Ryland Craze

Hi Everyone. I bought the plans and downloaded them several weeks ago. I was contemplating having Chuck send the starter kit to me in Australia. It seemed the easier way. However, I have chanced up a community makers space a few miles away which provides access to laser cutters, and woodworking machinery that I don't have.
 
I bought a block of Cherry a while ago and thought I would see if they could assist with sizing it into 3 x sections by ripping the 1 1/4" slab on a bandsaw. The bandsaw was waiting a new blade so they used a table saw. I sized the slices to 1/4" on their thicknesser.
 
I then used 2 of the pdfs I had for the stem to test out their laser cutter. It has a bed size of 1300mm x 900mm.  My little piece was accommodated with ease. 

One question I have though regards the bulkheads and keel pieces. They are 1/4" ply. That size is problematic in Australia being a metric country. I can source 6mm or with some difficulty 6.5mm plywood. Both are fine? grades for exposed faces in furniture production. 1/4" though is 6.35mm. If I substitute the 6mm OR 6.5mm ply, what issues could be expected further down the build? Thoughts or workarounds?
 

Lantern test in 3 sizes....
 
3/16" scale and 1/4" scale and one size in between.
 
19mm, 23mm and 27 mm tall without any crank. Top to bottom.  That isnt a really big dime so you can imagine how thin those individual window frames are on the sides of the lanterns.   No clear glass insert yet.  But that test is coming. 
 

 
 

I had the same problem with my Sphinx, only the big difference was that it was my first planking layer and not the 2nd one. That is the disadvantage if you only have 1 layer...it has to be right straight away! But...it is nice that you are tackling it now, instead of looking at it later and not being satisfied.

Jeff, glad you found this issue before it was too late. 
At least you didn't give up.

Thanks everyone for your comments! You guys are right that varying color does give it a more distinctive look!
 
So I have some bad news.  I was half way done with the second belt on the starboard side and I wasn't satisfied with it at all.  At the bow, my second plank after the garboard was way too thin.  This caused a bigger curve than what it needed for subsequent planks.  After 4-5 plank rows, it curved up way too high at the bow.  Im sorry I forgot to take pics of what I mean.
 
So I tried to remove some of the strakes at the bow.  Because they were all connected together, this was the outcome.
 
 

I ended up having to remove all the planks on the second belt for the starboard side.  This also includes the garboard as well.  Thats a lot of work lost that I have to redo.
 
It's very upsetting to have to do this, but I really didn't have much of a choice.  Because of this, I might have to order more wood strips from Model Expo.
 
Im waiting for the de-glue to dry before sanding off all the excess wood still attached to the bulkead formers.
 
I'll give an update once I start the stsrboard side again.
 
Jeff

Excellent job, the walnut is a nice touch.

You may have noticed in some of my photos, the wale was installed using a darker colored wood.  I decided to buy some walnut and use that for the wale, cap rail and any of parts that were colored black in the prototype.  The wale will consist of 2 layers of 1/32 material.  After installing the first layer for the wale, I was not satisfied with the result.  I struggled to get a smooth edge.  I decided to remove the first layer and create the first layer with a continuous strip of basswood to ensure a nice smooth edge.  I used two 1/32 x 1/8 inch strips for the bottom layer.  I will complete the wale with the walnut on the second layer.  
 

 
Here is the model with the first layer of the wale installed and all of the planking below the wale completed. 
 

 
Above the wale I decided to use 1/32 x 3/16 inch basswood strips instead of cutting the pieces out of the basswood sheets.  
 
To create the template for the cap rail, I used a piece of cardstock and traced the outside line of the rail.  I then used a compass to create the the full width of the cap rail.  
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 
Below is the hull with the cap rail installed.  I used 1/16 walnut for the cap rail.  I thought 1/32 material wasn't substantial enough for the cap rail.  I used a hobby knife to cut the cap rail, but that was difficult with that thickness of walnut.  I should have used my scroll saw instead.  
 

 
next I will plank the stern, add the second layer of the wale, and stain and varnish the hull.
 
 

Nice progress so far, it's looking  good.
 
Bob M.

As stated in my Pinnace post, I started a HMS Cutter Sherbourne. I have made some good progress on it after a couple months or so. I have slowed way down now that I am working the very fine details and getting ideas. I really wished I got the Vanguard of this model. The materials would have been better for some of the parts that I want to do more fine details. But overall, this one is not bad either.
 
So, as always started putting together the frame using lego and 1,2,3 block. Thanks to the person that answered me on that they were. Love using them. 
 

 
 
 
While working on that, I was working on shaping the two gun-port Balkwarks.
 

 
 
Placed the gun-port balkwarks into place and clamp overnight. Also, I shaped the hull getting it ready for first planking.

 
 
Ok, time not to be a chicken and start the 1st planking taking my time and remembering to let the plank naturally lay this way you get a better fit. I did some shaping using water and clamping into position.
 
 
 

 
Time for second planking. Took even more time on this one. I believe it took over 1.5 weeks about 2 - 3 hours. Was really taken time shaping and let glue dry before moving on.
 
 

 
Now, I started working on the inside. I even added an extra piece in there to help transition the inside of the bulkwarks and the decking. a baseboard if you will.
 
 

 
Well, that about catches this build up. I do have some more progress, but I did not take pictures yet. Such as the Main wale and the posts on top of the upper cap.
 
Anyway, time to get back to the shipyard.

I've never done ratlines before, so I did a few practice rows that I expect I'll undo and redo until I feel more comfortable.
 
I can already tell this is going to get tedious, though 🙂
 

Now that you mention it I think I remember seeing him. I try to remember all of us that have cat friends.  

Thank you to everyone for the kind comments and for the likes. 
 
 
 I got the railing around the pilothouse installed. The balusters are 0.03125 (1/32) inches and the top rail is 0.9375 (3/32) inches. I drilled 0.031 holes in the top rail for the balusters. The top rail is about twice the width it should be but I needed the extra width for drilling the holes because the wood has a tendency to split if too narrow. The railing is pretty robust now that everything is glued together so I may try sanding the top rail width a tad narrower but I don't want to mess it up and have a redo. 
 
 I still need to add stairway handrails, some railing (very little) on the boiler deck, and make a mount for the stern lantern and hang it and that's it for construction.  

 

 

 
 Thank you to all for your support and for following along. 
 
  Keith

Thank you, Keith.  You must have a cat hanging about? 

Got the first of the second planks glued on. Realized when checking the alignment at the stern that the edge of the plank butts up against the corner of the transom. It looks kind of awkward, but it is indeed lined up with the garboard plank above it. I'm curious to see how the final sheer plank will line up. The instructions never mentioned to shape that part of the transom.

Bob  M.

Interesting bio. It ticks off many of my boxes - Dickens, Babbage and Lovelace, Shute, set design (may harpsichords substitute for organs?), steampunk, and, of course, ship models. You've come to the right place, apparently! Welcome indeed, sheepsail!

I miss the TRMA.
 
It wan not a site I visited often.  Perhaps once or twice a month.  The last thing the world needs is another model of the Titanic.  I did however enjoy the modeling process, along with research involving support ships such as the Nomadic and the CS Mackay-Bennett.
 
My real passions are watch making and pipe organ building. Those are the forums I mostly follow.   I also have a side interest in volcanoes. 
 
Years ago I worked for Apple in the Imaging division.   I was one of the people known as a Postscript Guru.  I got to know everything there is to know about that printer language.  
 
I even use Postscript as a general purpose scripting language.  I tested fonts, the command line backchannel, and the color imaging operations.  The language can parse anything.
 
When I was in school in the 1970s, I found a book on how spacecraft cameras work.  By chance in one of the non Apple contracts around 1995 I worked for a company that acquired Itek.  The company what made the cameras for the 1960s and 1970s era spacecraft.
 
Not exactly a model ship, I did in the last decade modify a card model of one of the Mariner class spacecraft to represent Mariner 9.  Which is my favorite.  I downloaded nearly 8000 images, which are difficult to read do to data loss and obsolete file formats.  Quite interesting to see images no one has looked at in over 50 years.
 
When I was little I did a lot of card modeling.  Usually the 'Mayflower.'  We visited the site and the ship in 1967, when I was about 7.  I remember I liked to put them into bottles. Usually Orange crush, which had clear sides.  Was really disappointed when we got back to the hotel room and the maid had cleared all the bottles.   Back then it was much easier to recover the deposits as the bottles were washed and refilled.
 
I also collected cathedrals.  These however take up a lot of space.  St Peters sat on top of the refrigerator for years, till the apostles got quite dusty.   It got to the point where I simply let them sit in their flat packs.
 
Two writers I really like are Charles Dickens, and Nevil Shute (Norway).  I have all of their published works.  Jane Austin also rates as I have all her stuff too.  Bit of a romantic I guess.
 
For forty years, I have been involved with the Dickens Christmas fair.  Also the Northern California  Pirate festival.  My education is actually in Film and theater.  I designed sets and stuff for the Big Renaissance faire held in Northern California (Black point.)  We had a full size mock up of the Golden Hind as one of our stages.  (I re-did the Lord Mayors gate house, when the prior one collapsed.)

Nevil Shute wrote a book every Modeler/Miniature mechanic should read.  It is called 'Trustee from the  Toolroom.'  Such is about Sailing ships and small steam engines.  Even Petrol Engines.  This gave me a real interest in scratch building stuff.
 
There were not a lot of Dickens Fairs in the 1990s.  I found myself, as part of the group running Science Fiction conventions.  Even back in the 1980s I would wear my Victorian dresses and watchmaker loupes.  Eventually this became something called steampunk.  The word comes from some novels written back then.  I was one of the first people to re-enact Ada Lovelace.  (really Ada King, nee Byron)
 
I think what I really collect is information.  Over the years I have collected almost everything public about the Antikythera mechanism.  As well As Babbage's analytical engines.  My real passion is the mechanical automatons by the Jaquet-Droz what can write, draw and play musical instruments.  There are also tiny mechanical birds the size of postage stamps what play mechanically.  I collect these as well.
 
Image processing lead me into the world of Photogrameritry.  Which is recovering data from multiple photographs.  I also acquired a rather good CAD program back in the 1990s which I still use.  This is a subject unto itself.  I have spent years messing about with obsolete code drivers and such.  The mathematics behind this are complex and I barely scratched the surface.    To this effect I collect old photography equipment 3D camera stuff and recently since no one wants them APS cameras.   I also have a Photo CD film scanner, and started to make a Holographic projector, until I found the former.
 
I have a full woodworking shop with some metal working tools.  Everything to build a pipe organ.  I also became active in the local Makerspace, what is in an industrial area.  They have the usual 3D printers,  Along with Welding equipment, CNC machines, and my favorite an industrial Laser cutter with about a 1 meter square bed.  Can only cut about 1/4 inch stuff.  There is a lot one can do with that thickness.
 
I built a vacuum forming press for one of the pipe organ projects (to replicate the plaster grill molds.)  
 
I considered making model airplanes. Like the ones Neville Shute wrote about.  I joined some of the modeling sites to download plans of his planes.  None of these were like the TRMA.  Most of the builds seemed to be one and done.  Copied from old magazines and such.  I really want to do some of the merlin engine craft like the spitfire, and the mosquito.  Few people realize these were mostly built by women.
 
The plane though I really want is an Airspeed Oxford, which Shute(Norway) and his partner (Tittle) designed.  Like the cathedrals, and the mariner 9 spacecraft, these would likely up space and collect dust.  I have enough projects for 500 years or more.
 
Somehow into all this mess enter the Endurance.  Yes, that ship.  I sort of mixed up Franklin and Shackleton at first.  A pole is a pole, right?  The Dickensian ships were a bit tubby for my taste.  But the lines of the Endurance, (along with the Aurora, and discovery are beautiful.)  
Somewhere along the lines I found one of the MSW endurance blogs in 2020 or 2021. Which showed all the laser cut parts.  There were also additional notes showing how to fix some of the details.
 
I squirreled all this away in my vast collection of data.   When the ship was actually found, I went to my steammodel folder, only to find I had restored a backup from 2013 over it and all the images were lost.  A reverse image search lead me back here.  I am seriously considering bulding this from the redrawn lines I found here.
 
One book I really liked was called 'The wreak of the Sagwina.' By Keith Robinson, who wrote a lot of popular JA books.  This one was probably the least popular in the school library, but I found it quite interesting.  By chance the Dickens sets were stored in the old Mare Island coal sheds.  More chance last year our maker booth (laser maze)  was in front of self same shed with a huge banner of the Sagwina above it.  (another subject unto itself.)  So this ship is also high on the wish list of models to build.  Someone here started a model, it seems like it was never finished, although it is marked so. 
 
Before the Titanic was found I would have said that the Andra Doria was the most well known passenger ship sinking (at least outside war, since the Lusitania was a war casualty.)
 
Joining MSW is something that has been in the background ever since I became TRMA homeless.  I have been reading it for many years, and some of the regulars actually feel like aquantances.   I sort of intentionally avoided these forums , as there are too many ships.  The best thing though is to choose a few ships to focus on and do one's best to ignore the rest.
 

As such I removed the stern gallery taft rail and facia, the quarter deck beams the last 2 bulkheads #’s 16 and 17, the 2 gundeck extensions #24 and the 4 stern counter patterns #’s 26 and 27.
 
With the help of the AOS Diana I was able to estimate the limits of the Captain’s area and removed any gun deck planks there in as I was going to substitute a parquet floor. 

I had about half of the rigging completed when Mrs. Jason realized the model’s size and He was promptly unrigged. HMS Jason now resides in Jason’s summer home.
 
As I did with my Victory build, I hoped to embellish the model by adding and furnishing the Captain’s dining, great and sleeping cabins. 

I December 2023 I bought a partially built model of the HMS Diana at an auction of the New Jersey Ship Model Society.  As you can see the guy deck was planked, the hull double planked, the quarter deck beams, the stern gallery taffrail and facia were also in place.
This is my second Caldercraft Diana build. My first was completed in 2017 before my Victory. While doing research for thet build I learned Diana had a sister named Jason. My younger son who I was building Diana for is named Jason so HMS Diana became HMS Jason.
  

Started working on the 18# gun carrages. 

The modeler had also finished and painted both quarter galleries to which I added doors to the great cabin, a commode and hanging lanterns. For the great cabin I made doors to each quarter gallery, a desk for the Captain, 2 smaller ones  for his clerk and secretary, 2 chests and trunks for his clothes and a large bench seat with storage drawers at the stern. 
For the sleeping cabin - which you can see dry fitted - ( please ignore the as yet to be painted guns - there’s a hanging bed, a washing/shaving table and 2 clothes trunks. 

Congratulations on your "end game" plan.
 
Speedwell will keep me busy for a few more years though I'll miss building your new designs.