JSGerson

I determined which and where the openings in the gundeck were to be, measured for their locations and cut them out of the plywood gundeck support pieces. Not only did the support needed to be cut, but areas of the keel and certain bulkheads under them had to be modified to allow the installation of ladders. The support pieces were placed back onto the model, so I could mark where the keel and affected bulkheads needed to be cut. I figured that approximately 1” in depth needed to be removed to give the illusion of the berthing deck below. I thought about just painting those areas black, but if light hit those spots wrong, the bulkheads and keel might be visible, and the illusion would be lost. Images below were taken just before the plywood was glued down.

My two cents about the open waist. Here is the US Navy plan for the open waist dated August 2009.

Very nice pictures. I've added them to my reference library. The gun deck is looking great too. Jon

I'm amazed you even attempted those carvings, let alone succeeded in pulling it off! Well done!

Welcome to my build Bill, pull up a comfortable chair because anyone who has followed my builds, knows that I am sssssslllooowww. The practicum I am using as a guide was written by Robert Hunt and can be purchased ($100 plus $60 for the rigging instructions) on his site Lauck Street Shipyard. I bought mine as a bargain sale. If you are new to ship building or have limited experience, or just plain intimidated, his practicums should help you. They are not perfect, but without his document, I could not have started my Rattlesnake, let alone build it. If you follow his instructions, you will get a nice model. If you use his practicum as a guide and use the wisdom of the build logs on this site, you will get a superb model. Jon

The simple answer to your question kmart, about percent scaling of the US Navy plans to fit the 76.8 scale of the kit is…I don’t know. For the complex answer, I need to explain. In order to reduce the size of the gun deck plans, I used my super sophisticated CAD program, MS PowerPoint. I don’t have a real CAD program or any “Photoshop” type software. The first thing I did was import the plans images (two separate images) into PowerPoint and align and group them into one complete image. So now the fateful question arises, how small do I reduce the plan image? I needed something on my model that I could measure and in turn measure on the Gun Deck plan. I chose the distance between the Main Mast and the Foremast. I believe that was about 12” or so. Along the edges of the PowerPoint work space are rulers, one vertical and the other horizontal. Using the horizontal PowerPoint ruler, I reduced and positioned the image so that the mast separation reflected the distance I measure on the model. To print the plan, the image had to be in 3 positions, so the print area covered the complete image. The 3 prints, each with a portion of the complete plan, were then aligned, taped together, and trimmed to fit onto the model. It was then that I discovered that the PowerPoint ruler was inaccurate, the printed mast positions did not match the model. Since the built-in PowerPoint ruler left something to be desired, I made my own I knew the distance between the mast as 12” so I drew a line in PowerPoint between the masts in the image, added 13 tick marks of equal spacing to create the ruler and printed it, and compared it with an actual ruler, made adjustments as necessary and printed again. After about 4 or 5 tries of readjusting the image size by trial and error, I got a match. Now with the accurate PowerPoint ruler to measure the mast separation, I adjusted the plan size and voila, a perfect template.

Beautiful!

Only the most discerning eye would know that there should be a plate and that it was missing. 99.99% of the observers of your model wouldn't have a photo of the real ship to compare and be observant enough to note the omission. You however are in that 0.01%. If this is something that will eat away at you, then by all means fix it. If however, you claim artistic license, well then, beautiful work, you should be proud. Jon

Those openings which will be covered with a grating, do not need to be cut. So, the only places which do require cutting a hole, are where the ladders pass through the hatches to the berthing deck. That should be easy too, I have the US Navy plans to show me where to cut…But not so fast. I have two detailed arrangement plans for the gun deck, one dated September 30, 1931 and the other November 1927. For the gun deck main hatch, they don’t match. To make matters more interesting, neither of them match what is existing today. My original assumption was that the 1927 version was the “before” and the 1931 was “after” the restoration. But somewhere along the line, there is what actual exists, so the plan is to build the reality.

Gun Deck Waterway – Plywood Foundation There are several different paths I could have chosen pertaining to what to do next. Some builders installed their framing for the gun ports, others worked on the transom. Since I just installed the waterway on the spar deck, I decided to install the waterway on the gun. To do that, I purchased a large sheet of 1/32” plywood and using the US Navy plans for the gun deck as a template, three pieces were formed to fit onto the bulkheads. This has a twofold effect; it provides a solid smooth support for the gundeck planking and it smooths out any imperfections in bulkhead heights and shapes of the deck when I modified the bulkheads and keel. Once the plywood is installed, the waterway will sit on top and against the bulkhead frames just like the spar deck. I decided that since the interior of the gundeck bow from bulkhead A forward would be unviewable, that portion would not be detailed. Before I can secure the plywood to the bulkheads and keel, now would be the time to cut the holes for the masts and any openings that may be seen through the open planks I plan to leave on the spar deck. The masts were simple enough, I drew the center line on the 3 plywood deck pieces and measured where the mast opening had to go and cut them out with an X-acto knife. That worked just fine. As noted, the plywood is not glued down in the photos below.

Phenomenal job! Thinking ahead to when I get to this stage, or in your case looking back in hindsight, would it have been easier to make the triangle panels from a single piece of wood with openings cut into them rather than assembling 4 tiny pieces with extremely tight tolerances? Or would the solid piece just fall apart due to the nature of the material at that scale? As you found out, just the slightest deviation causes alignment issues. For such a small item, there are an awful lot of components. Out of curiosity, what type of wood did you use? I can't imagine you used basswood for this. Jon

More digging: Per Fisherman Outfitter How accurate / authentic the information is, I don't know. The choice is yours. Jon

Thanks for the feed back. I got curious about the life preserver and found this at Nauticapedia: So yes, the Constitution could of had a life ring (kisbie), but not until 1855 or later. Jon

Very nice recovery on the bowsprit steps. I have to admit, I'm very leary about making ladders and stairs. Consistency in the steps geometry is paramount. How did you make them? I checked back in your log to when you first made them and you didn't address your method. Were they hand cut? If so, that is some precise cutting; or did you use a milling machine? I have a long way to go before I get to that stage, but I'm already apprehensive. Jon

You may have noticed that when I originally cut the bulkheads to allow the formation of the gundeck, I left a remnant of the spar deck on the bulkhead. The waterway was fitted against the bulkheads and glued to these short outcroppings. Then the planksheer, made from 1/16” x 1/16” basswood stock, was fitted and glued on top of waterway, also flush against the bulkheads.

I found that I could not fit the curve onto my piece of ½” wide wood. Instead I opted to buy a 3” x 3/16” piece of basswood from my local hobby store. This enabled me to make a one-piece pattern directly from the kit plans. Note that in either case, the stock wood was 1/32” too thick and had to be sanded down. As mentioned in the post “The Next Step”, the waterway has a trapezoidal cross-section that changes as it moves away from the bow and stern. Mr. Hunt made his bevels using an X-acto knife. I’m not that good that I could make consistent cuts over the length of the model. I chose instead to use my $10 mini razor plane I got a Micro-Mark some years ago. The curved section was however had to be formed with the X-acto knife, files, and sanding sticks.

The Waterway and Planksheer The waterway is made from 5/32” x 5/16” basswood stock. This is fine for most of the waterway but trying to bend this thickness of wood from bulkhead E forward around the inside of the bow would be exceedingly difficult. For this reason, the practicum directs the builder to use the ½” x 3/16” basswood stock supplied with the kit to make a two-piece pattern for the curve for each side of the bow as shown in the images below.

You've got a great looking model and I hope mine will eventually would look as good as yours. Jon

The Next Step At this point I have no instructions on what to do next. The practicum and the kit instructions do not describe the kit bash I’m about to plunge into. After a number of false starts, I thought I would start by making the sills for the gun deck gunports only to quickly realize that I needed a reference point to measure from. This lead me to think I should use the floor of the gundeck, but I had chopped them down to make room for the plywood floor support and planking. If those cuts weren’t perfect, all my subsequent measurements would be off. Also, the wood needed to make those sills was going to be different than what the kit called for because I wasn’t planning to use a lot of the dummy cannons which require a “cannon barrel box” to be fabricated. When I started to research whether I needed to buy additional wood for “my” gunports or if I could recut the kit suppled wood, I checked the practicum to see what Mr. Hunt used for the “cannon barrel box”. I discovered that he didn’t get to that stage until Chapter 3 in his practicum while I was in the middle of Chapter Two where he had come to the same question: where do you measure from? He stated: Even though he is referring to the spar deck, the planksheer reference point will also apply to the gun deck. Hence, the next step is the construction of the waterway. This should be interesting as this element bends and is beveled 45° on the inner side and varying acute and obtuse angles on the outer depending where along its length it meets each bulkhead.

The kit offers, as an option, the creation of bulkhead stiffeners. I took the option. I discovered that as careful as I was making sure the bullheads were installed at eight angles to the keel, there were some differences in distances between the outer edges of the bulkheads from one side to the other by as much as 5/32”. To counter act this, the stiffeners were cut the average of the two sides. So, if I added 1/32” to the port side stiffener, I reduced it by 1/32” on the starboard. This forced the bulkhead to twist back to a right angle.

Then my curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see what the gun deck looked like on the model. I will have to know where the ladders are located and whether I need to make those or gratings if I leave the stair openings covered. Using the US Navy plans, I matched their scale to the kit’s and printed the layout (3 sheets). These will also be used to make the template for the gundeck support flooring for the planking.

What to do next? What to do…According to the kit instructions, I should be attaching the transom extensions (the aft side of the quarter galleys) but I don’t want to add those on until I’m actually working on the quarter galleys. I’m afraid I could snap those off by accident. But in looking at the transom, I thought I’d better check how the planking boards will curve into the stern. I discovered that I needed to trim more wood off the filler blocks. You can see in the image below, the subtle but significant difference between the untrimmed port side and the trimmed starboard side.

Thanks for the compliment Captain, flattery will get you everywhere with me! Mast Reinforcements Before I go off script again, the next items to be added per Mr. Hunt’s practicum and the kit instructions are the mast reinforcement. These add sides to the mast slots in the keel bulkhead. The main and mizzen mast are constructed the same. The foremast has the added complication that it also is in a slot of a bulkhead. The kit plans state that the pieces are to be 1/8” thick, no width or length is specified. The practicum calls for 1/8” x 5/16” stock (basswood). The problem is that the kit does not supply 1/8” x 5/16” stock. I used 1/8” x ¼” stock which close enough. The main and mizzen masts reinforcements were cut to length by eyeball and glued into place. The foremast had to be notched along one side to allow for the bulkhead to slide by and notched at the bottom so that it could sit low enough on the bulkhead to cover the keel notch. Once those were done, stock dowels for the fore (3/8” ᶲ), main (7/16” ᶲ), and mizzen (5/16” ᶲ) masts were notched to create a mortice to fit into those slots.

Glad that I could be of some help. Some of that stuff really requires fine dainty fingers and a delicate touch, not to mention patience and tenacity. We're lucky if we have one or two of those attributes. Looks good though. Jon

My first attempt to create the rudder top box also failed. I had tried using a block of basswood with a hole drilled into it As I tried to increase the hole size to accommodate the rudder shaft, it obviously got closer and closer to the edge of the block till it structurally failed. The green strip (1/32” basswood) reflects the internal counter bending toward as seen in the actual photo above. Because the rudder top box will not be seen clearly, it did not require much detail other than its overall shape. That meant it didn’t even have to be made from wood. My second attempt, I tried cardstock. Using a single piece of cardstock, I fashioned a pattern with glue tabs which was then folded into shape. It worked. I gave it a splash of stain and you would swear it was made from wood.