Bob Fraser

I feel your pain. I've an AL Endeavour on the shelf with about half the fittings missing that they wouldn't replace. It'll end up as a lower mast only model.
Good catch withthe balsa , it'll give the gun stubs something solid to glue to, not much chance of them coming away.

Back at it a little today. Had to step away a few days because of busy schedule. Nice way to relax and spend part of Independence Day. Working today on life boats and davits. Weathered the davits, life boats and top of deck house with some black and white wash. Instructions simply had the 3 pair of oars glued in. I added tan thread as tie downs for a little more realism. Instructions showed rope (tan thread) attached at ends of life boats and then running to davits. However there was no place on the life boat ends to connect a pulley so I fabricated a set up using left over parts from previous builds. 

It’s been a slow month or two, the weather has just been so nice it’s hard to justify staying in my basement (although the temperature is spot on down there) but this past weekend I made a little more progress. 
 
the hull is completely planked (pictures will come), I am still working on the second level deck, that fancy angled planking really takes forever to do properly. 
 
on my previous build I made the mistake of waiting until the build was complete before I made the stand, this time I am making the stand early on. 
 
Since the hull is planked with walnut and it has various walnut pieces, I decided to make the stand out of walnut as well. I cut up a slab and essentially made a 2x4, cut it in half and then “unfolded” the two pieces so the grain will make a mirror image on the base. 
 
the overall length of the base will be ~13.5 inches, 2/3 of the overall length of the hull

Transom cast metal part has come up rather well.

Working on other bits. I decided to replace the cannon with one from Chuck. Soldered in the trunnion and then blackened it. However instead of black, I've used a dark brown patina to give it the look of bronze.
 
  
 
 

There we go. Some decent Balsa wood blocks. It's not right, when you buy a kit you shouldn't have to blindly make peices. It should come with them.

Thanks Halfdan.  The Captain has now been joined by a very stern Mate!
Thanks to all for the likes.
I did these, one side only, before the 4 week illness 🤢 break. 
Distances between were measured as per the large plan page as advised (thanks @John Gummersall)
Measured the height with a micrometer - great - cut one out to test fit.
Fitted - then realised these are angled 🤬 Each one differnt height.

Then the Mate inspected the sternmost post. His comment was "a bit of a tight squeeze there!"

 
He also inspected the stairwell fence for height.

 
said it was "fair enough"
Looking at sorting an easier way of putting a slit into the beams to sit the brass etch into.
May be a while before another update, decorating the son's bedroom.
Cheers,
Bob

Hi everyone,
 
Here is my slow-time build log of the Dallas Cutter. The pictures are a bit rough and ready and were taken originally as a memory jogger for myself...little did I know.... 😉
 
The Dallas was started 25 years ago and I got as far as finishing the hull before the project was put into cold storage.
 
Here is the front cover of the box which contained all the parts, 3x very good layout drawing sheets and a (sometimes confusing) 15 page Instruction Booklet

 
25 yrs ago the hull starts to get the planking fitted.

 
Hull planking finished.

 
Decking started.

 
Hull and decking finished, mostly.

 
June/July 2020. Deck fittings etc installed. Some parts highlighted with 'Canadian Cedar' Danish Oil.

 
Railings being installed.
Note: new £15 battery powered Banggood 'Dremel' bottom right. It works OK and battery lasts a reasonable time. However the supplied brass collets don't have their holes drilled in the centre of the collet so drills cut slightly large (and vibrate). I also have an actual battery powered Dremel + extension cable, but it is a bit heavy handed for the finer work.

 
Almost ready for masts and rigging.

 
Dummy deck idea, to facilitate the assembly of mast and rigging away from the 'real' ship to prevent damage to deck fittings. I'm unsure whether I'll actually use this dummy deck...might just fit straight onto real ship....pondering.

 
OK, that's it for now. Any advice/comments gladly received.
 
All the best,
 
Richard

Go careful, you can quickly take too much off with it.
Use a piece of string, or a 0.5mm length of stripwood to check for lumps or gaps as you're going.
This is where, many years ago, I trashed a model 🥵 and didn't really touch another until now.
Is this a double planked hull?

Thanks Halfdan.  The Captain has now been joined by a very stern Mate!
Thanks to all for the likes.
I did these, one side only, before the 4 week illness 🤢 break. 
Distances between were measured as per the large plan page as advised (thanks @John Gummersall)
Measured the height with a micrometer - great - cut one out to test fit.
Fitted - then realised these are angled 🤬 Each one differnt height.

Then the Mate inspected the sternmost post. His comment was "a bit of a tight squeeze there!"

 
He also inspected the stairwell fence for height.

 
said it was "fair enough"
Looking at sorting an easier way of putting a slit into the beams to sit the brass etch into.
May be a while before another update, decorating the son's bedroom.
Cheers,
Bob

Hi Wayne.
Welcome.
Have a look here, there's a lot of pinned info that will help you.   card-and-paper-models
Cheers,
Bob

Hi Wayne.
Welcome.
Have a look here, there's a lot of pinned info that will help you.   card-and-paper-models
Cheers,
Bob

Hope this will work, this is a time lapse build of the metal earths USS Arizona.
Small parts and tricky but I got the last parts together last night at 2am. 
Here's a penny in front of the finished model.


USS Arizona timelapse.mp4

First Hull Planking:
 
Finished the first hull planking but haven't finished with sanding or doing some of the filling I'm going to have to do. This was pretty challenging and I've been steadily doing 2-4 planks a day, alternating sides, doing a plank and then doing the corresponding plank on the other side. Fist thing that stood out to me was starting at the top and working down seemed really awkward, the other ship I build started the planking at the bottom and worked up which made more sense to me. I ended up with some pretty unusual shapes near the keel and had to force some of the planks into unnatural positions. I've seen where some people do the second planing working from both the top and bottom and meeting in the middle and I think that's what I'll probably do but I'm going to be going though a lot more information before I start so I could change my mind. I understand why you have to start at the top to make the flow of the planks match the wales but that seems to make the bottom pretty problematic, it certainly did on my first planking.
 
The bow on this ship also seems like a challenge as as the planks go around the curve they naturally tend to go up since the top of the plank has a slightly longer path than the bottom. I also felt that the lime strips used for the first planking were very "splintery" and largish splinters would often try to come up when bending even after an extended soaking and pre-bending to get them flexible. The bow is where I'm going to have to do more sanding and filling to get everything ready for the second planking.
 
My goal was to get more experience and to have a good smooth surface for the second planking and I think once I fill a couple of spots and finish sanding I'll have that.  I'm going to have to completely rethink the pattern of the planks, especially near the bow. One thing I have decided is that if I do another bulkhead planking, and I hope I get that chance, that I'm going to get some hull clamps, I've seen several different types and there has to be a better way than the tacks and tape. The tacks help keep pieces you're gluing from moving side to side but don't stop the plank from having one edge twist up. I'm pretty sure some of my issues were inexperience and trying to force the wood to do something it didn't really want to do but I think sometimes you're just going to have to do that.
 
I'm pretty  cautious about the second planking after reading the other build logs and seeing some of the issues others have had with it. Since I hope to stain and varnish the entire hull I really need to have a good clean surface when I'm done. I've ordered some medium drying CA glue in hopes that I can hand form and fit each piece first and then CA glue it into place, wood glue seems like it will take too long to dry but the CA glue requires that everything go in place right the first time. The wood in my kit for the second planking is Tanganyca, same as the decking, and I'm not sure how it's going to take some of the extreme curves required near the bow. I've been reading the challenges John Maguire had in his build and hoping to learn from what he did to get the wood flexible enough to go where I need without coming apart. So far planking the hull has been the least enjoyable part for me, mostly due to how concerned I am that I'm getting it right, sometimes it seems like you don't realize that things are going in a direction where you're going to have a problem further down the line and honestly I'll be glad when the second planking is done to satisfaction, I'll feel like I've passed a milestone. It seems like planking the hull is the place where my inexperience is hitting me the most but I'll get through it and move on.
 
 

Go careful, you can quickly take too much off with it.
Use a piece of string, or a 0.5mm length of stripwood to check for lumps or gaps as you're going.
This is where, many years ago, I trashed a model 🥵 and didn't really touch another until now.
Is this a double planked hull?

Hi, The Next task was to plank the waist deck. The planks supplied were 3x.5mm dark walnut, the wood was ok but I really don’t like the colour. I don’t understand any kit manufacturer thinking that this colour would be ok for decking as it looks so obviously wrong. I was stuck with it as the shops can’t supply an alternative at the moment.. I laid these planks, I didn’t darken the edge as pencil wouldn’t show up against that dark colour, I sealed, sanded and varnished with a satin poly.
 
I then started on the cabins. The instructions would have you put in place the upper decks first but this would make would make the placing and finishing off the deck planking quite difficult.
 
The cabins are made up from ply and were supposed to be covered with the 3x.5 strips. Rather than do this and then try and get a smooth finish for painting I decided to face them with very thin styrene sheet and then trim them to shape, it worked well. The doors and vent covers were also made from styrene, they painted up well, the windows, vents axes and rails were the added.
 
Ken
 
 

Ken

Hi.
Don't know if Anna is able to reply.
Part 26 is a length of walnut, 500mm long and 4mm x 5mm. You have to cut this to length yourself, and shape it to fit as in pic 9 where it meets part 25, and pic 10 where it meets the end of the flat bottom.
Before cutting and fitting ensure part 25 sits flush to the hull, as it hasn't fitted too well on my build.
Your best idea would be to start a build log of your model in the 1850 - 1900 area, (check out how to create a build log name), and use the same tags as this log so that other builders of this model who are currently active can follow along and give you help and advice.
Bob

Planking the jig:
 
This process went much smoother than I had anticipated and reassured me that modifications I made to the jig didn’t hurt and may have even helped set the stage for pain-free planking. If your jig matches the plans, your planking should go on without a hitch. I probably could have done a more precise job of beveling each plank to create nice tight joints up and down the hull but I had intended to paint the model from the start so a little filler here and there wasn’t the end of the world. The biggest area of concern for me was getting the planks to transition properly into stem and stern posts . This is something I’ve noticed about several builds I’ve seen of this boat on the internet. The planks appear to rest on top of the stem and stern posts creating a ledge rather than merging into them. With that in mind, I made sure to overkill the depth these rabbets while building up the laminated stem/stern posts and still allowing enough gluing surface to complete the laminations. As it turns out, my version of overkill still wasn’t enough! I needed to thin the planks quite a bit to get a somewhat smooth transition. It wasn’t the sharp/clean result I had envisioned but it wasn’t horrible either. Live, learn, move forward.
 

 
Starting the planking process with a little help from my friends at the Albany Distilling Company. 
 

 
So far, so good.
 

 
Mission accomplished.
 
Interior frames:
 
So my completed hull came off the planking jig as advertised with surprisingly little glue seepage inside. Joy to the world! On to the frames. These are made by laminating 2 thin strips together and conforming the lamination to the insides of the hull at regular intervals. The instructions recommend soaking the strips in water first for ease of bending but I used heat instead which did the trick nicely and saved me from having to sand a lot of unsightly “fuzz”.  
 
Bring on the first major mistake: 
 
For reasons I can’t really explain given how carefully I had measured things to that point, I pretty much eyeballed the placement of the frames as if I’d been building these things for years. I hadn’t and the results made that clear. Inaccurate frame placement isn't apparent at first, but trust me, it makes itself known later. Amazingly enough, the plans are far more accurate than my eyes and the issues this would cause turned up after the majority of the ceiling planks were glued in and tearing everything out just wasn’t in the cards. For 99 out of 100 people who might actually see this boat in person, the great frame disaster would hardly be noticeable. For me, however, it was very close to the moment I introduced the project to the wood stove. Instead, I put the kit aside for several weeks and went about formulating a plan to salvage things as best I could. While taking some time to reread the Ronnberg book I was heartened to discover that Delano himself had laid the frames for the 7 half-sized Lagoda boats for the New Bedford Whaling Museum inconsistently, even going as far as to have different numbers of frames from one boat to the next. If a guy who built the real thing for 50 years wasn’t fretting over frame consistency, I certainly had no business doing so. Vindicated! Feeling slightly less stupid (just slightly) for not taking simple/accurate measurements, I moved on to another issue with this kit I felt was worth fixing. If you look at builds of this kit you’ll notice that there are gaps along the insides of the frames and the planked hull. This is caused by both the battens between several of the planks and the overlap of planks in areas where there aren’t any battens. On the real boats, the frames were cut to conform to all the intricacies of the inner hull so those gaps are neatly filled. Given that I intended to paint the frames where they were visible above the ceiling planks as well as in the bow and stern, I decided to take the time to close these gaps with wood filler. If you’re planning a natural finish, this technique would probably be too noticeable to get away with. It’s a small detail in the grand scheme of things but I thought it was worth doing, especially at this scale. With the frames installed it was time to move on to thwart risers and ceiling planks.
 

 
Measure frame placements carefully. I didn't and lived to regret it. The gaps that I mentioned between the inside of the hull planking and frames are clearly visible here. I closed these with wood filler where they would be visible.  

Before you plank, check the glue you'll be using to the dummy barrels to the polystyrene. Some glues just melt it.
It may be better to replace with balsa.
Fairing the bulkheads make all the difference with planking!

Hi Everyone. got the positions of supports sorted. but after putting them in a lot of the paint came off? "My fault" so I have done a new set, this time I have sprayed them with primer before the final coat. due to my lack of experience I am just trying to follow the instructions, they don't say to put the loops on that a lot of you have done, and a good job too I might add, very realistic! I will be satisfied with something like a decent model for my first attempt😊. Who knows I might build another from scratch one day and get things right🤯. The first pic is of the 1-1 picture that came with the kit, this is where I measured the starting position of the supports. Just hope they go in ok this time. enjoy whatever your doing. Martin.

So I've decided number 36 sucks. I have temporally made them out of polystyrene and screwed the decks down. The holes won't matter because I haven't planked the decks yet.  Oh dear. Looks like the next step is to plank the hull. Wish me luck

Still some details to add, but the rigging is done (still need to do something with the main sheets, still a little slack, but I'll do that after I glue on all the dead eye/lanyard castings.

Continued some work on both ends of the ship today. On the back end I added the black rope rail around the top of the deck house. On the bow I added anchor supports, rail poles with rope to be added later, and the red and green lights on the side. I have continued to refer to the older assembly instructions provided by Arctic37. So much better than what Ravell now includes with the kit. Had an oh *^#% moment today.  As some know Ravell now includes decals for the name and decorative scroll work on the bow. I definitely don’t like it as much as the molded form on other ships like the Constitution. On the Constitution I carefully painted the raised design and name with a fine point brush. On the Cutty Sark it is just a peel and stick decal that looks like a peel and stick decal. Since that is what was provided That is what I applied. Well, somehow today moving the ship around and leaning it over to touch up paint I accidentally damaged the decal.  So I just sanded it off and will either try to hand paint something in that area or just leave it black. I know I can find new decals on eBay but don’t know if I really want to put decals back on it. 

The instruction call for all the lower top sail braces before moving on to the crojack and main braces, I opted to complete all the mizzenmast braces before the mainmast braces on these steps, because all the mizzenmast lines would be harder to reach after the main lower top sail braces.

Thank you, shipman. That is high praise indeed, but there are many many superior builds out there which simply haven't been posted online yet . Hopefully others can learn to love the olde Airfix kit, learn from my mistakes and see what is possible from this blog.
 
Hackney's manual breaks it all down so it is easy for a novice like me to build this ship. Also the fantastic support and advice from MSW members like you!