palmerit

My older son had taken a "wood turning" course in high school - with only 4 students (all seniors) taught by the high school principal because they had only 4 lathes. I thought about getting one just to have something to play with - adding another wood hobby - that I could also use potentially with model ships (even if knowing this wasn't a need, but yet another toy to play with). Ultimately, I think it's pretty clear that a lathe is a want, not a need. I thought it was a need before discovering (i.e., reading about, seeing recommended) the electrical drill trick. I'd imagine even for scratch building, you might put a mill or nice scroll saw ahead of a lathe.

I looked onto getting one hoping to use one for other things - putting a mast or yard in the end of an electric drill (covered to protect it) has worked well for now. A challenge is finding a lathe that can do small pieces and larger ones too - not that I’ve looked too hard yet (maybe when I retire).

I have the new version from Model Shipways in my stash to build. It’ll be interesting to see how different this one is, apart from the scale.

I’d probably start with a plastic kit. Or even a LEGO kit. Or build a wooden kit together with him. Or all three. The Lego Endurance is a great model. Don’t know if he is interested or good at legos. It is a ship. And a cool looking one. I built it. Maybe you and he could work on it together. When my sons were his age, my job was to find the pieces. Neither of my boys took to plastic kits like I did as a kid. But between the two of them, we probably spent well over $20K in Legos over the past 25 years. They still ask for them sometimes and they’re in their 20s. I once got a wooden plane model as a kid and I started it and never finished.

One piece of advice: Buy blades (for a scalpel or hobby knife) in packs of 100 and change them often.

I’m no expert, but is the shellac new? I’ve been reading that it can “go bad” in a year. I’ve used some recently that bought a year ago and after applying it’s gotten tacky, unlike before. I’m switching to using flakes next time, dating my jars and making them in small quantities. I’ll see if that helps.

So would you recommend using your cannons unfinished? Or painting them?

I did this in parallel with other kits. It helped me understand the geometry you’re trying to achieve when you edge bend and regular bend strip planks used on most models. It might actually be more useful after you try building a model with strip planks since the Smack does not use them. My first model I started was the Vanguard Sherbourne and my planking was absolute garbage. I did the Half Hull because I wasn’t getting it. You might do a strip plank model, read about how to do planking, and if it all comes together then maybe you don’t need to do the Half Hull. I needed it. Note that the Half Hull has you create templates out of paper or tape or tag board which you then use as a template on large flat basswood sheets. No other model I’ve seen does that. You kind of are building from scratch the hull pieces that are lasercut on a model like the Smack.

While I haven't build an Occre model, I understand that the Polaris is intended as a beginner model from a good company. And there are lots of build logs here to learn from. I don't know if you can get more basic than that - except for doing something like a Dory and Pram from Model Shipways / Model Expo. What company is the viking boat from - avoid buying garbage cheap kits you might find on amazon. They'd be more of a headache and the opposite of a learning experience from everything I've read. Is the viking list listed as a beginner kit? One think I've learned is that size and the seeming simplicity of the finished model is not an indication of its difficulty. One of the kits I'm working on now is the Maine Peabod, just a little canoe, simple in form, and it has been the most difficult planking I've yet to do - I wasn't surprised by that, I got it because it used lots of little strip planks and I wanted the challenge (though I've seen some comment that maybe they would get that as their first model, which would be a serious mistake). Some viking boats might have clinker planking, which would add a whole other layer of complexity. Make a build log. It can be as simple or complex as you want. I just post from my iPhone. Sometimes I write long entries. Sometimes it's just a brief progress report and a few photos to share. People who have built the Polaris before might click on "Follow topic" and then any time you post they will get a notification - so if you do hit a rough spot, someone who built the kit might be able to chime in with a suggestion. I tend to follow builds of kits I've built - not that I'm an expert by any means, but I just built some of those models in the past year and might be able to share a suggestion, or even commiserate if the instructions are confusing or a part does not seem to fit right.

I’m curious if lathes are either sized for small work (like on a model ship) OR larger work (like turning a bowl, or if here are lathes that do both. Is it simply a trade off of small for precision at the price of limited diameter of a piece vs larger for the power (with less needed precision) to turn something many times larger than what you’d need for a model ship. Or does BOTH mean paying 10x the price?

I built it but don’t remember the details. I’d recommend checking other build logs and see if someone commented or there’s a photo. I remember having to adjust some things, confirming with other build logs, but I can’t remember if this was a step I had to adjust. I definitely had to do a lot of sanding to fair this half hull - a lot more than any other model I built, which was actually a useful learning experience on getting a hull shaped just right (and in the end my version was not quite right).

I asked something similar a while back - don’t know if there’s anything here that’s useful: I did not end getting a lathe or a mill. Maybe someday.

Definitely. I’ve used what I learned combining rubber bands, clamps, clips, and lately hair pins, on these smaller kits on bigger builds. Basswood is (too) easy to sand and it gets fuzzy (can combat with sanding sealer or shellac and a light sanding). It’s used in all Model Shipways / Midwest kits - some people replace with other wood. The Vanguard models I’ve built only have something like basswood (lime wood) as the first layer of planking and it’s a good bit thicker, with the rest stronger wood.

I started on the Vanguard Sherbourne and paused part of the way through - after having a tough go at planking it - to do the Shipwright Series (Dory, Pram, Smack). I was surprised at how different those three models really are - especially in terms of planking - from the Sherbourne (or other strip plank-on-bulkhead models I've worked on). These small simple (and relatively inexpensive) models do give you some practice at sanding, shaping, and beveling wood, which is useful certainly on large kits. But they face some unique challenges you do not have on larger kits. Building these also forces you to find creative solutions to clamping (clamps, rubber bands, clips) pieces of wood into place to dry and cure, which is also useful on large kits to be sure. I started these in part because I was a bit scared of the rigging on the Sherbourne. The Dory (at least the Model Shipways Dory) has no rigging, the Pram has minimal, the Smack a bit more. After finishing the Smack's rigging I felt like I could tackle with some research what to do on the Sherbourne.

Adding the deck. I had to sand down the tops of the bulkheads a bit so that the deck laid flush along its length - the instructions obviously point out that you need to sand down the transom, but you also need to sand down over the length of the boat. It will have a bit of a camber. You need to make sure the hole in the deck is lined up with the mast step, even though that means that things don’t line up quite right in the interior seating section. It would have driven me nuts except that I saw that Olha had the same issue in her build. This will take some repairing later. You need to do some creative clamping to hold the deck in place flush with the bulkheads to glue. A combination of clamps holding rubber bands that wrapped around the deck worked for me. After securing, I added some more glue underneath for extra strength - a trick I learned from Vanguard model instructions.