Bill Morrison

Hi Avi,
 
First I'd like to say that your ship is looking great. I've been reading your build for some time now and it has been very useful. I'm just starting my own BJ Connie and currently getting the hull shaped (what a job!) I am contemplating doing as you did and removing the galleries. My question for you - what did you have in mind for building and attaching them once you get to that?
 
Frank

Yeah that is a good idea. I’ve got it painted copper underneath, so the few places I did mess up the overlap, you cannot tell unless you know precisely what you are looking for. 
 
as for CA, I’m not convinced that the overlapping was causing the CA issues. I think it might have been either the smoothness of the underside of the copper plates, or the planks on the hull. 
 
either way, I’m going to try butt joining next run. 

Hi Avi
Just looked through your log - very nice work indeed. But I'm confused by your coppering technique and it seems to frustrate you as well. Why at 1/96 - a very small scale- are you overlapping the plates? It seems like a near pointless detail that is causing the frustration and it appears to be "ruffling" the lines of the hull. Why not just butt joint them and the problem goes away? Why are you doing them in sections rather than them running full length side to side?
 
On my Fly model at 1/64 they are just butt jointed and I laid each row, starting at the keel - stem to stern, side to side before I moved up to the next row. All glued with a light coating of CA. The plates follow the planking lines and are snipped to the correct angle when they reach the waterline. At least for Fly or Pegasus this the correct layout for these ships. They aren't the Constitution of course so I can't speak to that.
 
I have no idea how you'll be able to match the sectional approach from side to side. I'm also confused about why the kit supplies them as individual plates when you can get them as strips which work quickly and accurately for long horizontal runs? With strips you can snip off individual planks to work with the upward flow made by imperceivable increments. The strips with butt joints also keep the flow of the hull intact and avoid the "ruffling" effect that I see and remove the adhesion problems as well.
 
I can't help feeling that you are digging a hole with your method and it looks like it'll just get deeper as it progresses.
 
My more radical advice would be to de-bond what you have done and take a simpler line of approach. Strips if you can get them, butt joints (for sure), run them full length and from side to side and go with the planking flow from the keel upwards. I'd see this as a make or break moment as an outcome below the waterline that detracts, for you!!!, from all of the work beforehand will always detract from all of that work and all of it afterwards.
 
I hope you take this as intended - advice from someone who has coppered a hull (but not done a Constitution build!) and had a relatively easy time of it.

I thought about that, but I was concerned the profile was a projection onto 2D, and doesn't account for the z-axis curve; if I curved it back in, it would be misshapen. Or maybe it wouldn't.
 
Perhaps @MrBlueJacket knows about the layout of the profile and its projection?

Yes I believe they curve upwards slightly.  Could you make a copy of the plans and rubber cement the strip of the gun ports to the hull where  they should be and then cut the ports out?
 
Hope this helps. Keep up the great work.
 
 

Thanks for the warning @KHauptfuehrer
 
I am unsure what you mean by “stem to stern on both sides”; isn’t the stem in the middle?
 
also, how did trying to fix it mean you would have sanded through the gunwales?

I have never heard of a "bad" brand of CA

Perhaps @MrBlueJacket I’ll give the next set a few hours next time I use it. 
 
I’m heading stateside on business soon. Any good CA brands I should pick up?

Yup

Got it. So prime the hull (possibly a few times lightly with sanding in between), then paint, then CA to attach shaped planks. 
 
Your links say that you don’t bother sealing the wood separately, just prime a few times?

@MrBlueJacket I have been thinking about what you wrote. If I do attach raw planks to unsealed and unprimed/unpainted hull, then wood glue or others can bind nicely.
 
If I prime and paint the hull (like your link above), then my planks' glue are adhering to the paint. I am not sure if wood glue would adhere to the paint, and if the strength is good enough; might the seal between the two deteriorate over time?
 
Similarly for the idea in the instructions about using CA to create a "perfectly smooth surface which is almost like plastic"; what glue do you use to bond between the raw wood planking and the plastic-like CA surface?

CA glue adheres very well to paint, better than wood glue. Second question: again, CA.

I’m somewhat unsure about the stern, specifically with regards to the path from the keel to the counter. Some of the diagrams in the book show it as a narrow straight like all the way up, while others seem to show a flaring or widening as it goes up, from about halfway up. The flaring makes sense, but I’m unsure. 
 
If it is a flaring, I’ll have to use some putty. I cut a bit too much away on the starboard side. 
 
On the other hand, there don’t appear to be any templates for that, so I don’t know what “too much” would be. 

I also discovered that the block was about 4" height, but my longest nails (left over from a drywalling job a few years back) were 3.5". So I took a drill bit slightly wide than the screw head, drilled 1.5" into the block, then a pilot hole 0.5" below that, and was able to get the screw through the block, sticking out the bottom just enough to hold the hull solidly. You can see the wider holes in the upper picture above.
 
As for the three holes? The screw went in on an angle in one of the holes, so I just did another, with a deeper pilot hole. No problem.

Hmm, I have finished the hull templates,
but find myself somewhat confused by the lowest number ones. It is nearly impossible to tell the differences between 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and while when you look at the bottom, 3 is clearly the outermost, at the middle it looks like they cross over, and at the top, it looks like 15 is the outermost? I’m quite confused. I’ve attached the layout to hopefully help. Sorry for the sideways pic; I have no idea why the forum did that.
 
anyone know? I think Nic is here at @MrBlueJacket

Hi Avi,
 
Years ago I bought a set of "French Curves " made by Staedtler at my local Staples. That should work for you as far as the ships curves are concerned.
Hope this helps,
Mort
 

Avi, enjoy your build of the Constitution. I started it in Nov. 2020. Very challenging but also very gratifying! Kurt H blog is tremendous. He is a craftsman and his postings are very informative and helpful. Enjoy, שלןם... Jerry Berenson

Avi, enjoy your build of the Constitution. I started it in Nov. 2020. Very challenging but also very gratifying! Kurt H blog is tremendous. He is a craftsman and his postings are very informative and helpful. Enjoy, שלןם... Jerry Berenson

Oh yeah, almost forgot. @KHauptfuehrer recommended "Anatomy of the Ship", which of course I immediately ordered. I never argue with another book.

That is a beautiful job planking the hull!!!  Well done!
 
Bill

While I'm experimenting with paints, stains, dies, and finishes, I finished the last task in Chapter 3 of the practicum.
 
 

 

 
 

May 29, 2024 update:  Based on a comment by Bill Morrison yesterday, I'm amending this post to try to shed a little light on the issue I tried to explain below.  The camber(?) is not symmetrical between port and starboard on a number of bulkheads. 
 

 
I discovered this by simply eyeballing the hull from fore and aft. The worst offenders were bulkheads A, C, D and P.  By laying planks along the bulkheads, I was able to determine that bulkheads A and C needed to be trimmed back, and that bulkheads D and P needed material added to properly "fair" the deck.  It the photo of the Constitution from above in post 170, you can clearly see the shims on top of bulkheads D and P.  A closer look reveals the bulkheads that needed to be shaved or sanded back.
 

 
 
Original post of July 7, 2023.  (Man-oh-man, has it been almost a  year???)
 
Before I continue with my build, I have a question for any of you who have build Conny from this kit.  The next step in the process is to glue the bulkheads onto the keel.  I noticed that the some (?) bulkhead components have yet another flaw.  See below:
 
I don't plan to install a gun deck, so the fact that the flaw is repeated in what would be the gundeck (lower) cutout may not be an issue.  However, when it'll get to be time to plank the spar deck, absent a fix now, the portside of the deck will be slightly lower than the starboard side.  I see two options.  One is also illustrated below, and the approach I am taking with bulkhead C.  It occurs to me that I could also slightly taper slots in the offending pieces to allow for a little wiggle room to align the bulkhead so the deck edges line up with the closest neighbors.  C would align with B and E, and so forth. 
 
Sorry, the photos are out of sequence.  But I think third one (Bulkhead A) clearly illustrates the problem.
 
(I now see the advantage to making the bulkheads from scratch, but it's probably less work to fix the poorly laser-cut parts than dust off my scroll saw.)
 
Thoughts?  Advice?


 
 
 
 

I've taken care of it for you (and deleted the duplicate log).

2024 07-09: Note from my future self to anyone just starting the Model Shipways Constitution and planning on using the Hunt Practicum without a kit bash.  
 
At the end of this post, I've begun attaching bulkheads to the center keel set.  I would like to advise you now to look waaaay ahead to chapters 4 and 5 of the Practicum to see what will be involved in planking the spar deck.  Also look for XKen's build log (link below) here at the Model Ship World site.
 
Why?  Because I learned that some steps taken at the very beginning would have saved me considerable grief a year later.  In the Hunt Practicum, you will be asked to taper the planks covering the spar deck.  Now, not everyone posting here does that, and there's a case to be made that not doing so will make planking the deck much easier.  If you're a stickler for sticking as close to the plans as possible and following the Hunt methodology, here are a couple of options you may wish to consider very early on:
 
1. Following in  XKen's footsteps.  In particular, the bit about building a plywood carrier deck to facilitate planking off the hull.  There are quite a few advantages to doing the spar deck planking off the hull, not least of which is that you can much more easily achieve the tapered planking the plans really call for.  (By the way, Hunt sort of cheats on this tapering at the foredeck.)  
 
(A tip for you now! In his build log, XKen failed to mention early on that you'll need to shave off the thickness of this plywood carrier from the top of the bulkheads before you affix them to the keel.)
 
 
2. If you don't want to mess around with the plywood carrier, then spend a little time examining the plans and develop a map of where the butt joints for the deck planks will be.  If you want to understand what I'm talking about here, jump ahead to the latter part of page 8 and page 9 of this build log.  Tapering long planks and scratching in fake butt joints sounds easy, but it's not.  Once you know roughly where the butt joints will be, plan early on to put support pieces between the bulkheads.  Again, see page 9.
 
 
If perfect 20/20 hindsight, there are three things I would have done differently right from the start. First, I would have gotten some Baltic birch plywood and cut my own bulkheads, because the laser cut parts that come with the kit are simply the pits.  Secondly, I would have built a plywood carrier for the decking ala XKen.  And thirdly, I would have purchased better planking materials for the hull.  I didn't realize until I finished planking the hull, that I would prefer not to paint the Constitution.  The basswood material that comes with the kit is okay, if you're going to paint over it, but if you would like a nice natural wood finish, you may want to consider investing in alternative woods.  Look at Hipexec's build log for the Constructo kit to see what I mean.
 
 
Let me close this addendum with the best advice I can give you here at the start.  Learn how to navigate this site, and at each stage of your build, consult as many build logs as you can to help you chart your own course.  
 
Here are (hopefully) the links to the build logs I found must beneficial to study:  (I may have missed a couple, but this is a pretty good sampling to get you started). 
 
Good luck!
 
 
 
 
 
 

A great place to visit!!  I live 6 miles away and try to stop in frequently.  Nic is a wealth of information, their fittings are top notch and I love to see their display of finished models!!  Well worth the trip!
Rick