kees de mol

Thanks for all the like and comments.  If you see a problem or have a warning, PLEASE point it out.  They are easier to fix earlier in the process.  Rough fairing in process. Boy, does this make a lot of sawdust!  I taped up the stem and keel so I wouldn't damage them with all the sanding to be done.  In addition to checking the fairing with a thin batten, I checked the width of each bulkhead from the spine at the reference lines.  I added some vertical reference lines to the aft most bulkhead and checked there as well.  The sides can be fair, but still not the same from port to starboard (I made that mistake on my Emma C. Berry a few years back).  Several minor sanding adjustments and one bulkhead that needed building up by about 1/64".  Some 1/32" scrap bass is glued on the edge and will be sanded down to the proper level.  More checking along the keel then on to the next step.
Maury

some photos...
 

 

 

 

 

Fore upper deck
 
Hi, all friends. I'm very happy with your kind words and comments.
 
Still I can not decide the method and material for bolting on hull planking, I moved to upper deck work as below. I'm not sure l can keep the carlings as well aligned with the progress of work.
 
Regards. Lee

Hi everyone.
 
Many thanks for your Likes and comments.
 
Igor and Dennis - I decided to leave the coaming off the floor of the cabin because it would be hard to see it anyway, but thanks for your feedback and suggestions.
 
I've done a bit more work on the cabin and here're the results of it temporarily (and crookedly) sitting in the hull.
 
Hope you enjoy them!
 
All the best
 
Patrick

Thanks everyone for the likes.  Not much time for the model over the last few weeks but I was finally able to finish the gudgeons.  There were made in a similar manner to the pintles, two pre-drilled brass straps connected by brass bar which was then drilled for the pin and filed to shape.  Some of the detail is obscured by the blackening.  I have not decided yet when to install the gudgeons but will not ship the rudder until much further along into the build.  
 

 

 
Since I was playing around with metal I decided to make the hook and eye assembly for the riding bitts.  The crosspiece is not bolted to the standards.  It is held in position with a hook and eye attached to the medial side of the two standards. These are made from 1" thick brass which was filed to shape.  The eyes and the bolts are made from brass wire.  Sorry for the dust in the picture.  
 

 

Christmas came and went and the new year is upon us. I figured it was time to start laying out the hull to carve from the red cedar blocks I had cut up and quartered. I initially glued the top and bottom sections together first then they are screwed to each other with 3 brass screws to start.
 

 

 

 

 
The next step was to pull the two end brass screw's out and replace them with some wooden dowels as I'll be carving and shaping in this area soon. Round tooth picks work well here.
 

 
I also decided to start laying out the hull lines onto the blocks. The first step here is; to start from the outside and work in by tracing out the lines on the wood, cut off the outer line on the template, then trace the next line, cut off, and so forth. Works well!
 

 
Next I needed to make a trip to Lee Valley and score some tools. I had some Christmas money to spend so off I went to may favorite candy store. I picked up a leather strop, Veritas compound, a Frost carving knife etc. The Frost knife on the left is from Sweden and is deadly sharp! I love Swedish tools they rock! I sharpened my old shaping knife on the right and I got the edge almost as good as the Frost knife. Still learning how to sharpen as it's truly a skill you do not learn over night.
 

 
I then started to lay out, then cut out, my hull templates starting with the stern section. These are made from some thin fir wood. More to make!
 

 
The next two pictures show me starting to transfer the bottom sheer and hull lines so I know where to remove material as I get ready to carve it down and shape it. Also what I learned from Clive Monk and Lloyd McCaffery's book is the the blocks quartered give a natural center beam and water line which works excellent when laying out the sheer. When I go to attach the bottom and top part of the hull together I'll insert a 0.005" piece of plastic sheet in between to give me a superb joint. This will also help me to separate the black and white paint colors on the hull and get a sharp delineation between the two. One thing about modeling at this small scale is every little flaw is noticeable when photographing at the micro level.
 

 

 
Finally is a shot of my new soldering kit. Another candy store purchase from Lee Valley. I also scored a wick as well. Torch is butane fired and the kit gives me an assortment of tips for the fine detail work I will get into on the masts and spars etc.
 

 
So there you have it. I slowly move forward. 
I am having fun and learning as I go.
P.S. still tweaking my white cap techniques as well.
 
Jeff

...

I was able to get a little break from driving today and was able to stay home. I had a couple of hours in the shop and worked on the spark plugs a little more.
 
A few more bodies were turned up out of brass. the small diameter stub represents the plug body and will be filed to a hex section the larger diameter of the rest will represent the circular plate that is on top of the head covering the oval plate as in this picture
 

 

 

 

 
Next I cut a strip 1/8th by 1/8th off the side of a scrap of Corian that I used as a cutting board in the kitchen using the tablesaw.
 

 

 
Some time ago I made a special 4 jaw collet from a bolt in order to make square headed bolts out of 1/8th square stock
This came in handy for turning down the Corian to .078" diameter after drilling a .028" hole about 3/8" deep
 

 
I turned short sections 1/16 long down to the finish diameter and progressed toward the chuck, this helped to support the work. once the full length was turned I slipped the steel core rod into the Corian and then pressed the brass over the Corian, using the tailstock chuck to ensure a good alignment.
 

 
and a shot with the finger for scale
 

 
The electrode was tested with a piezoelectric crystal to see how the spark would work and it worked fine I will need to add a steel in for the ground so that the spark jumps from steel to steel and not steel to brass.
 

 
I will do some more experiments on the fabrication next week if I get time.
 
It was a good stress reliever today to focus on the model and take my mind of other things.
 
Michael
 
 
 
 

Lock for the 30,5 cm gun
 
The next thing to be tackled was the lock piece or ‘wedge’. This 'wedge' has a rather complex shape with a flat front, but a round back and various recesses and cut-outs. I decided it would be best to undertake most of the machining operations while it is still attached to some (round) material that can be easily held in a collet. The round back was milled in an upright collet holder on my mill's rotary table after the various coaxial holes had been drilled and the flat sides milled, all in the same set-up. For machining the other recesses the piece had to transferred to the diving head on the mill.
 

Round-milling  the lock piece in an upright collet-holder on the rotary table
 

Cutting off the finished lock piece
 
The most time consuming part turned out to be the cover piece for the lock, which in the prototype was fastened by five hexagonal head bolts. It holds the moving and locking screws in their place. It took me four tries before I produced a half-way satisfactory piece. Soldering the microscopic bolts (0.4 mm head diameter) in place got me quite a few grey hairs. Finally a fake locking screw was turned up and the moving screw, which moves the lock in and out, was faked from a couple of drilled-together 0.1 mm copper wires, covered in a thin layer of solder to make them look like steel.
 

Milling square and hexagonal bolts
 

Facing the locking screw in special protective brass collet
 
The large re-enforcement ring for the barrel was also turned up and two holes drilled into it for seating the rack quadrant that forms part of the elevating gear. In fact, I had cheated a bit, when drilling/milling the lock seat: the front of the hole should have been flat, which is difficult to machine; so I continued the elongated hole under the re-enforcement ring, which was made as a separate part and slipped over the barrel.
The various parts of the lock were assembled using lacquer and cyanoacrylate glue.
 

 

 

The (almost) finished gun barrel with its lock (toothpick for scale)
 
To be continued ...

Thanks, gentlemen, for the encouraging comments 
 
**********
 
Milling the trunnion seats and the lock
For drilling holes for the trunnions and milling the seat of the lock the diving head was set up on the slide-rest. I could have done this operation on the milling machine, but on the lathe the dividing head (http://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/tools/dividinghead/dividinghead.html) is centred automatically. The outer end of the barrel was supported by the arm with an appropriate centre fitted. The resulting shape from the milling operation looks like a keyhole, but something like a mushroom shape with sharp edges is required. This was achieved by hand filing.
 

Set-up showing for milling the seat for the lock
 

Close-up of the milling operation in the dividing head with support
 

Working drawing and files used to finish the lock seat
 
For the next operation the set-up had to be transferred to the mill anyway: milling the seats for the square trunnions. The trunnions merge in a concave curve with the barrel. The trunnions were turned up on the lathe as disk with two round stubs protruding from either end. In the dividing head on the mill the disk was milled square to the size of the seat (or rather the other way round). These parts then were soft-soldered to the barrel. Back on the mill the concave curves of the square part of the trunnion were milled using a miniature ball-head cutter, rotating the barrel in the dividing head.
 

Milling the square part of the trunnions
 

Milling the seat for the trunnions
 

Trying the trunnion
 

Milling the concave transition between trunnion and barrel
 
Aiming a gun in these days was a rather primitive affair, using just simple sights. The sights (two of them on either side of the barrel) consisted essentially of a round bar with a sliding rod to give the elevation. The beads (mounted near the trunnions) were observed through a ring of inverted U-shape on top of the rod. The bar was screwed into a notch in the barrel. Now, drilling into a round at a tangent is nearly impossible without deflection and breaking the drill (0.3 mm!). Therefore, I ground flat a broken drill bit to make a make-shift micro-mill and sunk a start hole. This was finished with an ordinary drill.
 

Milling the seat for the sights
 

Drilling the seats for the sights
 
To be continued ...

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

Some progress on the little trawler from Holland.
 
I made some antenna's, a compass, a searchlight and some other bits and pieces.
It's hard to build an acurate model. Drawings don't show enough detaills and the photo's are made from to far sitance or are bad quality. I have to use lot's of photo's (also from other ships), drawing, the internet and the help from an old sailorman to make the parts but its very rewarding to do.
 
Now I will start working with a very strange material. Its has a brown collour, has a smell, splinters when you break it, and is not very easy to bend. I think it's a high tech new material from Nasa's laborotery's. Do you know the name? Very strange.... It makes me sneeze when I sand it


























 

Thanks for the responce and for everyone who hit the like-button.
 
I managed to do some more work on the Antje. I build an exhaustpipe a roof for the wheelhouse and I added the first detaills on the ship.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

All the woodwork on the wheelhouse is done now and i guess it will look great after some varnish. I also made a mast. It took a lot of time to find out all the dimensions and how all the rigging was. This week I got some new photo's wich are very helpfull to me.

Thank you very much.
 
I finally finished treenailing this side.   I am glad that is over.   I tried my best to take pictures of the treenails really close.  I had to mess with the settings of the camera to get the best shot.   But at least you can see the shape and detail.  They are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.  But it does the trick.  Remember these are #78 holes.  
 
Interesting though...the last two photos are identical shots except I changed the settings.  On my camera I changed from Fluorescent to outdoor....on a setting and look at the color difference.  Freaky.  I could swear that both are representative as well.  Its funny the tricks your eyes play on you.  Only after seeing them side by side does it get so clearly different.  I couldnt even tell you which is better.  After looking at both for so long it all just blends together and gets confusing.   I think I like the third one down the  best and wont change the settings again until my kids steel the camera and screw up how I set it up.  Then I have to start all over again.  
 
I hope this helps.
 
Chuck
 

 

 

 

I was asked to take a photo from the bow "right-side-up", so folks can see the run of the planks there.   I hope this will do the trick.  Let me know if there is any other questions.
 
Chuck