JSGerson

I also felt that the practicum’s styrene fiddlehead star was too big, another reason I didn’t follow the practicum for this detail. The star was made on the computer and printed on white paper. I thought about a decal, but the whole circle is only 3/32” in diameter and it had to be applied to a 3/32” diameter dowel. Because the star is white, the end of the dowel would have to be white, and the decal would provide the black markings to render the star image.  Maneuvering a decal that small was going to be a bitch, so I chose to glue the paper to the dowel. It would then be cut off to a final height of about 5/64”.
 
The images below show the brass spiral painted white (still needs a bit of touchup) and the paper white star and black background loosely in position for demonstration purposes.

That was the easy part. The fiddlehead was a bit more complicated. If you look at the actual ship’s fiddlehead below, it is a highly complex sculpture. I made several attempts to simulate the fiddlehead spiral using wood, styrene, and finally brass. I finally I settled on 1/32” x 1/32” brass rod. It could be bent into a very tight spiral without breaking, it was the right thickness, and I could make spiral open so the black background would show through. The last two images are the first rough shapes. You can see that I left a round opening for the central white star in a black circle.

The colored shield image was provided for a decal in the practicum, but good as they were, I decided to see if I couldn’t make my own from an actual image (shown below). The colors of this image were weather faded, so I had to use the computer to make the colors pristine. The image was cropped and reduced to scale size to create a decal. The wood shield piece had to be painted totally white before the decal could be applied.

Being my anal self, instead of using the kit supplied pattern for the carvings, I used the US Navy’s plans.
27498 - Billet Head sh1 30155001 - Bow Scroll Board I cut the paper patterns of the scroll board and rubber cemented them onto the 1/64” boxwood. So, I wouldn’t lose my way, I shaded in the scroll work with a pencil. Then using very, very fine etching bits (cone, ball, and rod) in my rotary tool, I cut the patterns out of the wood. All the unshaded areas were removed. The images below show the process and are just rough dry fits.

It’s been almost 2 months since my last update. I’ve been busy working on the model, but that’s not to say I accomplished much.in the first month. Again, with the false starts, restarts, hesitations, and wasting time, I did manage to fabricate and install the “support shelf” to the underside of the bottom trailboard rail. The rails themselves still were not installed at this time so I would have more freedom to work on the scroll board off ship.

Finally, the trailboards where glued into place. Then the hawsers were painted black and glued into position. Using my normal cordless drill with an 1/8” bit, the two openings in each howser were drill out into the interior of the model so that the future anchor chain and rope can pass through.
 
The final touches were the white star and the braid on the front of the fiddlehead. The braid was made by twisting two strands of brass wire tightly, and then cutting the resulting piece to length. Two holes were drilled into the fiddlehead for each end of the braid to be inserted. Before the insertion, the braid was paint white. I should note that the thickness of my fiddlehead turned out to be thicker than the US Nay plans call for. Had I been aware much earlier on, the stem would have been tapered. But it is what it is.

Based on kmart’s  idea (post 146), of the white architectural pinstriping tape, it is a lot easier to use than trying to work with very fragile narrow wood strip which must bend to the contour of the rails. 1/64” and 1/32” tape was purchased for the pinstriping of the bow. Only the 1/64” tape was used to pinstripe the trailboard. Additional white paint was used on the scroll work at the tip of the fiddlehead. Lucky, you can’t see all the imperfections that you do see in the magnified images.

The scroll boards spirals and stars were glued to the scroll board.
 
The last element of the scroll board is the carved section right where the scroll board meets the hull as you can see is images below of the actual ship. This piece is actually attached to the hull and the scroll board and not just on the scroll board as the kit and practicum would have you install it. Therefore, that’s the way I fabricated and installed it. The short piece is mounted on a piece of 1/32” piece of wood. With one end one the scroll board and the other to be attached to the hull.

The scroll boards spirals and stars were glued to the scroll board.
 
The last element of the scroll board is the carved section right where the scroll board meets the hull as you can see is images below of the actual ship. This piece is actually attached to the hull and the scroll board and not just on the scroll board as the kit and practicum would have you install it. Therefore, that’s the way I fabricated and installed it. The short piece is mounted on a piece of 1/32” piece of wood. With one end one the scroll board and the other to be attached to the hull.

I also felt that the practicum’s styrene fiddlehead star was too big, another reason I didn’t follow the practicum for this detail. The star was made on the computer and printed on white paper. I thought about a decal, but the whole circle is only 3/32” in diameter and it had to be applied to a 3/32” diameter dowel. Because the star is white, the end of the dowel would have to be white, and the decal would provide the black markings to render the star image.  Maneuvering a decal that small was going to be a bitch, so I chose to glue the paper to the dowel. It would then be cut off to a final height of about 5/64”.
 
The images below show the brass spiral painted white (still needs a bit of touchup) and the paper white star and black background loosely in position for demonstration purposes.

That was the easy part. The fiddlehead was a bit more complicated. If you look at the actual ship’s fiddlehead below, it is a highly complex sculpture. I made several attempts to simulate the fiddlehead spiral using wood, styrene, and finally brass. I finally I settled on 1/32” x 1/32” brass rod. It could be bent into a very tight spiral without breaking, it was the right thickness, and I could make spiral open so the black background would show through. The last two images are the first rough shapes. You can see that I left a round opening for the central white star in a black circle.

You might consider using brass tubing to make tiny thimbles. Obviously, the hole is already there. All you have to do is slice them off the tubing and paint. If you need to carve a groove on the outside perimeter of the thimble, place the ring on a tapered mandrel which will hold the ring tight while you file the groove.  Wood becomes very weak at that scale as you have found out, whereas the metal thimbles remain strong and won't break. At this scale it will be impossible for the viewer to know what material they are are made of. It's a model, not a reproduction,
 
Jon

Hearts
The actual hearts are partial filled in and have 3 grooves. At this scale, it is not practical to make nor likely to be seen by a casual viewer once the parts are paint black, hence a simple open heart was fabricated. They were made by slicing 3/32” dia. brass tubes to create rings. The rings were placed on a mandrel for ease of handling and a circumferential groove was filed. Brass wire was used to strop the hearts because the actual hearts were stropped with metal. This was done by wrapping the wire around the ring and securing it to the eyebolt.

Cathead Hardware
For such a small structural piece, the cathead has a lot of hardware. All the double blocks and hearts are attached to the cathead with eyebolts and shackle connections. For the model, simple eyebolts were used due to scale.
h-Bracket
I don’t know the technical term for this, but I’m calling it an “h”-bracket due to it being shaped like an “h.” I used a typical picture hanger nail and bent the pointed tip 90°, flattened, and thinned the bend portion. This was then cut off. A piece of brass plate was cut a bit larger than the final bracket size for ease of handling and a hole was drilled to accept the fabricated right-angle piece. These were silver soldered together so that the flattened nail tip was parallel to the plate leaving a fine gap between the two. The excess brass plated was trimmed to size. The actual size of the bracket was based on its relative size as compared to the cathead beam as were all the pieces of hardware. I did not have dimensions for these pieces.

I DID cut down the bulkhead gun deck to compensate for the additional gun deck planking and yet my mock-up gun was too short as well. I was surprised that your guns were short, but you stated that was because the MS carriages were too short. For you, that should have cancelled each other out - the higher deck and the short carriages. That's odd it didn't. However, since I have to do what you are doing with the carriages, I really appreciate your little jig on how to accomplish this task. I've put this little task off until I do more work on the hull.
 
Jon

Just started to follow you. You are moving along very nicely. I also am putting in a gun deck, but my model will reflect what the ship looks like today (minus the tourist accoutrements). I admire anyone who can extrapolate what the ship looked like before photographs and accurate detailed plans. Paintings and old models are nice guides, but as any model builder knows, no two models of the exact same ship (or paintings) are identical. The artist/builder always puts in or leaves out details as he/she feel fit. Even though the US Navy has provided some of the ship's plans, I wish they would provide more. There must be more for the contractors working on the restoration of the ship all these years. Keep up the good work and even though you claim to work slow, I think you will surpass me soon enough. I've been working on my model since Feb 2017.
 
Jon

It's a mutual admiration society between us because I did take your idea for the architectural tape and bought some to do my pin striping which by the way is more accurate than using 1/32" styrene or wood. The MS plans shows the detail as 1/32" half rounds strips or about 2 1/2" full scale proud of the rail.  But if you look at all the current images, those strips are flat and hardly rise above the rail surface. Good call. I'm still trying to figure how to form the fiddle head with the star a bit more realistic than what shows on the kit's laser cut part. Yours is spot on to what the kit shows. I'm a bit anal and am trying to do a bit more. So far, not much luck.  If I fail, I'll try to make mine, look like yours. I'll be taking a break this week, visiting with my sister for Thanksgiving in Windsor Connecticut, a colonial section of Hartford. Have a good holiday.
 
Jon

As I feared, applying the transfers to the decal paper was a bitch. I had to use my headband magnifier just to see the digits, the guide marks almost disappeared when trying to find them looking through the transfer sheet, and of course I’m applying white numbers on white decal paper. To add a little more apprehensiveness, I could not afford too many mistakes because I had a limited number of transfers and mistakes were made.
Once the port and starboard decals were made, the bonding spray was applied and set aside to dry thoroughly. These were then dipped in water and applied to the hull. The process worked, but my alignments were not as perfect as I would have liked due to the difficulties I mentioned above. Micro-Coat Flat was then applied to remove the sheen and blend the decal into the background. From about a foot away, the numbers are almost too small to be read, so the imperfections are not too noticeable.

Most builders who documented their builds, created their trail boards from two pieces of wood using the profile in the plans. I couldn’t quite wrap my head what the final shape was supposed to look like or how to insure I had the proper dimensions. The rails bend in all three spatial dimensions. Also, I didn’t trust that my model truly matched the plans, so I used my as-built model and the photographs of the actual ship as my guides. The result was that instead of two pieces, I ended up with three (not counting fudge factor pieces): The rail on the stem, the hull, and the transitional curve between the two, which for me was the key piece.
 
The angle where the trailboard meets the hull was measured using a profile gauge which was original transferred onto a piece of card stock to make a preliminary template which you can see in the first image below. Once I assured myself this would work, the process was repeated on 1/8” thick piece of stock basswood. A parallel line was drawn to it as well a parallel line to the basswood edge which would eventually represent the hull’ A curve was drawn representing the outer edge of the rail as it transitions from the stem to the hull. Satisfied, the process was repeated an additional three times so that a total of four transitions pieces were created: the upper and lower rails for each side of the hull. Based on the photographs, the upper transitional curves were a bit smaller than the bottom ones. Additionally, the hawser opens were constructed using the precast white metal parts from the kit. The back side (shown on the right accounts for the wale being proud of the hull. You’ll notice, my openings as seen from the front butt up against each other per the image from the actual ship and not the plans. In the image, the hawser assemblies have not been trimmed to their final dimensions at this point. Once installed, the hawser holes will be extended into the hull so that the anchor lines will be able to pass through them. The hull trailboard rails have not been constructed yet at this point.

After numerous false starts, restarts, hesitations, and wasting time, I got the pieces partially glued together all the while measuring, remeasuring, checking and rechecking and still I had to do a bit of fudging to get it to this stage.
 
I discovered from photos of the underside of the trailboard taken during the 2015-17 restoration, there was a “support shelf” (my term) that is not shown on the kit plans or installed by anyone else that I could find sufficient details on. I did not find a US Navy plan of the trailboard rail construction. The last image shows two pieces of 3/64” x 3/16” basswood stock per side that will be used to create the “support shelf.”

After numerous false starts, restarts, hesitations, and wasting time, I got the pieces partially glued together all the while measuring, remeasuring, checking and rechecking and still I had to do a bit of fudging to get it to this stage.
 
I discovered from photos of the underside of the trailboard taken during the 2015-17 restoration, there was a “support shelf” (my term) that is not shown on the kit plans or installed by anyone else that I could find sufficient details on. I did not find a US Navy plan of the trailboard rail construction. The last image shows two pieces of 3/64” x 3/16” basswood stock per side that will be used to create the “support shelf.”

After numerous false starts, restarts, hesitations, and wasting time, I got the pieces partially glued together all the while measuring, remeasuring, checking and rechecking and still I had to do a bit of fudging to get it to this stage.
 
I discovered from photos of the underside of the trailboard taken during the 2015-17 restoration, there was a “support shelf” (my term) that is not shown on the kit plans or installed by anyone else that I could find sufficient details on. I did not find a US Navy plan of the trailboard rail construction. The last image shows two pieces of 3/64” x 3/16” basswood stock per side that will be used to create the “support shelf.”

Most builders who documented their builds, created their trail boards from two pieces of wood using the profile in the plans. I couldn’t quite wrap my head what the final shape was supposed to look like or how to insure I had the proper dimensions. The rails bend in all three spatial dimensions. Also, I didn’t trust that my model truly matched the plans, so I used my as-built model and the photographs of the actual ship as my guides. The result was that instead of two pieces, I ended up with three (not counting fudge factor pieces): The rail on the stem, the hull, and the transitional curve between the two, which for me was the key piece.
 
The angle where the trailboard meets the hull was measured using a profile gauge which was original transferred onto a piece of card stock to make a preliminary template which you can see in the first image below. Once I assured myself this would work, the process was repeated on 1/8” thick piece of stock basswood. A parallel line was drawn to it as well a parallel line to the basswood edge which would eventually represent the hull’ A curve was drawn representing the outer edge of the rail as it transitions from the stem to the hull. Satisfied, the process was repeated an additional three times so that a total of four transitions pieces were created: the upper and lower rails for each side of the hull. Based on the photographs, the upper transitional curves were a bit smaller than the bottom ones. Additionally, the hawser opens were constructed using the precast white metal parts from the kit. The back side (shown on the right accounts for the wale being proud of the hull. You’ll notice, my openings as seen from the front butt up against each other per the image from the actual ship and not the plans. In the image, the hawser assemblies have not been trimmed to their final dimensions at this point. Once installed, the hawser holes will be extended into the hull so that the anchor lines will be able to pass through them. The hull trailboard rails have not been constructed yet at this point.

After numerous false starts, restarts, hesitations, and wasting time, I got the pieces partially glued together all the while measuring, remeasuring, checking and rechecking and still I had to do a bit of fudging to get it to this stage.
 
I discovered from photos of the underside of the trailboard taken during the 2015-17 restoration, there was a “support shelf” (my term) that is not shown on the kit plans or installed by anyone else that I could find sufficient details on. I did not find a US Navy plan of the trailboard rail construction. The last image shows two pieces of 3/64” x 3/16” basswood stock per side that will be used to create the “support shelf.”

The Head Rails – Trailboard Rails
Using one of MS kit’s precut 1/32” thick trailboards as a template, two 1/8” thick trailboard bases were cut and carved from basswood stock. Next, four strips of 1/8” wide x 3/16” thick basswood stock were cut a bit longer than required for the upper and lower trailboard rails. The extra lengths facilitated the carving and bending. The rails tapered from 1/8” to 1/32” at the forward tip of the trailboard. Once the tapering was carved, they were soaked in water for a day and bent using the heating iron method. Then wetted again, they were clamped to the trailboards so that they would conform to their curves and final shapes when they dried.