qwerty2008

I just realized I had not posted the completed port side ratlines.
The Masters Comission was canceled for this year. My whole year was planned around that, I even canceled my college app to go. Now I have nothing planned for the next year so I decided to apply for the National guard instead. I am going to take the  ASVAB Wednesday.


 
 
 
Lextin.

My Model building will take a hit, but to kickstart my life it would be worth it. After my first enlistment, I can do Air reserves and get a civilian job using skills learned in the military. I wouldn't have any major bills/expenses while on active duty so a large portion of my pay could be set aside for when I get out.
 
 
 
 
 
Lextin.

I am leaving for Vegas today to work at a tech convention. The money I make will go towards a missions trip my church is planning so I won't be getting paid.
A small update on the National guard, I decided to join the Airforce instead and am thinking about going active duty.
Lextin.

My Model building will take a hit, but to kickstart my life it would be worth it. After my first enlistment, I can do Air reserves and get a civilian job using skills learned in the military. I wouldn't have any major bills/expenses while on active duty so a large portion of my pay could be set aside for when I get out.
 
 
 
 
 
Lextin.

I am leaving for Vegas today to work at a tech convention. The money I make will go towards a missions trip my church is planning so I won't be getting paid.
A small update on the National guard, I decided to join the Airforce instead and am thinking about going active duty.
Lextin.

Military might not be a bad option especially the Air Force, Lextin.   They now, as I recall still have the college fund in place and you can take college credit courses (depending on duty station, etc.) while on active duty.  On plus side, you'll get to see some of the world or at least the US... depending.  On the negative, shipbuilding might or might not be an option depending on the duty station.
 
Have fun at the convention....

I am leaving for Vegas today to work at a tech convention. The money I make will go towards a missions trip my church is planning so I won't be getting paid.
A small update on the National guard, I decided to join the Airforce instead and am thinking about going active duty.
Lextin.

So here's a rough idea of how the sails will be controlled.  Two "Mega-sail-arm" servos will be used with the Semaphore Sheeter as described above to control the sheets of the heads'ls, fores'l, mains'l, the running stays, and the tops'l yard braces.

Hello all,
 
Been busy with extra curricular activities, i.e. yard work and other chores.  However, I have also found a few extra minutes to devote on the Surabaya.  I spend a lot of time making the hinges and wanted to have a record for my own files so I made a few pics, thinking to share them with you.  I meant to post this a few days ago but something else came in the way.
 
The actual cutting of the 0.5 mm brass tubes for the hinges and the soldering was not much of a problem, except that I had to keep cutting new pieces of the tubes because when picking them up with the tweezers to solder they"twanged" away to who knows where    But finally I managed to solder all of them to their respected parts, the "gudgeons" and "pintles."  
 
Instead of dabbing a drop of solder to the ends of the hinge pins to prevent them from walking out I decided to just flatten the ends and then bend that up 90 degrees.  This proved to be extremely time consuming because i needed to file the upturned ends a little. All in all it worked out okay but in retrospect I should have just left the ends with the small flats.  No way they can come out of the hinge tubes.  Oh well, an exercise in patience.
 
Here are the pics of my efforts.
 

This shows the gun port lid hinge assembled.  Everything is still in the crude stage, hinge pin still needs to be cut to size and ends flattened and bend.  I used a pair of small duckbill pliers to squeeze the ends and then a pair of tweezers to bent the flattened part up.  As you can see it needs some trimming.  I used a nail clipper which did a splendid job.
 

This is a close-up with annotation.  Yup, they are small and a challenge.
 

This is the completed hinge assembly still in the rough state.  Still needs to be cleaned and dressed.
 
Cheers,

Druxey,
 
I do not know very much about brass grades. I do not know what grade I use.
A quick search  shows that there are 2 categories of brass: leaded or non leaded.
 
 Free Machining Brass (360 Brass). The most commonly used of the brass rod and bar items. The presence of lead (2.5 – 3.7%) in the alloy creates a highly machinable material that can easily be cut and shaped into whatever you need
 
 C464 (Naval Brass) offers high corrosion resistance to seawater. The substitution of tin equal to the same amount of zinc allows naval brass to be resistant to dezincification, but also gives greater strength and rigidity.  
 
As for the long curls parts, I have never seen that with the  brass type I use, so may be I do not use 360 brass?
 
Thank you Avsjerome2003.
 
David, is 1/72 really a scale for a large model? I do not know, but as you say it is surely easier to handle; but also remember, the bigger it is the easier it is to build. I prefer easier build, so I think I will stay with a scale not smaller than 1/36.

I think triangular deadeyes are correct but more likely to be found in northern europe as in the W A Kraeck

. The Mediterranean practice seems more likely to have been pendants and blocks


 
Some of these blocks were massive and elongated

 
These are just my opinions. Certainly I would not criticise the choice of deadeyes. There would have been much regional variability
Dick

I started on the formers.  Per the article, I copied the body plan eight times.  I "fold[ed] each plan on the centerline and cut out [two] full-size body sections, using the baseline (at the top of each section of the plan) as the bottom of each former."
 
The "baseline," Dr. Feldman refers to is, I'm assuming, the centerline marked on the half breadth plan above the body plan.  That's what I used, anyway, and I think it's going to produce formers that look like those in Photos 4 and 5 in the article.
 
His recommendation is to "rubber cement or spray adhere the body plan sections to 1/16" plywood..."  I used Weldwood cement, which I'd always thought of as rubber cement.  I must be wrong because there is no way those paper templates are coming off those formers now!  I had a little error, early on and tried to remove a template from the plywood.  No go. I sanded it off and you can still see the remnants in the photo.  Spray adhesive might work better.  Since these are just formers and will not be part of the finished boat, they need to be precise, but not pretty.
 
One thing that would have helped me, as a first-time scratch builder, is a list of materials needed for the boat.  I picked up some materials at Hobbytown yesterday.  I'll keep a running total in case others are curious as to what's needed to build this boat.
 
Three sheets of 1/16" birch plywood (6" x 12") @ $6.49/each Two sheets of 1/32" birch plywood (6" x 12") @ $4.49/each Ultra Light (0.56 oz) glass cloth (36" x 38") @ $14.39/each  
That's $42.84 so far.  I wasn't sure about the glass cloth, but that's the closest thing they had to 0.75 oz./yard material referenced in the article.
 
 
Dan
 

 
(Sorry the photo's sideways.  I couldn't figure out a way to rotate it 90°...)

When I got the most recent Ships in Scale magazine in the mail, I knew right away that I wanted to give the model on the cover a try.
 

 
I've never built a scratch-built model before.  I've never built -- or even played with! -- a radio-controlled boat before, let alone a radio-controlled sailboat.  This little model just grabbed me and I decided to build one.  It's small enough that I won't have trouble storing it.  It looks simple enough for a novice scratchbuilder to complete and it looks inexpensive enough that, if I screw it all up, I'm not out a fortune.
 
I haven't made much progress yet.  I did manage to get the plans copied.
 

 
I went to Kinko's to get the plans in the magazine scaled up to the proper size.  They refused.  They can't do something like that with copyrighted material.  So I took the magazine to work and did it myself.  After a little bit of experimentation, I found duplicating the image at 197% created a drawing with a 12" baseline, as called for in the article.  I printed nine copies on 11" x 17" paper.  That will give me enough copies to make the formers plus one other copy for reference.
 
Next steps are the make a building board, make the formers and get a solid foundation to start building on.
 
 
 
Dan

It will take some time for those things to come in.  A lot will depend on what kind of Guard units are in your area.

Hi Lextin, bummer on the Masters Commission but a great score with the 83.  Wish you the best.
 
Cheers,

Mark:
I took the ASVAB yesterday and scored an 83. They haven't told me what positions I qualify for yet.
 
 
Lextin.

Patrick:
The Masters Comission is a 9-month discipleship program that my church does every year. Sadly it was canceled this year due to not enough interest, as only two people (including myself) signed up.
 
 
 
 
Lextin.

I just realized I had not posted the completed port side ratlines.
The Masters Comission was canceled for this year. My whole year was planned around that, I even canceled my college app to go. Now I have nothing planned for the next year so I decided to apply for the National guard instead. I am going to take the  ASVAB Wednesday.


 
 
 
Lextin.

Mark:
I took the ASVAB yesterday and scored an 83. They haven't told me what positions I qualify for yet.
 
 
Lextin.

Mark:
I took the ASVAB yesterday and scored an 83. They haven't told me what positions I qualify for yet.
 
 
Lextin.

Thank you all for the compliments and the likes on the rope coils.  I do appreciate them!
 
So yea.  Rope coils.  I don't know why, as they really aren't any more tedious than lots of other things I've done on the ship, but I really had a hard time motivating myself to finish these, but I think the end result is certainly worth the effort expended.  I finally finished up the bow tonight.   There are 11 lines that terminate at the bow (would be more if I was building this with sails).  Here is what it looked like with the lines terminated, but not trimmed, before I started adding the coils.         First step was to add the three coils for the lower tier of ropes on the bulkhead.  I did this over the weekend at some point.     Then tonight I got busy after work, which was a bit early since today was a telecommute day, and I knocked out all 8 of the coils along the cap-rail at the bow.     Next I need to rig the anchors up, which of course means making a couple of buoys and then rigging the catheads to attach to the anchor rings.  I need to decide whether to rig them hanging, or lashed to the timberheads.  I might do one of each.  Then of course, I have to make coils for all 4 of those ropes, and then coil the main anchor cable on the deck after running them through the hawse holes.   Once that's done, I have to fix the few swivel guns that are still not fixed, and I'll be done with the ship (but not the display base).     Strange to be this close to finished after all this time.

Ever so slowly I am working my way through the rope coils.  I just haven't found a lot of time lately to work on them.  I started at the stern, finished all the ones up to the mast (including the shroud cleat ones), then tonight, finally finished the ones at the base of the mast.  All I have left is all the ropes at the bow now (going to be crowded!).
 
Here is a picture of the little balsa-wood jig in use with 3 coils in various states of the glue soaking in and drying, followed by a couple pictures of the way the base of the mast turned out.  The tooth-pick with alligator clamps thing in the photo is holding that last coil in position while it dries, hopefully staying in position when I remove it!
 

I certainly wouldn't change yours Alistair, this is a hobby in which we are constantly learning, and going back to completed projects just doesn't make any sense to me.  I've seen plenty of models with coils done like yours, and I've seen photo's of museum models with coils done both like yours, and in other ways that don't make any sense at all (like open coils laying all around the belaying points on the deck to the point where it would be impossible to get to the belaying points without crossing two rings of rope coils).
 
If I hadn't gone to the Festival of Sail in San Diego, I'd probably be more than happy to do them by hanging the top of the coils over the belaying points, but since I saw them on both working ships, and the museum ship (Surprise) done differently, that's what my new goal is.
 
Here are some of the photo's I took while in San Diego that I'm sort of trying to use as a reference while finishing this up.
 

 
The method that they hang the coils from the belaying points is actually really simple.  They make up the rope coil, then grab the line that remains between the belay point and the coil, pull it through the coil, twist the loop formed by that rope, and stick the end of that loop over the end of the belaying pin/cleat, and bam, the coil is hung!
 
I've been playing with methods of using the actual end of the line from the rigging to loop over the coil in the same way, but it's really difficult to get it to hang right, so I switched to making the 'hanging' loop from the coil itself.  This method works much easier, but I lose the detail of the rope loop coming from inside of the coil and over it, but it's pretty likely that the only person that would ever notice that detail would be me.  

Ok, so I made one coil on the latest iteration of the jig.
 
The brass is cut at a 45 degree angle at one end and just stabbed into the balsa block so adjusting the size of the coils is a simple matter of moving them to different spots on the block.
 

 
I put the scrap plank underneath to keep the rope off of the block for a couple of reasons.  So that the rope doesn't stick to the balsa since it's so soft, it's easy to pull up pieces of the balsa that need to be cleaned off.  The space underneath allows easy threading of the rope on coils that I want to tie off in the middle.  Finally, the space makes it much easier to push the rope off the brass from underneath without messing up the coil.  
 

 
This rope coil I made overly large on purpose to see how it would look sort of folded up against a bulkhead, as there were plenty of coils that were done like this on the ships I saw in San Diego, so I figured I'd try it.  Easy enough to pull it off if I decide I don't like it.
 

Thank you Mark, George, Pat, Druxey, Daniel, Grant and Bob.
 
 
That must be what those guys in white coats knocking at my door want .
 
Well, here are the final pics - she's all complete. Apart from the accident with the mast the whole build went according to plan, and I am very happy with the result. So is my partner - after all, I built it as a present for her :
 

 

 

 

 
  Danny