Salty Sea Dog

Amati also has Roger Taney in 1/60 though I think that's a resin kit closer to the scale I like and not sure if that is a Clipper or Cutter?  Will probably give it a go at one point but I didn't know about that Dikar kit so thanks for the info!  I do wonder what lovely kits are out there from defunct companies that have been buried and forgotten

Afternoon Ladies and Gents,
 
After a long shore leave, I've been putting in a little more work on the Lynx.  It can be difficult to find time to work on it for long periods, with university and all, but nevertheless, I have made a bit of progress! As you can see in the attached pictures, I've managed to complete the first layer of planking on one side of the hull, as well as made some progress on the other.  I've taken the advice you guys have offered me and used the drywall filler to level off the imperfections that I was talking about in a previous post.  As you can see, I have applied the filler and sanded it in layers, and I still have some more filling/sanding to complete before the contours of the hull are perfectly smooth.  I'm aiming to get them as smooth as possible, in order to provide the best possible bonding surface for the outer planking.  
 
On a somewhat related topic, I've been reading up on planking tutorials and it seems that my method for planking is not ideal for the outer layer of planking.  To date, I have been soaking the planks and bending them to the contour of the hull and using the brass pins to hold them in place while drying to the desired shape.  Based on the planking tutorials I've been watching/reading, it seems like the best way to do the outer planking is to use string as a guide and sketch out the planks onto the inner hull, as a sort of diagram to follow while planking.  Then, using the correct ratio to ensure that the plank sections are to-scale, to use the electric plank bender to perfectly contour the outer hull planks and just fit them in place, gluing with carpenter's glue.  I'm just worried that the orientation of the planks will not look "real" once the final planking is complete.  I don't know where the tapered planks should go, if I should start from the top and work my way down, or alternate between the top and bottom as I go.  I'm just worried that I'll end up having the tapered planks in the wrong location and the final product won't "look right".  Any ideas/tips?
 
To answer your question, my Panart Lynx kit did not come with any dye powder, however it did come with two different types of wood for the two hull plankings; lime tree for the under layer and walnut for the outer layer. 
 
EDIT: If you look at the second attached picture of the unfinished side of the hull, near the bow, you can see another example of the planks not adjoining properly due to the excess sanding that I was talking about in my previous post.  The amount of filling for this side will be roughly the same as for the other side of the ship, and I think that the drywall filler did a pretty decent job of correcting for those imperfections.  

Dikar has the Roger B. Taney in 1:54.

Here are a few quick photos to show the progress over the last month or so on the Lynx.  The planking isn't the prettiest, but its definitely taught me a lot of lessons about what to do and what not to do! Haha

Finally, some time to work on the Lynx! 
 
I've made some small amount of progress since my last log update, life has been pretty hectic recently with midterms and everything.
 
 I have finished assembling the bulkheads to the keel, including the support blocks that help steady each bulkhead. The aft deck has been installed, including the transom, and the fore and aft supports for the hull planking have been sanded and installed.  I just started the planking of the hull this morning, starting with the wale on the port side of the ship.  
 
I have run into a bit of an issue with my electric plank bender, however.  I purchased the plank bender from model expo, it is new, in great condition, etc.  I noticed that when I plugged it in to start bending my hull planks, it started smoking around where the base of the metal wand meets the plastic handle.  I was wondering, is this normal for the first time use of an electric plank bender? 

Welcome aboard Basic. 
 
Glad you took the plunge.  You'll find plenty of help here on MSW.  The folks on here helped get me through my first build.  So don't be afraid to post questions.
 
You've picked a very nice vessel to model.  I know this as I had the Pan Art kit in the closet for about 20 years.  As it turns out, I gave her to a friend who took interest in ship modeling when I started Syren so I let him have it to get started.  Unfortunately he has set it on the 'back burner' so I've yet to see one completed.  I also have never seen one on MSW.
 
So let's make yours the first!  BEST OF LUCK on your maiden voyage.

My first foray into these foreign waters, a Build Log by Basic.
 
After much thought and research, I finally decided to jump head first into the hobby and buy my first kit. (Hoorah!)  To begin my selection, I spent quite a good deal of time going over reference materials, posts on these forums and advice given by some of the more experienced members of MSW (Thanks ladies and gents, you know who you are!).  I came to the conclusion that the single, most important factor in selecting that all important first kit is this: It MUST be a kit that you find personally interesting in some way, which will significantly help you through the first build.  I chose the Lynx in part because I find her rather elegant and graceful, and also because I really like the schooner class of ships.  I picked her up off an eBay auction, and within a few days she was sitting on my desk, waiting for the build to start.
 
The first thing I must mention is that I was pretty intimidated when I first opened the box; there were so many pieces and it all seemed rather daunting at the time.  After a few deep breaths I plunged in, and started going through the parts, instruction manual and schematics.  The first thing I noticed was that all the schematics were in Italian, a language that I am not very familiar with.  My saving grace, a small instructions manual, was quickly discovered at the bottom of the box and I breathed a sigh of relief.  After going through all the documents, I came to realize that the one thing that was hindering my ability to discern if all the parts were included was that I had very little working knowledge of the terminology of the ship building world. After a bit of research, I managed to piece it together well enough to be fairly confident that all the parts are accounted for. I managed to work around the sheer number of pieces by picking up a small cubby box, one of the ones commonly used to store small nails, screws, etc, and set it up on my desk.  This helped me organize all the small parts into their own compartments and greatly relieved the clutter on my work surface.  Unfortunately, as was explained in my introduction post to MSW, I have not yet managed to liberate my basement from the snooker table which currently lurks down there, so my work surface is not ideal at the moment, but I’m working on that.
 
The work has started off rather slowly, considering that I am constantly checking and rechecking each task, and quite frankly I’m okay with this.  I want to make sure that I avoid the common mistakes by thinking and planning ahead, which I’m sure will help save me a few headaches down the road.  
 
So far, I have dry fit all the bulkheads to the keel, as well as the sub-deck and the aft platform.  I have begun to glue shims to the bulkheads to correct for the play that these parts have within their slots on the keel, and glue the bulkheads into place.  I have also glued a set of reinforcing blocks to each side of the keel by each bulkhead slot, to ensure that the bulkheads are correctly positioned and have more surface area to create a strong adhesion.  In the photo below, you can see the dry fitting of the bulkheads to the keel, as well as the first set of reinforcement blocks being glued & clamped to the keel. Excuse the poor lighting, I have yet to properly set up my work area!

Hi Ferit! Thanks for stopping by. Hope things are going well for you.
 
I got in a little shipyard time tonight and worked some more on the piggin. This mini coopering is sort of tricky! OK, that was bad!
 
I tacked the bottom of the barrel to the end of a dowel with a small drop of white glue. The edge of the bottom is beveled. The inside faces at the stave bottoms have a beveled notch that lock into the edge of the bottom. I wrapped some tape around the dowel to help flare the staves out.

 
This works pretty good but I have a bit to learn to get a better feel for the proper amount of tapering needed on the stave edges. I think this will clean up ok once I complete the circle and can sand it.

 
Best wishes,

Hi Ferit! Thanks for stopping by. Hope things are going well for you.
 
I got in a little shipyard time tonight and worked some more on the piggin. This mini coopering is sort of tricky! OK, that was bad!
 
I tacked the bottom of the barrel to the end of a dowel with a small drop of white glue. The edge of the bottom is beveled. The inside faces at the stave bottoms have a beveled notch that lock into the edge of the bottom. I wrapped some tape around the dowel to help flare the staves out.

 
This works pretty good but I have a bit to learn to get a better feel for the proper amount of tapering needed on the stave edges. I think this will clean up ok once I complete the circle and can sand it.

 
Best wishes,

Hi Ferit! Thanks for stopping by. Hope things are going well for you.
 
I got in a little shipyard time tonight and worked some more on the piggin. This mini coopering is sort of tricky! OK, that was bad!
 
I tacked the bottom of the barrel to the end of a dowel with a small drop of white glue. The edge of the bottom is beveled. The inside faces at the stave bottoms have a beveled notch that lock into the edge of the bottom. I wrapped some tape around the dowel to help flare the staves out.

 
This works pretty good but I have a bit to learn to get a better feel for the proper amount of tapering needed on the stave edges. I think this will clean up ok once I complete the circle and can sand it.

 
Best wishes,

Here come details in detail...

Here's a quick look at what I've been up to today. Making a piggin! Still got a few staves to make.

 
The staves were tapered with a hand plane set for a really light cut - 1-1/2 thousands! haha! Fun times!

Hi Lawrence!
 
I am in my new shipyard right now trying to turn a piece of an old cedar fence picket into staves to make 1:25 scale piggins, buckets and lantern cases! Having a blast and I'll post pictures when I get further along.
 
The new shipyard:


 
Thanks for stopping by!

I made a tiny little handle for that tiny little quoin, and then drilled a tiny little hole in the quoin.

So for the last few weeks I've been spending a great deal of time watching paint dry.  I may have mentioned in passing (or a lot more than that) that I'm not a terribly patient person, so this has been a fair trial for me.  Due to my extremely limited work space I really haven't wanted to jump ahead and work on other bits and pieces because I don't have a reasonable place to put those pieces until they are needed later.
 
Tonight after putting another coat of black on the AVS and setting it back down to dry, I decided that I would look at assembling (but not gluing, so I can put it back in the package) a gun carriage so that I could make sure that it would work height-wise with the gun ports.
 
I am not using the kit carriages, and the ones I am using (from Syren) are taller than the kit ones when looking at just the side pieces, so I was concerned about the fitment. 
 
Test fitment was a success, making me really wonder if the kit assemblies would have been too low!
The carriages and guns from Chuck are ..  well, I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. 

Brief early Saturday update.  The first group of planking (of 4 planned sections) is complete on both sides, and the 2nd group is started on the port side.
 
As I was cropping these pictures I realized how much damage I'm managing to inflict on my poor painted cap rails, so I'm going to need to do a lot of repainting when I'm done with all the heavy handling of the hull.  In the meantime I'm going to cover the rails with tape to try to prevent further damage, since I'm apparently incapable of doing work on the hull and not beating up the already completed work.
 

Here's a quick look at what I've been up to today. Making a piggin! Still got a few staves to make.

 
The staves were tapered with a hand plane set for a really light cut - 1-1/2 thousands! haha! Fun times!

Here's a quick look at what I've been up to today. Making a piggin! Still got a few staves to make.

 
The staves were tapered with a hand plane set for a really light cut - 1-1/2 thousands! haha! Fun times!

Hi Lawrence!
 
I am in my new shipyard right now trying to turn a piece of an old cedar fence picket into staves to make 1:25 scale piggins, buckets and lantern cases! Having a blast and I'll post pictures when I get further along.
 
The new shipyard:


 
Thanks for stopping by!

Hi Lawrence!
 
I am in my new shipyard right now trying to turn a piece of an old cedar fence picket into staves to make 1:25 scale piggins, buckets and lantern cases! Having a blast and I'll post pictures when I get further along.
 
The new shipyard:


 
Thanks for stopping by!

Here's a quick look at what I've been up to today. Making a piggin! Still got a few staves to make.

 
The staves were tapered with a hand plane set for a really light cut - 1-1/2 thousands! haha! Fun times!

Hi Lawrence!
 
I am in my new shipyard right now trying to turn a piece of an old cedar fence picket into staves to make 1:25 scale piggins, buckets and lantern cases! Having a blast and I'll post pictures when I get further along.
 
The new shipyard:


 
Thanks for stopping by!

Hi Lawrence!
 
I am in my new shipyard right now trying to turn a piece of an old cedar fence picket into staves to make 1:25 scale piggins, buckets and lantern cases! Having a blast and I'll post pictures when I get further along.
 
The new shipyard:


 
Thanks for stopping by!

4) Re-purposing some tools for model ship building
 
Thought I'd show some tools and techniques that I found useful that may interest some of you.
 
To thickness sand the rosewood and cocobolo strips, I used a homenmade fence clamped to an oscillating spindle sander table. The spindle turns counter-clockwise and I feed the strips from right to left with the rotation. It's easier to work with the rotation and there's less chance of breakage on thin pieces (unless you let go and they go flying!!  ). Press the outfeed side against the fence to prevent dips in the sanded surface. It's best to sand longer pieces and cut them to length later as there may be a bit of snipe at the ends. To use this type of setup, you initially set the fence so there is just a hint of resistance when trying to slide the workpiece past the spindle with the machine off. After power sanding a few passes, loosen the clamp slightly on the infeed side and gently tap the fence forward a hair, re-clamp and sand again. Repeat until you acheive the thickness you want.
 

 

 

 
The straight wale and gunwale strips had to be bent sideways and curved edgeways too. That could have been tricky with hardwoods like rosewood and cocobolo, but it was soooo easy with a guitar side bending iron. I wish I had this bad boy when I was bending the planks. These irons can be clamped either vertically or horizontally which leaves you with both hands free to work the wood. Wet the wood before bending. The eliptical shape of the iron allows a bunch of different radius choices. These irons are probably a bit too expensive for casual use, but it makes the bending job easy and allows a lot of precision. If you do a lot of ship building, the cost might make more sense. Like many tools, it takes a little practice to get good with it. It's mostly getting used to moving the wood and feeling when the wood is ready to bend. That's a pretty thick piece of mahogany in the picture behind the bender, and behind that, purpleheart and maple. That's a purpleheart guitar side clamped in the form in back (another project underway that divides up my time!).
 

 
There are several places that offer bending irons, but I like the accessory bands this company offers. The bands seem to help when bending edgeways.
http://www.lmii.com/CartTwo/thirdproducts.asp?NameProdHeader=Professional+Bending+Iron

There were a few posts recently on how to form the brass rudder hinge straps around the pins. Here's how I went about it. There's probably better ways to do it, but this is cheap. I took a pair of inexpensive end cutters and ground the sharp tips to flat faces so they would be able to grip without cutting. I originally used them to pull bone saddles out of the tight slots in acoustic guitar bridges. It turns out they work pretty well for the rudder hinges too. They easily squeezed the brass straps tightly around the pins so I could solder them.
 

 

 

3) Work done during the last year
 
So my little whaleboat sat around for a bunch of years and I would look at it every now and then. I wasn't ever satisfied with the fit of the keel between the stern and the prow. The kit supplied keel is fit with a butt joint at each end and it was just a tiny bit too short. Not too bad, but just enough of a loose fit to nag at me when I looked at it. It taunted and mocked me! I had been working on another project and had a scrap piece of mahogany that was a nice color match to make a new keel, so I cut/chopped/chiseled/filed the old one out and made a new one using half-lap joints at each end. I figured that would look more boat-like but mostly it was just fun to play with a little saw and a chisel.
 

 

 
I got such a kick out of fixing the keel that I kept going. I liked the look of the really dark wood wales and gunwales (cap rails?) used in the photo on the box lid. I had a left over Brazillian Rosewood binding strip from a guitar repair job and decided to use it for the gunwales. FYI - Per the CITES treaty, Brazillian Rosewood is banned for sale in the USA unless it is certified as pre-ban or salvaged from old stumps like these strips were. I had been lucky enough to locate 3 binding strips for the repair job (a 1927 Martin OO-18 if you're into guitars) and one strip was a spare. It was a special piece of wood to me and I thought it would be cool to use it in my boat. I used a dark scrap of cocobolo for the wales since it looks similar. The centerboard case, thwart seats, mast hinge and the rest of the top of the boat was also built at this time. The kit supplied mast hinge was huge and had to be cut down.
 

 

 
I had the most fun making the rudder. The kit showed using a clunky looking folded piece of brass to attach the tiller and it just seemed wrong to me. I cut a little bridle joint and double pinned it instead. The hinge pins were soldered in place as were the cross pins through the straps and rudder.
 

 

 

 
(edited to correct typo of Martin guitar model to a OO-18 instead of D-18, still a very cool guitar!)