Cathead

Cathead - I add a coat of matte lacquer after blackening. It doesn't add shine and it helps keep the black on your metal not your hands.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

Sort of a reawakening for me over the weekend. I finally added another plank. :)  One small step for a ship building padawan....  
 
Been a bit of a mental block, so I sat down with the Admiral, a former Reg Nurse and worked it all out. I had to get past a few ideas about being "available" for "small" little jobs (GIs may recall what an sljo is) around the house. No more wasting time on the computer, that kind of stuff. I'm back.
 
Lawrence, thank you for your kind support. I hope to complete the planking without further ado and try my hand at rigging and adding some accouterments to the basics included in this kit. I haven't rigged a ship since high school, back in the late Renaissance. (Around the Beatles invading the USA).

Some more progress.  The 'dunny' has now been completed along with the windlass.  I've been playing about with the windlass on and off for some time, but decided it was time to finish it off.  In the photos both pieces are in roughly their final position.  Going by the available photos, the 'dunny' seemed to have been moved from time to time, but this is the position it was in when the 'Pritt' went to the Roper River to land the missionaries, which is the period I want.  It must have been pretty inconvenient when sailing with the wind aft, as it stuck up higher than the level of the main boom.
 
John
 

 

 

 

 

So I've now tested the BlueJacket blackeners, using a variety of metal parts from the Model Shipways naval cannon kit, and am quite pleased with the results. I scrubbed all the pieces in warm soapy water, then soaked them in white vinegar before rinsing and drying. Then I tested the blackening solutions.
 
The bottle instructions suggest diluting the solution 1:10; I wasn't sure which direction this meant (one parts solution to ten parts water, or vice versa), so I wrote BlueJacket. As you might expect, I got a swift and helpful response:
It is ten parts water to 1 part solution. That ratio is really flexible.Some people use it full strength, and others really dilute it a lot. The10:1 blackens the metal in about 5 minutes or so. Make sure to clean theparts first. Here's what the blackened parts looked like after my first attempt (all were soaked for several minutes up to 15):
 

 
The pewter parts didn't fully blacken, but turned a deeper shade of grey-black. The true metal parts blackened beautifully, especially the chains. I really like how the cannon barrel turned out; the blackening kept the rough texture of the metal intact, whereas paint seals it into a glossy smooth finish. It wasn't dark enough for me, so I gave it a thin wash of black paint, which preserved the texture but achieved the right color:
 

 
Compare to the very similar carronade kit, on which I used paint alone, needing several coats to fully color the metal:
 

 
This latter gun has a much shinier appearance that I don't like as much as the blackened and washed long gun. Not sure how well it shows in these photos, but it's very obvious in person. I preferred the effect so much, that I removed my painted chain from the carronade kit and replaced it with extra blackened chain.
 
I did find that the blackening had a tendency to rub off on parts that were handled a lot, so I tried to use tweezers as much as possible. Also, I didn't notice any odor or other such problems, nice since I work in my living room.
 
So for whatever it's worth, I was very happy with these two products as a novice getting started with blackening metal.

No new photos, but I spent the evening scrutinizing the fairing, both with my Mark 1 eyeball, and using a piece of boxwood planking material.  I wound up touching up the area at the lower bow, and after test fitting planks, used a coarse sanding stick to further taper the bulkhead former at the stern from the bearding line to the rabbet strip . . . you were right Mike (Stuntflyer). 
 
On my longboat I had used Polly Scale Soo Line Red acrylic paint for the red.  I have plenty of that left, but am going to experiment with Vallejo red (on scrap wood, of course).  Vallejo paints from Spain are very high quality and are the best bottled acrylics I know for brushing with no brush marks or unevenness.  I'll post my results here.
 
http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/en_US/model-color/family/15
 
Erik

Ahoy, it's yet another longboat! Last fall, looking ahead to the completion of my steamboat Bertrand scratchbuild, I wanted my next project to fulfill three goals: have good instructions to give my brain a rest, let me develop & practice skills like planking & rigging before tackling a larger ship project, and not be too large.
 
I settled on this little model back in September, when Model Expo had their special offer to buy any kit 50% off, then send them photos of the completed model within a year to get the other 50% in store credit. I bought the two naval cannon kits and this one, figured that I'd have Bertrand done by the end of the year, and should be able knock those three out in the remaining nine months. Well, here it is about March, and the two cannons are done with the longboat underway. So in effect, this is a "free" kit if I can finish it by September. I think that's plenty doable.
 
Here's the kit laid out on my reasonably organized workspace, a plastic "market" table set into a cedar frame I built from the abundant red cedar we log & mill on our farm.
 

 
My mind doesn't think easily in small fractions of an inch, so I took a pencil and labelled the end of each wood strip or bundle as I worked out its identity on the parts list. This way, every time I want a piece, I won't have to measure a bunch of different strips to figure out which one I want. Light pencil is easy to remove as needed.
 

 
We're about to head down and visit the Arkansas in-laws, so not much more will get done in the next week, but I'm too excited to get started not to at least post the log. This will be a fun change of pace from the Bertrand, and will be a nice complement to the MS Bounty Launch I built before that; there's even a space on a bookshelf reserved for the finished model.
 
Thanks in advance to any of you who tune in; I hope I can add something to the collected knowledge of this great kit.
 

Ahoy, it's yet another longboat! Last fall, looking ahead to the completion of my steamboat Bertrand scratchbuild, I wanted my next project to fulfill three goals: have good instructions to give my brain a rest, let me develop & practice skills like planking & rigging before tackling a larger ship project, and not be too large.
 
I settled on this little model back in September, when Model Expo had their special offer to buy any kit 50% off, then send them photos of the completed model within a year to get the other 50% in store credit. I bought the two naval cannon kits and this one, figured that I'd have Bertrand done by the end of the year, and should be able knock those three out in the remaining nine months. Well, here it is about March, and the two cannons are done with the longboat underway. So in effect, this is a "free" kit if I can finish it by September. I think that's plenty doable.
 
Here's the kit laid out on my reasonably organized workspace, a plastic "market" table set into a cedar frame I built from the abundant red cedar we log & mill on our farm.
 

 
My mind doesn't think easily in small fractions of an inch, so I took a pencil and labelled the end of each wood strip or bundle as I worked out its identity on the parts list. This way, every time I want a piece, I won't have to measure a bunch of different strips to figure out which one I want. Light pencil is easy to remove as needed.
 

 
We're about to head down and visit the Arkansas in-laws, so not much more will get done in the next week, but I'm too excited to get started not to at least post the log. This will be a fun change of pace from the Bertrand, and will be a nice complement to the MS Bounty Launch I built before that; there's even a space on a bookshelf reserved for the finished model.
 
Thanks in advance to any of you who tune in; I hope I can add something to the collected knowledge of this great kit.
 

Lovely! I'm working to catch up on some build logs, as I just started this myself. Very nice work.

Lovely! I'm working to catch up on some build logs, as I just started this myself. Very nice work.

Seems tolerably acceptable.

Lovely! I'm working to catch up on some build logs, as I just started this myself. Very nice work.

I have finally reached completion. This project has brought me both great satisfaction and agony from time to time. The fact that I got to build this challenging little model online with all of you is still amazing to me.I think about the models I built as a kid, I never dreamed of how someday we'd have this technology that would connect us all. This is a fantastic website and I hope it will be around for years to come.Thank you for all your support.

After much effort I got the stern framing finished, more or less.  I still have more fairing to do, and more clean up.  The stern gun ports were a real pain in the butt.  I wound up doing one of them over 5 times!  Luckily I know when to just walk away for a while or I would've launched the ship out the window!  In addition to bass wood filler immediately behind the square tuck, I added some balsa filler material between that and the rearmost bulkhead.  This area is tough to get faired correctly, so I figured having a solid mass of wood in there would help me visualize the run of the planks.  I knew back when I faired the bulkheads that I over-faired one side of the rearmost bulkhead.  I added .020" strip to the bulkhead to get the shape correct.  You can see it in the top photo.  My goal is to not have any surprises when I get to the planking stage.  I extensively test fit planking material in every area of the stern to make sure the plank run looks good. This has been the most challenging part of the build so far.  Though not perfect, I think things came out well enough.
 

 

 

 

 
Erik
 
 

Seems tolerably acceptable.

Seems tolerably acceptable.

Seems tolerably acceptable.

Wonderful work, Glen. Did you need Novocaine to facilitate the amputation of those beautiful, healthy flywheels? 

You shouldn't exaggerate ...

Seems tolerably acceptable.

Seems tolerably acceptable.