gak1965

Thanks Rick! Moving along slowly though... The ship as she appears now: The bow filler blocks are in place, as are the stern blocks with the exception of the starboard side block after frame 14. The last two blocks that shape the stern were made from a 2"x3" piece of basswood that I bought at the local hobby shop. It is the hardest piece of bass I have ever seen. My saber saw could barely cut the blank out. I wore out three sanding drums on my Dremel getting it to shape, plus an entire sheet of 100 grit sandpaper. It was so hard, the sanding drum was sometimes burning rather than sanding. I'm frankly wondering if they were making a joke and gave me a chunk of hard maple labelled as bass. I also build out the knightheads and installed them on the bow. They were made from a couple of pieces of spare bass I had from another project and they trimmed much more easily. They are too high right now - once I have the planks that define the forecastle, I'll trim them down to size. Either way, 1 more chunk, some finishing sanding, and it's time for the waterways, which, at least I have a plan for. Thanks for looking in! Regards, George

It's been a while, as I've been working on the Discovery and had some travel in there as well. However, I've built up two of the three layers of the bulwarks and continued the preparation of the hull surface. Here are things as they stand (port and starboard) minus the innermost layer of the bulwarks. And from above: I did a dry fit of the decks and while they will need a bit of trimming, I think I'm in a pretty good place there too: In general, I think it looks pretty good, and after some additional sanding and puttying should probably leave me with a good base to copper and paint. I've progressed far enough to start to have some opinions about the kit. First, the good. I can't fault the materials. The wood has been good, the laser cutting sharp and clean, the brass, castings, and resin parts look nice and clean. That said, this is not the way I would have designed the kit. That doesn't make it wrong, but I have found a bunch of the steps in this kit to be really awkward. Compared to having the keel in place from the beginning with a nicely carved rabbet to accept the ends of the planks, I have found this to be very difficult. Similarly, building the bulwark core as a separate piece that you have to glue to a relatively narrow (1/16 x 1/16) "L" shape formed by multiple pieces of wood is much more difficult than forming the bulwark from an extension of the bulkheads, and planking both sides. In addition, you may have noticed that the ship is no longer upside down on the building board - this is because it was virtually impossible to fit the large bulwark core in place with it upside down and glued, and in the process of bullying it in place, I accidentally broke the ship loose. At that point, I said to heck with it, and finished it right side up which I found much easier. FWIW, in common with some of the other build logs I've seen on this ship, it seems to me that the instructions are a bit incomplete. I gather that there is a separate CD with a lot of very helpful build images at additional cost. At the moment, it seems to me that the balance between those that are in the instructions and on the CD is off. This isn't a free kit, and while I absolutely get that this kit is expensive to produce, throwing in some more pictures would probably improve the build experience. And to be fair, it's possible that this design works better when everything is perfect, and I'm far from a perfect builder. It's also true that this just isn't the way I'm used to building, and who knows - I might have felt different if this was my fourth go with this method rather than my first. And I think it's going to eventually build to a really nice looking ship. It definitely deserves the 'Admiral' level, though. If I had tried this three ships back, I probably would have put it aside and moved away from wooden ship building. As always, thanks for looking in! Regards, George

I wonder if this will prompt calls to have tugs nearby when any ship goes under some of these crucial bridges. MV Dali was registered at 116,000 DWT and was almost as tall as the bridge itself, nothing like the ships that were being used (or even considered) when the bridge was being designed and built. It's not even clear to me what exactly how you would engineer against a quarter of a billion pounds of anything striking a pier.

Thanks Rick! So, completed the coarse preparation of the main hull, a bit of putty and some 150 grit sandpaper. It will need more, but I think it's good enough to start putting the inner bulwark pieces in. Once they are planked, I can do a much better job getting the hull ready for paint. The really good news is that I am going to copper the bottom rather than paint it, so any imperfections will be even more hidden. In the photos below (with the frame for the RRS Discovery in the background), I've dry fitted the rudder post, it will come out before the next step. So, starboard side: and port side: One observation. I went looking for the relevant pieces for the inner bulwark. The two main pieces were easy to spot. They are LK72(A) and there are two of them. The pieces for the stern are LK72(B) and there are 4. What surprised me was that, on the same sheet, right next to LK72(A) were 4 pieces marked LK27(B), and I couldn't figure out how the heck I was supposed to use them to build the stern. Of course, they were the wrong pieces (I had swapped two digits) and when I saw the actual LK72(B)'s (which are half the thickness and hence on a different sheet), the whole thing made sense. With that said, if BlueJacket ever revises the instructions, they might consider including a diagram or photo of how these pieces work. Thanks for looking in and for the likes! George

Beautiful work!

Well, @MrBlueJacket's adage that "putty and paint make it look what it ain't" seems to be starting to come true. I've put the four starboard side balsa inserts in and faired them. The aftmost is going to be made from basswood since it is going to define the stern's curve. At this point I need to go to the hobby shop and get some more balsa, that chunk didn't go quite as far as I expected. But starting to look like a ship. Thanks for looking in! Regards, George

The mizzen has only a spider band, no fife rails, which is consistent with a lot of other ships I've seen. I'm not sure how I would interpret the spider bands on the fore and main (they are both there, BTW). The original builder's plans show the fore and main fife rails and no fife rail on the mizzen, so I'm confident Discovery had them from the beginning. The ship didn't carry that much canvas in 1901, so why they would need both is a mystery to me. That said, the current ship's rigging is vastly different than during the 1901-1904 time period, though. The fore and mainmasts were moved 4 and 8 feet forward to their current locations in 1923; the current ship carries 5 yards/square rigged mast (vs. 4 in 1901), the bowsprit now has a jibboom that wasn't there then, etc. Wasn't there in 1901 (possible, looking for photos that would answer the questions)? Belt and suspenders? Maybe the sailors found the spider band more convenient but no one wanted to yank the fife rails? Someplace to anchor the extra lines associated with the split topgallants that were added? Your guess is as good or better than mine. Regards, GAK

Hi Tom, Ship is looking great. This was like 8 weeks ago, but I'm interested here because I'm doing a scratch build of RRS Discovery and I have the same issue in that the plans I have are good for the standing rigging, and the location of the running rigging on the masts/yards, how they are anchored isn't shown. I am going to see if there are other plans at the Maritime Museum (I only had a couple scanned b/c it was expensive) but will let you know what I learn about how Discovery was rigged if you are interested. Two thoughts. First, as to the sheet's and halyards that are nominally tied to an eyebolt surrounding the masts, that seems odd to me. For the square rigged mast in particular, I would expect a ring of eyebolts that was the deck location of the tackles that go to the sheets/halyards/live lifts, but the live end of the tackle would end at a pin on a fife rail or on the mast. That is how the Flying Fish is rigged (see photo below). Not the best photo, but you can see the tackle that is attached to the sheet chains. Discovery is rigged the same way. You can see the tackles and the live ends on the fife rail of the foremast. Now, you need to be careful over interpreting - Discovery had her rig changed many times over the years (heck the masts were physically moved in the '20s, but when I see this pattern over a span of 50 years I suspect it's pretty common. I've never heard of anything running attaching to the channels either. Again, I've seen examples of tackles being attached to the channels (e.g. royal and skysail halyards) with the live ends of the tackle attached to a pin on a pinrail on the inside bullwarks. FWIW, Discovery has a continuous pinrail that runs along the length of the bulwarks, with periodic holes for pins. My suspicion is that lines that were belayed at the bulwark were belayed where convenient and not according to some unalterable master plan. Regards, George

My local hobby shop nominally carries a pretty wide selection of basswood strip (Midwest is their supplier), but their actual stock is a bit sketchier. I was there over the weekend to buy some glue, and I figured I'd get the 1/8" x 1/4" wood I'd need for the waterways, but they had none available. I generally try to buy from local sources (this place is a 3 location local chain in the DC area) to help keep them viable, or at least buy from specialist online retailers that support ship modelers for the same reason. Maybe they can order what I need for me.

Yikes, it's been about 3 weeks since I posted an update. Part of that time I was away, and part of it was working on the USS Kearsarge, but some real progress. First photo, all of the frames are fared, their elevations evened out, and glued in place. Large chunk of extra balsa from the Kearsarge in the background about to become part of the ship. Second photo has the first of the filler blocks in place and (mostly) faired (final fairing needs all the fillers). It doesn't go to the top of the bulkhead at this moment because I'm trying to efficiently use the balsa block I have handy - I'll fill the rest in with leftover chunks. I'm imaging 8 or 10 balsa fillers at the moment (between bulkheads 2-4 and either 11 or 12 to 14. From 14 to the stern I'm going to make the filler blocks out of basswood, and for the prow to bulkhead 1, I'm going to make a basswood filler that includes the knightheads. The ship gets two sets of planking (as seen in the section below). The inner, thicker set where the planks average out to about 2mm (1/16 to 3/32") deep by 3mm about (1/8") tall at scale, although the actual thicknesses vary a bit, and an outer layer over about 2/3 of the hull that is about 1mm x 3mm at scale. The model will be pained, so, presumably I'll use basswood - it's cheap(er), it bends well, and it doesn't have to have beautiful color or grain. That said, can anyone recommend a wood source? The only sources I know of with small dimensional lumber are ModelExpo and BlueJacket. Do you all find one superior to the other? Is there someplace else people would suggest? Any input appreciated. I'm on the US East Coast if that matters. As always, thanks for the likes and for looking in. Regards, George

A brief update. The basic planking is completed. It needs some filler and sanding now, before I move on to the bulwarks. Thanks for looking in! Regards, George

FWIW, I used 24 gauge annealed steel wire for the jackstays on my 1:96 Flying Fish, except on the skysails where I dropped to 34 gauge. Doesn't mean it's right or to scale, but it seemed to look okay and worked tolerably well with the 0.75 x 6mm eyebolts I used for the jackstay eyebolts. Regards, George

Mike, Glad you are back. I described what I did in this post: The summary is that I ran the forestays through the relevant locations (bees or hole in the jibboom) and the dolphin striker (if relevant) and then fed it through a hole I drilled in the bulwarks. At each location where the lines changed direction, I put a drop of CA glue to hold it in place, so that by the time I got to the hole in the bulwarks it would stay taut without having major strain on that one drop of glue (the line had 2 or 3 glue drops holding it in place. My recollection is that I ran enough line through the hole that I could snag it with a tweezer and hold it tight while the CA set (maybe 30 seconds). It worked for me, buy YMMV. Hope this helps, George

Thanks Keith, appreciate the confidence! I'm heading off on a work trip followed by visit to my daughter in Boise, so last update for a couple of weeks most likely. Bulkheads 1-8 are rough faired, evened out, but not yet glued in place. As you can see I opened out the fo'c'sle after all. I don't anticipate adding ceiling planks in there but the foremast has a set of forestays that anchor in there (through holes in the bulkhead so I just cut them out. One thing that may not be obvious is that in bulkhead 3 I thinned the part above the center keel to 1/8". The reason is that the fo'c'sle starts about 1 ft ahead of the station line in the drawings, so I needed to adjust accordingly. As always, thanks for looking in! Regards, George

Thanks Rick! I'm heading off on a work trip followed by visit to my daughter in Boise, so last update for a couple of weeks. Not a ton to report. Hull planking continues, should be finished by the next update. As always, thanks for looking in. Regards, George

Planking continues. As with my other project, need to keep reminding myself that putty and sandpaper cover a multitude of sins. Found another stash of 1/16 x 3/16, so going to keep using them until I run out. Thanks for looking in! George

Small update. Rabbets are cut. Keel is attached (it currently sticks out a bit on the end. Started fairing the bulkheads. Need to remind myself that putty covers a multitude of sins. Thanks for looking in! Regards, George

Any of the Brunel designed ships. Great Eastern, Great Western, or Great Britain would be cool. And a plea for that humble Cold War workhorse, the Spruance class. I'm partial to Peterson (969), but any member would be fine. It would joun your other USN DDs and you could make 2 variants, pre VLS and post VLS mods. And heck, build a Ticonderoga from the same hull, and several of the later (VLS variant) Ticos were built in Bath. George

Well, this feels like a bit of a milestone. Center keel cut. I drew lines to split it into two, but I was able to do it as one piece by cutting a bit of the center with a razor saw and some 80 grit sandpaper. So here is the keel with the pattern still attached: Here are two views of the bulkheads, from the top and side, dry fitted into the center keel: They still need to be trimmed and faired, some of slots lengthened and maybe one shortened, the bearding line needs to be put in, frame 3 has to be thinned above the main deck so that the forecastle will be properly aligned, filler blocks are needed fore and aftand I still have to cut out the keel. But, the thing is starting to look like a ship. Not radically different looking than the Flying Fish at a similar point in the journey: In any case, thanks for looking in and for the advice! Regards, George

Heck oil firing can be messy. My recollection is that the reason most US naval vessels had black masts and funnel/uptake vent tops until the '90s was that they would get that color anyway.

Well, a brief check in. I did get my saw set up better, proper tension on the blade in particular. I also learned that I was breaking the blades when I was making straight cuts removing pieces from that large piece of ply, and realized I was pushing harder on the blade. I'm using a very fine blade (34 teeth per inch) and I think it just needed to go slower. When I am cutting out the pieces, I'm much slower to make sure that I don't over cut - and so once I realized that my blade problem more or less went away. Here are the bulkheads as of today (no real smoothing or fairing). I thought I had all 14, but then I realized that I made 12 unique bulkheads, 2 of bulkhead 12 and none of bulkhead 11. So, one more to go before cutting out the center keel. I did take the cut out bulkheads and put them into the paper pattern for the center keel and they seem to fit properly, although several of them will require a non-zero bit of fairing due to their thickness. But that's okay - cutting them wrong would have been more of an issue. So here they are (I haven't cut out the forecastle yet. Debating at this point as it turns out that the Discovery forecastle was closed off in 1901 (the doors are on the plans). Probably going to leave them solid - no reason to model something you won't be able to see, and I know on my Flying Fish that those beams are fragile, and by the time I close it off would likely be about 90% glue. Probably better to keep them closed and model the doors closed. It's also clear in addition to the filler blocks I was planning for the stern, I'm going to need them at the stem as well. Fortunately, the USS Kearsarge I'm (probably stupidly) building along with this came with a giant block of balsa for filler and after finishing the filler portion I have a ton leftover that I suspect is going to find its way to Discovery. Thanks for looking in! Regards, George

Thanks Rick. Just means everything will take twice as long... Brief update. Started planking. I wound up replacing some of the kit supplied 1/4 x 1/16 with some 3/16 x 1/16 bass I had in a stash from old kits. It was a lot easier to bend as I was putting the sheer strake in. The sheer strake around the stern involved soaking in boiling water, pre-bending, letting it dry and then tacking in place. I'm going to put 4 strakes in with the 3/16 x 1/16 (the equivalent of three 1/4 x 1/16 strakes) and then switch to the kit supplied wood (the bends shouldn't be as big of an issue at that point, and they are going to be covered with copper plates so the out of scale planks won't bother me. Everything is going to have putty and paint, but I like having a bit of plank texture underneath the paint. So 3 strakes stem to stern on the starboard side, 3 strakes, but not yet to the stern on the port. Thanks for looking in! Regards, George

I now have some new blades and will take a look at my setup, particularly on the blade tension.

That's definitely a concern, and you are correct, the stations (except for 14) are all 1-7/8" apart (versus about 1-1/8" for the Kearsarge kit I'm also building). From station 3 until 10, there is very little variation in the shape - the real question will be from the knightheads to station 3 and from 10-13. Aft of station 13 I'm going to be putting a filler in place to create the stern - basically a suitably shaped variant of the Flying Fish kit stern filler block. For 1-3, my thought was that if it was looking problematic that I'd just drop a bit of balsa filler in to ensure an even flow. FWIW, I had spoken to Vlad Wairoa about his Glory of the Seas which used 18 bulkheads for a 101 cm false keel, 6 of which were closely spaced at the stem and stern for the exact reason you describe. Hopefully it will turn out okay, and I'll only have to add a little balsa or a couple of extra bulkheads rather than adding another 13 more to fill the gaps. Regards, George

Thanks Rick! I'm temporarily stopped in my Discovery build (broke all of my scroll saw blades, more on the way) so I had some time to work on Kearsarge. Finished the balsa filler blocks, sanded everything down, and installed the 3/8x1/2 inch boxwood fillers, and mounted her on a build board. Looks like she's ready to start planking. So, some photos. Bow: Stern from above and along side: And the ship as a whole: Build board, BTW, came from a piece of thin oak "driftwood" that had been paneling around a built in Sub-Zero refrigerator that was here when we bought the house. What a piece of junk that thing was. Replacing with another built in would have been such a hassle that we had a contractor remove it and leave us with a nice conventional refrigerator slot. The extra paneling has been slowly but surely been turned into a wide range of components, this from a bit of leftover from something else. Just validating with @MrBlueJacket that the upper end of the sheer plank (well the bottom with the ship upside down) should align with the edge of the ledge that is formed by the notch. That is, if the blue lines in the picture below are the sheer strake they would go where shown, and the laser cut inner bulkhead core would go into the notch. As always, thanks for looking in and for the encouragement and likes! Regards, George