mikiek

Thank you everyone! Elijah - if you can prime first it will help. Then at least 2 coats of paint. Make VERY sure each coat is dry before going to the next. Potentially a day or two. A lacquer finish will help against chips. Use matte if you don't want it to shine. Darrell - the additional light makes a big difference. It has also made me painfully aware that I still need readers

Thank you Scott. It does however seem to be my weak point - working with the ropes. It has been several months since I began work on those guns. Too many thumbs

Totally forgot about this - the Erie Museum used to sell a set of Niagara plans. I picked up a set early this year. Those have a sail plan page which I imagine is the running rigging and a mast/spar page which shows the standing rigging. Again, when you see them separated it doesn't look near as bad. I tried searching around on their site but couldn't find them, but then I'm a terrible searcher. As someone with an interest in Niagara, I think they are kinda cool just to have. PM me if you can't find them either. As Joel mentions, what we have is the rigging/spar plans for the replica. I've learned they purposely made some things differently due to modern technology and smaller crews. For instance the masts are quite a bit shorter than the original. The shallow water brig design was very tipsy, a crew had to be on their toes and ready at hand on the spars to handle big wind gusts and the taller masts just worsened the issue. With a large crew it was possible, but the small crews that go out on the replica would have a difficult (if not impossible) time trying to handle that. So they shortened the masts.

A mean fighting machine! Looking good! No experience, but I would probably wait on the hammock metalwork. Seems like they will just be in the way - at least until you get the lower mast spars in place. It's also another one of those things that is debatable as to whether the real Niagara had them. Several kits I have use a sort of black nylon netting material for the hammock enclosure. I like that look better than trying to do material at 1:64. Don't forget the capstan poles - they're stashed on the bulwark near the stern. The only thing I noticed is the decking under the capstan. Check your plans. All the effort is starting to pay off sir.

Black is probably more noticeable. My hull is all black and it shows dirt, dust, fingerprints. Was planning to do 1 more paint job on the hull sometime down the road. I've switched to a foam holder which does seem to protect the hull somewhat. All in all, I think dings and nicks are inevitable.

Elijah - Google sanding sticks. You'll find more than you ever imagined. All shapes & sizes.

I would probably stick to sanding. The interior edge looks slightly concave so a block with a convex surface would do well. Long, slow, careful strokes. At the bow and transom - where the curve is sharper - sandpaper on various sized dowels can work. I suspect it's not going to take much effort to remove material, so caution is the word.......

I went back and rechecked my sheets. I believe they are the proper ones but 1 entire sheet - the one that is 8 frames - has no identifiers on the parts. I punched them all out and tried to line them up by width, I think I have them correctly marked now. Not exactly a great start......I feel for you, having to wait for a replacement.

Hey Mike - just started this myself yesterday. I didn't notice the wrong bulkhead sheet - but I wasn't looking for it either. How did you determine? Mine seem to be numbered/lettered properly. Only thing I have noticed is that either the keel or false keel was a little warped. Unfortunately, I did not check before gluing them. It's not terrible, was going to try weighting it down on a glass pane for a while

That's a big milestone! Just make sure you have plenty more paint on hand. It will get beat up as you move on to other tasks. Especially the black. So what's next?

It's been way too long since some meaningful progress. But tonite there is some to pass on. Before that, I was asked about the frapping (love it or hate it) so I will show a few pix on how that was done. So much of this was figured out on that mock up gun port. Quite the extreme in one sense but helpful in others. Regarding gun tackles the plans call for 1/8" blocks and .016 line. Sadly, 0.16 is not to be had - a shame since that would have made this process a lot simpler. So I start out with a 1/8 double and a 1/8 single block, reaved with .012 (yes that's right) line. 3 mm PE hooks are stropped to the blocks. I'm going to figure everyone can get to that point. One note - even though the hooks are stropped I ended up putting a spot of CA at the base to keep the hook from flopping around while trying to hook them to rings. I struggled with the hooks, sometimes it was terribly difficult to get them hooked to the rings as the opening is not very wide. I ended up spreading the opening with some pointed tapered end tweezers by jamming the end into the opening. The further in it goes the wider the tweezers get and the more the hook spreads, Next the loose tackle is hooked in place. I need to get the tackle to the proper final size, so the line is pulled tight and then glued. Not to worry, none of this shows up after the frap. Once the glue dries, the tackle is unhooked (not the easiest thing to do) and then placed on my serving machine. The loose end is trimmed off. Now comes the trick. The .012 line looked awful when wound between the tackles. It was just too thin and I couldn't really make out the windings. So the actual frap is done with .018 rope. It is done using the same concept as zip seizing - the frap and what is being frapped are 2 different pieces of rope. So a piece of .018 is tied with a half hitch to the DOUBLE BLOCK side of the tackle and hit with a spot of CA. Then you just start serving, stopping every 3-4 winds to adjust. All finished. Remove the tackle and trim the end near the double block. Rehook the tackle to the gun. I would leave a bit of weight on the rope after that to stretch and shape the tackle. Glue the loose end of the rope to the deck. Of course the brass will need some paint. I've been using Tamiya Dark Iron rather than blackening. I suspect all the blackening would have come off during this process. I'm also hoping the paint will act like glue to help hold the hooks in place over time Here's where I am at now. My new light finally arrived. What a difference it makes having light coming in from both sides (not shown here). The shadows are virtually gone. The LED fixture stays amazingly cool even right next to my head. Well, 18 more tackles to go - although I haven't given the long guns any attention yet. Maybe a few more for them. G'night all....

The symmetry looks good Scott and I think at the end of the day, that's what is important. Don't know about you, but while I may have started each strake with one of three widths, I'm sure I ended up with ten to twelve varying widths. That transom was a beast wasn't it?

Elijah - E.J. nailed it. I think you are still going to need to be able to roll the hull over to one side or the other once in a while. So fixing the hull to something stationary will limit the mobility. Even when you get to rigging you may need one side up to get to the belaying pins easier. And that cutout in the foam will really do a good job of protecting your copper. Go ahead and build your stand (maybe a good project at your papa's), just don't glue the hull to it yet.

Yes, but I found page 6 not very helpful and as you say there is way too much shown on page 5. I'm sure it would be fine if you have rigged 3-4 builds but for the rookies, well I'll just leave it at that. I'll see if I can copy the rigging page(s) from another set of plans for you. We may want to do it off line to keep MSW off the hook. I did read some of the Syren rigging practicum. It could be useful to you.

Lever's book even shows how it was done back in the day. Using additional poles to get the fore, main and mizzen up and how to keep them in place. The Eagle practicum is another decent source since that ship was very similar to Niagara. Chuck has a practicum for Syren you can download from Model Expo - Chaps 18,19,20 After seeing the plans from several other kits, I have to say the Niagara rigging plan (1 page) is very intimidating because everything is on one page - standing, running and sails. Most other plans show standing on one page and running on another and it looks a heck of a lot easier.

Thank you Darrell - a few of the extracurricular distractions may be about to settle down so I'm hoping for some 'quality' time to finish up these guns. I've found it very frustrating when I just get 30 minutes here or there. The assembly line slows to a crawl. Had a cool experience this weekend - the gentleman that inspired me to try shipbuilding lives in the same senior facility as my dad. When he moved there he donated several builds to the facility for display. Seeing those is what gave me the itch. I took the Niagara hull with me last weekend to show my dad and was also able to show it to this other guy. He seemed impressed. I told him I would carry the torch for a while and also showed him some pics of my 10 year old daughter working on her kit. The next gen.

Interesting idea ca. Some cherry rigging blocks might look pretty good.

I have a diamond tipped reamer set I believe I got from MicroMark. There are 3-4 tips of different sizes, the smallest is fairly fine pointed. I was able to make a starter hole made with that. Hold the tip in place and twist the handle back & forth - just grind out enough material to keep a bit in place. I did not attempt to drill a hole, but start out with a real small micro bit, and get a little larger with successive drillings. I'm guessing a press would be required. It's hard to see (sort of white-ish looking), but there is a starter hole in between the predrilled ones.

Elijah - the rigging of the guns has taken an incredible amount of time. Very slow going for me. Joel is right, there are only 20, but since they are completely exposed on the deck vs. just a barrel sticking out of a gun port, they require a higher level of detail. As has been stated here, Niagara was just a platform for a lot of guns. Built for sailing Lake Erie only, so land was never far away. Neither was the enemy. So large areas for supplies and crew were not needed. You could sail the entire lake in a few days. But you are right, there are a lot of guns per square footage of the deck. I'm still finding it a rather somber experience arming the build. I can't imagine the experience of being on deck with all the guns going off - and a lot of hostile incoming material.

Elijah - you can use foam as a mount while you are working. Some of the hobby sites have some precut for boat hulls but you could easily make one yourself. If you mount to something solid then you lose the ability to roll the hull around. The foam allows you to still do that and it protects the sides very well. I started out with a good (and expensive) clamp style mount, but that is now gathering dust as I have found the foam to work better for me.

Scott - castyouranchor.com had the figures. I've seen a lot of places that have them but this was the only one I found that claimed to be 1:64. I don't have plans to mount them permanently, but I do like them for photos. It really helps to give me some perspective. For instance, I never really realized the bulwarks were so tall - they come up to around your chin.

Did I stump the band? I was mostly just thinking out loud as I don't plan on having them (other than the eyebolt in the deck). For a build it probably doesn't make much sense to have extra tackles hanging around.

I picked up a couple of scale figurines that I would like to use in photos of my Niagara build. They're pewter so they need some paint. Can anyone point me to some info regarding U.S. naval uniforms preferably circa 1812? As a matter of fact just uniforms in general might be interesting. Thanks.....

Question regarding the gun outhaul tackles. I've read that these were not usually installed during normal operation. Makes perfect sense - a real safety hazard. In theory they would be needed only before loading the first round and there was usually no rush in getting that load ready. There have also been some suggestions that there may not have been individual tackles for each gun. Possibly they were shared by neighboring gun crews. So my question is if the tackle is not hooked up where would it be? Stowed below? Draped over the gun? Elsewhere?

Thank you Don. It may be a while. I used up my stash of parts & pieces for the port battery. It is now back to the grindstone to make enough for starboard.