qwerty2008

This set of photos shows the main gun deck planking and three 32 pound guns in place.

John, Mark, Joe, Tom, Bob, Guy, Thanks for the kind comments.
 
Back to the cabin Planking, I thought about the deck and so did another test this time with the planks being pine and the redwood to simulate the caulking. I haven't tried using Fir yet.
 

 

 
I'm feeling more comfortable with this combination. Which I suppose would be better.
 
Michael
 
 

Jay, John, thanks for the input on the cabin top planking. I'm torn about it because I really like the pinstripe planking, Like that on the power boats and the water taxi that was featured here on MSW 1, but it does feel a bit over the top on this boat. I'm just going to have to build one of those power boats down the road.
 
I did some other stuff today while I think about the Cabin.
 

 

 

 

 

 
Doing this took my mind away from the service this morning-- I placed a wreath at the Stony Plain Remembrance on behalf of the Royal Arch Masons... always a sobering memorial
 
Michael

I started on the ruder, I still need to fill the tube with resin, make the hinge and make the tiller. I also made a skylight which will be placed just aft the path of the capstan bars. I am going to go with a capstan rather then a windlass, this clears up space in the bow and fills the extra space towards the stern.




Lextin.

Mark: I decided to just leave them the way they are.
 
Lextin.

John, if you do eventually get here, there are some great views in the Rockies not too far from here just three hours away. and we do have a spare room.
 
Joe thanks for the kind words.
 
well the bowsprit shrouds were a bit more fiddly than I thought they would be, Had to make a few more thimbles and shackles
 
I decided on the dark rope for the shrouds and a light rope for the tackle.
 

 

 

 

 

 
I need to make some cleats now so that I can tie ropes and lines off better, just need to sort out where to put them and what type to make, they will probably be brass.
 
Michael

The 3D printed guns arrived in the post; 5 32 pdr carronades and 5 Blomfield pattern 18 pounders.  These I'll make a mold from and cast the model's guns in resin - 5 at a time.  4 extra long guns will be modified a little to serve as Pride's six pounder tubes.
 
Be sure to click on the image for the larger version where you can see the details!
 
Constellation's pivot 10" shell gun and Ivan for scale (Ivan is 2" (50mm) tall)
Wooden turned tube and carriage for Pride.

 
HM's crest on the 18 pounders:

 
Ivan and the Macedonian's guns:

John, Jay, Carlos, and Bob  thanks for you continued support it means a lot.
 
Popeye the snow is likely going to stick around the temp is dropping to -16c tonight.
 
Today I worked on the grating and chose some dark coloured Cedar for the frame.
 

 
Using the same mill to also create the correct spacing for the short slats.
 

 
reassembled with the correct spacing in both directions now.
 

 
The top surface sanded down with some 220 then 600
 

 
oiled with some teak oil.
 
Michael

Hi John thanks I just have to round off the corners a little more for it to fit back in the bottom of the cockpit.
 
After supper I made a little block that fits to the shrouds to hold some belaying pins, I have seen this arrangement on a number of the pilot cutters and Smacks seems like a good way to deal with lighter lines like flag pennants and getting rope off the deck.
 

 
The wood is mahogany and the plank was split and bolted back together then the shroud holes were drilled at a slight angle right at the split line and the three holes for the pins were drilled in the wider section. the bolts are 2x56 cap screws I made the nuts.
 

 
This is so much fun I am really enjoying myself.
 
Michael

On 5 October, National Ships in Bottles Day, the Ships in Bottles Association of America (SIBAA) announced the start of a group build of Fantasy Ships. The only criteria is that the ships are depictions from art, films, books, movies, cartoons, etc, or from the creators imagination. My first thought was one of Hornblower's ships but decided against any of them. Then I remembered that the covered wagons from the western expansion of the United States were sometimes called "prairie schooners" because of their very loose resemblance to ships at sea. That triggered a visualization of a large Conestoga Wagon "hull" fitted with masts and sails from a Baltimore Clipper and I set to work on drawings to work out the details. When I posted my drawings on the SIBAA facebook page several people mentioned a Disney animated short "The Saga of Windwagon Smith" presented as a classic tall tale like the Paul Bunyon stories.
 
 
 
As soon as I saw the beginning of this cartoon I remembered seeing it in the theater when I was about 9 or 10 years old and that my inspiration for Ogallala must have come from it, so I'm giving credit to Walt for my inspiration.
 
My intention is to present Ogallala as if it was real including the "real" dimensions, correct rigging, deck details, wheels and necessary wagon details like brakes and steering.
 

 

 
In the time since preparing these preliminary drawings as jpeg images, I found the bottle I'm going to use which requires reducing the drawings from 1/64 scale to 1/96 and preparing individual detail drawings of the components, now in progress. I learned by doing how to generate the usual three view line drawings of the hull from my very simple hull. I have reduced the beam a little so the hull will fit through the bottle neck. The hull will be divided into an upper and lower section with separate wagon frame components all to be assembled inside the bottle.
 
My first problem is how to depict a "sea" of chest high prairie grass but I'm finding information on how model railroaders do fields of tall grass or grain crops.
 
Please, don't try to tell me that a "prairie schooner" or "windwagon" is impossible. I know and I don't care - it's a fantasy build and just for fun.    I hope you join in the fun by following the build.
 
Yippee-ki-yay and a yo-ho-ho!
 
Dave

Glad to have you aboard, Mark.
 
Made some progress. Click an image for the full size photo.
 

Image of Ogallala inside the bottle. The blue tape indicates the planned "waterline" (actually soil line) inside the bottle. Good fit with about 3/8" (9mm) clearance between the masthead and the bottle.
 

Hull piece templates attached to 1/64" (.4mm) and 1/32" (.8mm) plywood. Templates were printed onto the paper side of freezer paper, arranged on the plywood, then ironed (waxy side down) to the ply. The pieces will be cut out with scissors and sanded to size. During assembly the paper is easily removed.
 

Hull under construction, plank on bulkhead technique - never mind that individual planks cover the entire bottom, sides and ends. The two inner decks are spaced about 1/64" apart - the upper and lower hull sections will be separated between those decks at a later stage of the construction.
 

Decking section, print-out of decking plan and the left over piece of raw deck material. Planks were made from 1/16" (1.6mm) basswood with thin black paper glued (thinned white glue) to one side then the wood cut into strips about 1mm thick. After cutting planks to match the decking plan they were glued black edge to wood edge. Black paper was glued to the end of one plank at the butt joints. Ordinary transparent tape applied to the assembly fixture's bed prevents gluing the planks to the fixture. After the glue dried the deck was sanded to less than 1/32" thickness, ready to glue to the deck former after it is in place.
 
 
Thanks for looking.
 

 
Dave
 
 

Making tools to get at stuff on the inside of the bottle need not be a huge challenge if you select a bottle with the right ratio of neck diameter to neck width. The inside diameter of the bottle also plays a roll and some geometries won’t allow you to have an influence anywhere inside the bottle. Usually you don’t need anything more than a bit of wire twisted over the end of a wooden dowel or bamboo skewer and up till now I had not needed to build special tools more complex than a piece of razor blade attached to a stick. But this project has had some special challenges.  This tool is simply a tweezers tied to a threaded rod. I use metal rod since the leverage you put onto the end of the tool that you can grasp has a strong effect within the bottle and wood can break or bend more often than you would think. 

Here is the tool in use within the bottle. Its holding a cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol and its making short work of the glommed on clay residue at the “water line”. The tool with the tweezers on the end could not reach the waters edge and when I tried to hold a Q-tip and use that to swab the inside it simply wasn't effective.

With the water in place and the wooden base built, the ship itself constructed and painted and now a new useful tool to use I guess there is no excuse but to proceed with getting the Kraken inside the bottle.

I made another deck beam for the orlop deck bringing the total to 3 beams. I also made some temporary cross beams so I could see what it might look like when its done.

She's in!  Lines are tight and she's sailing beautifully.  This ship is by far my best work.  The bottle it's in has the best clarity I've seen in a bottle.  It's a tradition of mine to call the entering of the ship into the bottle her maiden voyage.  Old sailor superstition has it that the maiden voyage is a reflection of the life of the ship.  If that's the case the Mercury's got a good long life in front of her.  She shook off the snag's and problems and came together with ease.  She's been a pleasure to work on.  I'm just sad I have to ship her away for some one else to enjoy.  I still have to build a stand and put a turks head knot on the bottle but other then that she's good to go.  
 

 

 

 

 

I tried a new technique and really like the results.  This is the launch that will be towed behind the ship.
 

 

 
The Launch is made completely out of paper.  I carved out a plug out of bass wood put a little wax on it.  Then cut out small planks of paper and stained them.  I then glued the planks together and planked the plug like it was a solid hull.  Once dry I added a couple coats of clear nail polish to seal and harden it.  I then cut out the plans and stained them then glued them into the stern bow and bottom of the launch.  Last I cut out a few planks and made the seats.  I put on one more coat of nail polish for good measure.  I may try another since I really don't want this little boat sucking up the oils from the clay sea.
 
Strangely enough the jollywatt which is smaller and kept on deck is made completely out of wood.  
  
 
I used a tried and true dremel technique for this one.  Pictures and instructions can be found on my blog.  
 
I got the sea in the bottle.  Just need a few more finishing touches and she's ready to bottle.  

recent examples of our work

Well, I almost had the rigging done!  All rigging was secured yesterday afternoon until I turned around quickly with a pair of tweezers in my hand, caught the port after brace and carried it away!
 
The brace is now re-rigged but still to be trimmed and re-secured, so apart from a slightly cock-eyed yard (due to no tension on the port brace) and the unfinished brace, she's rigged.
 
Next time in at the museum I hope to get her finished (visitor numbers allowing) as once the brace is re-done there's only cleaning up of Irish pennants, attaching rope coils and the anchors to do - the anchors and cables are made and simply awaiting attachment.
 
Here are some photos of her as of yesterday.
 
John
 

I made the new deck and did some work on the deck beams also I sprayed a quick coat of white on the small boat. After seeing a video that Jerry posted on a different forum I realize that I will need several small boats that are significantly larger then the one that I already made which is still usable but will be the smallest boat on board. 








 
Lextin.

I pulled a hull for one of the ships boats off the smaller (shiny one) plug. This was the best hull yet although it has 9 strakes on the starboard side and only 8 on the port side. The first hull (made over a year ago) that I made was bamboo it didn,t turn out so well the second was newspaper layered then sanded it was to smooth and looked weird the third is strips of card with a wood stem and bamboo keel.
 




 
Lextin.

I went back to my old plan to build up the bulwarks and reshaped the stern again. I also made the rails and made the catheads from the old stern davits which were too big.






 
Lextin.
 

I went back to my old plan to build up the bulwarks and reshaped the stern again. I also made the rails and made the catheads from the old stern davits which were too big.






 
Lextin.
 

I made the supports for the servo tray and cut the gun ports. I decided not to build up the bulwarks as thick (I still might go back to my old plan if so that was a wast of Bondo) and smoothed the inside with some Bondo. I also changed the angle of the bowsprit to make it more accurate to the period that I am shooting for.






 
 
Lextin.

Pride in the Pacific 1982
 
In late 1976 I got a job as a laborer on a construction site in Baltimore's Inner Harbor.  At the site they were building a Baltimore Clipper schooner named Pride of Baltimore.
Pride under construction in November 1976, just about when I started there.
 
Five years later, on my 21st birthday, I reported on board as Pride's newest crew member.  I spent two months aboard the boat in charge of her guns as she took part in the bicentennial reenactment of the battle of Yorktown.
    Yours truly is at the top right, in the cocked hat.
 
A summary history of the boat is available at my site, as is an album of the few photos taken during my time aboard.
 
In 1982 I acquired a copy of her plans from Thomas Gilmer with the intent to build a sailing model, but I was young, moved around a lot and it just never happened.
 
In November of 2011 I got to seriously thinking about actually building a model of Pride and figuring out what size to make her.  The upper limit was as large, overall, as Constellation, but there was a lower limit also.  I tried scaling her the same as Constellation (1:36), but looking at what she would need in terms of batteries, winches, servos, etc; I didn't see how I could fit the equipment needed to control so complicated a rig.  I decided to make her 1:20 scale, as large as I could and still stuff her into a van or SUV.
 
With her lines scanned and scaled up I printed her stations on paper.  There were glued to 3/8" CDX plywood, cut out, sanded, etc, and stood up on the old building board Constellation was built on.
A work in progress: every item I draw in scale gets added to this plan.
 
 
 
There they stood for nearly a year.  On November 19, 2011 I cut out the keel, mounted it on the forms and began planking.  I learned my lesson on Constellation and fully planked the hull, but I taped the edges of the forms so the planking wouldn't be glued to them, and they could be removed - leaving me with full access to the very limited space.
 
 
The hull was planked in pine strips 1/8 thick and 1/4" wide.  They were glued to each other, but only pinned to the forms.  The pins were akin to half-length straight pins and bent at the slightest look, making planking extremely tedious and hard on the fingers.  I wasn't doing the next one that way.  I also didn't spiel the planks, but just laid them on from the keel up, and the sheer down, leaving that football shaped hole to fill.  The hull being glassed and painted, it wasn't an issue visually, except that it bother's me constantly.  I'm not doing that again either.

 
By Halloween, the hull was planked.

 
The hull was filled, sanded, filled, and sanded some more.  The aft-most form with the counter and transom forms was given a tap with the handle of a screw-driver and came right out.  Soon the other forms followed, leaving the hull open.
 
 

 
The inside was sanded and then  painted with diluted Tightbond III to get into the nooks and crannies of the planking and glue everything up.  It was then given two coats of poly resin.
The stern post was too tall, a sign of advanced planning.  I cut it down with a rotary tool - you'll see why later.
 
The stern and then the sides were fiberglassed with 4 oz cloth.
 
 
  Pride's plan compared to Macedonian's
 
  The concept
 
I restarted the build logs for Constellation and Macedonian that were lost in the crash.  There never was a build log for this model on MSW, but, what the heck, there is now.