NWdiverTodd

That would be great :-) I'll PM ya with my cell number.

Hi Floyd, More like a little fleet of cats. I have 3 H-16s and a H-21SE. I quit the big boat\off shore racing scene a while back and returned to my roots. It was a great choice for me. The picture is my son and grandson alongside of me on lake Whatcom.

They printed great. I'll check the size when I get home. Thanks!! -Todd

Augie, Your link goes to "kit build logs in progress" and as expected, there is your build. I went back and did a search for "syren" in "kit build logs in progress" and your build does NOT show up. As a newbie, I am probably doing something wrong, but it seems a shame for people to miss your and possibly other completed builds. What did I do wrong?

Welcome to the Syren club! There are lots of us here working on that ship. Hopefully we will help each other out :-) -Todd

Augie: There is no place or space on the sheet for the 5th lift. I read your post and was thinking "How can I call you? I don't have your... Oh! ME=Model Expo!" Duh :-) Not enough sleep. Thanks for the link. Floyd: Thanks! I sent a PM.

Augie: Your build is a big part of the reason that I chose to build the Syren. Thank you for the excellent log! How do I reach that log now that it is no longer "in progress"? I look forward to your advice and tips! Do you remember your long boat build? I think I'm missing the top lift, it's in the book but no part. Charley: I'm following your log as well :-) Your build is looking really clean! I too have the little sander on the way, this part of the job sold me on the idea. I have the bad template, it's the wrong size. How do I get a hold of Chuck to get a new one? Floyd: How do I get on the mailing list? I'd like to catch a meeting and meet some folks. Are there others up north near me? You should see the wood in the "real" part of the shop. As to scratch building, I have my hands full following simple directions at this point

Started on the inside, but it is really slow going.

I sanded the outside, easy peasy. Now for the inside. Um, how to do that? I can’t see an easy way to sand it flat with the bulkheads and because it is an inside curve, not bite into the next line on either side. Ideas anyone? What did you use?

I never fixed the first block. It was even, and well, I forgot.

Reasonably happy with this, I’m sure I wouldn’t be if I knew better J

That’s looking a bit better.

I can’t really see the dip from here, it only became apparent (to me) when I sat back.

It gets a bit better as I work my way along.

You can see where I started on the aft end of the ship, there is a dip there. I did a bit of deconstruction, and it looks better now.

Here are a few of the tools that I used to make cutting and sanding the angles quick and mostly painless. Yay airplane tools!

Oh Boy!! I get to do the sills now! I thought “This will go fast, measure, cut, glue, done!” Not so much J Obviously the ship has curves, this means that your sill ends should have an angle on most of them. Ok, I can do that. Cut them on the nifty tool and pop them in, yes? Not quite. I added a few and then looked, hmmm, these are not looking very nice. I was not keeping the inside of the sills even with the bulkheads. I’ll go back and fix those later. I was also thinking that the less I had of the sill on the inside, the less difficult it would be to sand. So I started keeping the sills to the inside edge. To do this, you must cut angles in the sills. I was lining up my sills with the marks I made based on “the line”. After a few sills I could see that the lines were not keeping me in a pretty, smooth, transition. I started using a plank to lay along the line and fair the top of the sills to that. It made a big difference. I found that I had to let the plank lay and go with that, ignoring small differences in my original marks. Off we go again. After two more, I see something wrong. After looking close, the sills were not all in plane. They were close, but it really showed. I’m not convinced that it will matter all that much after I’m finished sanding, but better to be safe. Now I have to angle each end, get the length right, get the height right using the plank, and then adjust the plane of the sill, all before the wood glue gets too tacky. I got better at it after a while. Sort of. I did use a level to get close and to keep the sills consistent, it worked pretty well. The good news is that alcohol works a treat to remove the wood glue, the bad news is that I had to use it with alarming regularity.

After quite a lot of sanding and fairing and gluing all those bits at the top back on, I have to find “the line” This step is probably really easy for folks who know what the heck they are doing, but for us er, challenged folk, it is a bit daunting. It seems that so much of the final look of the ship will depend on getting this just right. I think I made a mistake here. I used a much lighter (thinner and narrow) piece of wood to layout. It bent better than the plank wood so I was thinking it would give a better line. It did, but the plank didn’t bend laterally as well, so I would use the planking next time. I had to correct a bit as I added the sills and checked with the planking to see how it would run. It would go better if I knew what the heck I was doing :-)

More pictures

Huh, I guess I got so involved with doing this part that I didn’t take any pictures. The manual explains it very well. You need to buy your own balsa or basswood for the filler blocks. I used 1”x2”x24” balsa stock. Basswood would work fine, but it is heaver and a bit harder to sand. You sure don’t need the extra strength. As many others have noted, it is really solid with balsa when you are done. I first sanded all the laser burns off. The frames fit very well if a bit tight. I sanded them a touch so they were still very snug, bumped them gently down so they lined up exactly on the laser marks, used steel blocks and a steel square to plumb them up, and glued them on with wood glue. I used a micrometer to measure the space between the bulkheads right at the bulkhead former and then cut the balsa stock with my Byrnes table saw. Though I’m not even close to the first person to say it, this saw ROCKS! I have a proxxon saw, that just collects dust now. The Byrnes will only cut ¾” but I just flipped the stock and there was no way to tell that the wood was double cut. Sweet! I used a rasp to rough in the blocks and a 12" sanding block to finish. Oh, don’t even sneeze in the direction of the top of the bulkheads, I broke so many that I should have just cut them all off and re-glued them after I finished. Ok, I’m clumsy, but those things are really easy to break. This does NOT bode well for me doing rigging.

How much do I take off? How do I get the angle right? How hard is it to sand after I have them installed? These were the questions going through my head as I tried to shape these parts. I found that it saves time to be reasonably close, but you can sand them pretty well once they are installed, so I didn’t need to be concerned. You could sand them entirely after installation, but it is much faster to cut them close now.

The keel installed. I got a little excited and installed the stem knee before finishing it up. It turns out that is not a big deal, I will nick and scratch it several times over the next few steps.

Gluing the keel. The blue is card stock that I stacked to set the keel on. This will center the keel on the rabbet strip.

Installing the rabbet strip

Some of the parts are a bit toasted from the laser: