davec

Gene - Olympia came out spectacularly! Congratulations on finishing. Tons of amazing details all executed flawlessly. The figures and water are tremendous. I've enjoyed seeing the progress at the club meetings and hope I get to see her in person. What's next? Dave

Great to see you back at work. Your cross section is coming out awesome! A friend from my club who does a lot of photo etching helped me with photoetch hinges for my cross section. Micromark sells a photoetch kit that could be an option if you want to go down the photoetch route- I've used it to make some similar parts. Toni's suggestion about painted card would also work great. Completely agree with your frustration with metal blackening. I can't understand why with the same brass, prep, and solution sometimes it works great and sometimes it doesn't. I switched to flat black paint.

Beautiful work - not sure how I missed this. I just finished a much smaller sharpie. Looking forward to seeing your progress. Dave

I don't make masts and spars on the lathe. For those I tend to mark out square stock and shape with planes and sandpaper. I use the lathe for a lot of other things: display pedestals, gun barrels, spindles for railings. . . I haven't made any fixtures, but I did adapt a vanda-lay duplicator. I haven't gotten it to work well for metal, but it work pretty good for duplicating wooden parts.

Your building board and jigs are very impressive - looks like they will work great!

Looks like Sherline stopped selling them, even though they still have them in their cover image for their wood turning accessories. Best bet would probably be to wait until a used one comes up on ebay. Alternatively, it looks like there are some accessories for other mini lathes that might be able to be mounted in a sherline tool post: https://www.littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=1685&category= or cross slide t-slot: https://www.littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=2949&category=

Great work! Congratulations on finishing!!

Beautiful work!!!

Again, thanks for the kind comments - I really appreciate them. Chuck - your rope walk was amazing! Much better results than the much more complicated/expensive machine I was using before, and much more fun to use. I need to go a little tighter next time, but that was me, not the machine. I highly recommend for anyone planning to make their own rope. Dave

Welcome! Looking forward to seeing your build! Dave

Thanks everyone for the very kind comments. I will post pictures of the case when done. I ordered the acrylic sheet yesterday. It should arrive this weekend. My daughter is in town, so I probably won't start work on it until after she heads home. Ryland - I'm planning on bringing the model to the club meeting this month. I'll probably put the plans/books/printed out practicum/jigs/building boards up at the club auction in February - hopefully someone in the club will be interested in building it.

No log entries in two years, but I have been slowly plugging away a few minutes a week. I had a pretty steep learning curve silver soldering the brass fittings for the masts and figuring out how to make the mast hoops. Rope was made with Chuck Passaro’s rope rocket. Rigging relies heavily on John Leather's The Gaff Rig Handbook. When the book didn't have the necessary detail, I defaulted to the advice from the Mystic Seaport staff restoring their Sharpie - "These boats were built in people's backyards with what they could make or get from their local hardware store." I did not want to make sails and there is no rigging exerting downward pressure on the gaff, so rather than having limp rigging, I lowered the gaff as if a mainsail was about to be attached. Both kids were with their partner’s families this Christmas, so I got to spend some concentrated workshop time and finished this morning. Next project is a case – I got some good tools for Christmas (router table, acrylic cutting table saw blade) so I should be able to build one. I made some acrylic shelves for my display case, so I’ve got the cutting and edge polishing down, and just need to sort out the gluing. Happy New Year Everyone!

Fixing the model to the base makes packing the model for shipping much easier. It wasn't something I thought about when I was building my first few models. I fortunately used pedestals and attached the models to their bases. I ended up moving from MA to VA, and was able to pack and ship the models without breaking them. Not something I thought about when building, but all models get moved eventually.

they shipped me decals 2 weeks ago and responded to my email. they seemed very open

I ordered from yellow wings last month. No automated response or update to my order. I emailed to inquire. I got a nice, quick response that the decals had been shipped. The decals arrived the same day, 8-9 days after the original order.

I use the grizzly G0555 like Jim does. The 1 hp motor has been enough for me. I cut boxwood and pear in approximately 2' lengths and rarely more than 3" thick, just for my own model ship projects. I'm not in business like Chuck, and only cut a few dozen billets each year. If you are going to be cutting thicker wood, cutting high volume, or doing heavy duty wood working, the Laguna is a beautiful machine, but probably more than necessary if you are milling wood just for yourself at the pace most of us build. I agree with the comment about bench top machines - I tried one and had to return it. The comments about the blades are interesting. I have a 3/4" resaw blade. It works fine for my purposes.

John Van Horn's book Emma C Berry in photographs: the slade dale collection, 1931-1941 has pictures from the 1930's. This is later than you have in mind, but ECB is rigged as a schooner. It looks like the lashing on the left is what was used. Dave

I just finished a fisherman's anchor for my sharpie. Sheet brass, rod, and tubing. metal cutting blade on a scroll saw (I don't have the patience for doing it with a jeweler's saw), lots of filing, and some soldering. Needs to be cleaned up for painting.

Roger - which blade do you use for cutting the brass? thanks!! Dave

Tim- Feel free to take me up on the offer - it is the least I can do given the number of people who helped me. VTHokiEE - not sure about the two capital E's at the end, but it looks like you have spent some time in my part of the country Dave

I had a great time building this cross section, and learned a huge amount. There are lots of people on MSW who are probably better sources of advice than me, but if you need input from someone who also tends to "over analyze everything," I'm happy to help any time. I'm really looking forward to seeing your progress. Great work on your practice pieces. Dave

The Sharpie has only gotten intermittent work since January. I got hung up on the researching the rigging, then got distracted by life and some other projects. I got reengaged after passing through Mystic over Labor day weekend. They are restoring a very similar late 19th century Sharpie. The restoration is going very slow because of COVID and a number of other parallel projects, and they are just getting going. I was amazed at how much the framing and the molds on the model parallels the work they are doing on the restoration. My May and June 2020 build log pictures look a lot like this stage of the restoration. I got to speak to the restorer for a while, which made me feel much better about my model. He reminded me that these boats were so simple that they were frequently built in people’s yards, without much in the way of plans other than the mold measurements, and usually using easy to gather materials. I’ve been trying to research it like I have done on my other models, all British warships with abundant documentation of rigorous establishments. For rigging fittings I need to think local hardware store and what people could make in their workshops. I will post some pictures of the model tomorrow, but since January I’ve been picking away it: finish on the hull, built a stand, added the rudder, and made the mast, bowsprit, gaff, and boom.

I was at Mystic Seaport a week ago. I wasn't specifically taking king plank pictures, but did get the section in Maury's plan in one of my photos. As restored, there is one wide central plank with a narrower adjacent one on either side, exactly as in the plan.

I spent the last two weeks having adventures in bending wood. I’ll briefly summarize here. When I downloaded pictures, I realized I had only taken a few. The model has 5 different trim strips that go around tight curves at the stern and cockpit combing. I’ve bent wood for hull planking before, but never around curves this tight. Up until now I’ve used soaking and a bending iron, which worked adequately, but I was afraid might not work well for the tight bends. I’d heard good things about using a heat gun, so gave it a try. Other than at the stern, the bending was only in one dimension, so spiling wasn’t necessary. I did the cockpit combing first, trying to air bend with the heat gun held in a vice. Didn’t work. I cut a form to the shape of the cockpit opening from ¼” plywood, and once I’d figured out clamping and the right heat setting, it worked great. The 1/32x1/4” cockpit combing bent right around the form. I could actually feel the wood give as the heat did its job. It took a little experimenting to find the highest heat that didn’t discolor the wood. The false wale at the stern had the added challenge of being thicker 1/16x9/32”, and wrapping around a beveled surface, so it needed to be spiled. The pattern wasn’t hard, and I was able to reuse it for the 1/8x1/16” rub rail that went over it. I made a beveled bending jig that matched the shape and angle of the stern. Biggest challenge was clamping the piece while gluing in place. Would have been much easier to install the two stern trim strips prior to planking the deck, when clamping would have been very easy. I think I used every clamp I have ever accumulated when gluing the trim strips in place. The 1/16” square pear trim strip around the cockpit combing turned out to be the biggest challenge. Dry heat worked OK for the fore piece. I had saved the aft piece for last thinking it would be the easiest, but the two bends were the most acute, and the pear kept breaking. That was when I finally tried soaking the wood prior to using the heat gun. I really wish I had tried this at the beginning- it was like magic. Not only did the wood bend without breaking, but once dry it had much less memory and did not try to spring back to its original position. I put the first coat of wipe on poly on the deck, which highlighted glue spots I had missed sanding away. Getting the curved pieces all clamped into place was challenging, and frequently I got glue spots. It is easy to sand it away, but because it dries clear, some of it wasn’t visible until I tried to put finish over it. This is somewhat of a milestone with an essentially completed hull and bowsprit. Mast, boom, gaff, rudder, stand, and rigging to go. I need to sort out a stand next. There weren’t real options for hiding mounting bolts in the flat hull. I don’t anticipate needing to transport the ship once finished, so I will probably build some sort of cradle and not fasten the boat in place.

Hi Michael - I almost bought one of those. How does it work with really fine dust? Most of my hard to control dust is from thickness sanding, where the dust is really fine and ends up clogging the filter on the shop vac I use with the sander. I was worried that if I got the Festool vacuum I would end up having to add the $300 festool dust separator. I ended up getting a cyclone dust devil, which takes care of dust extraction, but is really inconvenient because I have to move the shop vac and cyclone from machine to machine. Are you having to clean the Festool filter frequently? If it worked for all my sanding, I might still get one. Even if it works for everything else but the thickness sander, might still make sense. Right now if I'm milling wood strips I end up setting the cyclone and shop vac up on the planer, then band saw, then thickness sander, then Byrnes saw. Would be way easier with a single extractor than the cyclone/vacuum combo. If need be, I guess I could leave the cyclone attached to the thickness sander and use the festool for everything else. My wife got a bunch of HEPA air filters for the house when I developed a chronic cough. I have one in the shop. It does help for the airborne stuff, but wouldn't be near adequate on its own. Way easier to have direct dust extraction to the sawdust generating machines than trying to get everything with a vacuum cleaner after. It has seemed to cut the airborne dust when it is time to do finish work. I wear a mask while sanding/painting, but nice to know the dust is taken care of when a mask isn't otherwise necessary. Dave