Piet

I thoroughly enjoy your enthusiasm and all the builds. You are running a fun shipyard and a pleasure to visit. Keep up the good works and banter :) Cheers,

What a wonderful sight it is, seeing that jewel glistening on your hand. Cheers,

Very nice work Mark and yes, sometimes we have to do whatever it takes to make things appear as if it's buildup out of different pieces. hen all he smoke clears it wont (hopefully) not be noticeable. Cheers,

Between the yard work and some other chores I managed to spend some time in the shipyard. Yesterday I started with making some simple scroll work for the head rail carving pieces. I had some 1 mm boxwood planing and drew a simple figure on it to lay on top of the figure's head mounting piece. Then I thought why not make a simple wavy thing for the sides. So, with my trusty sharpened #11 blade, a 1 mm drill bit, and a dental burr I managed to carve two sets out. I even tried to make the top piece look like twisted open rope. I forgot to make the side pieces curved so they are soaking in water overnight so I can bend them into a fitting curve. I asked Gwen (who doesn't want to be called Admiral) about what colors to make these pieces. I wanted to have the actual mounting pieces in yellow ocher. She suggested black for the scrolls, which would off-set nicely on the yellow. She also mentioned red or green to match the other trim colors but I thought dark oak like I have on the whales and the slats in the head railing. So, this after noon I painted the mounting pieces in yellow ocher and stained the scrolls in oak. I have to let everything dry, bend the side scrolls and stain them before I can cement them on. I show the the pics when they are mounted to the head railings some other day. Still have a lot of yard work to do so it'll be a day or so. All the parts are ready for stain, paint and assembling them together. I even fiddled with the heads some to improve their shape;e a little. A close-up for yuns to see my effort in making the larger scroll look like a loosely twisted piece of rope. Cheers,

Nice work Cees. Bazaan mast, I'm glad I can still read and understand Dutch Yup, sure brings back memories. Cheers,

What a beautiful sight Pete, A Herreshoff in the water. Very nice set of sails! Cheers,

Good to hear the good news Dave! Fixing that hole in your ear drum is a piece of cake, a small piece of catgut and CA and presto, a new eardrum Cheers,

Like the ladder Popeye Dennis. What, working three boats -and at the same time? You're something else my friend. I have enough trouble keeping tabs on one build. Cheers,

Yup, good to see the Syborn back up on the bench. Looking good Dennis and good safe with the MIG wire. Cheers,

That looks super nice Nenad, what a marvelous achievement! Cheers,

Yup, I'll be dropping in as well and watch the progression. I love them old Dutch ships. Cheers,

Hi George and thank you for dropping in. Yeah, it's finally warming up a little here. We've had temps in the 70's the last few days and I have neglected the yard a little. Gwen used to do a lot of the yard work but now with back problems she can do only so much. No more plowing the back 40 Thank you too Greg for stopping buy and thank you for your kind words. Videos of me working? That'll be es exiting as watching grass grow I work rather slow because of using mainly small hand tools. Cheers,

Beautifully done Paul, very elegant looking carronades or mortars. Cheers,

That's it Nenad, what a wonderful spoke you made. BRAVO!!!! You are breaking boundaries my friend. That'll be a perfect wheel. Cheers,

Nice going Nils! Looks like you are applying the KISS principle Cheers,

Very impressive Dave! Yes, I really like the corner carvings, well worth the effort. Cheers,

Thanks to everyone for visiting my humble shipyard and your likes of my efforts. Thanks to Carl, JesseLee, Pete and Lawrence for your comments and kudos. My little extra project is still in the trial stage to see if it can be done. All I can say now is that it is nautical with ships. Not much work done in the shipyard, had to do some gardening. That always interferes with fun stuff. Was able to make a few scrolls for the head rail thingies and have to make two more. Hopefully I can complete these sometime this week. Garden work again mutters jochie Piet Y'all have a great rest of the week. Cheers,

Yes, I know all about how much time goes into small fiddly stuff but you are on the right track Nenad. Perhaps you can make the discs a little thinner - maybe ? yes? You can make the spokes a little longer so you fit them in the Dremmel tool and using a small file carve then into the shape you want. After they are made you cut them to size. That's the easiest way around it. Persevere my friend, you can do it. You are on the right track. You don't need fancy tools, I don't have fancy tools, Nils doesn't have fancy tools. We all work with small hand tools. Cheers,

Hello all, and thank you for the likes and comments. It's a good feeling that yuns are watching the slow progress. Hey Lawrence I think you got me confused with someone else - great carving skills - - indeed. No my friend, I'm just a novice and beginning to learn. Thank you Sjors. Your name reminds me of a cartoon character from long time ago, Sjors van de rebellen club. Are you perhaps that Sjors? Okay, I've been awol for a few days working on that other project I can't talk about yet. I was in a real world of hurt with it because one particular item/part is not available. It really gnawed at me that I may have to abandon this whole thing. But through a rare brainstorm I came up with a simple solution and can now proceed to a point where I can disclose this mysterious project. We, at least I, seem to look for the difficult way out of doing things and overlook simple solutions. I have to keep reminding myself to use the KISS principle, keep it simple stupid I'm still in the trial stage so don't expect it soon. Am I building the suspense or what! Well, I started making the carvings for the head rail figures. I decided to use the two knight heads I previously made for the forecastle deck instead of making new ones. Reason being is that Jan asked a loaded question about them possibly interfering with the ropes going up. Yup, they are 0.5 mm too large and I'm now forced to make new knechten. This is okay because nothing is lost and can use these carvings up front at the head. The head rail carvings are still at the beginning stage. I need to add some fancy stuff to them, paint them and cement them to the rails. I also got some ideas about the carvings on the waist railings / bulwarks, a slight departure of the traditional dolphins. Not that I don't like dolphins but - - - well yuns'll see. There will be dolphins though but on other sections of the railings / bulwarks. Here are a few pics of how it'll look on the ship. The poor fellows have no shoulders. I may have to add some. nah, maybe not. I'll add some fancy scroll work in front and on the sides. I have temporarily taped the port one to the railing for show. Cheers from jochie Piet,

Yes, that's it Nils, at that small scale we must by necessity "fool the viewer's eye." In art that is called "trompe l'oeil." We can go batty reducing reality to the scale of 1:144. It was a different story with my father's submarine, the O19, at a scale of 1:50. There I managed with some difficulty to make the deck torpedo launcher doors operable. IF by chance you can file a few very small grooves into the edge of the discs for the toothed wheels that are visible you may still get away with it. Let the viewer's brain complete the picture. If they are guarded like Steve's photos show then mimicking the gears becomes a moot point. Nice work on the winch prototype Nils. Cheers,

Nice work there Sculpy Dave. Beak head is coming along just splendidly, nice work. Cheers,

Yes, your prototype does look good. Narrower planks may be better for scale but they may just disappear when looking at it on the model. Eye appeal seems a better choice in this case. Sometimes scale get's in the way in our efforts to replicate the real thing too much. I like the way you think. Cheers,

Catching up on your progress Nenad. Very nice looking pinrails. Steering wheel, hmmm - - - not easy but you'll get it. Suggest using Gerhard's suggestions, seems to be the easiest way to do it. Wooden spokes will also look more authentic. Good luck, I know that with your perseverance you'll make a very nice wheel. Cheers,

Nice set of stairs there Dennis and yes, the canvas sides would have been lovely too. Cheers,

Awesome looking dunny there John. Love the gull's eye view. Cheers,