Cathead

I decided to install two orange flickering LEDs in the lower deck.  One to be placed one frame from the hatch toward the bow and the other one frame from the hatch toward the stern.  Here you can see that the beams at the hatch have been reduced in depth closer to scale.


     For the one at the bow frame, the wires had to be run between the inner and outer hull sides as shown here.

    The one toward the stern was offset slightly to avoid the main mast.  The LEDs were glued in place with some medium CA.

    I drilled a 3/32” hole (large enough to pass the four wires with the shrink wrap) in the bottom of the hull on the port side which will be the side of the ship against the wall when displayed and thus less visible. The excess wire was coiled and taped to the hull for now.


                                             

Thanks Mike And Fright
 
Well its been a while, truthfully I got frustrated over painting the gold scroll work. I just was't able to see it very well using my mag lamp. So I bought one that fits on my head and it was better. here are the results of that
I'm not sure if I really should have painted it white before I did the gold. The close up pictures look worse than when I am looking at it just with my glasses on. So maybe people won't notice the imperfections.

 

Here I have the captains quarters installed. I tried to print out a tiny picture to put above the seat but the resolution of my printer is not that great. 
any way it was a picture of Rose from the movie Titanic. the picture that Jack sketched of her topless wearing just the necklace. Just couldn't tell what it was with out a magnifier.

 
Here I'm getting ready to add the lower deck cannon doors. I'm using Andy Mech's idea. But I think I will add some wax paper on top of the pencils, to keep from gluing the door to the pencils.  
You can also  see in this pic the cannon doors all made up with the ropes already on.

 
DO you guy's use bees wax on Syren's rope? because I do not see any fuzz on mine at all. I think it will be fine without.
Also do you glue the end of the rope to keep it from unraveling. I'm in the habit of just touching the end of the rope to the CA glue bottle tip to keep it from unraveling. I just so it to every cut I make. Just wondering what you guy's do to keep it from unraveling. prolly Beeswax.
 
 
Thank's Ozark 
 
 

I set up this drilling jig with rubber cemented scraps and mounted it on my Proxxon X-Y table as shown.

    The knees were all placed in the jig as shown to place the bolts consistently.  I drilled the holes clean through for a .023” x 1/4” steel brad in each leg.
  
    I soaked the brads briefly in a full strength solution of Brass Black and let dry.  The brads were then pressed through the legs of the knees.

    The brads were slightly too long, but rather than trying to cut them shorter and risk having them disappear, I just put them in my vise to file off the excess.

 
    The knees were then glued in place with some medium CA.

    Now I came to realize that the beams had not been sized to scale, as they were originally not going to be visible, but now that this had changed, I thought they needed to be reduced in depth.  You will notice that a line was now drawn on the face of the beams here.

    With a good deal of trouble they were reduced in place with scalpels and chisels.  This also would allow a little more to be visible inside the hull, so I thought overall it was a good thing.  Also, in this view from above, you can see that the bottom of the hull would be visible.

    Taking another section of the pre-made decking, I marked the treenails and plank ends on this sheet.  This was finished the same as done previously.  To make this sheet of planking conform to the bottom of the hull, I made numerous shallow cuts in the backside of the sheet parallel to the deck boards.  This allowed the sheet to flex enough to match the curve of the hull bottom.  The sheet was slid in from the stern, and held in place by using a pencil eraser down through the hatch.  I then dribbled some thin CA down alongside the gap in the hull walls that secured it in place.

 
    The next thing to do now is to set up for the LED lighting.

Now here is my knee production method.  First off, I took a billet of basswood of the desired thickness and cut triangular pieces with the grain running parallel to the long edge.  The remaining edges of these pieces were squared up with my sanding fixture as shown here.

    Then I drew a rough outline of the shape of the knee on all eight triangles to help keep track of their orientation, as one leg was longer than the other. 

    These were grouped in sets of four that were glued up with a thin coating of rubber cement on all the facing surfaces and clamped in place overnight to dry.  The next day I drew the pattern on a stiff piece of manila folder and cut it to shape.  Holding the pattern in place on the face of the glued up blocks, the pattern was traced onto the top blocks.

    I clamped the blocks in my vise and using a small back saw trimmed off the majority of the waste.


    The blocks were then sanded close to the outline of the knees on my 2” belt sander being careful keep the block flat on the table.

    Now, using several grades of sand paper on sanding sticks the blocks were sanded to their final shape.


    Now the blocks were separated from each other with a chisel driven into the glue joint.  Even though I only used rubber cement to join them together, they were still held together surprisingly well.

 
    Now I had the eight knees duplicated to the same shape.

    Using a fine sanding stick, I eased the exposed edges of all the individual knees.


   Here are all the knees cut to final shape and given a coat of stain and two coats of polyurethane.  I still need to add two bolts to each knee, which will be included in my next posting.

Ship board damage control  now finds the bulkheads sanded fair at the keel rabbet and the rabbet strip and keel have been replaced.
 
Time to move on, by attending to the transom frames. These are very delicate members and have to be added somewhat "in the air" as they are attached, one by one to the former sides w/o much structural support. I will describe what I did but in hindsight I will also suggest an assembly method that might be a bit easier.
 
The pictures in Chapter 3 related to transom member assembly aren't too clear but they suffice. Once again I was on a roll with the bulkhead supports I had used for most of the other bulkheads and placed them (the vertical ones) on the aft end of #22. They should have gone on the inside of that bulkhead. This is going to give me a bit of the problem when I have to add the fillers where the stern terminates. However they did give a nice landing area for the inside stern frames that were to be added. I then added the 2 inner most stern members per directions (separated by 1/8 inch spacers along the former) to yield a 7/16" spacing. I liked the support they gave enough to add horizontal members port and starboard to support the remaining stern members. These are separated by 7/16" spacers per directions. All spacers and frame members are glued one to the other across the stern. These frames should be flush with the top of bulkhead #22.
 
I am left with the problem of still having to shape the stern with fillers as one does the bow. This I perceive will be a bit cumbersome. In hindsight I should have re-enforced the bulkhead from the inside as I said and executed the following:
 
On the aft side I would have placed a 3/8" X 1/2" strip across the bulkhead port and starboard side of the bulkhead and then filled in the balance of the stern area with balsa filler.
 
Also for the more fastidious modeler I would be tempted to extend the horizontal legs of each transom frame member such that they can extend forward of #22 bulkhead  (slotting this bulkhead to accept the thicker base leg of the frames) and placing those 3/8" X 1/2" horizontal strips on bth sides of the bulkhead (i.e. forward and aft).
Joe
 

Upper Port side staircase. Not 100% happy with this, but it is what it is. I maybe able to deflect eyes from
it via cunning methods elsewhere. Anyway, the Port side is always my "test" side so I hope to do better
on the Starboard. All mistakes are my own and not the kits or manufacturer.
 





 
Cheers
 
Chris
 

This is a good news, bad news accounting.
 
The Strong museum demo/display was this past weekend. I used Essex for my demonstration for how a kit might begin and managed to assemble about 16 of the bulkheads before the end of the 2 day session. Today I installed the bulkheads 17 through 20. At this point one has to decide if the "strong back" stiffeners are to be added as they pass through bulkheads 3 through 20. They then are glued to the "strong back" and hopefully some of the bulkheads. It turns out this is a annoying task.. I say that because of slight irregularities in the slot of each bulkhead. Theoretically they all should line up and the stiffener just slides through, in this case from the stern, one to a side. If one uses the top of the strong back as the datum slight irregularities occur in the alignment of the slot from bulkhead to bulkhead. As it turned out I had to remove about 40 thousands from the stiffeners. and chamfer the edges to avoid any glue obstructions that may have occurred when the bulkheads were glued in place.
 
Stupidly I used CA to attempt to fasten the stiffeners to the strong back. I used the very thin CA and sure enough some trickled down onto my assembly jig gluing the keel to it!!!!! It took a bit of doing but I was able to extract the hull from the jig but in so doing the keel and most of the rabbet strip stayed behind. After a few moments of self chastisement I discovered it was somewhat of a blessing in disguise. I will have to make a new keel.
 
When using the top of the strong back as a datum and with each bulkhead set flush with it I observed that about 7 of the bulkheads protruded into the rabbet area. At this point  I realized it was going to be a lot easier to sand the bulkheads at this point so there was no rabbet overlap prior to the keel repair! That's my good news. Sort of!
Joe

Note bulhead protrusion at rule 15 3/4 and 16 1/4.

For staining, begin with a pre stain conditioner. It is clear, but it will create a surface that will absorb the stain evenly with less blotching. You can then stain immediately after. You might consider a clear stain on top of the conditioner just to bring out the wood grain. It would darken the wood slightly, but without much color change. 
 
Russ

Also, working on the guns.  still a work in progress but here they ready for rigging

I've haven't found a reasonably priced stained wooden stand so I've gone off to create my own.  Home depot sells poplar boards that are pretty reasonable and I've routed the wood to what looks about right to me.   I've got 3-4 stains I'm testing on the remnants of the wood.  I'm honestly not that thrilled with my staining work and I'm holding off on jumping to the real piece.  I've tried putting 4-5 rubbed on coats of stain to try to control how dark it gets and it never seems to get as consistent as I'd like.  If anyone has a some detailed staining instructions to get to a professional like finish, I would really appreciate some detailed how to instructions.  Everything I've found is pretty straightforward, but doesn't give the results I'd like to see.  The color seems fine but just doesn't look like a professional did it.  I have a sample of a kitchen cabinet next to it and it just looks a lot richer.  Any thoughts if that's due to the wood itself, wood prep, the stain, staining technique? 

after a couple of months of on and off again work here are few pictures of the ship.  I've done most of the core painting so that I think I'm pretty good with the overall look.  Much of what I'm working on is to complete enough details on the gun deck so that I'm comfortable putting the focsl deck and quarter deck on.  seems like I've been trying to do this for a long time and concern over forgetting to do something is keeping me from diving in.  Probably for good reason. 
I've just dry fit the masts and bowsprit (not shown in picture) so those should go in smoothly when the time comes. 
Its time to move on to a better stand as I sure don't want to turn the boat over to work on the pedestals after the masts and rigging are in place. 
All this is generating a lot of small side projects that need to get done to move forward. 

The seizing took a little to get used to, especially since the rope is so tiny. But it got easier over time so the rigging is coming along. I haven't glued anything down yet and I will do that once all the running rigging is completed.

You're doing great, especially for a first build. Looks better than mine, which wasn't a first build!

I continued by seizing the blocks. I purchased some new rigging line and blocks for this sections because the ones that came with the kit were not great quality. I am really happy with the way it looks on the mast. Then I shaped, glued and painted the bowsprit on. I am really happy with the way it looks and I will finalize and glue the mast one so I can continue. 

I painted and glued on the knees and it is time to work on the rudder. I cleaned it up then realized I finally have to place the frieze, especially on the transom. I printed out the PDF from Chuck's revision and gave it a couple thin coats of hair spray for protection. Then I cut it out and use some adhesive spray to place it on the boat. I taped a cutout of the transom frieze on so I could paint around it. Then I completed the metalwork on the rudder with gudgeon and pintle. I also shaped the handle. Before I can continue, I have to figure out the best way to draw the waterline on the boat.

I fixed the caprail and glued on the knee. I also put in the mast bracket and installed the belay pins. Next I had to problem solve the dilemma of the windlass. I couldn't figure out a way to make perfect square holes, so I just drilled the the approximate size and cut the corners out with an Xacto knife. Had some trouble installing it but was finally able to do it. 

I completed the locker hinges and moved onto the knees. That is when I realized that my cap rail is not the correct shape for the knee so I had to do some surgery to repair it.

Redoing the thwarts didn't take too long and I moved onto working on the seats and the locker. It took some extra time to make sure it fit the boat appropriately with no extra gaps and it was worth it. 
 
Eden

I've glued on the risers and finished working on the thwarts.
 
Did anyone else have an issue with the plans not scaled appropriately? I am trying to work on my thwart with mast, but the plans are scaled just a bit too big so looks like i'll have to eyeball a lot of measurements. 
 
 

I have been away on several trips, but I am back with an update on my progress. I have put on my caprails and the molding as well. I've prepared the friezes and will wait to install them later to avoid damaging them. I've also put Polyurethane on my boat then painted. Then I continued onto the floorboards, and the 2 platforms. I also bend the risers but have yet to install them. 

Took a long break from posting but I'm back. Since last time, I have completed planking the boat and I am currently sanding the inside to prepare for the cap rails. This is my first time planking and I definitely need to work on the curvature of my bending. I made such sharp bends that it was hard to compensate for when I started moving up. Able to finish it but good lesson learned. 
 
 

I continued on and carefully glued on each bulkhead. I marked the center of each bulkhead so I can visualize the placement and also made sure they were perpendicular to the keel as well. I used wood glue for this section to give me a little more time to adjust the placement as needed. Then I beveled all the bulkheads so my planks will have a even surface to adhere to. This took a while to complete.
 
 

Bruce, you are not the only one that put those supports on upside down. I did the same thing but fortunately noticed in time to pull them off, clean them off and redo. Lucky I was using wood glue and not CA.
 
I wouldn't worry about it. As Eric said, only a river boat expert would notice the issue and if they were smart they would be admiring your clever work around instead of being critical. Very nicely done indeed.
 
Bob 

For what it's worth, I'm not sure about Chaperon's later era, but in my understanding the hog "chains" on earlier boats were generally solid metal rods, not cables or chains, meaning they can be simulated with straight brass rod. I assume Kurt knows the proper details for Chaperon.
 
Model's looking great. I see what you mean on the wheel timbers, I didn't notice in the oblique views of your first post but it's more clear in the side views. The good news, at least, is that no one who isn't a serious expert will likely notice, although I know what you mean about the frustration of finding something you know about and can't really fix.

Eric's correct - hog chains were not chain but steel rods with hook ends (or hook to round end).  I have quite an extensive collection of period photographs and have never seen actual chain used though I guess it could have been used.  I suggest that solid rods should be used.
Kurt