David Lester

Good Morning Tim, You have done a great job on your Bluenose. It's really nice and I can't get over how well you've done the brass work which is hard to to do without getting everything overscale. I agree that those dories are a real pain in the neck to do, and I can't remember how many times I have soaked them in acetate to unglue and then redo them, but I would encourage you to not give up. The nice thing is, you build them completely off the model, so there's no danger of undoing all the beautiful work you've done. You don't need to add them until you're completely happy with them. I'm currently building my fifth Bluenose and my third once from scratch and I have finally managed to get the dories to work. If you need more material you can buy a sheet of 1/64" plywood from BlueJacket and it's not expensive. Here are my tips: be sure to clamp the sides to every one of the frames while the glue is setting and clamp the bow end together. This part is not too hard to do. It might also help to cut a temporary piece of wood to jam between the sides at midpoint to help them keep their shape. There's only really tricky bit that I can't really find a work-around for is getting the stern piece to sit squarely, so I focus all of my frustration on it and work at it until it's sitting right (or close enough.) Once it's in place, the hard part if over. I also found the bottoms very hard to install and difficult to glue because there is so little edge, but I solved that problem. For every dory except the top ones, I simply omit the bottom, there's no actual need for it, and for the top two I don't use the thin plywood provided, but I cut new bottoms from 1/16" material. This helps enormously and they glue into place easily, and you only need two of them! Once they're ready to come off the form, it's just a matter of detailing them to whatever degree you like. I tend to keep it to a minimum. Two other smaller issues: The first is their colour. The real dories were a very bold yellow and I found that if I painted them a bold yellow that they drew the eye too much and I felt detracted from the overall effect. So I found a toned down colour, more of a buff really. It blends in with the decking, and doesn't draw the eye, but still looks more or less authentic. The other one is the number of them. I believe Bluenose carried eight dories. I found two stacks of four to also look too distracting, so I do two stacks of two and it conveys the idea without being a distraction. Here's a shot from my last scratch-built effort. Anyway, maybe some those techniques might encourage you to give the dories another try, and again, congratulations on a great Bluenose. David

Hi Shawn, I would start by downloading the parts list from MS. It will tell you how many blocks of each size, then just order a few more than needed to compensate for the ones that go flying off into the abyss of the workshop floor. Similarly with the rigging line and again order some extra to accommodate do-overs etc. For eyebolts, just order lots and lots. They're not expensive and you don't want to be counting them out sparingly for fear or running out. Another alternative that I have taken to, is to make your own eyebolts. I buy 32g. and 28g. annealed wire from BlueJacket and you can make as many as you need in whatever size you need. One big advantage to them is that there is no gap which the rigging line seems to always find. You probably won't need to upgrade the deadeyes, although if you want to, the parts list will tell you what you need. Apart from these things, I can't think of much else, if anything that you might need to shop for. I normally find that there is plenty of wood and it's usually decent in MS kits. The only thing that I often prepare for is replacing the rail cap if it's included as laser cut pieces. Minor differences in my hull shape sometimes mean that custom made ones fit better than a pre-formed one. Just check the parts list to see if Niagara has laser cut rail caps. They're usually 3/64" or 1/16" thick. for a few bucks you can add a sheet of each to your order; you're be sure to find some use for it, even if the pre-formed caps fit well. The Niagara is a really nice build and I hope you enjoy building it as much as I did mine. All the best, David

Thank you everyone for all the kind comments and likes! Now I just have to find a place to put it; my collection is getting out of hand. Thanks again, David

Thank you Harvey! Really appreciate it. I would like to visit it myself, but we never get to Vancouver anymore. Our son used to live there, so we were there quite often, but not so much these days. (We're over 2,000 miles away.) Thanks again, David

Hello All, I believe I have finished! One of the attractions for me with this model was the limited amount of rigging, but it still caught me by surprise how quickly it wrapped up. There isn't too much to discuss about it either. It's very straightforward. From the 360 tour on the website, I was able to sort out a couple of details that aren't evident in the plans. So that's it for my St. Roch. This was quite a fun small build, not too challenging. The most fun was sourcing and making improvements on some of the poor quality fittings included in the kit. Thanks again for checking in. Much appreciated. David

Good Morning, Well, I think it's about time to quite adding things to this boat - those decks and roofs are pretty much full! I've added many details that are not included in the kit, and I need to stop because I'm just about out of room. It's been fun improving what is really a very basic kit. While the kit omits many of the details, at least it was reasonably accurate so far as it went and I couldn't detect any really glaring errors in what was included. I did have a bit of trouble fitting some things in, due to scale, but I think it's ok overall. Here's how I made the fire hose. I started with a piece of sail fabric from another kit and painted it with watered down white glue to prevent fraying. I cut a strip 3/16" wide and then folded it in half lengthwise and glued it. This resulted in a 3/32" wide strip with one rounded over edge. I simply rolled it up and secured it with some glue. That was the easy part. I had a bit of trouble with the wooden frame that holds the hose. I tried to make the frame separately and then just slip the coiled hose into place. This wouldn't work for me as I couldn't get the tiny pieces of wood to stay together, especially with the odd angles at which they meet. Then I had another one of my 3 am epiphanies and realized I was going about it the wrong way. The answer was to glue the individual pieces of the frame directly to the coil, one by one. This was very easy to do and the result is much better than my failed earlier attempts. So that's the hull and all of its details done. Now it's on to the masts and rigging. With many models this is often only about the half way point, but this one has so little rigging, that it won't be long before I'm looking for a new project. I've started the shrouds. The shrouds on the real boat have serving in a contrasting colour, so that was a fun detail to add. That's all for now. Many thanks for checking in. David

Good Morning, A short update, but what appears to be a lot of progress. Really just a few minutes of gluing the components on the decks and it almost looks like the model is done. What I found the most challenging so far has been the railings. The ones running along the rail are easy, but the ones on the roofs of the deck house and wheel house were much more difficult. In my naivete I thought I could use one piece of brass rod for each run of the railing, bending it in the appropriate places and feeding it through the stanchions. After about an hour I was about as bent out of shape as the brass rod! In the end, and after restraining myself from throwing the whole thing across the room, I used individual pieces, gluing them between the stanchions. There's a small platform on the starboard side of the hull. On the real boat, the stanchions are very thin and end in an "eye" through which the chain passes. I experimented with a small piece of dowel, drilling a small hole in the end for an eyebolt. This worked ok, but looked far too heavy. The stanchions need to be no bigger than the 1/32" brass rod to look right and there was no way I could drill into the end of that, so I flattened a small bit of the rod at the end with a hammer and drilled through that. Not 100% accurate, but I think it works ok. Just a couple more small details to attend to -the axe and fire hose and some paint touch-up, and then it's time to start working on the shrouds. Many thanks for checking in. David

I see your problem. I believe that the bulkhead extensions needed to either be pared down to the same size as the false stanchions or else removed completely and a false stanchion put in its place. It's still not too late to do that, but, of course, the issue is this would leave gaps in your deck planking. I guess you could add a new plank on top of the existing planking and it would be like a waterway; slightly elevated from the rest of the decking, but that would entail cutting it around the false stanchions which would be very onerous. Another idea is to replace all of the railing with wider material and another would be to taper the bulkhead extensions so that they are full width where they meet the deck and narrower where they meet the railing. If it were me, at this point in the process, I think I would opt for this last approach. I think it would give the best overall result and shouldn't be too noticeable to the casual observer. Your workmanship is really great and the model is looking really nice. David

Good Morning, I have most of the bits and pieces ready to be added to the deck. Getting the size correct on these has been a bit of a challenge. The plans cannot be trusted. The drawings differ between the plan view and elevation view by as much as 10mm on some things! There is a measuring tool on the 360 tour on-line that works very well, but it's difficult to get every measurement needed and not always easy to get the same measurement twice. So it's been a matter of trial and error and discovering what fits and looks about right to the eye. I enhanced the kit provided windlass a little bit, relying on the on-line pictures and working only with the limited supplies and tools that I have. I'm not sure that it's completely correct, but it looks complicated enough to be believable 😁 Thanks for looking it and I hope everyone has a great Easter weekend. David

This solves a mystery for me. A few years ago I bought some "boxwood" strips from Model Expo and received this same rough yellow stuff. I was at a loss to understand why everyone raved about boxwood so much. I could see no improvement over the basswood strips I was intending to replace. Now that I understand I want to try some of the real thing. David

Brief update for this morning - Bill, if you use the 360 tour and go to the extreme forward starboard side of the roof of the deck house, you can just get a glimpse of the rod arrangement running along the roof. It appears to be a complicated set-up and pretty hard, if not impossible to model accurately at this scale, at least without a better reference. So I'm just representing it with a simple single rod. I'm not going to add sails. I tend to prefer my models without them, but this model would be an ideal one to show furled ones on. Have you seen Tom Lauria's youtube video on making furled sails from silkspan? It's quite good. I've been working on the lifeboats. I don't like the fact that they're plastic, yet at the same time, I don't really like the idea of building new ones either and I can't seem to locate cast ones that are quite right. So my solution is to use the plastic ones and show them with their canvas covers. I use some sail material from another kit. I was hoping to leave them unpainted, but did paint them in the end, because they looks just a bit too dirty by the time I finished. I first thought I could make each one from one piece of cloth, but soon realized that wouldn't work. The real ones, of course, are constructed out of several pieces, taking the shape into consideration. So, my solution was to use three pieces for each boat like this: I simple glued the side pieces on first. I used white glue which holds quite well. I didn't want to use CA in case I had to remove the piece and start over. I don't think the plastic boat would stand up to the acetone. (It may not have stood up to alcohol any better, had I needed to start over, but I thought the odds were better.) As it turned out, I didn't need to start over. This seems to work fairly well and with so little of the boat showing, it's hard to tell what it's made of. Next, I'm going to attack the windlass. Thanks for checking in. David

I've been trying to figure out the complicated steering arrangements on this boat. The kit provides some, but not all of the parts that are required and absolutely no mention of any of it in the plans or instructions. However, I've managed to decipher enough of it from the on-line 360 tour to make an acceptable representation of it. It seems really odd to me that considering that this boat spent most of its life in the Arctic, exposed to snow and ice that so much of this gear would be external, rather than internal. It appears to me that either cable or chain (which is encased and not visible) connects the wheel to rods that in turn connect to chain that runs down the aft side of the deck house, then runs aft along the deck to the rudder which is located beneath a deck fitting; a table or bench (not sure what it should be called.) Now I'm mulling over how to handle the two winches and windlass. The ones provided in the kit are over-simplified and mostly plastic. The winches shouldn't be too hard to re-imagine, but the windlass is a complex piece and will be more difficult. At least, too difficult for my evening brain; more suited to my morning brain. All I'm good for by this time of night is a detective series on BritBox! (my favourite is Vera) David

All the best Bob!

Very nice looking Mayflower, Bob!

Good Morning, Bill, those models look great. Just saw your post now; we've been away for a couple of days. A Saturday morning update - Lately I seem to have the attention span of a gerbil and have been working on all kinds of different things. First, the four vent pipes: They're made out of 1.5mm brass rod, bent into shape. I wanted to indicate the joints. First I tried some Evergreen styrene strips, .01" x .02" but it was much too large to be in scale. Then I tried some rigging thread. By trial and error I discovered that both .5 mm and .25 mm lines were too heavy. I settled on ordinary sewing thread and it seems about right. Next, I was concerned that the supplied piece of dowel was not going to be quite right for the funnel. Taking measurements from the on-line 360 tour, I discovered that at 16mm diameter it was spot one. It was just a matter of flattening the sides to about 12mm. Finishing the funnel is probably next in my peripatetic approach to the details. The biggest challenge for me has been the four metal ladders. The ones provided are brass and are not bad quality, but don't look anything like the actual ones on the boat. It took me several attempts, but I have come up with something that I think is acceptable and are a pretty close approximation of the real ones. The three that mount on the deck house have curved tops, flat sides and round rungs. So I used some 1/64" x 1/16" brass strips for the sides. I made a small saw kerf at about the place where I wanted it to bend, and then just bent it using two pairs of pliers. It buckled a little, so using my best blacksmithing skills, I just hammered it flat. It's not very elegant, but once painted gray, it's going to work just fine. The rungs are .5mm wire. I'm really bad at soldering, but I discovered that one of the secrets is to hold the parts very firmly. I made two parallel grooves in a piece of wood. Once I had the holes drilled and the wire rungs inserted, I just placed the sides in the two grooves and gave the whole thing a tap with a hammer to seat it. This worked really well, and it wasn't too difficult to solder each rung in place. The ends of the rungs are snipped off and they've had some cleanup ready for paint. I think these will work, and besides, it's the best I can do, and once I know I've reached that point, I can live with it. The fourth ladder that mounts to the wheelhouse doesn't have a curved top and I'll cut it to length when I get to that point. The final item for today is the railing that extends out from the wheelhouse on both sides. These pieces were easy to make and I added the detail to the back side to match that of the real boat. So that's it for now. Again, many thanks for checking in, likes etc. David