aviaamator

In addition to the conservators wax I found three kins of bees wax off the internet The basic yellow color, black, and a white or neutral color.
 

 
 
I also found a thread treatment from an American company  www.herrshners.com
 
 

 
 
It is similar to the conservators wax.
 
I still learn to the conservators wax
 
 

Beeswax has been identified as being slightly acidic, which is not good for the lines in the long run. Conservators' wax, which is pH neutral, might be a better choice.

Try the The 20-Gun Ship Blandford Peter Goodwin....
 
See this link
 
http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-20-Gun-Ship-Blandford-Peter-Goodwin-1988-Royal-Navy-Model-Ships-Frigates-/200812419882?pt=US_Nonfiction_Book&hash=item2ec15a5b2a
 
Chuck

Thank you Chuck and Rusty. 
Post 25
Planking the first belt
Chuck has set out the approach clearly in Chapter  four and I hope to follow his example.
I have tick marked each bulkhead for the first belt and tentatively  prepared the first strake below the Drop plank.
There is a fair bit to think about, marking the plank for the taper, remembering to mark the butt joints at the correct place, bevelling the plank before fitting, and marking the 'tar' line on the edge.

8016
The first plank below the Drop Plank is very short with a butt  joint below the first port.  I prepared a longer plank to include the second butt joint which is just forward of the third port from aft.
The first butt joint was scribed, which allowed me to get a continuous run and more easily form the required lateral curve into the stem rabbet.

8015
The third plank running to the stern was fitted separately and required a little twist where it runs into the counter.

8038
Port side strake completed.

8037
I run planks port and starboard alternatively to monitor the match, and place an even stress on the hull.

8040
Once the plank is shaped a dry fit is required to mark the butt joints, which are then cut.
The method indicated by Chuck really does take the guess work out of planking, which is not necessarily the same as saying I can match his peerless work.

8105
Five strakes completed below the wale, photo'd here in their unrefined state with only glue stains scraped away.

8108

8113

8114

8115

8116
I will now continue to finish the first belt. From this point onwards clamping the planks to the bulkheads gets a tad more tricky as they start to follow the round of the hull towards the keel.
B.E.
19/04/2018
 
 
 

Thank you Jason, and thanks for your apology Kurt, I also think you should start your own log that we can all engage with, but don't fret about it.
on with the build.....
Post 23
Fixing the Wales
 For this 1/32" x 5/32" strips are used.

7703
Not too onerous to fit as clamping is fairly easy along the hull.

7705
Before they are fitted I painted the top edge of the upper wale strip and bottom edge of the lower strip where they will meet the Boxwood finish.
I decided to fit the wale strips in one length gluing progressively along the hull. This I felt allowed me to maintain a better natural curve  to the upper wale strip, and as they stand proud of the hull marking the butt joints with a micro saw blade was fairly easy.
Once fixed the forward 1" of the wale was sanded, scraped, and pared down to almost nothing where it meets the stem.

7708
Cleaned up I then applied three coats of  thinned paint; I won't complete the painting until the rest of the hull has been planked.
I  decided to use Caldercraft Admiralty 'Metal Black' water- based paint, which is less shiny than their 'Dull black' version.

7722

7725

7726

7727
A period of general cleaning up now follows, and some revision and preparation before I continue with the planking.
 
B.E.
07/04/2018
 
 
 

The counter and transom are finally done (I think). I am not sure why the transom doesn’t have quite the crown it should have. Everything measures correctly as far as I can see. The top center is even with the end of the center stern frames. If I rip off the top plank and make it wider, I’ll have to figure a way to extend the frame heights to match. I might just go with the way it turned out. The Surly’s transom was more like this, but that was later in her career. Any thoughts?
 
Kurt

Post 22
Strakes below the Wale
Before I apply the second Wale layer I intend to fit the drop planks and first two planking layers.
I start with the first plank below the wale (3/16" x 3/64") which terminates at b/h J. and meets the Drop plank that will run to the stem.

7313
Following advice from Kurt, Dave, and Erik I have decided to  run the planks at scale lengths and this first section runs between b/hds J and B, the next section between B and 12, and a final short strip to termination at the Square Tuck piece. This last piece has some twist in it to follow the curvature of the hull.

7423
With the first strake fitted I can move onto the Drop Plank.

7429
The last of several card templates to form the Drop plank.
From the plan the forward end tapers to 3/32" and the aft end where it adjoins the second strake below the wale 5/32".
The drop plank was cut from 1/16" sheet and using a jig sanded down close to 3/64".
It is then a case of sand and tweak, tweak and sand to get the bally thing to fit.

7436
I stuck at it long enough to get thro' several card templates and three Boxwood versions before I got one that I could live with, which is not necessarily the standard  some of my more adept colleagues could live with.

7606

7603

7599

7594
At last after seven days toil the first two strakes below the Wales are completed, altho' in need of some serious cleaning up.
I will now move on to the second layer Wales.
 
B.E.
04/04/2018

Post 5
Bulkheads.
Nice to have these heavy cleanly cut bulkheads provided for me, I particularly like the scored reference lines for the ports and wales.
All the Bulkheads slipped easily onto the false keel.
 

3820
At this point I made a simple support board to keep the keel upright whilst I fitted the bulkheads.
Bulkheads not glued at this stage.
 

3823
Get my first real impression of what a chunky little vessel she will be, lovin' it already.
The b/h's should have the scored reference lines for the ports and wale facing either forward or aft depending on whether they are designated by letters or numbers. Forward for numbers, aft for letters.
Chuck has confirmed to me that b/h ⊕ can be placed either way around.

3835
Starting with b/h ⊕ I work fore and aft to glue them into place, checking for square and level as I go.

3837

3839
I use a high quality pva for this purpose, which has a 5 minute grab, sufficient working time, but short enough to hold quickly once positioned.
With the bulkheads fixed it remains to fix the Bow and Port fillers.

3934
So far so good, then........
When it came to the Port fillers I hit a problem.
The fillers run between the external edges of bulkheads J and M., leaving just a wedge of the shorter bulkhead L  protruding, which will be faired away.
4013
On the starboard side of my cutter they fit perfectly, as above.

...but on the Portside seem a tad short.
Hhmm have I got either Bulkheads J or M slightly out of square, I spent so much time squaring them up, or has a bit of warp crept into the bulkhead.
Annoying and barely a mm but sufficient to need a filler to make up the difference.
Rather than try to get the bulkheads off again and perhaps end up with more trouble I added a sliver of Boxwood to the aft end of the filler pieces.

 4008
To bring the filler sets up to the level of the Bulkhead extensions I split a spare filler piece and used one thickness of ply.

4012
Onto the far more testy business of fairing next.
 
B.E.

Gotta love Proxxon!  Their tools work seriously, and they fit in a small space.
 
Nice progress on the bulkheads -- they look good and square.
 
And Hooray for William!  There's nothing like having a dog to help out with the technical details.
 
Happy holidays to you, BE, and to Mrs W of the Shires, and to WW himself.
 
Cheers,
 
Martin

Thanks Martin, been 2013 since we had  any significant snow in my small area of England, an area that would no doubt slip into a corner of Oklahoma and not be noticed for weeks. Great for taking seasonal pictures of William, but it's all gone now.
Been busy in the shipyard this morning making an additional support cradle for the Cutter.

3927
Haven't used it for months but the Band saw came into its own today, I so love these bijou Proxxon  machines.

3932
Set the supports for bulkheads H and 8.

3933
Rough and basic from a bit of scrap 9mm mdf, but it will serve the purpose.
 
Winding operations down now for the Christmas break.

2659
Not before time for some of the Dockyard  workers.
 
Cheers,
 
B.E.
 
 

Thanks Martin, I can't make out  the signature on the plan but this is what I know.
 
Cheerful (and Surly) were designed by Sir John Henslow, Surveyor of the Navy, who had served as a young man as draughtsman to Sir Thomas Slade; The Cheerful Class were the last of a varied class of ship designs produced before he retired in 1806.
The plans were produced in The Navy Office 16/4/1806, approved by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty 17/4/1806 and a copy of the draught sent to the Merchant Builders James and Joseph Johnson, Dover 30/5/1806.
The keel was laid in June of that year, the vessel launched in November, and commissioned in January 1807.
She was sold  on 31 July 1816 after 9 years service.
Surly her sister ship was commissioned at the same time but had a much longer and more exciting early career, finally sold in 1837 after some 30 years.
 
The moral of this tale if anything, is, if longevity is your goal, it's better to be surly than cheerful.

Happy Christmas to you and Mrs W. 
 
B.E.
 
 

Post 4
Attending to the stem
 I am grateful to Chuck for the laser cut parts that make up the stem and keel, saves a lot of time faffing around with the scroll saw; nice Boxwood and need for very little fettlin', the most time consuming part is removing the quite heavy char on the pieces.
I did this mostly by scraping with a sharp blade.
I followed Chuck's  example of filling the treenail holes rather than use dowel pegs.

3772(2)

3609
They are very small, he suggests a #76 drill equivalent to 0.508mm Ø I used a 0.6mm Ø drill.

3603
Once I was satisfied with the fit the two stem pieces were  glued together.

3608
and then to the Rabbet strip on the false keel.

3772
All went together very nicely.

3774
The two keel pieces were then added.

3779
Impressed by the fit of the stern post and rudder, although these will be put aside for much later in the build.

3776
There seems to be a slight kink in the forward section of the keel, I hope this doesn't prove to be troublesome, the false keel looks true sighting along from stem to stern.
 
To complete this part of the build, a light sanding and sealing with wipe-on-poly.

3786

3783
Note:
Chuck makes reference to the use of Minwax wipe-on Poly to seal the Boxwood finish of the stem pieces once they have been fitted.
For those in the UK Minwax products are horrendously expensive (£36) for what is essentially a thinned down oil based Polyurethane Varnish.
Normal oil based Poly is readily available in the UK. Thin it down 50/50 with White spirit to make your own wipe-on.
I used Blackfriars satin poly - 250ml cost me £8 effectively 500ml once diluted.
There is loads of stuff on making your own w-o-p on the internet.

3771
Finally as with Pegasus I obtained the Admiralty plan for Cheerful and Surly which now sits above my workbench as additional inspiration.
 
Next up fiddlin' with my Bulkheads.
 
B.E.
 
 
 

Cheers Kurt, I've got to work
So the build begins
The two keel halves are glued together and the Bearding line marked on the Starboard side to match the Portside.
The Rabbet strip is now ready for fixing.

3112
I used the False keel fret cut out to make a former to shape the rabbet around the bow shape.

3120
Using the wet/heat method I pre-bent the strip to take the stress out when gluing.

3122
Because the strip has to be centred along the keel not having to fight it or apply too much pressure is a great bonus.

3256
Only light clamping is required.

3258
The stern rabbet strip is then added.

3262
and finally the bearding line taper sanded in.
 

3263
I can now move onto the Boxwood stem and Keel.
 
B.E.

Cheers Guys 
Well a week or so has passed and nothing really to show, but I have been busy reading logs  and I feel grateful for three fine builds by Rustyj, rafine (Bob) and Stuntflyer (Mike) in addition to Chuck's own initial build, to refer to.
If I come anywhere close to those examples I will be a happy man.
 
As an aside I have treated myself to a couple of Proxxon goodies to add to my collection.
A Thicknesser/sander, (DH40) and a Surface Planer (AH80) plus some spares, and mill bits.
 
As with previous purchases I obtained the machines from Germany.
https://www.tbs-aachen.de/
 .....and saved myself £118.00 over the UK supply price.
 
I always feel a certain trepidation whenever I start a new build, and I tend to spend a fair bit of time fiddling with the first stage bits before I get the pva out.

3079
Looking at the two false keel halves, they don't seem to join square at both top and bottom. Maybe the tongue of the Jigsaw join is a tad long.

3078
The second task will be to glue a Rabbet strip (⅛" x1/16")- 3.2mm x 1.59mm along the stem, bottom and up the stern of the false keel.
This strip doesn't seem to have been provided in the Crown Timber package  but they do supply a 1/16"" thick sheet of boxwood which would require a ⅛" strip cutting off.

3104
Fortunately I do have some 3.4mm square Boxwood strip and this provides me with a perfect opportunity to bring my new Thicknesser machine into use.

3103
It  brought the  30" length of 3.4mm boxwood strip down to 1.59mm consistently along its length. Being new to this machine  I took  quite a few light passes to familiarise myself, but I think it will be a very useful addition.
 
A question to those who may have this machine, when feeding narrow strip thro' is it normal for it to move across the planing table without maintaining a straight line? it doesn't seem to affect the cut but is a bit disconcerting to a new user.
 
B.E.
 
 
 

Jim, I tried your method quickly to see if it had any merits. I have some wire that is .009 inch diameter. That translates to about 0.7 inches on my scale. I made a template (which I need to do any way) and made a few attempts to use the thin wire. 
  
 
I finally gave up because I cannot see how I can crimp the ends uniformly as I go along.
I know I am not following your suggestion to the point, but I also cannot constantly rotate my model to get to the other side.
Thanks for this idea.

In Popeye's build of the Gothenburg a member posted pictures of blocks recovered from the wreck (see here) .  These blocks from 1745 have wooden pins.  When were blocks made with metal pins? 
 
Bob

I agree with Norman about not being hasty in tying off the lines as you go along. I just finished doing the stays and top shrouds on my Conny and found that I had to redo a couple of those lines because as I went higher up those lines tended to distort what I had done before. It was not serious, but enough to see the difference. And believe me, your eyes are better than any gismo to determine tension.
 
One problem, of course, is that the untied lines end up get in the way of what you want to do next. I did as much as I could, made a judgement call and tied off those lines I thought would be unaffected by what came next. Here is part of the result.
 
 
I like to add one more comment about the effect on the masts alignment. When I started to do the rigging of the three masts seen above, I noticed that the main had a slight tilt to port (compared with the other two). As I went along with the topmast, topgallant and royal shrouds I kept that in mind but did not do anything really 'tight' about it. Sure enough, it did not take much because they now line up very nicely. However, to reiterate, the fore and aft alignment can be changed drastically with tension in the stays.

Or simply protection reasons?
 
XXXDAn

No question is dumb! I've noticed that the surrounds to hatchways (don't fall down them!) and other obstructions on deck were often painted, usually red, then black on British contemporary models. This was as a safety feature in the dark or bad weather. One could easily distinguish the dark painted areas from the light deck color. I suspect that blackening mastheads and yards were done for a similar reason: to provide visual contrast with their surroundings.

If you can replace it: do.
However: you can splice it (or do something that looks like it) as long as your rope has no clear strands in it (otherwise you'll be seeing it from miles away), and there will be no tension on the shrould.
 
How do I know?  well    (btw where is the ashamed off emoticon gone )
 
I snipped one of my futtoch shroulds a couple of months ago. I was not able to remove the lower part of the without damaging more than I would have liked.
So I spliced a new 'upper part' to it. Not completely invisible (you can see a slightly thicker part in the shrould to the right, just above the seizings. But it will do (at least, for me ) (to get an idea of the scale: ratlines is .15 mm thread)
 

The essential rigging would not be much different ( except for size and quantity ) from the
Victory.
 
If you can get  something like Historic Ship Models by Wolfram zu Mondfeld,
 
It would give you a good line by line accounting for similar ships; which you could compare
to the plans you have and make adjustments as necessary
 
 

This is probably too late to help the OP but it may help others.
 
I took some pictures of the Phoenix in Charlestown, Cornwall ,UK, a couple of years ago.
The Phoenix is a working two masted brig built in Frederikshavn, Denmark in 1929, and regularly appears in tv shows and films.
The following pics clearly show that the ratlines are "tan" and not tarred.
However the last pic shows that the knots on the outer shrouds are tarred, either as a result of the shrouds being freshly tarred or as a way of "securing" the knot.
 

Nylon looks good to me but, I'm thinking about how well glue will soak into the line. It soaks in real well with cotton but I'm not too sure about this.
(White glue im meaning, Not CA)

I am fortunate enough to live in a Coastal Community where I can walk the docks, and look at different types of ships and small vessels. We also have a extensive Marine Retail Store dedicated to Commercial Fishing located on the Docks. Over the years, I have been buying Nylon Seine Line in various sizes for gardening and other projects. The smallest diameter Seine Line I am aware of is #5, which has a diameter somewhere between 050 and 070 in equivalent Kit lines. See examples below.
 
The Seine Line is stiffer and is much easier to use.  When cut, the Seine Line frays less at the cut end than the line provided in the Kits.  The #5 Seine Line (Nylon) comes in 1 lbs spools. Which is approximately 3,500 feet at a cost of only $12.99 each. This one spool will last me a lifetime.  So far I have only experimented with it. So far I am impressed.

You can get the AVS book on CD from the publisher for around $30. The CD also includes the practicum on a Bermuda sloop and the Brig Fair American. It's well worth the price in my opinion.
 
http://www.seaways.com/CAFCD.html
 
Good luck, Al