mikiek

Wooh hooh - forward sub deck is attached. I offer one photo for proof, but I won't bore you with 10 more 🙂 Gonna redo one side of frame #4 as the deck did not get flush with the frame protrusion. Had to soften up the glue with some alcohol and have reglued and reclamped that. For deck planking I am going to go with 120mm planks with 4 plank pattern. The deck has been marked off accordingly. Looks a little crooked here but I think that is just the angle this shot was taken. Looking ahead, I'm reviewing the deck planking instructions. Hmmm, there aren't any. Photo #8 in the instructions shows the subdeck, photo #9 shows the deck planked - as if by magic. On a related note, here is the bunch of sticks that the decking is supposed to come from. Be very careful because as of the inventory list, there are 4 different dimensions of white wood in this bunch. Some obvious, some not. Once I started measuring the sticks I quickly found that the deck sticks which were stated as 1mm x 3mm varied in the range of .65mm x 3.25mm and all ranges in between. Typical but annoying. I'm going to get on a soapbox for a minute. When I was beginning to build I used to take deck sticks or hull sticks and cut them to my preferred length and just drop in a big pile. The idea was when I needed another I just grab one from the pile. Many articles here at MSW claim that's the way to go. BIG problem with that logic. Let's say I lay down one piece (plank) for decking. Now I need another plank to continue the strake, so I grab one from the pile. Given the fact that kit sticks never match up in width, the plank I just grabbed likely doesn't match the width of the plank I just laid. Things can get out of whack in a hurry. These days I tend to work with one stick for as long as I can. Then move to another. So besides the subdeck I am painting the Britannia ornaments. In most cases the pieces have a background and a relief. So I started most pieces by painting the background color (black) on all pieces. Then I am taking my detail brushes and hitting the raised (relief) parts of the piece with gold leaf. Obviously I had to break out my paints, most of which have been sitting on a shelf of my bench for 6-7 years without opening. As you might observe I use Tamiya paints exclusively (no affiliation), mainly because I always liked their jars/tops. Rather than the usual circular cardboard insert in the cap, the Tamiya tops have a shaped plastic insert that IMO does an incredible job of sealing the jars. So far every jar I have opened is unchanged from the first day I opened it 6+ years ago. I'm impressed. Here's a shot of some of the Brit pieces in progress. Will start planking the deck tomorrow. C'ya....

Evenin' - I'm still working on gluing the subdeck which is proving to be time consuming so far. I started at the bow because I knew that was going to be the most trouble. I glued frame #1 when I glued the deck to the false keel so I started with #2. Bending the deck outwards to the edge of the frame was not easy. In fact it might be called a struggle. A little unexpected since the deck is not all that thick, but there is some serious camber in the frames. Gluing and pinning did not hold. With that in mind I would ignore the instructions telling you to nail the deck. Fortunately some clamps were big enough to reach so that's what I used. On frame #2 I tried to glue both sides of the deck at the same time as seen in the first image. This really didn't work very well but I was too far into it to do anything else. On frame #3 I focused on one side. Problem here is given the stress the deck was under, I wanted to wait until the glue thoroughly dried (minimum 8-10 hours). At that rate it might be a week to get everything glued. So my impatience lead me to glue one side of frame #4 as well shown in image below. I suspect after #4 the going should get easier and faster. So there is some time to kill between frames so I started looking for other things to do in the meantime. I pulled out all the Britannia ornaments and decide to paint those. As I said before "mediocre" might be a stretch, but I have no intention of bashing any of it. Bashing is not a goal for this build. I did see that the background of most pieces is painted black and the relief parts are painted gold. There are some pretty fine nooks and crannies. So my challenge for the ornaments will be to do a good job hand painting them. Definitely going to need to pull out some reading glasses for that.🙄 I checked my paint brushes and came across a few that had tiny hairs - didn't even know I had them. They should help with painting the details. It rained here today so I was not able to dump the trash & recycle to look for the missing plans. Hope all this isn't in vain. I can plank & deck with no plans but not sure how much beyond that I could go without them. Talk to ya soon...

Hey everyone. The sub deck is secure on the false keel so I have started to glue the deck to the outer edge of the frames. I will post a report on this tomorrow. Mean time - a quite bizarre thing seems to have happened. The instructions have disappeared.😕 Both the booklet with the images and the booklet with the written instructions. Not in the house, not in the garage (my shop). Maybe the strangest thing that has happened to me in over 20 years in this house. Tomorrow I will dump out the trash and recycle bins to see if there is anything there. Unbelievable!

Get on and do it! I did the first step on attaching the sub deck to the frame. I applied glue down the top edge of the false keel - shown here In between the white glue I added a few drops of CA - to hold the deck until the white glue dries. Then I laid the sub deck. As you can see instead of the stupid nails I just used a few pin vises to hold it down. The trick is you need to get the deck situated in the first frame before anything else. After getting that I just ran my finger down the keel and it all kinda slipped into place. The deck won't just fall into place, but forcing the back end into place puts a natural slope into it an the rear 2/3's of the deck just ended up fitting like a glove. In all this exercise, it's the forward 3 frames that may cause problems. Mainly because they are in the middle of the most outrageous sheer (Thanks Phil). Ensuring that those frames are squared and their top surfaces are fared (a little poetry?) is really crucial. Rather than nails I just used a few pin vises to hold the whole deck down. I imagine the pin vises can be used in the upcoming step of fastening the deck to the outer portions of the frames. So for me the biggest takeaway is to seriously fare the top edge of the frame to match the sheer of the false keel. You will not get good contact with the sub deck otherwise. I might have made too big of a deal from all of this but it is planning and dry runs that makes this step work. If you don't get the deck laid right, you will have multiple problems down the line. I REALLY wanted to start gluing the deck to the frames tonite, but I will give the glue a chance to dry every last drop before proceeding. C'ya

"The curvature lengthwise is called sheer. It is lower midships than at the bow and stern. The transverse curvature (crosswise from port to starboard) is called camber. It is higher on the center line and lower at the hull sides. The resulting shape of the deck is a hyperboloid. " Thanks Phil. I hate it when I don't remember stuff like that. Makes me feel old😒 A lot of times when nails are called for I apply spaced dots of CA with a run of white glue in between. The CA can behave like nails and hold until the white glue dries.

Yves - thanks for looking in. Those penciled lines are to give you a guide on where to apply glue. What the instructions didn't say was you need to pencil those lines on both sides on the sub deck. The lines on the other side can be used as a guide on where to drive nails. Gary - welcome. I bought the kit about 10 years ago. I agree with you that working out from the spine is the way to go. Then I can go one frame at a time front to back to finish the process. Using a syringe with a needle, it shouldn't be to hard to get some glue on the frame surface and then drive a few nails. Welcome to both of you!

I am obviously struggling with the application of the false deck. The keel and the frames produce 2 opposing angles for laying the false deck - both a horizontal and vertical bend. The flat piece used for the deck doesn't want to bend in both directions. Am I making too big a deal out of this? Something simpler? I have made multiple dry fittings - putting a few nails thru the deck into the keel. I then try to bend the deck down to the outer edges of the frames. If the nails don't pop out they at least come loose from the keel. I'm considering soaking the deck for a day and then putting a permanent crease in it from bow to midship down the centerline. That might relieve some of the stress and wouldn't require manhandling the deck quite as much. I must say, I am disappointed in the related logs regarding this situation - both at MSW and elsewhere. All suggest "just glue the deck down and start planking". Well IMO it isn't that easy. I'll try to provide some pix showing what I am experiencing. C'ya

If I understand your description and question - plank from the garboard up. Not down to the garboard. Typically, the laying of the garboard will have a direct effect on how all the upper strakes will lay. There are a few MSW posts on how to lay the garboard. The success of that will have an impact on the rest of any hull planking.

One more observation - after manually fitting the false deck to the forward frames, it appears that there will be a need to "fare" the gap in those frames to match the slope of the false keel so the deck will sit firmly on top. Hope that made sense.

Getting started with the hull. It's the typical false keel with a bunch of frame pieces. Nothing really of note there. I won't bore you with hull pix you've seen many times before. That assembly was uneventful. The next step is going to be fixing a false deck to the top of the frames/keel. It gets kinda interesting now. A side view of the keel shows it slopes upwards from midship to the bow. A view from the bow shows a downward slope (I don't remember the term for this) from the keel outwards to what will be the bulwarks. So the false deck is going to have to bend upwards to the bow and also laterally from the keel center to the outer edge. Hmmm.🤨 I had a similar situation with my Enterprise build. In that case the false deck was even thicker than this kit. It was evil. There was no way to clamp the parts so I ended up literally holding the deck to the frames until the glue dried - about 40 minutes. Even then many frames popped from the deck and had to be re-glued. The instructions say lay some glue on the upper frames and keel, lay the deck down and start nailing the deck to the under supports. First off, the nails are the usual brass pin nails, maybe 1/2" in length, and I seriously doubt they are going to hold anything unless I bang in a few hundred. Not happnin'. Kit nails are useless. Even worse there are notches in the false deck that have to sync up to protrusions in the frame pieces. If I start gluing and nailing and then discover that one of the notches doesn't sync with the frame, what then? It seems like I need a couple of extra hands. It gets worse towards the bow as none of those notches are going to sync until the deck is firmly fitted on the keel. Again, how would adjustments be made when half the deck is already glued down midship? I may be entirely missing something, wouldn't be the first time. My first inclination is to take the false deck and slice it up into smaller sections that could be secured easier. The deck is going to have planks on top of it so none of that would show in the final build. Would appreciate any ideas.

Hello MSW! - I'm starting a new adventure building Cazador. The images show this to be an interesting and attractive build. We shall see. I've always liked lateen sails so this fits nicely. The kit also has some ornaments (although only Britannia) and I have never done any of that. Just to be honest, other than maybe some wood swaps, I have no intention of bashing this build too much - reasons explained below. I originally thought this might be a fictitious ship, just built similar to the Xebec of those times, but it looks like it was a real ship. Designed by Spain to combat the Moorish pirates in the Mediterranean. I have moved to this build after giving up on my previous build. That literally dragged out for years and I had barely got past the hull. This was due mainly to the horrendous instructions/plans (or lack off). I just got so frustrated that I didn't even want to work on it anymore. A lot of lost idle time. I feel like I have lost my edge when it comes to modeling so it is time to move on. I need to get my Mojo back 😏. After perusing thru my kits I decided on this one mainly because the plans appear very well put together. I needed a kit that I could concentrate on planking, decking, rigging etc. without having to muddle thru 5th world instructions. Just get back to basics. After reviewing the plans, I think they are prepared in a format that makes sense to me. There is a booklet that has actual photographs in numbered sections. The instructions are in another booklet - well written in good English. There is a matching instruction section for each image in the other booklet. Very easy to follow. Also included was an inventory of all parts & pieces. Another page showed all the precut plywood sheets and each piece is numbered. No confusion. Pretty hard to mix things up! As far as the parts and materials go, I'm not going to bore you with pix of all that. The sticks and strips are of typical kit quality. I may replace some - maybe. I will say the laser cutting for the precut pieces is excellent!👍 Not a single missed or partial cut in any of the plywood sheets. It has been easy to cut all the parts out of the plywood. Maybe the best I have seen. The Britannia ornaments are nothing to write home about - pretty bland. But since my goal for this build is pretty basic, I will probably go with them. So as I stated, my goal is to get my build skills and confidence back again. Just work with the materials the kit provides. I am amazed how that previous build just totally drained me. Three years wasted. But I am ready to get back in the game again. So hop on board if you are interested. There aren't too many logs of this build to see. C'ya soon

Just be careful. Shellac and Varnish can be mentioned in posts but can also be very generic terms. Many types of shellac, many types of varnish. Whatever you think you want to use, always try it on some scraps of the material you ultimately want to cover. Your decision at that point should be easy.

Good idea doing your garboard first. It's critical to get that one mounted correctly. If you you have too much curve in it every strake above it will also take on that curve. Also to make life easier and your entire bow more symetrical, when you shape a strake for one side be sure to make a duplicate right then and there for the other side. That way you only have to figure out shape one time.

Hey Richard - kind of a down the road question, but did you paint your build or leave most of the wood colors? I'm asking after I stumbled across a section of the plan that showed "bumpers" on the side of the hull. The suggested wood was different than the hull wood. I am finding that the contrast between the two is not particularly appealing. If you did paint most of the build, where did you get your ideas from?

Yeah Richard - I kinda had that idea a little later. No one but you and me will know the difference.

Rats Jonas - I didn't realize there was a hatch in the stern deck. That'll be fun trying to cut out now.

Looking good Stuart! Keep on rocking. I did want to make a comment on what was said a few posts back. You are going to find that in almost every build, the kit supplied ropes and blocks pretty much suck. Next for full disclosure, I have no connection with Syren. That said, their ropes and blocks will take your final build up at least a couple of levels. What I have learned, is that in addition to the cost of the kit, I need to be prepared for at least an extra $200 in kit bashing parts & pieces. Maybe even more if I replace some or all of the wood. One of those gotchas no one made you aware of when you dived in 😉. We all have found out the hard way. But IMO, it was money well spent.

Stuart - you will get varying opinions and experiences here, but at least they are given with good intentions.

Stuart - I didn't mean to bogart your log. There is just so much uncertainty about Niagara as she was built and what happened to her. A lot of opinions floating around. This link was just one of many, but it does show (before he passed) Joel's extensive knowledge and also how much debate there is regarding Niagara to this day. I got really overwhelmed with all the possibilities - this was my first build. I just decided to trust Joel's expertise and we schemed on what a historical Niagara might look like. There are no right or wrong decisions. You can go current with the plans or dig around a bit and come up with your version of historical. Historical was actually easier as there were less deck toys to build. Let us know how things are going....

Good comments Steve! Yup - Joel was the MSW member that helped me thru this build - an amazing man. On so many levels, I miss him to this day. Our consensus was that given the immediacy of the situation, only what had to be built was built. Skylights served no purpose in battle (just more splinters flying around). Same with davits and ships boats. Obviously there was at least one boat on Lawrence or Perry could not have transferred to Niagara. Our other secondary thought was that the boat(s) were built for one battle. If you lost and had to surrender there was no point handing over a perfectly good and repairable vessel. Longevity was not a primary concern hence the use of a lot of green wood for structural parts. This idea has been expressed in several books on the situation. The Brits seemed to have the same mindset with the boats they built. It was winner take all. There would be no second chance. No specs on hammocks. There was no room below deck (the only extra deck) for crew to sleep. We surmised they just slept on deck - again realizing that the mission was going to be short-lived - a week or two at most. Not like some ocean going adventure where they might have to live for months. Joel and I both crafted a binnacle for our builds. Apparently, much of the sailing on the Great Lakes was just sailing a mile or so offshore - within site of land. But there had to be times when a compass was needed. However, where a binnacle would have logically been placed, totally disagrees with the location of the Captains Skylight. Paint? They were basically in BFE. The only paint around might be what some creative mind could come up with using local materials. Fire Engine Red and Frenches Mustard Yellow would have been a stretch. There are some thoughts that black might have been used - just as many that there was no paint at all. Again alluding to the fact that they needed these vessels quickly and only for one fight. Paint ain't gonna help you in battle. Because I wasn't good with a plain wood colored hull, I went with black as that would have been the easiest color to create in the given environment.

You might check my build log (check signature below). I went back and forth on the question of historical or current. I went with historical and was very fortunate to have the input from a very informed MSW member. The guy was like an encyclopedia on anything historically nautical. Sadly, he suddenly passed away a few years ago - a huge loss to our community. Unfortunately, no original plans of Niagara are known to exist. So with Joel's help (many of his comments are in my log) we just did our best to understand the time and the circumstances and what/how they would have built the boat(s). For me, that was as intriguing as building the model. The 2 big things we went with were there was likely very few deck items/structures, and the paint job - if indeed there was one at all - would have been quite different than what the MS kit suggests. Here is one link to a good write up of the overall situation. It's kinda long but it can give you a good overall idea of what transpired. I also have several paperback books that I can recommend ($5-10 on Amazon). I just need to dig them up. One thing I did do and it's worth considering - The limewood included in my kit was awful. It splintered, feathered and frayed constantly. You will be using that for your decking and planking. I ended up replacing all that with boxwood which is a much harder wood. No regrets there other than some additional costs. Let me know if you run into any problems. I'll be glad to try and help.

Niagara is a great kit to build. Instructions are quite good and mostly understandable. The biggest problem I had was whether to go historical or modern. The MS kit is closer to the current vessel. There's several deck toys that most likely were not on the original. The paint probably would have been different also. I really didn't care for the color scheme suggested by MS. I would suggest reading up on the situation at that time in history. The story behind Niagara and her sister ship is quite interesting. I had no idea how much of the war was fought on or around the Great Lakes. Anyways it's an attractive build when completed.

Did the OP ever come across a sander? I have a barely used one I would sell.

Hey Cisco - looks like you are already committed to your process for this build. For future reference, the garboard placement is critical. It is always the first strake I try to lay. Frankly, it doesn't matter much whether it is a wider plank than the rest. The important thought is to get it laid correctly. The upper edge should be perfectly horizontal, meaning the strake above it should need almost no shaping, bending or whatever. Once you get 1-2 strakes laid above your garboard, then figure out your bands. You can do a lot of math to calculate them or just use some proportional dividers to make the process much easier. I use that technique for all planking. This link post 244 will give you a tutorial. If it works for you great. It may seem a little overwhelming at first (and of course it requires another expenditure for the dividers) but it is almost foolproof as you get down to the last 2-3 strakes to be laid.

If that block plane is the little mini one they are great. One my most useful tools.