Ryland Craze

The Byrnes saw, is a professional quality machine.  If you decide to buy one, I suggest that you discuss spindle sizes with him.  Mine came fitted to use a blade with a 1/2in arbor hole.  Living in Europe, you will want to be able to buy replacement blades locally that will have metric sized arbor holes.  If he does not automatically fit his saws sent to Europe to accept metric sized blades you should ask him to make you an adaptor.  This is easy and inexpensive for him to do.

Hi Kronvold,
I purchased the Byrnes Table saw plus accessories  directly from Jim in the USA mid last year.  They packed all items expertly for save shipment with lots of
well fitting foam parts in a big carton box and shipped by FEDEX Int'l.  It took approx. 4 weeks until the shipment was finally released from German Customs and delivered to me. I would recommend to order all spares and relevant accessories with this first lot due to economising on shipment and import costs.
 Technically seen it is a wonderful machine in high end manufacture. I love it.
Just inquire on their homepage and they will send you an offer including FEDEX delivery cost to your place.
Best Greetings to Denmark
 

Welcome to Model Ship World.  It is never too late to join this forum.  We look forward to your contributions to this site.

Hi Pascual and welcome to Model Ship World.  The Palma Nova looks like a good kit for your first wooden ship model.  Before you know it, you will be building the Vanguard kits that you mentioned.

It was a tough day in the hobby room (Sleepless night), but it started well. I put the recommended clear satin coat on the exterior. I am happy with the result:
 

 
Then I assembled the tiller. Tough going there. I broke one of the pre-drilled holes in the tiller side pieces while trying to perform the riveting. I could not get the 1/16" hard brass rod to mushroom as described, the rod bent and caused the break. I think that I should have paid more attention to squaring the clipped ends of the rods, and it's also possible that my hammer was too light. I did a repair with CA glue. Then I forgot to drill the hole in the tiller extension piece, and had attempted to rivet it to the tiller arm, where I broke this hole as well. I saw pretty quick that I would not be able to drill the hole, and decided against doing so. During my CA repair, I accidentally glued the extension to the tiller. What a mess.
 

 
I'm thinking of filing a groove and attaching the rod to the extension that way. I know the preferred method of display would be to show the extension slightly to one side of the tiller, but of course, can't do that now. . . BTW, the instructions call for the grooved slot in the transom to be filed with a 3/8" round file, which I purchased, but the laser lines show a much narrower slot.
 
Next I did the eyebolt and bow stay, no problems there, but gosh the piece of tubing to simulate a hex nut is tiny, and I kept losing it once cut. Heads up, the instructions to anneal the tubing come after this installation and seem to apply to subsequent steps, but you will need to soften the tube before cutting.
 


 
I do understand that I should have filled the gap towards the rear of the sheer plank, I think I thought that the paint would fill them. Lesson learned, Fortunately, this won't be real visible in the finished, stand-mounted model.
 

Hi Jayhawk and welcome to Model Ship World.  It sounds like you have a good approach to get into the wooden ship model hobby.

Welcome to Model Ship World.  There is a lot of information on this site to help you choose your modeling project.

hi all
small update 
new name plate for washington.
 
cheers....mick
 

My next step was to make the 3 gears. The 2 smaller ones also needed banding.
 
I made the 2 small gears and the bands for them. Drilled the proper size hole in some stock brass on the lathe, cut them to the proper thickness and cut the bands as well. Then cut the gear teeth on the mill.
 

 

 
In order to keep everything aligned during assembly I made a simple jig and glued the gears to their bands.
 

 

 
I then made the pawl wheel out of wood and made the brass bands for that as well. Also made the 2 wood spacers that would fit on either side of the pawl wheel.
 

 
Next I made the large gear wheel, no bands required for this one.
 

 
The drum for the chain side required some shaping on the lathe as well as an end piece.
 

 
For the “iron” whelps on the chain drum I used 1/32 square brass bar stock. Cut 8 pieces a bit longer than needed, bent the dog leg in them to accommodate the shape of the drum, blackened them and glued them in place on the drum. Then trimmed off the excess and blackened the cut ends.
 

 

 

 
After staining the cherry wood to make it look a bit aged (Jacobean stain) and blackening all the brass pieces I was ready to assemble the windlass.
 

 
I used the jig to keep everything in line as I glued. Then transferred the entire piece to the black painted axel, adding the supports as I did. To add some detail I placed 2 small blackened brass bolts on each supports.
 

Continuing with my work on experiments in cardboard/paper modeling.....
 
            Work on the second hull continued with the start of a first layer of planking. This time I used well saturated cardboard that was thinner than that used on the first hull. These planks were stiffer, but also much more brittle. I also changed things up a little by using a white card stock, also saturated with thinned poly varnish, to delineate the waterline. The following photos show this work in progress. One thing to note is that this time I did not fill in the bow and stern areas with solid card stock, not sure if it was a good idea or not, it make planking much more difficult.
 
            One thing I am trying to accomplish with these experiments in card modeling is to see how far one can go with only cardboard and paper. I expect at some point I won't be able to take it all the way, but the only way to really find out is to experiment.
            While working on the planking for the second hull I would take breaks from that work to try out a method to make spars for the models. I used a variety of different sized aluminum and brass tubing, as well as a long miniature drill bit in my efforts. I wrapped very thin paper around the largest tube in my selection, carefully rolling the paper between my thumbs and forefingers on both hands around until the paper was tightly wrapped. I then let up slightly, removed the larger tube and inserted the next smaller tube and continued. I repeated this process until I had a tube that was slightly larger on the outside than the desired finished mast. While holding the paper tightly to the last tube/bit I applied CA glue to the point where paper ended, working from one end of the tube. I then slid the paper tube nearly off the tube, and saturated the entire outside of the tube with the CA glue.
            I then removed the paper tube from the brass/aluminum tube or drill bit, and used a thin sliver of bamboo to seal and harden the inside of the entire tube by dipping the sliver of bamboo into the thinned varnish and letting it drip from the tip of the sliver into the open end of the paper tube. I repeated this three of four times on each end, then pushed the bamboo sliver in and out to clear any excess varnish. I wanted the inside of the paper tube completely sealed, but also completely cleared so that the metal tube/bit could be reinserted. At this point I put the metal tube/bit back into the paper tube and sanded the outside of the tube to attempt to get the desired taper. After sanding a bit I would reach a point where the CA glue had not saturated and the paper would start to fray a bit. I would then add more CA glue to the outside of the paper tube, and continue again with the sanding. I repeated this process until I had the desired spar shape.
            Though the photos included below only show the finished mast parts for one model, I made many more tubes. I had to make up tubes that would be thick enough to be stiff at whatever desired size I needed, but that meant cutting many pieces of paper and gluing them up to determine the length of paper that worked best, i.e. not too much paper to make the tube walls too thick, but enough to make the tube as stiff as possible.
            The next portion of the work was making up layered solid pieces of card stock, to add to the tops of the mast tubes. These layered pieces were made to be as thick as the tops of the paper tubes, masts in these cases. These pieces are designed to make up the mast doubling areas. The layered pieces were then measured so that they were about twice as long as the mast top area, then one portion was cut and sanded into a solid, round stem. This stem portion would be inserted into the paper tube top end. Then they were sanded and cut into the proper side and shape for the mast tops.

 
            Work on the masts continued with making and adding the cheeks. I first made a template by gluing a cutout from the plans onto a single layer of card stock. I used that to trace the shapes onto a thicker layer of card stock, and cut them out. I glued them to the masts, then sanded a taper into the cheeks, thinner at the bottom to full thickness at the top.
            While doing this work I also glued the card decks onto the hull. I did glue a card stock beam to the underside of the stern edge of the forecastle deck. The holes for the masts were then cut out of the decks.  I also glued pieces of thinner white card stock to the insides of the bulwarks. I used thin paper pushed tightly to the deck and bulwarks to get the curved shape needed, then transferred that to the final card stock. The following photos show the work on mast cheeks and first hull with decks.
 

 
Anchor's A Weigh!
John Fox III
 
 

Before continuing with this build article I would like to review some of what I've learned, and how it affects the work as it progresses. First of all I have learned that I need to soak/saturate the card stock from packaging much better. Originally I only used multiple painted coats of thinned poly varnish to do this work. I was only saturating the uncolored side, which is in effect sealed off by the printing. I have since learned to sand the colored side of the card stock, using 320 grit sandpaper and a small wood block, to roughen up the surface and remove as much of the sealed surface as possible. The second thing I've learned is to use a small plastic tray, in my case the base of a plastic container used locally to hold bakery goods, to literally soak the stock for at least five minutes. This worked much better at hardening and saturating the card stock. It makes it slightly more difficult to cut out parts, but keeps the fraying from unsaturated inner parts of the stock down to a minimum.
            Although not evident from the photos shown thus far, the hull does have some places where the top of the bulwarks are not symmetrical side-to-side. One side has a slight bulge and the other a bit too much tumblehome inwards. I believe this is due to the fact that I did not cut the slots for the individual pieces well enough, in some places the bulkheads were not perfectly 90 degrees from the keel piece. I didn't realize the problems this would cause later. I figured that although the center keel piece was forced out of alignment at the deck level, once the tops of the bulkhead pieces were glued to the spacer piece it would straighten out. I was wrong, the top of the center keel piece was pushed sideways slightly in places, but I could not see this until the hull was planked and cut from the spacer piece so I could view that area.
            As a lot of the work involved soaking or gluing, and then waiting for up to 24 hours to continue work, I decided to see if I could improve on the hull by starting over completely. Remember, this whole things is an experiment to see what is possible and what can go wrong and how to improve things with card/paper modeling. I am still working with the original hull,  as experimenting with it will help improve things overall.
            I redesigned the bulkheads and added some additional pieces to make what I believe will be a stronger and better hull. The following images show this new design.

            Like the previous plan drawings my CAD program exports rather poor images, I have all these drawings as PDF drawings if anyone is interested. The major changes to these plans are the additional longitudinal stiffeners and the open areas on most bulkheads at deck level. I am hoping that it makes cutting down to deck level much easier and more accurate. I also extended the bulkheads on each side right at the top of the bulwarks line, to make planking in that area much more accurate.
            I did make up the parts for the new hull, using the above mentioned soaking technique to the card stock this time. While the results were much better overall, it was a bit more difficult to cut the thoroughly saturated stock not to mention a lot more slot cuts were needed. The following images show some of the work on cutting out and gluing together that different parts. Each was made twice, and then each pair glued together to make up the final pieces.
 

 
            After the pieces were glued together to make up the hull parts, I dry fit each piece to all the pieces it would interact with in the final hull form. I made sure each piece fit easily and the pieces remained square to each other. It took a lot of time, and if a piece fit tight enough but slightly off square I would slightly enlarge the slot so that it would be square. Slightly over sized slots turned out not to be a problem, as there are so many pieces that fit together it did straighten it all out.
            The installation of the longitudinal pieces did require them to be installed on all the bulkheads that they interacted with at one time. And, due to the limited open areas above the deck level, they had to be put in place at 90 degrees to their final position. They were then slid into place and rotated to fit into their respective slots. A bit fiddly to do, but it worked out quite well due to the dry fitting and trimming of all the slots.
            The hull parts were put together in sub-assemblies, which were then added to the center keel piece. The larger center section had to be added first, then the stern and bow areas added. The following photos show this work.
 

 
            All the joints were then glued with white glue. This hull form was very stable. This time I glued the spacer print directly to a 3/8" maple board, and glued the tops of the bulkheads to that. Unlike the first hull, this time all the bulkheads lined up perfectly on the spacer print, with no adjustments needed. The following photo shows the final results of this process.
 
Anchor's A Weigh!
John Fox III

Work on the card/paper models continued with finishing up the masts and bowsprit/jib boom. The process for making the top and topgallant masts was similar to the work involved with making the lower masts. Various sized rods and tubes were wrapped with brown paper, using a tube or rod of the appropriate size to make the final paper tube a bit larger than necessary. The next steps were to sand the glued paper tubes to the proper size and shape. This work was very tedious as the CA glue applied to the outside of the tubing only saturated the paper for a few layers. As the sanding reached those unglued layers the paper because fuzzy and started to unwrap a bit. At those points an additional application of the CA glue was necessary. I found it necessary in many cases to have to repeat these steps quite a few times to get the tubes to final shape.
            The doublings for each mast overlap were made by making mast tops and trestle cross trees out of 3 or 4 layers of varnish saturated white card stock. I found that using the thinnest card stock worked best for these parts. Holes were drilled and cleared out to shape using an X-acto knife and #11 blade.
            The problems arose when using thicker card stock during the drilling and cutting phases of the work. The inner portions of the thicker card stock were not saturated with the varnish, and would start to separate as I drilled, or cut. This caused the drill bit to just push aside some of the inner card stock, which caused that portion of the part I was working to swell up and become thicker. Even when working with thinner card stock this happened to a lesser extent. What worked for me was to drill a few increasingly larger holes, then add a bit of CA glue into the hole. In this case I started with a #80 drill bit, then a size #76 followed by a #70 sized bit. Once these tiny holes were drilled I added the CA glue This hardened the area around the hole on the inner layers and helped stabilize the part. When larger holes were needed, larger drill bits were used, applying the CA glue to each hole after drilling.
            The same sort of technique was used when cutting and shaping the outside of white parts of the doublings, for much the same reason. Cutting to roughly the correct size and shape for a part, CA glued was applied to the edges, where the individual layers of the card stock were exposed. This work stabilized the part, and kept the layers from separating while further cutting and sanding to final size and shape.
            As with the doubling portion made for the lower masts, the tubes were connected together with pin like extensions of a part, or with card pins made from layers of stock glued together and then sanded round and to fit inside the necessary tubes. The white portions of the upper mast in each doubling was just a white paper tube, made like all the rest.
            The most difficult masts to make were the topgallant masts. In all cases I was simply unable to sand them down to a fine enough shape and size without their collapsing or unwrapping of the brown paper used. A fine pin of solid stock was glued into the tops of the tubes, with a bit sticking out the end. The work was similar to the other masts, sanding and applying glue as necessary. The following photos show the final results, including an exploded view of each portion of the total mast assembly.
            Note: While my purpose was to make an entire model from nothing but glue, paper and card stock, it would have been far easier and much closer to exact scale if I had been working with wood for masts and sheet styrene for top, trestle cross trees and mast caps. It took far longer to work with the paper and card stock, especially when having to use separate colors for the parts to keep from having to use paint.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
            Simultaneously to work on the masts for the models was continued work on the second hull. The brown saturated card stock planks were added to finish the lower hull on the side shown in the earlier photo. The other side of the hull was then planked in the exact same manner. After planking was complete, as thin a coat as possible of epoxy was "painted" onto the entire hull surface with a thin, stiff brush. My previous attempts to thin two-part epoxy with rubbing alcohol never worked out right, the glue never cured. Not being thinned made applying a thin coat much more difficult in the end.
            Once the epoxy coating had cured, the entire hull was lightly sanded with 320 grit sandpaper, to even out the coating. As desired, the coating hardened the card stock surface making it far easier to sand and even things out.
            In an effort not use paint on this hull, I decided to use two colors of card stock. I found a moderately copper looking card stock at a local shop, and used black construction paper for the second color. Both stock were saturated with thinned poly varnish and allowed to dry. A wooden jig was then constructed to make it easier to cut 1/16" wide strips from both colored stock. At that size it was a bit out of scale, about 2' wide.
            I found that there is a vast difference between the construction paper and the copper colored card stock at this point. The cut edges of the card stock were white, meaning the color was only applied to the outside surfaces, where as the construction paper was solid black through it's thickness. I did a little research online to look for card stock that might work better, what I found was that there are two types of card stock. The "normal" stock has color only on the surfaces, while the "solid core" card stock had color the same as construction paper. Unfortunately, the solid core stocks were much heavier and thicker, so I decided to use what I had.
            While researching the stock, I did find that there are some copper card stock that looks just like metal copper, but none that were solid core. Another thing I found with my experiment was that the varnish fully saturated the construction paper, but not the card stock. The color on the outside surface of the card stock seems to seal it allowing minimal saturation. This led to the black paper being much stiffer, harder and brittle, but the colored stock being the opposite. The colored paper easily bent to fit against the first planking layer, while the black paper would crack and break if attempting to force it to shape.
            The second hull was now planked, using the white plank line on the first plank layer as a guide to separate the copper lower hull from the black upper hull. The effect of this planking looks quite reasonable from any distance, but close up one can see the white edges of the copper stock in areas of extreme curvature of the hull. There are also a few places where the fit wasn't quite right, and a small portion of overlap of the previous plank installed happened, which left a raised portion of that copper colored plank. There are also a few spots where the planks left very slight gaps, allowing the brown planking beneath to show through.
            In the end, while the second planking definitely is not as good as I wished, it does do a reasonable job of duplicating a ships hull. I will attempt to keep the errors from the first side planking to occur on the second side as I work. Were I to do it again, I might make the hull form a bit smaller, so that the much thicker solid core card stock could be used for the colored planking without compromising the scale. I may attempt to alleviate the problems of the copper colored planking by lightly sanding the copper stock to get rid of raised areas and then use a green colored thinned paint "wash". My thinking is that it would look somewhat realistic, but would compromise my idea of not using paint.
            The following photos show the planking work to date. There are some areas that shine on both planking colors, these are areas where it was necessary to apply some CA glue to the outside of the planking.
 

 

 
Anchor's A Weigh!
John Fox III
 

Hi Pascual and welcome to Model Ship World.  The Palma Nova looks like a good kit for your first wooden ship model.  Before you know it, you will be building the Vanguard kits that you mentioned.

This project has taken a back seat for a while.  Here is some more progress over the last month.
 
 
Realized rub strakes and cap rails installed were installed incorrectly.  Too late to go back.   Thwarts, knees, and keelbox installed.
 
Tiller and rudder assembled and installed.  Mast dry-fit. Oars finished.  Will add more pics later.

Gripe  bent and installed.  I secured the bottom with glue, and once it was set added a clothes pin to the end. Ran the heat gun over the strip until it bent, added more weight, repeat until sufficient.  I got too aggressive and broke it one time and had to repeat.
Frames cut to length. Cap rail/rub strake installed.
Floor cleats installed and F2 cut for keel box.
More fairing and removing glue drips.

I transferred the sheer line by measuring the plans at each frame and used a carpenters square to mark the sheer planks.  The pencil lines still don't look right, but it's a starting point.  I think a lot of this is going to be eyeballed.  I plan to use 80grit sandpaper instead of cutting.  I think the less aggressive removal will give me plenty of time to check the symmetry.
What is everyone's preferred method of marking sheer lines?

Somehow I managed to mount the transom almost 1/4" too low.  I fabricated an extension and got the planking closed up and faired.  I'll finish shaping it after I get the sheer lines transferred from the drawings.
I cleaned up the bow a little bit and started to square it off in preparation for the gripe.
I started fairing the bow, but decided to put it down for the night and re-assess the progress tomorrow.
Next steps are to transfer the sheer line and trim the frames down.  Planning to do one more all-around fairing after that step.

Straightened the stem as best I could.  I need to extend the bevel before I close up the bow.
After having to cut and reglue the planks. I think I can hide most of this with some sanding and paint.
Everything ended up a little too high as pointed out earlier. Not quite sure what to do about it yet. 
 
Overall progress:
 

Frames, stem, transom, and knee sanded and glued to the bottom.  Taking the time to draw a center line on the bottom and labeling bow and stern helped a lot with placement.  I almost mixed it up several times.
Eyeballed alignment; not perfect, but I think I can work with it.

 
I made an error when transferring the frame pattern to the bottom.  F4 is too far aft by roughly 1/4".  Once the stem and transom set, I'll try removing the offending frame repositioning it.  I could probably shoe-horn the planks on as-is, but it seems like an error of that size would drastically change the shape.
 

Some progress and many thanks to all your patience with me!

@Richard: thank's again for your great tips and advices! Well, yes, the ply is not against the deck, you are right! Id does'nt hold this position without nails or clamps, and yes, in this picture the Stem Post is not fully snapped to the slot. The bulwarks press it out a little bit, because it is not glued in the picture.
I hope, that I have a 'ok' fit now, but both sides are not identical, I have seen now, after it was glued (of course...), perhaps I still shoud add some wood again, but I describe later in the post :).
 
Yeah, a break is always a good idear, that's so right! I also need to know what I want to try next, otherwise it will not work out anyway, but it is good, that you remind me of that :-). It should be fun an joy, otherwise something went wrong... 🙂
 
@SpyGlass: thank's alot for the pictures! As you said, I concentrated now on the top curve, and the bottom will be sanded out, that seems to be the way for me to get it sorted out

I think that I'm in the slot kompletly with the stem-post, but I might be wrong. On starboard it seems to be spot on:
 

 
Port sid, I might have already put away to much material:
 

 
I formed the gunport-strips more with my fingers, broke one on one gunport-opening and, last, glued it to the frames. If I can't get it to work, I can still ripp it apart again, can't I?
Funny thing: the perhaps half a mm misaligned broken bulkhead helps a lot to let the ply run more smoth on the upper side:
 

 
Slot at the Stem: as high as possible, still a very smal gap, but I think that's fine:
 

 
Underside, of course, still very warped:
 

 

 
And perhaps I should have added some wood to get it flush with the stem, but the stem is now glued in, and it's a bad position to sand.
Talking about that, because I need to file the waves away, and later on, I'm sure the planking will require also a lot on sanding, I'm thinking about to rip the stem just under the gunport-strips apar, to better sand in that area. But still don't know jet, if that is nessecary.
To ilustrate what I mean:
 

 
Ok, now the port-side is glued, buuut (I wait for my first post without a 'but', lol), because I was not able to bend the 'pipe' into that ply to follow the bulkheads, I have a small gab between the upper-side of the ply and all the frames:
 

 
At least, the curve following the hull is somewhat ok now...
Okay, I can glue the upperside of the ply to the bulwarks, in replace I get again some waves on the upper side.
But my question is this:
 
Will the ply not anyway snap again in the flat position, when I have to remove the bulkheads from the inside?
 
I'm sure, the ply would hold the 'pipe' if I had to apply one additional layer of planks to th outside, but that does'nt happen as per the instructions. 
There will be only planks up to the marks of the main wale, and this is not higer than the deck, so will be of no help.

Or will the ply hold also the 'pipe'-form around the bulwarks, if they are only long enough glued in this position?

If so, I'm sure will glue the pattern the whole way up to all the bulwarks!
Best part of it is, the upper-curve now is acceptable:
 

 
Kind regards

Have one of the deck cabins complete also. I was busy this weekend.
 

Here is the "glue" I used to put the PE decorations on the side. Varnish works well and any that leaks out isn't noticeable.

Have the railings done.
 

There you go!
 

Brass chain - various sizes
Artscale

 
The good folks at Artscale have sent me a few samples of their new brass chain. The samples sent are:
 
Gross - €3,00 Coarse - €3,00 Medium - €3,00 Fine - €3,00  
All chain is provided on metal spools, in 0.5 metre lengths. Each spool is packed into a clear sleeve with a product information insert. The insert is useful as it provides dimensional detail for the chain links. It's very difficult to actually review chain, so this article serves as a guide as to the size of this product and it's suitability to your own project(s). I can tell you that the chain quality is very good and will certainly find its use in my future project work. 
 
Chain isn't something many of us actively seek out, so here's a handy article for you to bookmark, if you need to buy something specific. Check out each link for the sizes above and you'll be taken directly to the product page.




My sincere thanks to Artscale for providing these samples to be published here at Model Ship World. Head over to their site for this and many other goodies (including coffee!)