JeffT

Welcome aboard!

Welcome! I hope you enjoy your time here.

Hi all!
Just found & joined here. Have built lots of models, mostly aircraft but also a couple of ships, in my youth. The hobby has been dormant for a long time.
Then I built/modified a Kyosho SeaWind 1m RC sailboat, as a New Zealand racing sailboat, complete with commercials on the sails. That was fun, and I got a sail number from the SeaWind class club in New Zealand - they gave me 47 as that is the telephone code for Norway. 🙂
 
Now I'm trying to detail a RC controlled French Thonier (tuna boat), that was bought ready-built, but in my eyes screams out for detailing. Will also start to build, and have a kit for a Caldercraft Motor Fifie "Amaranth". That too will be an RC-controlled model.
 
Can see here already that I can learn a lot here! Looking forward to that! 👍

Grecian rigging now complete and the boat fitted. Tightening the rigging whilst keeping the yards square was less tricky than I expected. 

 
I’ve kept as true as I could to Chris’s plans and Jim’s prototype, both of which are excellent. Only notable differences, other than a much less skilled builder, are: 
- no tack toggles in rigging and a few lines tied off to the wrong belaying pins
- different paint scheme for the boat - I couldn’t get a good faux wood finish on it.
- green vs black skylight - I preferred green. 
- slightly different cannon layout
 
Only remaining jobs on this build are:
 
1. Anchors
2. Flag halliard and flag aft
3. Rope coils 
4. I need to find a way to repair the broken winch handle (lost the part and tried CA to attach another piece of brass, but without success so far - I’ll add a photo later)
5. General touch up of paint plus waiting for a delivery of Vallejo ultra matt varnish to remove some spots of shiny CA. 
 
Thanks again for all the advice and encouragement. 

Ah, what the heck -- I decided that since I provided links to all my other KK builds, I might as well dig up some shots of the only one not hosted here at MSW, just in case anyone wondered about it. So here's a couple of looks at Pawel's Polikarpov Po-2 design. This one used alternative winter camo provided by a member at a different forum. Enjoy!
 

 

Thank you for the warm welcome! 

It is not necessarily an  either-or situation.   Do a final shaping on the outside of the solid hull.  Fix it to a base upside down and use it as a mould for planking.  Study the planking run using serious sources. I don't think the serious up curve at each end is what it appears to be.  It is carving in large chunks of wood I think - not my area.

This is the place to be !!!!

Dan, welcome to MSW. Glad to have you aboard. 

Hello,
I am a new member residing in the state of Montana.   I am in my late 40s, a 20-year veteran of the rail industry,  and have been an avid modeler for most of my life.  Modeling subjects of interest for me have ranged from cars, armor, aircraft, motorcycles, and sci-fi to an occasional plastic sailing ship model.  
About 10 years ago I purchased the Heller 1/100th HMS Victory kit as a 'retirement' project, when I get there.  I've been lugging that huge box around for years but so far have resisted the urge to start it.
I do love wooden sailing vessel models but l have also been intimidated by them.  It's a slightly different skillset than is required for plastic modeling.  A couple years ago I purchased a very old Marine Models viking ship kit that I'm planning on starting soon.  Near as I can tell the model is from the mid-70s and appears complete.   More on that kit in a dedicated build post.  After that I bought a very cheap wood kit off Amazon that I think will build into a nice little model with some work and patience.   It is mostly my sampler to try out a planked hull as the old viking boat is a solid hull.   And lastly I have a Revell viking ship plastic kit that is started but I put down a couple years ago.  
I'm here for history and resource materials, wood kit tips and tricks, part and material supplier information, and people and projects to keep me motivated.   Thanks for having me. 

First of all, thanks so much, gentlemen, for your likes.  They mean a great deal to me.
 
Time to fit the gun deck patterns.  In most other kits this is called the false deck, so I will depart from my usual practice of duplicating the terminology in the manual to avoid confusion and call it that.  Unlike the planking pattern that will overlay it, it is split longitudinally into two halves to be inserted individually.  In preparation for that, I faired the stern counter frames.  As the outboard frames canted inward, considerably more material had to be removed than was the case for the inner frames.   For no particular reason, I decided to install the port half first.  As stated in the manual, it is important that the outer edge of the false deck be fully inserted into the slots as the base of the bulkhead ears.  Since the fit is quite tight, it is hard to judge by feel when it is fully inserted.  I found that if the outer edge of the false deck is flush with the outboard surface of the bulkhead ears (circle), the inboard edge will be correctly centered.

I then inserted the starboard half of the false deck:

As you can see, the two halves fit tightly in the vicinity of the forward hatch, but diverge slightly at the bow, and considerably at the stern.  Using a ruler, I checked the inboard edge of the port half, and found it to be true.
I am not sure how I managed to edge bend the starboard half.  I have always thought that edge bending a piece of ply that wide should be nearly impossible.  What future difficulties this may cause I do not know.  However, as I managed to work may way out of problems far more dire than this in my last build (BJ Constitution), I am hopeful that I will be able to do the same here.
 
The next step is the installation of the vertical gun port frames:

These are numbered from fore to aft.  I found that they were a fraction too wide to fit into the notches, so I sanded down the vertical frames just enough so they would fit in on the port side, and filed the char out of the notches on the starboard side, which worked a bit better.  Obviously extreme care must be taken not to over do it.  There must be no play once they are inserted.  Here they are in position:


I hope I did that right.  I guess I will find out when I fair the bulwarks and the hull.
 
On to the planking patterns:

Here they are dry fitted and marked...

...and here they are beveled and glued into position:

This seems to have gone reasonably well, which hopefully bodes well for the successful completion of the quarter galleries.
Th-th- th-that's all folks.
 
 

Very cool. maybe you'll get a cameo

The last few days have been spent making the first frame. I have learnt some lessons here. I may use the frame and the keel as test pieces only.

I used 5 minute epoxy which was problematic on one joint. I changed the reglue of the joint to PVA glue and let it sit for 24 hrs. The joint is better. I will get some Titebond II. I couldn't find my bottle from last yr so used the epoxy. Lesson learnt.

I glued the frame printouts to 5mm foam board then pinned the pieces to it for gluing. The epoxy stuck to the foam board and was a mess to clean off. On the reglue of the one chock with PVA I used wax paper between the frame and board. That stopped the glued frame sticking to the board.




 
peeling the paper off. The rubber cement made this easy.

 
The dead flat #1 pinned over the outline.
 

 
The joint below failed. The 5 minute epoxy was still soft after 24 hrs.

 
2 joints worked ok with the 5 minute epoxy.

 
I need better clamping methods. None of my clamps were not suitable so this sufficed.

 
Raising the frame for a test fit on the keel.

Happy belated Thanksgiving to all the US MSWers, and greetings and best regards to everyone else in the community.  I had  a couple of presentations to give recently, so my time had been focused primarily on work and slides for the last few months.  I am glad that is done for a while, and am now delighted that I can take just a wee bit of time to focus on making some progress on the Sphinx build while away from HMBV Granado.  I'll reiterate what everyone already knows, the Vanguard Sphinx kit is superb, and makes building a model ship a real pleasure.  The only tricky part I have run into is getting the gun deck settled into place, which took some sanding and swearing, but once it snapped into place I knew I had succeeded.  I've got some sanding to do now.....but I am pleased to have things moving in the right direction.  Here is a quick pic of where things stand at present.  I hope everyone is doing well and want to extend my thanks for stopping by and taking a look.  This community is an awesome positive reinforcer for beginner modelers like me and I appreciate that a lot.  Cheers all.
BT

I was busy today and missed this thread but I will add that early on our members were actually scammed on MSW.   This happened exactly how one would expect.  Someone pretended to have lost a relative (father) and had their stuff from 30 years of ship modeling to sell.   He listed them all and took PayPal payments and nobody received anything.  Thousands of dollars worth of tools and kits and books.  It was a complete and total scam.   By the time we suspected and found out...the email was disconnected along with the paypal address.  Photos of the stuff were pasted from the web etc. This is what prompted our rule about 25 posts (originally 50) and for folks who sell stuff to be vetted or be members in good standing.  But yes it is always buyer beware.  It is too easy to get scammed these days.  It usually happens around the holidays too!!
 
So please...damned if we do and damned if we dont.   I would rather have folks here be mad at us for protecting them rather than screaming at us after they were scammed here out of not so insignificant $$$....It is for our community protection.  
 
We have always had exceptions.  Most folks contact either me or Kurt and we make it so they can create a topic here.   We must have missed this one and they never contacted us directly.   But usually we know these guys who passed away and even their relatives.   So we vet them ahead of time and endorse them when they finally make a post about the stuff.   If you dont see that, please be aware its all your risk.  But if you dont see such an endorsement...please bring these topics and posts to our attention so we can do our due diligence and make sure it is legit. 

That is my hope....if I can do my small part.   I do get vetoed a lot.   The movie isnt about ship modeling but the guy just happened to be a an experienced intermediate kit builder.   Many scenes will take place in the garage workshop.   I have a gigantic pile of old journals and seaways ships in scale mags to leave scattered throughout the house....LOL.  But they keep taking them away.
 
Its pretty friendly though.  I mentioned that my admiral doesnt like my ship model stuff all around the house either.  Then puzzled.... they asked me...."Your Admiral?"
 
I explained that many ship modelers refer to their significant others fondly or even not so fondly as the admiral.   They all laughed and have decided to write that into the script...LOL.  They want the guy to be a real ship modeler.  One scene the wife enters and breaks a model and yells at the actor to clean up all the sawdust and mess.   Sawdust I happily swept up from my shop floor the night before.
 
Chuck

I just got back from the set where they will be filming.  It was very interesting indeed.   I brought about half of the ship models and tools needed to set up the house and workshop.   I met some of the actors and an army of crew moving furniture around and staging the house.
 
I have to be back there for the next few days as they get most of the heavy stuff done.
 
Just a few of the items I am bringing.
 
All this stuff is mine and also from my local NJ club members.  The paintings will hang in a yacht club scene or two.  Painted by my friend and club/msw member Richard Lane.
 
Some of the models are his also along with Tom Ship Model (Tom Ruggiero) here on MSW and from local club. Some old tools and a kit stash etc. Old Nr Journals and books and an old Preac.
 
My old ropewalks and serving machine. An old coffee mug from a Joint clubs conference,LOL and one of my old hats.
 
You might notice my Longboat model is now American and the flag and name are changed for the movie…along with the Ed Harris character’s name on the side.  I made the name plate in my laser cutter…all together a very interesting experience so far.
 
The last photo shows how I will be setting up his workbench while he works on his longboat.
 

There will be a junk scrap box and all around messy shop my own and many of yours.

 

I have had to remove permissions from TWO new members here who have been using our forum to circumvent our rules.
 
These posts have been made in here and the forum tech area, each selling items. 
 
REMEMBER: Please don't buy from anyone who has no provenance here at MSW. 25 posts are required to sell anything here, and these two members, SueMac and L Pecore have attempted to pass our system and sell to our membership. We have now put them on post moderation and disabled their messengers. PLEASE do not deal with these members. 
 
Admin

After seeing JamesH's review of this kit (here) I decided it would be a good one for me to build. Small, as I have limited space, only one mast and no rat lines 😁. I then found the videos by Olha Batchvarov (here), and she made it look so easy. There are a few members on MSW who have mentioned the shallop, but as far as I am aware, there is no actual build log.
 
There are three main jigs to be used at various times, all of which were easy enough to assemble, though some easing of slots was required. 
 
The first jig is used to build the 20 main frames, plus there are five cant frames (each with its own jig), three at the bow and two at the stern. The latter consist of two futtocks (I assume that’s what they're called) joined by a cross piece (chock), while the former have two futtocks and a floor that overlaps them. All pieces have laser etch marks to show how much fairing is required to allow a fair run of the planks. The boat is clinker-built, so all frames are notched for the planks.
 
The illustrations on how to assemble the main frames were somewhat confusing (there are no written instructions), but after some thinking and doing a couple of dry fits, it became obvious that frames 3-12  (towards the stern) had to have the futtocks and the floor placed with the etch marks downwards, while the other frames (towards the bow) needed to be placed with etch marks upwards. The floors were always placed on top of the futtocks. The frames in the jig, and a close-up of frame 21, showing the fairing. I faired the futtocks and the floors before assembly. 


The cant frames were difficult as some fairly precise sanding of angles was required to get the three pieces of each frame assembled correctly in its little jig. Again, thinking before glueing was definitely needed. The parts for the cant frames and their jigs….

….and assembled.

The keel, stem and sternpost were glued together, let dry, and placed in jig 2. As there was a small amount of sideplay, four completed frames were carefully glued in position, making sure that they and the keel were correctly centred on each other and in the jig. By doing this, the keel was kept firmly in place. All other frames were then glued to the keel.


Two stringers were soaked, bent, then glued to the frames. The keelson and some other pieces were added.


Next up, planking.
 
Cheers