Cathead

Regarding the inflatable, I wonder if adding some seams would help with the realism, especially internally? It would break up the long run of smooth plastic and give some more visual interest. Looks nice, nonetheless

I am aware of the other brand, cannot remember the name either, but I am sure I will bump into it eventually somewhere on the sight. No hurry, one of those jobs I can do tidying up at the end.
 
 
I have been busy in the garden since my last update, so have not made as much progress as I would have liked (same with the garden).
 
First, I have started the ships boat which is an inflatable, the shell of which is made by CAP Maquettes and purchased from Cornwall Model boats. Picture curtesy of CMB.

I have dressed this up a bit with some black paint, paper and some 2mm o/d rings made from 0.33mm brass rod. It looks a bit better. My wife said (scornfully) that it looks like a lump of plastic. That’s what an inflatable is, so maybe it’s better than I thought. The side ropes do not hang very well, I will give them a coat of diluted PVA and see if I can get them to look better.

I still need to do the outboard motor, fuel tank, paddles and the fittings for it to be lifted on the davits.
 
I finished the foresail boom. I was hoping the gooseneck would be fully working, but a bit of solder got into it, so it only goes to port and starboard.

I need to cut the chain to length and fit a double block to the end. It goes 2-3 times round the end of the boom and then I need about another inch.
 
To get this far, I realised I needed some idea of how the foresail would be attached, so I also started the process of making the sails. I cut up the piece of cloth I had obtained into sail sized chunks and then tried to iron out the creases. Lesson. I should have washed/soaked it first then dried it, then ironed it and finally cut it into sail sized chunks. I then experimented with making one of the triangular sails, the inner jib, as I thought they would be the easiest.
 
It did not go as well as I had hoped. I folded over the shortest edge and used diluted PVA to glue it in place. It was too narrow to tack. However I did not pay enough attention and did not realise it stretched as I did this. Once I realised what had happened I decided a new inner jib would be required, but I would continue with this one for practice. I then repeated this process on the longest edge, taking more care. I found that I could glue this in place without any stretching. That is as far as I have got. Below is a picture of my trial sail along with the Billings one. I would describe the billings material as deck chair canvas.

I have drawn the shapes of all the sails onto the chunks I cut, using the billings sails as patterns.
 
I then made the foresail gaff. I used the supplied tapered dowel, but made the jaws from scratch and added other details from the Musées de la Marine plans and photographs. The jaws supplied in the kit was a piece of plastic, which I used as a template to make the new one from some 1.5mm ply I had spare.
 
Once made I realised the shape of the foresail needed adjusting slightly as the length of the head was too long for it to be correctly mounted on the gaff.

Here are the two together. The piece of cloth they are on is the foresail.

I will now continue with my attempts to make sails. May try various methods on scrap material first. Will also do the mainsail boom and gaff as they are very similar to those for the foresail, just a bit larger and finish of the ships boat.
 
Thanks to everyone for looking in,
 
Glenn
 

Hey Hof! Yes I thought about LEDs. I have this battery powered string of LEDs. But i have my hands full with this model and dont think I can pull it off🙁  Maybe with my next model ( the Missouri)🙂  

 
I'm now trying to assemble 4 20mm guns. This is where me being a rookie really shows! I dont have the skills to cut off the plastic barrels and replace with brass barrels. I already cut one barrel off so I atleast have to use one brass barrel and it will be a mess. 

The searchlights are done for now. I like to let the paint dry for 24 hours before I start weathering. So I will continue tomorrow. 

she wants to help but has shakey hands 😟

Daria,
Mrs. Cathead (who is a scientist) thinks it's fantastic that you're interested and engaged in such things, as do I! I've been sharing all your updates and photos with her. There isn't much in the nautical way out here in the central US, so I quite envy you the chance to work on such a Viking ship (especially as someone of Norwegian descent).

and painted 🙂
 

Daria,
Mrs. Cathead (who is a scientist) thinks it's fantastic that you're interested and engaged in such things, as do I! I've been sharing all your updates and photos with her. There isn't much in the nautical way out here in the central US, so I quite envy you the chance to work on such a Viking ship (especially as someone of Norwegian descent).

Michiel, not only lights but I even thought of RC controls. But since I know nothing about RC boats I moved on.
 
Vaddoc, the primer is Krylon Gray Primer out of a spray can, nothing exotic and sands nice and seals the wood. Also works well with the Glazing Putty in filling any gaps.
 
Thank you all for stopping by and words of encouragement.
 

Daria,
Mrs. Cathead (who is a scientist) thinks it's fantastic that you're interested and engaged in such things, as do I! I've been sharing all your updates and photos with her. There isn't much in the nautical way out here in the central US, so I quite envy you the chance to work on such a Viking ship (especially as someone of Norwegian descent).

Making 7 searchlights. And ready for paint. 

Well I'm off to airbrush

Thanks, she is happy to read it!
Today we took part in another build (or a maintenance of an already built "model"). It is Helga Holm, the Viking ship replica, built in 1983, 22m long, weighs 4 tons.
It is in a decent shape, but definitely requires some repair. For now the goal was to raise a tarp cover to protect it from elements in the winter.
Daria participated a lot, and she looks forward to sail it in the summer!



 

 

 

 
Ready to be covered:

 

I did line off the Stern too. The bow planks will narrow to about 2/3 of there original width. Not too bad I guess. After I removed the plank I installed today I put it up for the day. I think I was just to tired to concentrate. It's not fun when it's like that.

As long as you line off the hull you should be fine. About the first 4-5 bulkheads the taper starts at the bow. There is also some tapering needed at the stern. Again- Bob F illustrates a good tutorial. Hope this helps. 
Steve

The build was finally resumed, we had a number of modelling sessions during the last few weeks. Horray!
This time the job is simple - glue pre-cut veneer pieces to their places, fine fit and making sure they are properly clamped.
Daria likes it a lot! And whines that with this tempo it will take too long to finish the model - we need to glue more than one part per day!
 
Learning how to work with a scalpel with various angles. I know the holding is not correct here, but that will be corrected later:

 
Using masking tape to "clamp" the veneer where regular clamps could not be used. Works like a charm on this scale:

 
Transom all clamped: 
 
Result is ok, including the ebony parts:

 
Then onto the bulwarks. They are double-layered for whatever reason, but alignment is easy and done by a small pins that fit into tiny holes cut in all layers. Such a simple and elegant idea!

 
Found out the hard way that these clamps are not good enough - they clamp only in the middle, while veneer warps due to moisture.
So we experimented with other ways of clamping:

 
And ended up with this monster, but it seems to work:

 
She really enjoys it now - the difficulty level is just perfect, and learning some new techniques every time. I am touching the model less and less, she is doing more fine fitting herself (and said fitting is always required, a millimeter here and there).
 
 
 

The presentation went extremely well and some are now more informed about the various aspects of modelling.
In working on the hatches I first make the sidewalls fitting snugly on the coaming using Midwest #8006 Basswood strips. Then I glue a slightly over-sized 1/32" hatch cover to the sidewall frame while in place and set a small steel block weight on top until the glue sets. This assures a flat cover index to the coaming; the glue while drying can distort the the cover if not weighted down. Each cover is marked on the inside with B(bow) and S(stern) and location P (port) and hatch number from bow. There is enough slight variation in size to make each cover unique.
 
 
 
I bounce back and forth between making hatch covers and the accommodation tower. The tower is being built with individual decks so down the road details can be added much easier than if the tower were one piece. Things like door hatches, ladder ways and rails.
Here is deck "A" which will index on the main deck; the small locator rectangle will have glue added to the center while indexed into the deck and the glue will stick to the main deck and release the deck when the glue is dry providing a tight fitting locator. This will be the foundation for the tower.
 

 
I used a wood strip spacer against the bay wall and masking tape for centering and gluing Deck "A" locator to the main deck.
 

 
Here is a view of the in progress build up of the tower so far. The challenge is adding the indexing locators of each deck to each other with a tight fit. The tower decks will separate from each other to add details later on. Here is a front view.
 
 
 
Here is a rear view showing various ladder way openings. The individual height of each deck is .375" 
 

 
Here is an overall view of where I am at so far. Many more hatches to go.
 

 
Now back to making hatches and decks.   Bring a whole new meaning to "Down the hatch!" 

Steve, Thanks for looking in and keeping me on the right path. I will run tick marks on the frames and up the stem. The proportional divider sure makes it easy. It's a great tool.

Al,
Steve is right, you certainly need to start the tapering of the planks.
But overall it's looking good.

It amazes me how many twists and turns hull planks take. I hope I still have enough room to fit 7 more planks a side without ending up with daggers.

Nice, Kurt, thanks for sharing! Your extra detail looks especially nice.
 
Your shade of green seems more marine, but I chose the exact color scheme I did because it's quite literally the same as our house. After I rejected the kit paints, I decided to use the house paints I already had on hand for our siding and trim  as I'm budget-conscious and really didn't want to order yet more paints (I wish I'd thought of that in the first place). I know that house paints are generally not good for models because the texture is so much coarser, but given the large scale and low detail of this particular kit, I thought it would work well enough, and as it's a gift for my mother any subtle reduction in textural quality is overruled by the "cool" factor of a meaningful color scheme. If you look closely you can see the texture isn't ideal, but it looks great from more than a foot or so away, and that's good enough for me on this one.
 
Next up I'm finally getting back to my long-delayed steamboat Arabia project, which has been languishing all summer. It's still in design mode but I'm close to actually doing some physical mockups that will help me move forward.

One method I've used a lot for edge-bending planks is to cut a scrap piece into a gentle curve, around which I can bend the plank. I find that it helps to have a solid curve to press up against, it lessens the potential for the plank to buckle or form a sharp curve in one place. This form doesn't have to be true to the final curve, just something roughly similar. I clamp it down first and then bend the plank around it. This is roughly what you're already doing in bending the second plank around the garboard, just more standardized since you won't be able to do that every time.
 
From what I can tell, you've definitely got the right idea and it's looking good.

Ragove, that's interesting that you had quality issues, as I didn't. The only part I broke was the very thin port-side door frame which sticks up alone for part of the build, and that was my fault for rough handling. I was able to reattach and brace it with no problems. Otherwise the frames stood up well to sanding and shaping, and the planking material was strong but flexible.
 
I did hear from Nic at BlueJacket (I hope it's ok to share this) that the kit is due for an upgrade, which would be exciting as it's fundamentally an interesting model and well worth building.

That looks good. Don't forget to taper the planks at the bow. I do not see any tick marks in that area. You will soon run out of room. 
Steve

Thanks for stopping in and all the likes.
 
I'm sure glad there is nobody depending on my boat building skills to stay afloat in the ocean. The turn around the stern has given me the most problems so far. You sure can't just plunk down planks with this kit. They all take careful fitting and bending. Mine are far from perfect but I am learning more with each plank. I think it will get easier from here.

i purchased the kit around 2008, I think it was, when we were visiting Maine and I stopped into their facility in Searsport, ME and got around to building it just a couple years ago.  Perhaps the kit had been up-graded since that time.  It might even have been a Laughing Whale kit in a Bluekacket box. 
 
I have a Laughing Whale model of Slocum's "Spray"  that I had been sort of reluctant to start.  I just re-read his "Sailing Alone Around the World" and that has encouraged me to give it a go.