dgbot

Ulises, take a look at my Royal William build log. Fabricating a part like that is not difficult, you just need to think outside the box! Personally I wouldn't bother with aluminum, I would make a frame out of plastic and veneer over it. 

Hello Kees
 
she is not not the sleekest of yachts (a bit on the beamy side). But never the less she has curves in all the right places. 

Waterway worries
 
Panama Canal expansion brings about new challenges for pilots, tug operators
- See more at: http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=2fb0c10a-05e0-48e0-9597-8cb124a65d8f#sthash.tZLKjblD.dpuf
By Juan Zamorano and Peter Orsi
Associated Press
ON LAKE MIRAFLORES, Panama — Waiting to guide a cargo carrier toward the Panama Canal's southern locks, Benjamin Russo gazed from his tugboat at another vessel headed north toward the Caribbean Sea.
At 650 feet long and loaded with automobiles, it was a massive ship. Yet, it pales in comparison to the so-called New Panamax behemoths, up to 1,200 feet in length, which within days will begin transiting the waterway. 
I remember watching a special about Pilots being helicoptered to large freighters near the mouth of the Columbia River and this sounds ust as dangerous.
David B
 
 

Waterway worries
 
Panama Canal expansion brings about new challenges for pilots, tug operators
- See more at: http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=2fb0c10a-05e0-48e0-9597-8cb124a65d8f#sthash.tZLKjblD.dpuf
By Juan Zamorano and Peter Orsi
Associated Press
ON LAKE MIRAFLORES, Panama — Waiting to guide a cargo carrier toward the Panama Canal's southern locks, Benjamin Russo gazed from his tugboat at another vessel headed north toward the Caribbean Sea.
At 650 feet long and loaded with automobiles, it was a massive ship. Yet, it pales in comparison to the so-called New Panamax behemoths, up to 1,200 feet in length, which within days will begin transiting the waterway. 
I remember watching a special about Pilots being helicoptered to large freighters near the mouth of the Columbia River and this sounds ust as dangerous.
David B
 
 

Waterway worries
 
Panama Canal expansion brings about new challenges for pilots, tug operators
- See more at: http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=2fb0c10a-05e0-48e0-9597-8cb124a65d8f#sthash.tZLKjblD.dpuf
By Juan Zamorano and Peter Orsi
Associated Press
ON LAKE MIRAFLORES, Panama — Waiting to guide a cargo carrier toward the Panama Canal's southern locks, Benjamin Russo gazed from his tugboat at another vessel headed north toward the Caribbean Sea.
At 650 feet long and loaded with automobiles, it was a massive ship. Yet, it pales in comparison to the so-called New Panamax behemoths, up to 1,200 feet in length, which within days will begin transiting the waterway. 
I remember watching a special about Pilots being helicoptered to large freighters near the mouth of the Columbia River and this sounds ust as dangerous.
David B
 
 

Thanks Popeye, I am learning faster than I thought I would.
 
Lawrence, I’m not ready to place the copper vents yet but here’s how the rest of it looks.
 
 I used styrene again for the main deckhouse.  Bending the curved ends was the hardest part.  I had to go slow with very little heat, about body temp.  In the first two photos it is the lighting that makes it look yellow. The doors will be open so I put the barrier down the middle so you can’t see through.  Then the handrails.  There’s a spot of epoxy on the inside where each wire penetrates the wall.   
 
Then I went back to soldered brass for the stack.  I once again discovered you can’t always trust the drawings.  The drawing shows the whistle at the top of the stack where the pictures show it just below the band holding the support wires.
 
I put all the parts in place and showed it to the admiral.  She who only like sails.  She admitted that it was beginning to look like a nice boat, and it would be OK if I built non sail boats once in a while.  Wow sometimes I do win.
 
Bob
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

I am glad that you are proceeding well Elijah.  One of the things that Bob talks about in his talks about spiling and planking is use the wood that will work the best.  This makes the job easier.  Thankfully you have a hull that is not too extreme like an apple bow or exteme drag.
David B

I am glad that you are proceeding well Elijah.  One of the things that Bob talks about in his talks about spiling and planking is use the wood that will work the best.  This makes the job easier.  Thankfully you have a hull that is not too extreme like an apple bow or exteme drag.
David B

Now on to the margin plank.
 
I started with making a template out of paper by tracing the hull.
 

 
Onto which i drew the different parts for the margin planks.
 

 
I cut those out using caution.
 

 
And glued them on a piece of Cherry wood using a glue stick (Pritt).
 

 
After sawing them out, i needed a sander to get them to close to the line. My scroll saw skills are not so good 
 


 
The delicate parts i did with file.
 

 
The result before placing on the hull.
 

 
And finally glueing it in place.
 

 

Thanks for the praise Patrick but helping people is part of my beliefs and I really enjoy doing it. 
 
Weather has been rather warm the last week or so with a tropical storm thrown in.  Temps are now near 95 F or 35 C, in the shade    You can imagine how hot my shipyard, aka garage, is.   I love the heat but sitting there at the bench dripping in sweat is not particularly enjoyable.  However, even with all that I did manage to do a little more on the bow lion carving.
 
That basswood is really giving me a fit.  I don't like working with it and am almost to the point to start with the boxwood.  But I'll continue stumbling along with it for the simple reason to see how it's going to look on the ship.  
 
 As noted in my previous post I had to remove some wood from the sides of the cut-water, which necessitated closing the large groove in the underside of the lion.  Next was to make a chisel to carve the new groove.  I used a #17 Excel chisel and ground the sides down till I had a 3.5 mm chisel.  This had to be sharpened and honed on 1000 grit and 3000 grit stones.
 
Re-cutting the groove was easy and quick and I could now concentrate on shaping the lion.  I removed quite a bit of wood from the sides making it much leaner.  I even started to shape the muscles in the lion's legs, which are beginning to look a little better.  Next I moved up and started work on the head, much more difficult with this crappy wood and will most likely have to use some wood filler.
 
Well, that's about as far as I got yesterday when I threw in the towel and called it quits.  Showered and changed into some dry comfy duds, just a pair of shorts.  Had a cup of Rooibos tea and two gingersnap cookies, yummo
 
Here are a few pics of my efforts.
 

This shows my narrower chisel I made from a #17 Excel blade.  Held between a pair of Vicegrips and slowly grinding the sides down with intermediate dunking it it cold water to prevent loosing the temper.  Here it's not yet sharpened.
 

This shown the new 4 mm groove in the underside of the lion.  Everything is still in a rough state.
 

A 3/4 side view of the lion.
 

This shows the bow lion temporarily stuck on the cut water.
 
Cheers,    

I am glad that you are proceeding well Elijah.  One of the things that Bob talks about in his talks about spiling and planking is use the wood that will work the best.  This makes the job easier.  Thankfully you have a hull that is not too extreme like an apple bow or exteme drag.
David B

This part that I'm working on now is probably one of the most relaxing parts I've done.  I think I've chilled out on things.  
 
The drops... they not only have their shape when viewed from the side, but also have to sit flush to the hull and also have to be rounded to match the gallery.  Then there's the outside shape from top to bottom which I can only describe as a rounded bevel.  Thick at the top, thin at the bottom.
 
Here's some pics of the work in progress.  I'm making both at the same time to shoot for uniformity  I started with blanks cut to the shape when viewed from the side. I then set up the scroll saw with sanding blades instead of cutting blades and did the fit to the hull.   I'm currently doing the shape from side to side to match the gallery.
 
Here's pictures of the process (not complete as I forgot to fire up the camera in between tossing some in the scrap box and starting over.  
 
First.. rear view to show the fit to the hull.

 
Side view to show the shape and fit to the gallery.

 
Lastly, the rounding to match the gallery.   Being cheap frugal, I have some 120 grit Olsen Sanding Blades that I've turned around and stuck a strip of 100 grit stickyback to.  Works like a charm.

 
More when I get the final shape done and after finessing the final fit.

Chuck,
 
I'd say play to your strengths.  You design beautiful kits with a history. Instructions that are second to none. There's options on purchasing (that's a big plus) such that if the buyer wants better wood, they can get what they need from you and "good wood" from elsewhere.  This saves the buyer some cash on the kit.  Options on the fittings.   
 
You're already basically allowing your customers to "roll their own prices".  You have range of kits in work or available.  I take it that Winchelsea is next?
 
From what I see, you're doing right by your customers.

Today I had to find something to amuse myself as watching varnish dry isn't a very stimuating pass time (it has dried finally after 24 hours). 
 
I thought I would have a go at making the propeller. I have not made one before and the fall back option was going to be to buy one. I don't however like buying fittings as it always feels like cheating.
 
This is what I did.
 
Firstly to make the blades I cut 3 identical strips of brass .040 inch thick. The 3 strips were fastened together using double sided tape as I intended cutting out all 3 blades at the same time. A paper template was fastened to the brass strips again using double sided tape . Confidence / experiences was low so I marked out 6 blades. The pin in one of the photo's gives an idea of scale.
 


 
I din't need the reserve set of 3 blades as the first lot turned out ok. The small peg at the bottom of each blade was to locate / fasten them in the hub.
 

 
The hub was turned on the lathe and 3 equi-spaced holes were drilled around the circumference to take the pegs on the blade. Each blade was given a slight curvature by bending it around a bar - using the vice to apply the pressure. The whole lot was then assembled and soldered together.
 


 
 
 
 
 
 

Amitious is not the phrase I am thinking of at the moment. Nils.  In the future I would like to try my hand at a model of the USS United States at my normal scale.  And I am saving everything you are doing.  I wil shamlessly use your methods to build it.  Your log should be a book on how to build a 20c ship.  I merely just save it and drool every now and then.  
David B

I am sorry to see this happen Pat.  Thankfully you were able to repair the damge and at the same time not go totally mad with grief.  I have felt that way many times over the years.
David B

We have all been there at least once or twice over the years.
David B

As a comparison to the work boats depicted above, the photo below is of the preserved "snagger" 'Industry' on the Murray Rive in South Australia.  The photo was taken at Renmark some ten years ago.  'Industry' was built in 1910 and, like virtually all traditional Murray River boats, is a side wheeler.
 
John
 

 

Hello everybody,
 
At this moment I have done a lot of work for this model allready. Lots of work will not be vissible when she is ready but is inevitable to get a realistic model. But how good is the feeling when you have (after all the work) a fysical hull in your hands wich look svery good. On the pictures you see the wooden model of the hull. They call this the plug and I will use this in the future to make a polyester mould arround it so I can make multiple hulls out of it. I do this because I want to make two of the same models and maybe I can sell some hull later to other modelbuilders.
The pictures
 

The templates are ready to trace them on the wood

 
The wood (triplex 3,5mm)
 
All templates traces on the triplex
 

The gluing of the longitudinal cross-sections. I pay attention that they are on the correct line and place according the drawings.

 
And here all the sections together and the top-part glued in places

 
And then with the help of several powertools and a lot of sanding by hand sanding the shape of the hull. I have to do this very carefull so I wont sand to much. Most of the finishing I do by hand because you have more feeling and it gives a better result.

(Okay I admit. The sander was not even turned on. My wife made an ACTION-picture. But you can see I lost weigt tough )
 

And then after a lot of sanding and filling (lots of times) you see the result. Its nice and smooth and ready for further finishing.






Thank you for watching, like-ing and reply-ing. The build is on and more updates will follow soon!
 
Kind regards, Kees

Soldiers ready to march on their places
 

 
Final painting and fine-tuning done.
 
Rounded shackle have got second white acrylic layer ( white acrylic is semi-transparent, and second painting was necessary).
 
After that, all of dead eyes have got thin layer of acrylic mat varnish ( two reasons: I use feature of acrylic to plasticize, for: 1. getting stronger connection between shackle and wood; 2. to use feature of acrylic to penetrate into wood and to make it harder. I wrote earlier that I make some kind of mistake choosing type of wood for laser cutting, and it really need to be a bit stronger.)
At final, every hole in dead eyes was "re-drilled" with sharpen top of toothpick. Also I wrote earlier, laser drilled holes were not pierced through, and I had to correct all holes. Now, after painting and varnishing, I had to remove excess of paint and varnish from every hole from both sides. If I do not, rope can not pass through, and it can be huge problem when rigging time comes.  

My intention was not to be 'huffy', it was to point out the exact same thing you did about the vegetable farming.  You can't have everything, you need to consider all the factors going into the product, and that it's kind of unreasonable to say "I want this awesome thing made out of the best possible components which are all expensive, but I want it to cost a dollar".
 
Sure, we all might *want* it, but that doesn't mean that it's reasonable to ask for it.
 
I don't need to really understand the industry to go to Crown and look at the cost of a wood package, then see what a set of plans costs somewhere, what do various bits of fittings, ropes, etc. cost, and add it all up to get at least a vague idea of the materials costs that would go into a given project, then consider that any business has development costs (in time and materials both), and that they need to make a profit of some kind.
 
Hopefully nobody takes my earlier post (or this one) personally, as neither was intended that way at all.

I feel compelled to make a comment from the manufacturer's side. Our CSS Alabama kit took about 1,400 hours to develop. That's a BIG chunk of payroll money. Even a "simple" kit like our Revenue Cutter is hundreds of hours of development.
 
As to deciding which ships to model, I made a survey back in April of 2014 that reached 3,000 people, and I got back 60 or 70 responses. That is BlueJacket's general guide for kit development for the next several years to come.
 
Without being too commercial, we already offer some kits that were suggested in this thread. We also have a toll-free help line for our kits. We take our reputation very seriously.

People aren't being unreasonable, they're doing exactly what they were asked to do by the topic, sharing what they'd like to see. Most of us don't know anything about the business side of kit development (which is why I tried to ask about it earlier), so how do you expect respondents to magically produce only practical answers?
 
Look, no one understands businesses they aren't engaged in. Among other things, I'm a vegetable farmer, and farmers market customers always want their produce organic, perfect, and cheap. Well, you can't have all three. Organic and perfect, it won't be cheap. Organic and cheap, it's going to have bug damage. Perfect and cheap, it ain't going to be chemical-free. But people who have never grown a vegetable in their life, or even people who have a home garden, have no mental structure for evaluating the actual business of vegetable production.
 
So there's no need to get huffy about modellers saying what they'd "like" to see, especially when that's what was asked for. If we can get a nice explanation from the developers of what actually goes into the business model of kit development, maybe then we can give more "realistic" answers. Until then, just take the feedback here at face value as a narrow sampling of a limited community of dedicated modellers and get what value you can from it.

Thanks, everyone!
 
Brian:  The painting is a .jpg that I reduced to the proper size, then printed out.  I glued it to a piece of 1/64" thick plywood, cut out 4 pieces of wood for the frame, then glued them around the painting.  Trim the plywood flush and paint with gold paint and you're done.  It was kind of fun.  There is a portrait of Capt. William Kidd, the "pirate", hanging on the opposite wall of the great cabin.

Amitious is not the phrase I am thinking of at the moment. Nils.  In the future I would like to try my hand at a model of the USS United States at my normal scale.  And I am saving everything you are doing.  I wil shamlessly use your methods to build it.  Your log should be a book on how to build a 20c ship.  I merely just save it and drool every now and then.  
David B