would be a solid block with 1/64” plywood side panels. This would provide the basic shape. All the other parts would be added to it.
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Ship’s Stove (Camboose) This ship’s stove is totally scratch built without any solid plans to go by. The Camboose is more than likely a variant of a Brody Stove of which I have found some plans but none matched exactly what is on the ship today. As most of us do, I follow numerous other builders to see how they handled certain problems and challenges. In doing so, I discovered that BlueJacket’s model of the Constitution is supplied with photo etched parts to construct a stove albeit at 1:96 scale. Fortunately, I found a particularly good image online of these parts. I scaled the image of the photo etched parts to match the US Navy arrangement plans of the gun deck at 76.8. Now I could measure the photo etched parts directly for my dimensions. I constructed the BlueJacket stove using card stock to get a feel of what I needed to do when I designed my stove out of wood. Stock and plywood.
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It was at this point I realized something was wrong with the foremast ring. It didn’t fit completely over the hole on the gun deck. It seems I had made the grating next to the mast a bit too long. Knowing this error would be difficult to see, I chose to flatten on side of the ring. Unless you knew, you wouldn’t know.
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Using the thickness of the rings supplied by the kit and the plan view of the rings from the Navy, templates were made, and rubber cemented to a piece of 3/32” basswood stock. They were then drilled cut, carved, and sanded into shape. Finally, they were painted green. OK now I use this image
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Oops I meant to post this image
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Gun Deck Mast Rings The first things to install on the gun deck were the mast rings. The kit provides mast rings for the spar deck, obviously none for the gun deck. Because I could not find a US Navy plan that showed mast ring details, all I had to go on were the Navy’s deck plans and a few photos of the main mast ring. Because the bilge pumps were photographed a lot, a few captured the main mast which was next to them. As many photos as there were, very few included the main mast with a clear view of the ring. I could not find any photos of the mizzen or foremast rings.
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Those guns and carriages look great. I'm going to have to be creative on my gun deck armament. For some reason, if I use the carriages that came with the kit (I have extras as the kit does not provide any for the gun deck), they are a bit low in the gun ports. I know of someone else who had the same problem and remade their carriages a bit taller. I have a ways before I get there to figure out how I am going to do it. That really is a nice carriage jig. A word of caution, the kit cannonades for the spar deck are based on the 1926 renovation, which in turn are based on British cannonades, but they are the wrong period. A couple of cannonades on the actual ship, are correct and they have a vertical screw for vertical barrel adjustment and a different design for the carriage than what the kit provides. Something to think about.
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Ohhh, she's a beauty!! You wouldn't perhaps have a build log?
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At this point I’m going to leave Robert Hunt’s practicum for a while leaving the hull planking unfinished. I need to install all the goodies in the gun deck before I close off the hull. If you may remember, I added hand ropes and stanchions to the ladders going below the gun deck. These have been effectively knocked off and must be repaired which requires access through the hull. And, before I can do that, I have to finish the gun deck. There is a lot of stuff to add, and most of it I don’t have any plans, I will be an adventure.
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The blocks were initially carved to shape using a disk sander and custom fitted into position by dry fitting and adjusting the shape with sanding sticks and files. This took a while and I got as far as my skills would take me. They still needed filler to complete the job. Thankfully, all of this will be covered in black paint.
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Continuing with the bottom quarter galley filler, I cut out the patterns from copies of the plans and rubber cement them onto the wood blocks. The plans show only the starboard side so of course you must make a mirror filler block for the port side. So far, so good. However, the starboard pattern also show the position of a hole that is supposed to be “under the officers’ head” in the quarter galley. I drilled an 1/8” hole in the starboard block as indicated by the plans. The question was, does the port side also have a head? According to the USS Constitution Museum’s documentation (January 18, 2014, Life at Sea Blog), “The captain had the cushiest arrangements. His private privy was located in one of the quarter galleries.” Since the captain had only one privy, I left the port side alone. No privy hole was drilled.
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Well, I’m back, sort of. After 9 months, my left eye can almost see 20/20 with my new glasses. My right eye is starting to heal after about 2 months, so it has a way to go. Reading and close-up are still hit or miss, but with my close-up head gear magnifier, I should be OK…. considering we have a pandemic going on. While I was dealing with my eyes, I got a full-blown hacker attack who tried to steal my credit. It involved all my credit cards (email and postal address change attempts, additional cards in different names, attempts to add on accounts), my savings bank account, the financial institution accounts where my financial advisor is, attempted online purchases through Google and ebay and they even tried changing my US Mail address. All within a 5 day period. Luckily, I was able to thwart it in time by changing account numbers, login IDs and passwords, acquiring all new credit cards and numbers, professionally having my computer checked for viruses (there were none) and notifying the all three of the credit bureaus and the IRS. A real pain in the butt. I hope that’s the end of it So, hopefully I won’t have any more interruptions and have started working on the model again. Looking forward to posting new stuff soon.
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Me too.
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Within an hour of my last posting things changed. It had been almost a year since my left eye cataract surgery. I had seen the eye doctor for a scheduled appointment the previous week for the right and told him that I was feeling occasional pain. He said it was time we did the right since the right cataract had gotten bigger and was swelling the lens. The following week I got the required EKG and Covid-19 test. BTY, the Covid-19 test is the longest 15 seconds you will ever endure – painful. OK that brings it up to my last post. I get a pain like someone pokes me in the eye which lasts from Saturday evening to Monday morning and my right vision is completely fogged over. My left vision still hasn’t fully recovered. I still can’t read with it The original planned 20-minute surgery took an hour and a half which the doctor described as the most difficult surgery he had performed in his 35-year career. So right now, my right eye is still fogged up with four stitches and my left eye has no close-up vision. Corrective lens are about two months away, awaiting stitches removal and healing. Model building will have to wait some more. Typing this message was a pain even with the zoom in and spell check capabilities of a word processor. I keep hitting the wrong keys.
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I don’t feel too bad as Mr. Hunt stated in his practicum that he had to use a bunch of wood filler as well. Once I finish the basic structure of the quarter galleries, I will fill in any remaining gaps with wood filler.
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The patches were made by taking a piece of scrap basswood and cutting it into the basic triangle shapes to match the areas of repair. The through repeated trial and error, I carved the necessary contours on the bottom of the patch so they would snug. The patches were then glued into position and then filed to their final shape.
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