gak1965

Sorry I missed the completion! Fantastic job! George

The tumor is in our (apparently) Carolina Dog, Annie (seen here guarding (?) the house in Cleveland. Her brother Hobbes the coonhound is partially visible is in his characteristic pose as well, which is to say, sleeping. They are both 11. So far the prognosis is good and surgery is usually curative on cutaneous mast cell tumors. Since she will be sedated the vet is going to remove a stye and clean her teeth. Suggesting this was quite reassuring to us since we trust our vet and can't quite imagine her doing the other treatments if she thought the prognosis was poor. Regards, George

@Canute that makes as much sense as anything I've ever heard, which seems all over the place. I've seen people say that hatches are only on horizontal surfaces and doors on vertical, but in my own experience I've heard people say to "shut the hatch" when referring to a door on a vertical bulkhead. The items on the deck houses open out and are vertical so "door" it is. @KeithAug, thanks! @Rick310, that must've been pretty weird. I wonder if the sailors were creeped out, or if they had the attitude almost everyone does of "well, it couldn't happen to me." Last update on the Discovery for 2025 as we are headed back to DC for the last 2 weeks of the year tomorrow (a little early, as one of our dogs is getting surgery Thursday morning to remove a mast cell tumor). Before turning to the monkey poop, I decided to do some of the deck furniture in the after part of the ship. The two items I worked on were the gratings that the ship's wheel is mounted on, and the well that allowed access to the propeller. The latter is an interesting feature, which in theory meant that they could pull the prop out of the way to prevent damage, and I suppose repair/replace it if damaged. I tried many different ways to make scratch gratings. I can see how to do so, but don't have the tools, and in the end, just broke down and bought the grating strips from ModelExpo. The wheel gratings are just a rectangle sitting on a very thin platform around the edges. It's shown in the photo below. The well is more complicated. If you look closely at the plans, you will see that it is an irregular octagon with 5 identical sides and one shorter and two longer sides. The shortest side is the aftmost face of the octagon. Ultimately, I built out a rectangular grating using the ModelExpo strips, cut out the octagon, centering it as best I could and stained it as per below: I then took a 1/32" by 3/64" square piece of painted basswood, and wrapped it around the octagonal grating. The painted piece became the part of the lid that fits over the octagonal well. The rest of the well was made for 1/16" by 1/4" basswood, painted white. I cut out each of the well's sides to fit, trimmed the edges to approximately the correct angle to fit, and glued it onto the underside of the well grating, until I had the full octagon. A little touchup and you get the following: I then mounted the steering box (black), the well, and the wheel gratings onto the deck. Here are two views. The first from above: And the second oblique from the starboard side: As always, thanks for looking in. Everyone have a safe holiday season, and a Happy New Year. Regards, George

Unbelievable! That is absolutely astonishing work!

Back in Cleveland, so that means work on the Discovery continues. So here are a couple of pictures of the painted and installed after deck houses, minus the overhead which needs painting and a few details. The doors (hatches seems wrong somehow) will eventually get knobs, but probably not until the new year as my stash of tiny nails I tend to use for such things is in Rockville. The steering box (black) is not yet set, I want to make sure that I didn't make a mistake that will cause it to interfere with the monkey poop before I glue it down. The overheads have a skylight. I made the skylights out of 4 mm styrene tube, painted and then filled with CA glue. Here they are on the plans with just the drilled hole: And then installed on the deckhouses: And two of the ship with the deckhouses in place. One looking aft from amidships: And one showing the whole ship from the waterline: As always, thanks for looking in! Regards, George

One last update until mid-December when we return to Rockville. The missing piece that I needed to make was a ring that wraps around the cast fitting that is the prop. That's the small wooden ring that is on the right side of the image below. I assembled the prop (now that I have the ring) and painted it brass so that it should be ready to fit when I return. In addition, I fitted the trailboards to the hull, opened the hawse holes, and gave them their first coat of black paint. And finally, I manufactured, copper plated, and mounted the stern tube? shaft alley? propeller shaft boss? Perhaps someone can provide me with the correct term. As always, thanks for looking in. Next update will likely be sometime the week before Christmas. Regards, George

Looks great Jared, and I loved the Boston Harbor photos!

So, it's been a few months since I last posted on this. Those that are following my Discovery build will be aware that in July, I accepted a new job in Cleveland, and my wife and I moved there in September, both age 60. Since then, we have spent about every other weekend in our old place in Rockville, MD due to a combination of elderly parents and some business commitments that my wife has. For obvious reasons, my building during that period was not significant. I split the two builds between the two houses, the Discovery in Ohio and the Kearsarge in Maryland. Things have finally stabilized enough (and we were back on MD for a week) so that I have made some progress. First, the four hammock net boxes that fit in the gunports for the 11 inch Dahlgren guns were constructed per the instructions, and trimmed with 1/32 inch white and black painted stock. Three of the are shown here: Next, I painted the anchor chains and chain stoppers, and glued them , again, as per instructions. ...and installed them on the deck. I was going to mount the prop, but the laser cut spacer part has apparently come loose and vanished somewhere. I will need to construct a replacement with some of my Ohio tools before installing, and, in any case, I think I will wait until I've mounted it on the board I just ordered. I needed to paint some more blue waterways before closing off the forecastle, but it appears that is in Ohio as well, so, that is for the next trip. If I have some time tomorrow, I will mount the trailboards and open the hawse holes and do another entry, otherwise, I won't have anything to add until mid-December when we return to Rockville. Thanks for looking in! Regards, George

Thank you. And your wish is my command! First, being on the Great Lakes we find things in the paper that would not appear in the Washington Post: But back to the Discovery, which has two deck houses on the stern that abut the monkey poop and that form the outer edge of a section of deck that includes the wheel, the propeller well and the steering gear (the latter two having been built earlier. Here are the plans from above. You can see three doors per structure, two on the inner side and one on the forward side. There is nothing aft because the monkey poop blocks it. Here is the side view. You'll note that it's asymmetric, and you could basically split it into two, each with a smaller section that is the door, and a larger section (forward) that has no doors. Here is it on the voyage (photo from Scott Polar Research Institute): You will notice that there is some trim that isn't shown in the plans. So, I redrew the plans as below: So, construction began by laying out where the forward and aft bases are going to sit with Tamiya tape. The bases (at this point not painted) are 1/16" by 3/16" bass, trimmed so that they fit evenly over the waterway. Here they are stained and glued into place: And here are the bulkheads. Each is a 1/16" thick piece of bass with 1/32" bass detail trims. Port on top, and starboard on the bottom. They are different because of the asymmetry, and the doors need to be in the after part of the structure. So right to left, top to bottom it's: port aft, port inner, port forward, and starboard forward, starboard inner, starboard aft. So, next steps are to stain or paint them, put in a small nail to make the door handles, create an angle at the joints, and install them. One thing I will need to do is to remove the bulwark stanchions at the point where the aft bulkheads hit the bulwarks. They will make fitting it a pain, and they shouldn't be there anyway - it was just sort of how it worked out. They are taller than the bulwark, so the outer wall will be installed on the cap rail once they are in place. That's it for now. To those who celebrate, have a great Thanksgiving. Ann and I will be going to my sister's house in Alexandria, VA (we are doing Christmas this year). Both of our kids and my sister's husband and daughter, along with my 89 year old father and his companion will be there. For whatever reason, probably some combination of my mother in law's recent injury and surgery, the unsettled nature of our lives, and/or this is the first time we've done this with both of us in our sixties, it is hitting somewhat harder this year. We are by any measure extremely fortunate and it's important to occasionally spend some time reflecting on that. Regards, George

That's quite clear, thank you! And sorry for my late reaction. Life changes, etc... George

The Fish is still back in DC. We are keeping our house there because we are back 3 days out of every 14 for a variety of reasons, and I didn't want to put it on the truck. When we eventually buy in Cleveland I may move it, or wait until we sell the DC place. We shall see.

Well, I've been pretty MIA on the forums for almost two months now. The reason is obvious, but I have the following to show. The Discovery packed for moving (in my car): Many of my tools, similarly packed: And my new Ohio worktable which I bought from a used office furniture place in Cleveland: Not shown is a cutting pad I bought, because the table top is a white board! So, I can do my calculations on the table as I work. We'll see if that is just a gimmick, but it's a nice solid table and I'm pleased with it. Alas, my plans are still in DC, so I won't be back to work on the ship until after this coming weekend, but I feel like I'm pretty close to ready. Regards, George

Really nice looking Rick! I know this is a small detail, but how did you get the fairleads on the shrouds so neat? It was a perpetual source of frustration trying to get them to stay in place. Regards, Geirge

Congratulations Jared, this is fantastic. My apologies for the delayed response, I've been AWOL on the forums as we began our move. Regards, George

Congratulations Jared! She looks really great! A long, difficult job that is paying off! Regards, George