Erik W

I've been working on the bowsprit.  I'm done shaping it.  The plan was to shape what would be the round part into an octagon, which I did, and then turn it in my power drill.  I didn't think ahead though, so didn't leave  extra material on the square end to chuck into the drill.  So I wound up just clamping the square end onto a table and doing what I've seen referred to as the shoe-shine method with 150 grit and then 400 grit sandpaper.  Removing material and then re-clamping the bowsprit 1/4 turn and repeating.  I tapered the bowsprit to the dimensions taken from the plans (it's hard to tell in the photo since the tapered part is in the foreground of the photos).   I then used files to reduce the bow end to a smaller diameter and cut in the sheeve.  I used a #11 blade to make the round holes in the aft end square.  I dry fitted the bowsprit this morning.  This was a slow progress of slowly removing material from the hole in the bulwarks.  For a first attempt at something like this I think it turned out pretty well.
 
Erik

I've been working on the bowsprit.  I'm done shaping it.  The plan was to shape what would be the round part into an octagon, which I did, and then turn it in my power drill.  I didn't think ahead though, so didn't leave  extra material on the square end to chuck into the drill.  So I wound up just clamping the square end onto a table and doing what I've seen referred to as the shoe-shine method with 150 grit and then 400 grit sandpaper.  Removing material and then re-clamping the bowsprit 1/4 turn and repeating.  I tapered the bowsprit to the dimensions taken from the plans (it's hard to tell in the photo since the tapered part is in the foreground of the photos).   I then used files to reduce the bow end to a smaller diameter and cut in the sheeve.  I used a #11 blade to make the round holes in the aft end square.  I dry fitted the bowsprit this morning.  This was a slow progress of slowly removing material from the hole in the bulwarks.  For a first attempt at something like this I think it turned out pretty well.
 
Erik

I've been working on the bowsprit.  I'm done shaping it.  The plan was to shape what would be the round part into an octagon, which I did, and then turn it in my power drill.  I didn't think ahead though, so didn't leave  extra material on the square end to chuck into the drill.  So I wound up just clamping the square end onto a table and doing what I've seen referred to as the shoe-shine method with 150 grit and then 400 grit sandpaper.  Removing material and then re-clamping the bowsprit 1/4 turn and repeating.  I tapered the bowsprit to the dimensions taken from the plans (it's hard to tell in the photo since the tapered part is in the foreground of the photos).   I then used files to reduce the bow end to a smaller diameter and cut in the sheeve.  I used a #11 blade to make the round holes in the aft end square.  I dry fitted the bowsprit this morning.  This was a slow progress of slowly removing material from the hole in the bulwarks.  For a first attempt at something like this I think it turned out pretty well.
 
Erik

I've been working on the bowsprit.  I'm done shaping it.  The plan was to shape what would be the round part into an octagon, which I did, and then turn it in my power drill.  I didn't think ahead though, so didn't leave  extra material on the square end to chuck into the drill.  So I wound up just clamping the square end onto a table and doing what I've seen referred to as the shoe-shine method with 150 grit and then 400 grit sandpaper.  Removing material and then re-clamping the bowsprit 1/4 turn and repeating.  I tapered the bowsprit to the dimensions taken from the plans (it's hard to tell in the photo since the tapered part is in the foreground of the photos).   I then used files to reduce the bow end to a smaller diameter and cut in the sheeve.  I used a #11 blade to make the round holes in the aft end square.  I dry fitted the bowsprit this morning.  This was a slow progress of slowly removing material from the hole in the bulwarks.  For a first attempt at something like this I think it turned out pretty well.
 
Erik

I've been working on the bowsprit.  I'm done shaping it.  The plan was to shape what would be the round part into an octagon, which I did, and then turn it in my power drill.  I didn't think ahead though, so didn't leave  extra material on the square end to chuck into the drill.  So I wound up just clamping the square end onto a table and doing what I've seen referred to as the shoe-shine method with 150 grit and then 400 grit sandpaper.  Removing material and then re-clamping the bowsprit 1/4 turn and repeating.  I tapered the bowsprit to the dimensions taken from the plans (it's hard to tell in the photo since the tapered part is in the foreground of the photos).   I then used files to reduce the bow end to a smaller diameter and cut in the sheeve.  I used a #11 blade to make the round holes in the aft end square.  I dry fitted the bowsprit this morning.  This was a slow progress of slowly removing material from the hole in the bulwarks.  For a first attempt at something like this I think it turned out pretty well.
 
Erik

I reached a huge milestone on my Cheerful build yesterday.  With the completion of the winch, I'm now finished with the inboard details and fittings and ready to start with the bowsprit, mast, spars, and rigging.  It's taken 15 months of daily work to get from where I had finished the exterior planking to here.  So in celebration, after a morning of touch up, and careful dusting, here are a ton of photos.  Haha.  The top photo is roughly where I picked up 15 months ago after a 6 1/2 year break.  I've spent time since my last post making the winch from scratch, and the bowsprit step (which is not yet glued down) from Chuck's mini kit.  I built the bowsprit step first to get the shape of the top of the timber heads and then copied those on the winch, so they'd look the same.  The last photo is my humble little work area.  To all those contemplating a Cheerful build, all the tools I've used fit in about a 3rd of the pictured plastic tool box, so you don't really need much, besides time, to embark on this project.
 
Erik

Not a ton of progress this week.  I did finish fashioning and installing the boarding ladders and channels though.  I must say ripping the boards by hand out of sheet stock to make these parts is a bit of a pain in the rear.  lol.  Also, it was tough getting the pattern cut into the scraper to make the boarding ladder profile.  I think my limitation there was my lack of precise small files.  I deliberately made the filed notches in the channels that will house the chainplates narrower than they'll be.  I just wanted to get the notches placed correctly and the angles in, according to the plans.  I'll finish the notches up when I fit and attach the chainplates.
 
And lastly, I'm patting myself on the back.  My third photo below manages to capture the elusive and hard to photograph lower step of the Cheerful's boarding ladder (located on the wale and painted black).  Haha!
 
Erik

Thanks for the kind words!  Toni, as far as the photos go, your comment is worth an explanation of how I get my photos.  I take the photos on my work space, which is pretty darn small.  Especially for the last year or so since I've been working mostly from home (I'm a remotely working accountant for the National Center for Atmospheric Research). I threw in a photo of my work space too.  Basically my work day, and hobby, all take place on different sides of my L-shaped desk.  It means my commute from work to modeling at the end of my work day takes about one second.  Haha.   I have a large sheet of light blue construction paper for a photo background that I tape down to my work surface.  For lighting, I always take the photos mid day in front of the window, which provides good area lighting, and use a halogen desk lamp with 700 lumen bulb as a spot light aligned with the lens of the camera.  The camera I use is a 7 year old Olympus OM-D mirrorless camera with a 14-22mm lens mounted on my now 30 year old Gitzo tripod.  I use the self timer so I'm not touching the camera when the shot is taken, this aids in crisp photos.  For each shot I take a 3 photo bracket by 1/3 stops using aperture priority with an F stop of F22 (creates the greatest in-focus depth of field).  The aspect ratio I prefer is 16:9 which gives a horizontal rectangle photo, rather than a square, so there is not too much dead space at the top and bottom of my photos.  For size I select 1280 x 720.  This is big enough to see details, but small enough to not use a lot of memory.  Once I have all my photos I upload them into the Olympus photo software on my laptop.  I delete 2 of the 3 photos taken in the bracket, selecting the one that is the best brightness wise.  The only editing I do is making the crispness greater (not sure why the camera doesn't automatically do that itself with in-focus photos), and to get the boxwood to look the actual color/shade it is, I've been color correcting slightly by adding a small bit of blue hue and very slightly removing red hue.  This has been an evolutionary process for me.  I don't have any kind of formal training, and taking photos of something as large as Cheerful, the largest model I've ever built, has had it's own learning curve.  I threw in a photo of my last ship build below, a 1/350 scale tugboat, for a comparison of the "normal" size I'm used to photographing!  For me, presentation is a fun part of participating in forums, so I really strive to have good photo presentation for you wonderful folks!   Hope this is useful for people.  I encourage my fellow modelers here to play around with their photography.  You'd be surprised at what you can come up with.
 
Erik

As always, thanks for the likes folks.  I finished a few different things over the last week.  I spent time shaping the rudder.  Using the plans I drew the lines that I would sand down to on the rudder faces and sides.  Doing this gave me the visual cue to not over or under sand.  Once the rudder was done I cut out the rudder port.  I made a paper template from the plans that I used to get the shape correct.  Next I made the top of the rudder post.  This took way more time than it should have.  I accidentally removed too much material from the laser cut piece.  So I would up gluing on a chunk of scrap wood to that piece and then shaping the whole thing again.  Sometimes it's the one little piece of wood that is the biggest pain!  The last thing I did was shape the 6 timber heads.  This was a bit nerve wracking as a newbie, but they turned out OK.  The photo below shows the tools that wound up working best for me (as well as a rough cut timber head before clean up).  For some reason, on any model I build, I'm most comfortable using either a #17 or #18 X-Acto chisel blade with no handle (rather than a #11 blade w/handle).  I know it's weird, but it gives me more control by holding the blade directly.  The overall height of the timber heads match the plans, but my angled faces are not as tall as the plans.  No big deal really since all 6 look the same.
 
The next thing I'll be working on is the boom crutches.  Wish me luck!  Haha.
 
Erik

I spent the week building the windlass mini-kit.  Hats off to Chuck for the engineering of this little thing!  It goes together easily, with the biggest challenge being beveling the edges of the windlass faces.  These didn't all turn out perfectly symmetrical, so I test fit the sub assemblies on the center strip in a bunch of different combinations.  I settled on what looks symmetrical when viewed from the top, and put the best sides facing up.  To get the windlass to snug down on the deck I taped a piece of sandpaper to a 1/16" thick wood sheet and then sanded each of the supports with one side on my cutting mat while the other side was being sanded on the 1/16" sheet with sandpaper.  Since the deck is angled towards the scuppers from the center line, sanding the windlass support bottoms like this allows them both to sit flat on the angled deck.  As far as getting the windlass positioned correctly on the deck in relation to where the bowsprit will go, I put a straight wooden dowel where the bowsprit will be and then marked the center line on the stern cap rail and top of the stem.  I positioned a steel yardstick on the center line and adjusted the dowel parallel to that.  Everything measured out and looked correct.  The proof will be down the road on the build when I'm installing the bowsprit step and bowsprit though!
 
Erik

I've been working on the bowsprit.  I'm done shaping it.  The plan was to shape what would be the round part into an octagon, which I did, and then turn it in my power drill.  I didn't think ahead though, so didn't leave  extra material on the square end to chuck into the drill.  So I wound up just clamping the square end onto a table and doing what I've seen referred to as the shoe-shine method with 150 grit and then 400 grit sandpaper.  Removing material and then re-clamping the bowsprit 1/4 turn and repeating.  I tapered the bowsprit to the dimensions taken from the plans (it's hard to tell in the photo since the tapered part is in the foreground of the photos).   I then used files to reduce the bow end to a smaller diameter and cut in the sheeve.  I used a #11 blade to make the round holes in the aft end square.  I dry fitted the bowsprit this morning.  This was a slow progress of slowly removing material from the hole in the bulwarks.  For a first attempt at something like this I think it turned out pretty well.
 
Erik

I've been working on the bowsprit.  I'm done shaping it.  The plan was to shape what would be the round part into an octagon, which I did, and then turn it in my power drill.  I didn't think ahead though, so didn't leave  extra material on the square end to chuck into the drill.  So I wound up just clamping the square end onto a table and doing what I've seen referred to as the shoe-shine method with 150 grit and then 400 grit sandpaper.  Removing material and then re-clamping the bowsprit 1/4 turn and repeating.  I tapered the bowsprit to the dimensions taken from the plans (it's hard to tell in the photo since the tapered part is in the foreground of the photos).   I then used files to reduce the bow end to a smaller diameter and cut in the sheeve.  I used a #11 blade to make the round holes in the aft end square.  I dry fitted the bowsprit this morning.  This was a slow progress of slowly removing material from the hole in the bulwarks.  For a first attempt at something like this I think it turned out pretty well.
 
Erik

I reached a huge milestone on my Cheerful build yesterday.  With the completion of the winch, I'm now finished with the inboard details and fittings and ready to start with the bowsprit, mast, spars, and rigging.  It's taken 15 months of daily work to get from where I had finished the exterior planking to here.  So in celebration, after a morning of touch up, and careful dusting, here are a ton of photos.  Haha.  The top photo is roughly where I picked up 15 months ago after a 6 1/2 year break.  I've spent time since my last post making the winch from scratch, and the bowsprit step (which is not yet glued down) from Chuck's mini kit.  I built the bowsprit step first to get the shape of the top of the timber heads and then copied those on the winch, so they'd look the same.  The last photo is my humble little work area.  To all those contemplating a Cheerful build, all the tools I've used fit in about a 3rd of the pictured plastic tool box, so you don't really need much, besides time, to embark on this project.
 
Erik

I reached a huge milestone on my Cheerful build yesterday.  With the completion of the winch, I'm now finished with the inboard details and fittings and ready to start with the bowsprit, mast, spars, and rigging.  It's taken 15 months of daily work to get from where I had finished the exterior planking to here.  So in celebration, after a morning of touch up, and careful dusting, here are a ton of photos.  Haha.  The top photo is roughly where I picked up 15 months ago after a 6 1/2 year break.  I've spent time since my last post making the winch from scratch, and the bowsprit step (which is not yet glued down) from Chuck's mini kit.  I built the bowsprit step first to get the shape of the top of the timber heads and then copied those on the winch, so they'd look the same.  The last photo is my humble little work area.  To all those contemplating a Cheerful build, all the tools I've used fit in about a 3rd of the pictured plastic tool box, so you don't really need much, besides time, to embark on this project.
 
Erik

Erik, that work of yours is so amazing.
I know I have experience with model building, but some of you guys are certainly taking it to another level.
Very nice work!

Thanks for the kind words guys, and the likes.  Al, I'm also a bit apprehensive about the mast, spars, and rigging.  I'm currently sloooooowly making progress on the bowsprit.
 
Erik

I reached a huge milestone on my Cheerful build yesterday.  With the completion of the winch, I'm now finished with the inboard details and fittings and ready to start with the bowsprit, mast, spars, and rigging.  It's taken 15 months of daily work to get from where I had finished the exterior planking to here.  So in celebration, after a morning of touch up, and careful dusting, here are a ton of photos.  Haha.  The top photo is roughly where I picked up 15 months ago after a 6 1/2 year break.  I've spent time since my last post making the winch from scratch, and the bowsprit step (which is not yet glued down) from Chuck's mini kit.  I built the bowsprit step first to get the shape of the top of the timber heads and then copied those on the winch, so they'd look the same.  The last photo is my humble little work area.  To all those contemplating a Cheerful build, all the tools I've used fit in about a 3rd of the pictured plastic tool box, so you don't really need much, besides time, to embark on this project.
 
Erik

I reached a huge milestone on my Cheerful build yesterday.  With the completion of the winch, I'm now finished with the inboard details and fittings and ready to start with the bowsprit, mast, spars, and rigging.  It's taken 15 months of daily work to get from where I had finished the exterior planking to here.  So in celebration, after a morning of touch up, and careful dusting, here are a ton of photos.  Haha.  The top photo is roughly where I picked up 15 months ago after a 6 1/2 year break.  I've spent time since my last post making the winch from scratch, and the bowsprit step (which is not yet glued down) from Chuck's mini kit.  I built the bowsprit step first to get the shape of the top of the timber heads and then copied those on the winch, so they'd look the same.  The last photo is my humble little work area.  To all those contemplating a Cheerful build, all the tools I've used fit in about a 3rd of the pictured plastic tool box, so you don't really need much, besides time, to embark on this project.
 
Erik

I reached a huge milestone on my Cheerful build yesterday.  With the completion of the winch, I'm now finished with the inboard details and fittings and ready to start with the bowsprit, mast, spars, and rigging.  It's taken 15 months of daily work to get from where I had finished the exterior planking to here.  So in celebration, after a morning of touch up, and careful dusting, here are a ton of photos.  Haha.  The top photo is roughly where I picked up 15 months ago after a 6 1/2 year break.  I've spent time since my last post making the winch from scratch, and the bowsprit step (which is not yet glued down) from Chuck's mini kit.  I built the bowsprit step first to get the shape of the top of the timber heads and then copied those on the winch, so they'd look the same.  The last photo is my humble little work area.  To all those contemplating a Cheerful build, all the tools I've used fit in about a 3rd of the pictured plastic tool box, so you don't really need much, besides time, to embark on this project.
 
Erik

I reached a huge milestone on my Cheerful build yesterday.  With the completion of the winch, I'm now finished with the inboard details and fittings and ready to start with the bowsprit, mast, spars, and rigging.  It's taken 15 months of daily work to get from where I had finished the exterior planking to here.  So in celebration, after a morning of touch up, and careful dusting, here are a ton of photos.  Haha.  The top photo is roughly where I picked up 15 months ago after a 6 1/2 year break.  I've spent time since my last post making the winch from scratch, and the bowsprit step (which is not yet glued down) from Chuck's mini kit.  I built the bowsprit step first to get the shape of the top of the timber heads and then copied those on the winch, so they'd look the same.  The last photo is my humble little work area.  To all those contemplating a Cheerful build, all the tools I've used fit in about a 3rd of the pictured plastic tool box, so you don't really need much, besides time, to embark on this project.
 
Erik

Erik, she looks fantastic. I'm really looking forward to watching her go vertical. I'm a little apprehensive about doing the masts and rigging on my Glad Tidings. I'll watch your masting and rigging with great interest. 

She really does look lovely Eric.

Absolutely gorgeous!  

I reached a huge milestone on my Cheerful build yesterday.  With the completion of the winch, I'm now finished with the inboard details and fittings and ready to start with the bowsprit, mast, spars, and rigging.  It's taken 15 months of daily work to get from where I had finished the exterior planking to here.  So in celebration, after a morning of touch up, and careful dusting, here are a ton of photos.  Haha.  The top photo is roughly where I picked up 15 months ago after a 6 1/2 year break.  I've spent time since my last post making the winch from scratch, and the bowsprit step (which is not yet glued down) from Chuck's mini kit.  I built the bowsprit step first to get the shape of the top of the timber heads and then copied those on the winch, so they'd look the same.  The last photo is my humble little work area.  To all those contemplating a Cheerful build, all the tools I've used fit in about a 3rd of the pictured plastic tool box, so you don't really need much, besides time, to embark on this project.
 
Erik

The hull planking is finally done. I'm glad to have it done .