xken

After a weekend of helping the Admiral at her Bird Festival Show selling her artwork as grunt labor I am now back to work. I am working back and forth between the bow and stern mooring decks along with the foremast. These parts are a combination of brass and wood materials as appropriate. Here is a picture of the foremast showing parts prior to painting and adding the signal lights. The wood blocks are flood lights that light up the area in front of the bow. The large horn id the fog horn, the smaller facing forward id the ship's bell and the rear facing is the loud speaker for bridge commands to the decks. 
 

 
Here is an in progress bow mooring deck with the winches in place with white ropes and yellow caution painted areas. Here you can see the lights have been added and lenses painted white. I still have to add the rope guides at the openings as well as the platform between the two anchor winches.
 

 
Now back to more fittings.
 
   

I finished up the ladderways and then added the mooring deck rails.
 
 
 

 
Next I made the mooring deck winches of which there are two styles, as well as left and rights based upon the electric motor location. Here they are set on the plans.

 
Here they are set on the deck with bits and mooring posts. White rope will be added before the winches are glued in place.
 

 
Next I moved on to the bow that has three winches the same as the mooring deck; in addition there are anchor winches and the pictures show "in progress" anchor winches in place on the bow fore deck.

 

 
The anchor chain will index into the hole with the brake arm over the roller and into the deck. Just a great deal of more details and fixtures to add yet. 

I hope all had as great a holiday season as we did with all the kids here for Christmas. We had four generations under one roof; Gretchen's father, Gretchen, our daughter Heather and Eric with grand children Sophia and Daphne;  Alex and Tyler. This picture was taken at Heather's house where we spent most of the time together.
 

 
Both Evan and Eric got to see their ships. Here is Evan holding his ship, still a work in progress.

 
Here is Eric and I standing next to his. He really loved the signal flags with the boys names on them.

I also spent a little time after Eric, Jamie and the boys returned to New York working on drawings for the LCVP for the Maritime Museum here in Morro Bay. At 1/12 scale it will be 36 inches long. Here is a PDF of one sheet of the plans I have so far. Once the drawings are done enough I will sort out a materials list to start the build.
LCVP PLAN.pdf
 
For now back to making the ladders and winches. HAPPY NEW YEAR to all!
 
 
 

The ladders have arrived from Tom's Modelworks. While waiting for them to arrive I made the bollards for the decks and started the winches for the decks. There appears to be three different kinds of winch set-ups; two for anchors, 6 for mooring and two that I will call general purpose. All start out with the same basic construction with add-ons for specific purposes. 
 
After grinding a parting tool down to 1/32" to cut the gaps between the rope reels, I started by turning the basic reel set up starting with 3/16" brass bar and then started one of the frames for sizing. I used a turned piece of aluminum and moved the cutting tool horizontally to cut grooves for fins on the electric motor. 1 started 9 to go as well as finishing up the ladder ways.

 

 
My build time and updates will now be sporadic at best until New Years; my son, his wife and the twin grandsons travel tomorrow from NYC and will be here until the 28th. This will be their first time seeing the Constitution completed that will eventually be at their home on Long Island. 
 

After a weekend of helping the Admiral at her Bird Festival Show selling her artwork as grunt labor I am now back to work. I am working back and forth between the bow and stern mooring decks along with the foremast. These parts are a combination of brass and wood materials as appropriate. Here is a picture of the foremast showing parts prior to painting and adding the signal lights. The wood blocks are flood lights that light up the area in front of the bow. The large horn id the fog horn, the smaller facing forward id the ship's bell and the rear facing is the loud speaker for bridge commands to the decks. 
 

 
Here is an in progress bow mooring deck with the winches in place with white ropes and yellow caution painted areas. Here you can see the lights have been added and lenses painted white. I still have to add the rope guides at the openings as well as the platform between the two anchor winches.
 

 
Now back to more fittings.
 
   

After a weekend of helping the Admiral at her Bird Festival Show selling her artwork as grunt labor I am now back to work. I am working back and forth between the bow and stern mooring decks along with the foremast. These parts are a combination of brass and wood materials as appropriate. Here is a picture of the foremast showing parts prior to painting and adding the signal lights. The wood blocks are flood lights that light up the area in front of the bow. The large horn id the fog horn, the smaller facing forward id the ship's bell and the rear facing is the loud speaker for bridge commands to the decks. 
 

 
Here is an in progress bow mooring deck with the winches in place with white ropes and yellow caution painted areas. Here you can see the lights have been added and lenses painted white. I still have to add the rope guides at the openings as well as the platform between the two anchor winches.
 

 
Now back to more fittings.
 
   

After a weekend of helping the Admiral at her Bird Festival Show selling her artwork as grunt labor I am now back to work. I am working back and forth between the bow and stern mooring decks along with the foremast. These parts are a combination of brass and wood materials as appropriate. Here is a picture of the foremast showing parts prior to painting and adding the signal lights. The wood blocks are flood lights that light up the area in front of the bow. The large horn id the fog horn, the smaller facing forward id the ship's bell and the rear facing is the loud speaker for bridge commands to the decks. 
 

 
Here is an in progress bow mooring deck with the winches in place with white ropes and yellow caution painted areas. Here you can see the lights have been added and lenses painted white. I still have to add the rope guides at the openings as well as the platform between the two anchor winches.
 

 
Now back to more fittings.
 
   

After a weekend of helping the Admiral at her Bird Festival Show selling her artwork as grunt labor I am now back to work. I am working back and forth between the bow and stern mooring decks along with the foremast. These parts are a combination of brass and wood materials as appropriate. Here is a picture of the foremast showing parts prior to painting and adding the signal lights. The wood blocks are flood lights that light up the area in front of the bow. The large horn id the fog horn, the smaller facing forward id the ship's bell and the rear facing is the loud speaker for bridge commands to the decks. 
 

 
Here is an in progress bow mooring deck with the winches in place with white ropes and yellow caution painted areas. Here you can see the lights have been added and lenses painted white. I still have to add the rope guides at the openings as well as the platform between the two anchor winches.
 

 
Now back to more fittings.
 
   

Like Jon I to am a life long member of the long and distinguished list of screw-ups. Screw-ups are just mis-judgements turned into learning lessons.   

Thanks for the likes, guys.
 
I have stained all of the yards and stunning sail booms with oak stain, except for the yard arms, which will be painted black. The spanker gaff and driver boom will also be painted all black.

While waiting for those to dry, which seems to take a few days, especially for the parts made from dowels, I have been making the stunning sail boom brackets that go on the fore and main lower, topsail, and topgallant yards. I am making these from brass tubing and round and square brass rod, and in the past I would have CA glued these together. But this time I was determined to make them correctly by soldering the parts together. Now, I have never been able to solder very well, so this was going to be quite a departure for me. What was different this time is that I had xKen's excellent instructions from his build log on how he made these, and I have been reading his Modeling in Brass book, which also has some great instructions for these kinds of parts. In the course of building these parts, I ended up using many different power and hand tools, so I will try to describe the process and tools that I used. The first task was to drill holes in the tubing for the rod, which I used the mill and sensitive drilling attachment with a very small center drill bit to do. I found that the mechanics vise on the mill was the perfect vise to hold the tubing without crushing it, and I used it for other operations too, like cutting the slices from the tube.


After drilling the starter holes, I used a pin vise to enlarge the holes to fit the rod I was using, which was round for the inner brackets and square for the outer brackets. I then put the tube back into the vise and sliced off individual pieces using the jewelers saw shown in the above picture. This saw was fantastic for this operation, which I have always had trouble doing in the past. I have tried rolling the tubing under an X-Acto knife, but could never get it to stay in a single line all the way around the tubing. I have tried other saws too, without too much success. Also, in the past I never had a good way to hold the tubing steady while cutting, like I can in the mechanics vise. The next step was to assemble the pieces for the brackets and hold them down for soldering. The inner brackets were made with one larger piece of tubing in the center and two smaller pieces on the rods, then cut in half after soldering. Here is one of the ready for soldering (left) and the one on the right has already been soldered.
.
The soldering board is a piece of something that is very light but fire proof (although not burn proof as you can see from the burn marks from previous soldering efforts using silver solder and a butane torch). It is soft enough that those push pins go into it easily. I bought it from Micro Mark a while ago. For a soldering iron, I have tried to use cheap or old ones in the past that I had laying around, but then I bought this soldering station which I am coming to really like.

It has both a soldering iron and a hot air blower, and you can set the temperature of each. I am using Stay Bright solder and flux, which I can't recommend enough. It melts at about 200 degrees C, so I set the soldering iron to 350. The flux is a liquid so one drop on each joint gets the job done, and once the part is hot, a light touch of the solder flows nicely into the joints. I have been trying to use other soft and hard solder that I had with very little success, until I tried the Stay Bright and flux. I still had some issues with too much solder getting into the small tubing, but I was able to drill these out with a pin vise, then ream them out with a pointed grinding bit in the Dremel tool.
When I sliced off the tubing pieces, I made them oversize on each side of the hole. So, the next step was to thin the brackets to the correct thickness. To do that, I used this disk sander which I keep permanently on the work bench, mostly to square up wood parts before gluing. It worked great on the brass though too. You can see some of xKen's pictures from his build log that I am using as instructions in this picture too.

To sand the parts thinner, I held them in a heliostat and carefully touched them to the sanding disk. The first few times I was leaving them on the disk too long and they would get hot enough to melt the solder. So I learned to use quick light touches and let the part cool between touches. Once thinned, I cleaned up the rest of the parts with files and they are now ready for blackening.
The pieces with the square brass rod on the single loop are the end brackets. The ones in the last picture had not been thinned yet. These will be bent and inserted into holes in the ends of the yards later. I won't bend these until I have the inner brackets in place and I can gauge the height of these end brackets so the booms will be straight on the yards. There are metal strips on the yard arms that hold these end brackets, but because the yard arms will be painted black, I am going to use the same technique I used for the mast bands and wrap paper strips around the yard arms before painting them to simulate these metal bands. I could have tried making these out of brass strips, but I think I will quit while I am ahead. That is actually the next step after giving the yards and stunning sail booms a coat of wipe on poly, now that the stain is dry. 
 
 

As another little test to get a sense of the end product of this approach I took the trial shrouds from above and reeved the shrouds through the bottom deadeyes.  Then I weighted each of the shrouds with a clamp. 
 

I thought the result was quite OK - recall that this was my 1st trial and that I didn't fuss over the ratlines too much and didn't do ratlines all the way to the top.  In addition although I had rigged the starboard shroud on the Ratliner I inadvertently show it here on the port side of the ship.  Furthermore I can assure you I have not been at all gentle with the unit as I wanted to see how stable and robust it is.
 
Second test here was to yank quite hard on individual shrouds (without actually breaking my mast!).  Here is the 5th shroud yanked down - you can see the distortion in the ratlines.
 

 
Once released the ratline resumed its original position quite well.
 

 
 
I'm satisfied that I can do pretty well using the Ratliner approach so now I'll do a pair of shrouds using it, install them, and then tie ratlines on the fore shrouds already on the model and comment here on the experience and show the results.  Back in a couple of days.
 

I finished up the ladderways and then added the mooring deck rails.
 
 
 

 
Next I made the mooring deck winches of which there are two styles, as well as left and rights based upon the electric motor location. Here they are set on the plans.

 
Here they are set on the deck with bits and mooring posts. White rope will be added before the winches are glued in place.
 

 
Next I moved on to the bow that has three winches the same as the mooring deck; in addition there are anchor winches and the pictures show "in progress" anchor winches in place on the bow fore deck.

 

 
The anchor chain will index into the hole with the brake arm over the roller and into the deck. Just a great deal of more details and fixtures to add yet. 

Added details to the various decks and then decided to apply the first working color coat of paint. Still no reply from Tom's Modelworks. Does anyone have a phone number for them? 
 
The tower will now be set aside to allow paint to set and wait for pictures of more details from Evan once in dry-dock. Here are some views.
 

 

 

 

 
Now to prime, sand and paint the hatch covers.
 
 

I finally finished up fabricating all the hatches and now they are ready for finishing. They will get painted grey like the main deck. I also have started adding details  to the various tower decks like the swimming pool and additional windows. I have emailed Tom's Modelworks for information regarding the sizes of their railing and inclined ladders and hopefully the will get back soon. Here are some pictures of the completed hatches and tower.

 

 
Here is a color test and I am pleased with the matches. The horizontal tower deck surfaces are Green.

 

 
Now back to hatch finishing and tower detailing. 

Slow going on the hatches and I have been working back and forth on the tower while waiting for glue to set on hatches. The tower is built up in deck layers that press fit together for now. Keeping them separate really helps as I add details as I discover them. Evan is taking the ship for a month in dry dock for refitting, upgrading, maintenance and paint for about a month. That is when he will be sending pictures of more details that are needed. Anyway here are some "In Progress" tower decks. So far the one big challenge was the NAV. deck and getting the windows angled forward using .0208" square framework. I also cut an access panel on the bottom of this deck to add the window glazing later on. The big challenge I see coming are the ladder ways and railing. I have checked Tom's Modelworks railing but they do not provide dimensions on height and stanchion distances. Has anyone out there used their 1:350 three rail railing?
 
Here are various "In Progress" views showing the tower stacked up and the individual decks. You can also see where I am at with the hatches, about 1/3 of the way complete.

 

 

 

 

 

 
Now back to hatches.

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!" 

I have been doing a great deal of fussy work on the bay hatches coaming while waiting for more stock to come from Midwest.  A couple of hundred pieces cut and fitted on edge around the hatch openings. While doing this it came to me that given the tight tolerances needed that I better paint the interior and coaming before fabricating the hatch covers. So after priming, glazing and sanding and fussing I finally was able to paint a Gray in the holds, coaming  and bow mooring deck. At least this will be a working color coat for now and will have ample time to dry and set while waiting for the material to arrive on Wednesday. Tomorrow is my presentation to the local Rotary Club on Model Building which has also occupied some of my time as well.
Here is the first working coat of Gray.
 

 

 

 
Now back to the presentation for now and get ready to make hatches.
 

Next I added the individual bay framework of three bays across the hull. First I added the lateral support beams and then the shorter longitudinal beams. These form the deck support structure with each opening having coaming around them onto which the hatches were located. 
The short beams required notching into the cross beams to have a level surface.
 

 

 
I should mention that when adding the cross members care had to be taken to make sure they were level to each other as added.
 
 

 
Next I started adding the coaming using 1/32" x 1/16" doing the outboard ones first. I drew a pencil line aligning with the existing coaming on the bow section. I laid down 1/4" tape which provided an edge to "bump" the coaming against but also kept any excess glue from the finished surface.
 

 
Once the outboard coaming was set I added the lateral ones fist on one side of the frame surface and allowed the glue to set. This allowed using a spacer when adding the second side to the frame.

 
This shows the using of the spacer.
 

 
Once all the coaming was in place and the glue allowed to set after adding CA to all the outside perimeters the entire frame work was sanded smooth and even.
 

 
Next all the joint gaps were cut carefully with the tip of a #11 blade and filed with a needle file to make sure there was an even spacing. Here is an overall view showing all the bay openings.
 

 
Next will come the tedious process of cutting and fitting of all the hatches. The hatches will form the water tight decking for the containers stowed below them and the surface for the containers open above the deck. I may address some of the accommodation tower to break up the boredom of making over 50 hatches. 
 
 

Patrick and Nils here are the results, Michael welcome aboard. I finished up closing the gap both outside and inside. Then sanded and blended the surfaces using 120 grit dry and then 320 using a block and sanding diagonally across the curves. Primed once again to seal the exposed wood then sanded with 320 grit avoiding to break the primed surfaces back to wood. Then a final prime coat. This will be a working surface until the balance of the construction is completed. This will allow normal scuffing while handling, but will really allow the primer to harden and the wood to set with the primer. Wood does expand and contract over time so hopefully it will set by the time I am ready for the final painting.
Here are various views of where the hull is now. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Now to move on and start adding the bay hold openings with coaming, basically extending those that are in place on the bow section. Evan is on his way to the ship today and I am looking forward to getting pictures of many details as his schedule allows.
 

I finished up the ladderways and then added the mooring deck rails.
 
 
 

 
Next I made the mooring deck winches of which there are two styles, as well as left and rights based upon the electric motor location. Here they are set on the plans.

 
Here they are set on the deck with bits and mooring posts. White rope will be added before the winches are glued in place.
 

 
Next I moved on to the bow that has three winches the same as the mooring deck; in addition there are anchor winches and the pictures show "in progress" anchor winches in place on the bow fore deck.

 

 
The anchor chain will index into the hole with the brake arm over the roller and into the deck. Just a great deal of more details and fixtures to add yet. 

John, thank you and yes it is. I finished up the rails and then added the ladder ways until I ran out and have since ordered more of both. I found the best way to fold the rails and ladders was to use small steel blocks that have sharp edges keeping things a crisp as possible. Here are a couple of views of the starboard side of the tower done. This is my first experience with these kind of tiny PE parts. 
 

 

 
While waiting for the additional parts to arrive from Tom's I will start parts for the mooring and forecastle decks.

Well the smoke was only around one day and all is clear now. While waiting for the airbrush paint to show up I painted the bow splash wall and then realized that before adding the rails that it would be easier to locate and paint the tower windows first. I copied the tower face CAD drawing and made a paper location stencil cutting out the windows. Once taped to the front wall I dry dabbed black paint to define the locations and then used strips of blue tape for the final shapes of the windows and painted with a small brush using two light coats.
 
Then the airbrush paint arrived and I then painted the previously primed rails. It has been 45 years since I last used an airbrush, but just like riding a bike it all came back. I glued the top rail in place and then added the top deck, easier to get this rail in place first. Now I am slowly working my way up from the bottom adding the painted rails. I am glad the tower is not glued in place yet, because adding the rails is a tediously slow process to get right.
 
I might also mention that I added the window glazing before gluing the top deck in place. I used card stock for pattern development and then cut out each window as required and once finally fitted was glued in place with tiny wood strips to hold in place on the inside. Glad I built in the bottom access hole just for this purpose. I did have to enlarge the hole for better access.
 

 
This shows the typical taping process used.  
 

 

 

 

 
Now back to adding deck rails.

Finished up the inner walls and container racks and cut the solid hold walls and installed the hold wall in the bow section. One of the challenges I am having is that in the plans provided there are no view drawings, just a great deal of sub components. Evan, showed me where the solid hull walls were located. He goes back to sea on Tuesday and will be taking the ship into dry dock for some serious maintenance and updating and new paint. He will be sending me a bunch of photos to use.
 
Here are two pictures showing the hold walls.
 

 

 
 
I then sanded and fitted the bow section to the main hull just a little bit of fussing to get the three reference points to touch without any pressure to assure a good tight level fit.
 

 
Once fitted I glued the two sections together and once the glue set overnight I then sanded the hull section to match the hull. The bow section plank ends splayed a little which I had thought would happen since they were not glued to anything and required a little sanding to blend before adding the filler plank pieces.
 

 
Here I am adding the filler pieces and here is where cutting the beveled ends comes in handy for a tight fit on the hull section.
 

 
Now back to finishing filling the gap.
 
 

Planking along slowly but surely, just a great deal of cutting, fitting, forming and gluing. I worked both on the outer hull and while waiting for glue to set I cut and fit the rear interior sections. I decided that I will finish as much of the interior before adding the solid walls that define the holds. My son-in-law shared that these solid walls compartmentalize flooding and that the ship could still float with any two holds completely flooded.
First I added the bottom flat piece based upon the tangents of the curves. Next I added the 1/16" thick planking starting at the top and working down from side to side. 

 
I also added gluing surfaces for the front bow section joint area. The gap will be short transition planks that will be filled in once the bow section is added after the hull is primed and sanded. 
 

 
Here I have added the rear portion of the holds interior walls. I am using the 1/32" plywood for the interior walls which really stiffen the hull once the glue is set.
 

 
Once the forward planking was complete I started adding the interior surfaces starting with the flooring and then working up the sides using steel blocks as weights to maintain flatness until the glue set. I am cutting away the braces a bay at a time as I move forward to maintain the structural integrity and strength. I also am staggering the internal and external joints again for strength and not creating a bending point.
The solid hold walls will add even more strength.  
 
 
 
Now back to cutting and fitting. 
 
 

Moved on to adding the balance of the framework and bracing on the walls and the coaming for the hatch openings. I also opened the third and fourth hold openings now that the structure is strong enough with the planking in place.  I carefully drilled and filed the deck drainage holes on the sidewalls. Just a great deal of fussy work with small parts to be cut and fit.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here is a closeup.
 

 
Next I located and cut in the anchor openings.
 

 
Next after a final hand sanding and blending I did the first primer spray painting of both the inner and outer surfaces and set aside to dry and set overnight before the next sanding. This is when you find those little bits of gaps that you missed resulting in more glazing putty.
 

 
Now while waiting for paint to set I will move on to planking the rest of the hull.