GuntherMT

Fantastic job Erik.

My personal experience with this, as a complete soldering newbie, was that I had a really difficult time using a soldering iron because of the need to hold it against the metal to get the heat to transfer.  With a small torch, I only have to keep the parts in place, not also secure them against the need to hold contact with the soldering iron.  Finally, using a silver-solder paste worked a lot better for me than using a solid solder. 

For my next project I'll have the multiple temperature pastes to be able to do the progressively softer solders to hopefully eliminate losing prior joints when adding new parts.

I'd say you are doing just fine on your rigging Erik.  Looks great.

Fantastic job, congratulations on the completion!

I didn't. I only did the outside. This being my first time using wipe on poly, I didn't know what would happen if I used a brush. I only did the outside. The interior is just cherry stain.

 

Paul

I've applied wipe on poly with a brush in several locations in the AVS.  No issues at all.  It will take longer to dry as you aren't able to wipe it out into a thin finish and work it into the wood like wiping with a rag, but it will soak in and I saw no problems with it.

The Bounty Launch is probably the simplest of those kits, followed by the AVS which will get you into considerably more complicated rigging (you can follow my rigging of the AVS in my log linked in my signature).

No idea how long the launch will take, but the AVS took me just over a year, and probably around 1200 hours, and it's not a terribly complicated model relative to the other two on your list!

I made about 10 or 12 small 'test' decking sections for my AVS, and tried various methods of both caulking, and treenails, and selected the ones that I like the most (after sanding and adding the finish - wipe-on Poly in my case).

I tried using black tissue paper as found in this excellent post by Nigel Brooks - http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/7445-plank-caulking-using-tissue-paper-tutorial-by-nigel-brook/

At the end of the testing, even under close inspection, I felt like I couldn't see any real advantage to using the tissue paper caulk vs. just using a #3B pencil on the edges of the planking, and the pencil method is so very much easier!  I imagine that depending on the scale and type of wood used, etc., the paper system could be a stand out winner in some scenarios.

Very well done, looks great.

If I can give one hopefully constructive criticism - your rigging appears to be very loose.  There are several places where the rope has visible bends/loose spots where it's not pulled tight.  For future builds I'd suggest tightening up your rigging more, it will give it a cleaner look as if the rope is actually under load (well, I guess it actually will be).  It is especially noticeable (but probably only in close-up photo's) in the lanyards between the deadeyes.

As I said though, really great looking job!  Congratulations.

You can 'seal' the edge with the color that you will be painting over, but that works best if you are painting over a light color with a dark.

For example you paint the yellow ochre first, then mask it off and paint along the edge of the tape with the same yellow ochre.  This guarantees that any paint that got under the edge of the tape is yellow ochre to match.  Then after that has dried, paint the black.

I used Tamiya masking tape on my yellow ochre/black area, and as long as you get the edge down night and tight, I had no bleeding problems at all when I did it this way.  I also left the masking on the ship for almost 3 weeks as I did various things, and had no issues with it at all.  The Tamiya masking tape is good stuff.

If your plans are to scale (i.e. 1:1 with your model), then you pull the measurement off the plans by simply measuring off the plans.  Good plans will actually have a note on the max diameter point, but if not, just use your calipers and take a measurement.   

As Joel said, the widest point will be at the deck, but some masts don't begin to taper immediately, and may stay that diameter for a few feet above the deck.

That's a great visual improvement in my opinion.  Good decision and time well spent.

Check your plans for the actual dimension of the finished mast, and then depending on how much 'slop' you think you need, get square stock appropriate to that size.  If the kit provides a 3/8" dowel, that doesn't meant that the largest part of the mast is actually 3/8".  It might be, but the only way to know for sure is to check your plans.

When I ordered my boxwood, I went about 1/16 or 1/8 over (depending on dimension of the final piece), but I was also using a lathe to shape the masts from the square stock, so step 1 was simply to turn the square stock into round stock just barely larger than the largest diameter of the mast piece according to the plans.  Doing it by hand I might have tried for a much closer starting size.

Looking forward to watching another of your builds of this era Greg.  This era is very under-represented not only on this forum, but in the modeling world in general, at least the portion of it that I've been exposed to!

I've made some mistakes which I've been able to fix but I won't go into detail. I've also learned a couple things. Clamps can push a piece out of position and posting on this site doesn't work the way it's supposed to. I can't "Add Photo to Post" and I can't copy and paste from a Word document. I don't know if it's my computer (windows 10) or the site. I have Adobe Flash and it is enabled.

 

Are you using Internet Explorer as your browser?  If so, download and install Chrome and try it, I bet that will fix all your issues, as IE is a bad browser and causes issues with many sites, but especially this one.  The problems you are having are known issues with IE and the software that runs this forum, starting about the time they released Windows 10.

Hi Gunter,

 

I discovered in my own build (corel, prins willem scale 1:100) that dor the topgallants some cheating was necessary: the yards are not heavy enough to keep thme in their places without some help. For the main yards, everything just hangs fine by its own weight.

 

Jan

I will take your word for that Jan - I built a Constructo 1:80 scale ship as my first build, but it was fore and aft rigged so no yards, and decided that I was never working in that tiny (or even tinier) scale ever again!  I'll give 1:64 a try, but plan to stay at that scale or larger forevermore!

Did your ship not have braces that would hold the yards in place after they were rigged?  I would not expect the weight of just the yards to hold them very well in pretty much any scale (other than 1:12 or something).

Looking good Dave, welcome back.  Hope you had a great vacation.

The pictures aren't very clear, but that appears to be just fine.  The fore and after braces will tighten everything up and allow you to adjust exactly where you want it to hang.

If your rigging is done properly, then there is no need (in my opinion of course) to 'pin' the yard to the mast.  The rigging will hold it in place just like it would on a real ship, and you can point that out to people who are interested, who will then be suitably impressed when you show them how it's done.

This also allows you to adjust the yards by using the rigging if they are not aligned exactly how you would like, and a pin arrangement would make this quite difficult.

Also, pinning requires (obviously) direct contact between the yard and the mast, and when a yard is hung from jeers, it should probably not actually be physically in contact with the mast.  If your yard is rigged using a parrel to a horse, then it's even more 'wrong' to have it in contact with the mast.

In the end though, use whichever method you like and works for you, chances are pretty good (like 99.99%) that nobody outside of this forum would ever be able to tell that it's not done the "right" way, regardless.

All the masting on my AVS was made from Boxwood which I ordered from Crown Timberyard.  I'll never use dowels for masting again, the Boxwood just is so much nicer, perfectly straight, and a joy to work with.

Congratulations, she's a beauty and you should be proud to display her anywhere.

Skip, he is "Chuck" on this forum, and you can see his current in-progress build log of Cheerful here - http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/8131-hm-cutter-cheerful-1806-148-scale-by-chuck/

Great job Greg, came out fantastic!

Surprised to see this old log brought up from the dead, and in looking at it I never did say why it got put on hold.

So, for a short explanation - I was trying to do a smooth resin finish like the 40's era Chris Craft boats are often seen with, which requires a lot of coats of resin with sanding between each coat.  I had probably 12 coats of resin on, and then began the final sanding, and when I got down to the 12,000 grit pads, I found out the hard way that I had some thin spots in my resin, as I went through it to the wood, which removed the stain as well, making light spots.

At the time I had a lot of other things going on, so I just shelved the canoe and went back to working full time on the AVS.  At some point I will return to the canoe, as it's safely tucked away in it's box on my shelf, and see how it looks by applying stain through the open spots, and then going back to adding resin coats to eventually finish it, but for now, it remains on hold, awaiting my eventual return.

Even with the super-macro shots, that is very nice work, and when viewed by the naked eye, I bet it looks perfect.  Very nicely done.

Good luck.  Make sure to start a build log and ask plenty of questions when you have issues.

I seriously doubt I would have successfully finished my first kit (the Carmen) without this forums help, and I got that help by posting a build log, showing pictures of the issues I ran into, and asking for help (along with reading all of the other resources and build logs on the forum).  Lots of information here, and lots of people willing to help you when you run into problems!