Ryland Craze

Today is Nov 18 and I completed the galley stack on July 6. The stack was made from a .015 thick piece of boxwood that had been planed from a .032 sheet boxwood. I originally thought a sheet of copper would be used in 4 pieces silver soldered together forming the stack. BUT the copper could not maintain a smooth shape from the soldering heat. Next pieces were cut from a brass sheet with the same results warping. Looking at the wood chimney didn't finish with sharp edges so more experimenting with the brass. The silver solder comes in an ejecting tube of soft, medium, and hard with corresponding heat. Now with 2 sides standing aligned and upright on a ceramic tile with a tiny dab of soft solder and the flame small enough to solder but not blow the sides over and flowed without warping. Now make the final sides closing the chimney. Sides 3 and 4 went without any issues and flowed the solder. All the sides were made from the plans and very carefully cut to maintain the edges. When I started making using very sharp jewelers snips.

Its hard to see inside the chimney and I wish i'd put a light but two late now as it is glued ti the deck.

Oh, just had my HMS Surprise photo etch production sheets rock up on a large pallet!

Funny that you mention that, people have been saying this exact thing for as long as I can remember, well over a 30 year period. I remember feeling the odd one out when I was younger, entering scale model competitions when  still in my 20's. I used to think the same and worry, everyone is so much older. Yet, three decades later, same story and people are still out there. Am sure the same will be said another 30 years from now..
 
The Blackpool show was mainly old tugs, steam vessels and warships, which is no surprise as there were only UK based traders there. (It was great to see and chat with Ron Dean again), I even saw a model of the very first model kit I was involved with, the steam drifter Peggy, which I did way back in 1994 - forgot just how big those hulls are...
 
And with my 60th coming up next year, I too have become one of those old silver haired (well, perhaps a couple of hairs) folk!

If the customer is happy, then I am happy! Doing alternatives like this is possible because I produce all my own stuff, rather than sub contracting to some Chinese company. So if I feel I have the time and it can be done, I shall endeavour to do it - like personalised nameplates for pre orders on some past kits.

You are spoiling us Chris, most (if not all other manufacturers) would say "like it or lump it!" 

One option is just to buy some extra strips and plank the deck yourself. It will look better and then you can control the amount of planking you want to do.
 
Well done on sherbourne, you are making good progress.

This is always the issue, I cannot please 100% of the people 100% of the time.
 
However, after reading this, I have done a modified Surprise upper deck with NO cut outs (apart from the required ones for hatches). So if anyone orders a Surprise, let me know if they want a deck with no extra cutouts to show the beams. So for my next kit, at least, the option is there - you will just need to ask.
 

Planking, filling and sanding are done. I like to put a coat of epoxy on to help smooth her out and provide a good base for the Rust-Oleum paints that are coming next.

I started building my model of the Seguin a few nights ago. I read through Rods entire build that he posted a number of years ago. It gave me the courage to get this project started as I have had the kit for quite a few years. I remember seeing a built-up version of the Seguin in a hobby shop many, many years ago with my father and always thought that it was a grand vessel. So here I am taking a stab at it. I know some have failed but I do have some experience in building model ship kits and scratch building. So armed with Rods excellent build log I feel pretty confident that I can do it. Here is a picture after a few nights works. Wish me luck!

Over the last days, I did a lot of sanding and test fitting, to prepare the body and wing parts for painting and decaling. I decided to add the front wings to the nose and built up the upper side of the body along the radiator housings for not having to glue these parts later after painting and decaling.
This way, I could ensure a proper fit and alignment of the parts, which will help later in the build.

I primed the parts with Mr. Surfacer 1500 black primer and then sprayed Tamiya LP-1 gloss black on, heavily thinned with leveling thinner. Unfortunately, I had some tiny color runs, which easily happens with paint, thinned so much. After drying, I sanded away the imperfections and today, I resprayed the black body color. Now it looks decal ready with a near perfect high gloss finish.

I also sprayed the cockpit with Ammo´s polished aluminum, which is shining fantastic, even better to the human eye, than on the picture. I read rumors, these Ammo metallic are the same as Alclad, but I don´t know for sure. Anyway, polished aluminum sprays perfectly in very fine layers over a base coat of Tamiya LP-1 gloss black.





Cheers Rob

Hola amigos of the 70´s Formula 1 cars. For my next build, I chose the most iconic one of it´s time, the Lotus Type 72D, produced by Tamiya first in 1973. It´s an old kit, which will need a bit of attention. Tamiya re-released the kit a while ago, adding PE parts, seat belts and new decals.
The decals unfortunately don´t have the JPS branding included and therefore, I added a complete TBDecals sheet. Other extras will be MFH aluminum air funnels and distributor and maybe MFH seatbelts, if I don´t use the included driver figure of Emerson Fittipaldi. 



Here are the extras;



For a start, I test fitted the body section, to see, how the fit is and what will be my painting and decaling approach. There will be a lot of sanding and maybe filling to get rid off the seams. I started with the air intake and it took a lot of sanding, to erase the parting line.



Cheers Rob

I have been playing around with meshy as well and think that I have come up with a better figurehead than the white metal one suppled by Model Shipways for the Confederacy kit.  I did a test print and am happy with the results so far. although I need to make him a little taller.  The final print will be done in a beige/tan color.  I may also try to model in the indention for the stem before doing the final print.
As you can see, the meshy product is 10 times better than the kit supplied one.

I'm having a devil of a time trying to figure out Billy's dimensions, Billy looks like a M.C. Escher creation. Is that a 7 foot door with 3 foot transom window or a 8 foot door in total. If it's 8 feet in total the wheels are super tiny and Billy is only about 14 feet wide. The window size offers no relief. I'm thinkin' Peyote is the only cypher to Billy's dimensions. 

 
 1. Appears to be a handrail but I don't understand the why of it?
 
 2. This almost looks like a companionway to below. If this wasn't how to get below maybe the handrail was at a companionway opening to below?
 
 3. Billy had a flat nosed bow and AO had Billy pinned to the barge. There wasn't any cutting the barge loose to save Billy, wherever the barge went, Billy went.
 
 4. There was a upsweep to the boiler deck from the bow to the stern. 
 
 5. There was a upsweep appearance to the wheels but I think that's just aesthetics as there isn't and structural strength provided, IMHO.
 
 6. The engine was placed between the wheels and sat inline with the wheel shafts. Engel built Billy as a oneway ride down the Mississippi. Once Engel reached his destination Billy's traveling days would have come to an end, IMHO. 
 
Billy's wheels were so small (3 x 10 feet at most) I don't know if she could have made two knots on flat water towing that barge? No way was Billy coming back up the Mississippi with or without the barge! This means the engine could have come out of a scraped automobile or it could have been a salvaged gas powered marine engine, Scripps, Hall Scott, or other. I kinda like to think since Billy was a oneway ticket AO stuck a salvaged six cylinder automobile engine and transmission between the wheels doing away with the radiator and running straight Mississippi water through the water pump. I'll not be modeling an engine so one is free to use their imagination has to how Engel had Billy powered. 
 
 7. Exhaust 

This has to be the quirkiest sternwheeler yet.
 
 This was a homemade sternwheeler built in 1938 by then 58 year old former ship carpenter "Captain" A.O. Engel of Pittsburgh, PA. His intent was to travel down the Mississippi towing a 62 foot barge carrying Engel's first boat, a 50 foot cruiser battered in a then recent Pittsburgh flood. Engel's plan was to repair the cruiser once he reached his destination. At the time, in 1938, Billy cost Engel $1,000.00 (approximately $23,000.00 in todays money) not including labor and was named for a grandson.  
 
 I discovered this image on e-Bay, it was a listing for the original press photo with writeup on the back. You know I bought it, right?! I am drawn to these quirky sternwheelers like flies to a dead mule. 

 
 The cruiser kinda looks like a converted canalboat and is every bit as ugly as Billy, maybe even more so. If that duo were to knock on your door after dark you'd call the police. 
 

 
 This should be a kick in the pants. 
 
   Keith

Something 'else' just caught my eye on this curious boat. What could 'this' be? The angle of its projection suggests that it's not just a 'wooden' feature nor a photographic anomaly, but rather something like a bent 'pipe' running forward out of the pilot house. Could this have anything to do with the indoor 'bar'? LOL
 

I'm going out on a limb again. Could Billy have possibly had 'two' doors for the pilot house, one forward and one aft? I see what must be a handrail, and also some curious carpentry in the aft end of the pilot house. Could that irregular open panel on the port side be a door? Maybe there was a stair coming up from 'inside', not on the outside. One entered the pilot house from the rear end and came out on the upper deck from the forward door.
 

Thank you to everyone for the comments and the likes.
 
 
 The pilothouse is finished. I wish I was really good and I could make a realistic looking bicycle horn, as a tongue in cheek gesture I'd hang it on the starboard side. 
 
 I'm leaving the door as is for the time being, the brown grew on me maybe the door color will to. I've added a bit of weathering and will probably revisit weathering once the PH is attached.

 

 

 

 
 And with that done, it's on to the hull. 
 
 
 Thank you for your support and for following along.
 
   Keith

Ouch, I bet that did make little Knocklouder sound off. Unfortunately there's no bell, I wish there was. Thank you, Bob.
 
 You maybe right, John. This was such a bare 'legged' (it's a family show) operation. Heck Engel didn't even have nav lights. 
 
 One would think he would have gone through some sort of inspection process, isn't that a registration number, 12-A-855, on the port side of Billy's bow? 
 
 That made me smile. Thank you, Eric. 

We had a swing door between the kitchen and living room,  lost my little  finger  chasing my older sister,  I was two, that made little Knocklouder make some noise.  Lol.
What did Billy have for an engine? Straight pipes off the manifold always has a nice sound to it.  
 I do see a little bell out the front window, pretty tiny  for a riverboat  I think.
Handle or not neat looking pilot house.
Bob  M.

Tom, a door on the pilothouse fore wall leaves no place to put the ship's wheel. An inside stairway would mean it would have been open to the sky and elements and there wouldn't have been room in the pilothouse to have a stairway leading directly into the PH. 
 
 As I noted in post #5, item 1, being a hand rail. The 'green' knee rail maybe a leftover piece of a salvaged porch rial leaned up against the PH? I'm not convinced it would have played a part in a stairway.  I think the red handrail may sit along the starboard side roof edge?
 
 Creating the space necessary for a stairway at Billy's bow is a challenge that's way I favored a ladder until the question of how did Engel get heavy items up onto the boiler deck?  
 
 There had to have been a stairway and a door, the how of it is the puzzle.
 
 When John enlarged the image I noticed that. If real, it appears to be a garden spigot with unknown reason for being.  I know, I know, we are talking Billy here and reason seems at times sketchy. Due to the small size and not knowing the why of it I'm ignoring it and not including it in the build. 
 
 Bob, if that's a stairway in front of the pilothouse it's completely plugged with junk and useless. Plus a center located stairway cuts into the center of the main deck structure below the PH. A stairway and door fitted into the removed corner on the bow/starboard side is making the most sense to me at this point. 
 
 
 Tom and Bob, thank you for your thoughts and input.  

Main yards  just need to be rigged and after that a final coat of paint
 

There is a pile of blocks just on these two yards 😳  foot ropes are easily done, thanks to the threader.
 

The booms  irons went great , you just got to do a couple then you get the hang of them. As I stare over to the Astrolabe,  I can see what a mess of the irons I did. After I finish  the Pegasus  I will go fix them,  I have a little  bit more  knowledge  about them , but that could be dangerous  lol.
I need to order some more cleats, I figure I should need about 26 more, an order was placed  with buddy @Gabek , I also only  had one fiddle  block and need 12. I talk to Gabe , he says he'll make me 50 of each. Pick them up Thursday . Lots to do before then that's for sure, it just wonderful. .   Thanks for looking in. 
 
Knocklouder 😁 
Kurt ⚒️ 
 
PS.   Forgot to tell you  Gabe is not taking any orders till winter of 2027.
😁

I’ve not had much time for shipbuilding recently, but I’ve managed to progress on Sherbourne slowly but not keep a full build log. 
 
My intent with this build was to work on three areas:
 
1. Learn to plank the deck. This goal failed. I ordered some expensive boxwood from a cabinet maker online. The strips that came were a deep yellow colour (apparently Boxwood can be). The real problem was that they splintered when I tried to soak them, bend them, cut them, etc. 

I started out using tracing / baking paper to trace the outlines of the margin plank from Chris’s engraved deck then glued this to a 1cm wide boxwood strip. Then tried to cut the shapes out but they splintered into pieces. I then tried soaking a strip and bending it to shape. 
 


I could just about get the shape, but the wood splintered in doing so. 

Clearly the wrong wood for the job. 
 
I got fed up so I reverted to the engraved deck rather than order a different wood to try. 
 
I really like the Vanguard engraved decks. I’m less keen when they’re cut away to show the interior as they are on Sphinx and Surprise. The cutaway deck works really well on Harpy as it makes the model much more interesting, but in my opinion detracts from the small frigates. It’s entirely a personal preference but I’d prefer they weren’t cut away as standard. I’d like to have had the option to fully deck Surprise myself so I can choose whether to have the cutaway engraved deck or not. I may have another go with deck planking on my next build (Speedy).
 
2. Paint the hull yellow ochre and see how it turns out. My planking can be messy so it’s nice to have the option of a fully painted hull. 
 
Sherbourne was one of my worst yet planking jobs, not that it mattered as everything that is planked is below the wales and painted white. I’ve been short of time and may have rushed the fairing so the planks didn’t lie as well as they should. Entirely my mistake. Some photos of the first planking below. It was worse than it looks here!

I also snapped the inner plywood bulwark and am eternally grateful for Chris’s superb customer service at Vanguard. He very kindly sent me a replacement. 
 
3. Mix and use wipe-on poly. You can’t easily buy wipe-on poly in the UK. I used the Blackfriars oil based polyeurethane varnish clear satin that BE recommended and mixed it with white spirit 50:50. Seems to work well. The effect on bare pear wood is almost identical to the finish I’ve achieved on other boats with Danish oil. Being a varnish I guess it seals and protects the wood better. 
 
The latter two have been a success  - some progress photos below: 


There’s still work to be done to the hull before starting the rigging. I’m not going to put any ropes on the cannons on this build. I forgot to do so before fitting the ring bolts to the bulwarks and they’re so small on this build that I’m not going to try and add them later. 

Wonderful example of how well it works.  I get that they have moved to a pay format for downloads.  Everybody needs to earn a living.
 
For those that wont or dont want pay I would suggest you can try doing so anyway.  Its very cheap for a month…and after you sign up they charge you each month.  So you can cancel soon after finishing your downloads.  It would cost you about $15.  
 
can you imagine paying a CAD guy to
design those figures you have shown?  
 
You wont get that quality for $15.
 
Chuck

Thank you Chuck..
Here is my Meshy work so far... hardly can wait to see the resin printouts..
 

 


 
Cheers
 
 

Yes it will…dont het a drop anywhere you dont want it.  You will have to sand like crazy to remove the spot from that area.  It will dye the WOP.
 
chuck