tkay11

That's really nice of you, Bob! I've often read your comments with interest -- they always have a good dash of humour mixed in with the wisdom. I loved your Dory, but your note to me made me aware of your Spray which is really beautiful. I have a strong feeling that my next project will be along the lines of your Spray. I have the book by Ewart Freeston on the Construction of Model Open Boats, which I bought when I was attempting my build of a ship's boat, and that made me think more of this type of boat. It's certainly a great way to get into scratch building and the models won't take up a lot of space. I'll now be following your Malabar closely. My thought about my log is exactly to help others like myself who come across the mysteries of how to approach an aspect of a build for the first time. For the more experienced it's all old hat and for many the techniques obvious, but when I come across a log that explains in detail how the problem was approached, what tools were used, how they were used, and how things go wrong I learn a huge amount. So I hope to give something back with each faltering step of my own! Tony Thanks again Tony

Very nice discussion! Good tips for me as I learn to use my own Proxxon FET! I hadn't thought about wood dust collecting in the cut. Many thanks to you all! Tony

The zero clearance insert for my Proxxon FET saw is 2.54mm thick, or 0.1". You might make a reasonable one by gluing together two sheets of plywood, one 0.8mm thick, the other 1.6mm. The remaining 0.1mm could be made up of a sheet of paper in between if you find the glue doesn't do that. At least that's what I am just about to try. If it doesn't work I'll let you know! Tony

Ha! I admire your thinking re the Shapeways cannon -- but they're still around 25mm (same size as the kit cannon) and look expensive if you have them done in brass. 3D printing is certainly a very interesting option, though. It all depends on your approach to the kit. I agree that if you're after something of beauty then it's hard to beat the brass cannon you can buy. I can't think, though, that trying to file off a mm or so from the kit's cannon would do any good. Where would you file from? From either end you'd be filing away essential pieces of the cannon. That and the fact that all the dimensions are slightly larger. I did spend some time filing the canon, but only to get rid of the irregularities from the moulding. I'm still sticking with mine. I had a look at changing the carriages, and as I'd have to add only 1.5mm to the carriages to match the size of the cannon I decided I'd leave them as they are. They don't look nearly as well as Dirk's, but then I'm focusing more on learning basic skills at the moment. If I bought cannon that are beautiful, they would not match the rest of the build which is clearly very basic. Your ability is better than mine in that regard. It might be worth your while to turn your own cannon in wood. One of the very best resources for people who don't have much in the way of machine tools (e.g. myself) is Hubert Sicard's (he uses the name 'Bosco' on this forum) site called 'Ship Modeling for Dummies'. This has excellent videos on making jigs for parts as well as your own tools from very simple material. One of these is a lathe made from a standard household electric drill. He shows how you can turn very nice cannon from wood using old blades which you grind out from a pattern. The site is both in English and French. You have to pay 45 Canadian dollars for a lifetime subscription, but it is possibly one of the best value spends I have made. Many on this forum agree. It has hundreds of great tips, many of them illustrated by silent videos which you can download and keep. I was revisiting his site yesterday to remind myself how he makes his own blocks. Even if you don't follow everything he suggests, his imagination is so wonderful you are bound to have great pleasure in seeing his ideas. In order to fashion your own cannon you need to trace a drawing. I have used both Photoshop and TurboCAD to resize drawings from PDF files. It really is very easy to do. I wasn't clear from your note whether you already are experienced in working in Photoshop or CAD, but if you don't have Photoshop, Adobe are now distributing all the CS2 suite (which includes Photoshop) totally free. You can find it at http://www.adobe.com/downloads/cs2_downloads/ where you will see the varieties available for PC and Mac. Once you have fashioned one cannon, you can then make a mould and make as many as you like. I noticed that several people on this site have done that. It's something recommended by quite a few books. What I did for the barrels was to put epoxy filler in the muzzles then drilled that out with a 1mm drill and painted them black. You'll already have seen that the kit cannon muzzles are not centred properly, so the epoxy also had a use in establishing the centre point to drill. I use a Proxxon mini-drill in a Proxxon drill stand, so I was able to place the barrels in the vice made for the drill stand and drill vertically quite accurately. I did the same for the trunnions, replacing them with bamboo dowel I had put through a cheap drawplate. I am very poor at gauging a vertical when trying to drill with a pin vise. If you want to try a CAD programme there are many trial versions available. Older versions of TurboCAD are pretty cheap on Amazon (round £50), but you can get a totally free CAD programme from DraftSight. There's also the free version of SketchUp which can be used (though I didn't find that so easy for tracing drawings). I taught myself CAD on TurboCAD, so that's what I'm sticking with at the moment. I had another look at my cannon trucks and I'm still dithering about whether to remove the black banding -- it does look rather nice, as you say! Once I've learned how to do blocks properly, it may well be I'll turn cannon: but that's some way off at the moment. All part of the slow trek towards the beautiful finishes achieved by many of the modellers on this forum. Tony

Yes, I remember David's guns as well. Actually, because the gun barrels are an intermediate size, I have been thinking of making the carriages the right size for the barrels rather than buying new barrels. This is because I keep trying to use as much of the kit as possible without buying new parts, or else trying to make the parts. However I have to admit buying photo-etched 0.3mm eyelets following Dirk's lead. The carriages I made are for a 3-pounder while keeping the 3.5-pounder barrel from the kit. I based the dimensions on the Anatomy of the Ship book on the Cutter Alert where it says a 4-pounder barrel should be 6ft long, and a 3-pounder 4'6", or 28.6mm and 21.4mm respectively at 1/64. I measured my kit ones at 24.7mm or 5'2" scaled up. So they'd have to be 3.3mm shorter than the kit ones if they were to be the 3-pounders suggested by the kit. I was swayed not to buy or fashion new cannon by George Bandurek's comment (after making his own barrels) that the difference in size was barely noticeable. I do agree that the trunnions were hopeless --which is why I drilled them out and fitted my own. The trouble with making the carriages a bit bigger than I have at present is that I am feared that they will be too high for the gunports. I might make one up just to see, as I remain unsatisfied with the way my carriages turned out. In addition, I have now found out that iron hoops were not added to the wheels during this period, so I'd have to remove the banding I put on the wheels (or at least paint over it). Thanks for the comment about the ship's boat. It has been quite exciting for me to find out I could do it, albeit in a rather rough fashion. It has certainly made me enthusiastic to do more. I'll be off travelling again tomorrow, so I'll be out of the loop for a week (unless I can find an internet connection). Tony

Wonderful to see another Sherbourne started! You've done superbly so far. Beautiful planking and finish to the wood, and your cannon make me slightly regret giving up on the carriages supplied with the kit. I'm sure you've seen Dirk's (Dubz on this forum) build. He and Daniel (Siegfried) as well as David (written by his partner Amanda as Bangle) set a very high standard for Sherbournes -- although when MSW 1.0 went down we lost a lot of their logs. I do agree about George Bandurek's book being useful, he gives great heart to the novice builder in trying things out. I hadn't thought of looking at the Badger instructions, so I'm going to give that a look. For my own build I'm practising making blocks at the moment, with the cannon in mind. Also continuing to work on the ship's boat (working on the rudder gudgeons and pintles) but work keeps getting in the way. I hope to have more time after the middle of June. I'm very much looking forward to the rest of your build. Tony

Nice thought, Walt! How about some photos? Tony

It's well worth reading the biography of Patrick O'Brian/ Patrick Russ by his stepson Nikolai Tolstoy. It's called Patrick O'Brian: The Making of the Novelist, and you can pick up used copies on Amazon very cheaply. It puts a lot of his writing into perspective, as well as explaining how he derived his characters. Very interesting, really, as he hardly ever put to sea in his life -- and when he did he was thoroughly frightened. None of that takes away from the brilliance of character, plot, historical detail, language and writing. It just makes you realise that he was projecting his imagination of himself onto his two main characters. Tony

This is really interesting. The amount of work that goes into this is astounding. Thanks again for keeping the flow of info. I think I could do with a an extra few gig in my own head to help me -- and that's just with figuring out the wooden ship! Tony

Thanks, Randy. I guess I could have predicted that, but needed to be clear! Tony

Just out of curiosity, what does a drill press add that is not done with a drill and drill stand? Is it the precision? Tony

Very useful info, Grant. Thanks for posting. Tony

I like the idea of adding rice grains -- would make it easier to distinguish the blocks. Has anyone tried doing it this way, with the small film canister? I'm still at the stage of trying to sand small blocks and am having quite a large number disintegrating instead, so the idea of a tumbler is appealing to me and I have been looking at a few examples on this site -- including Janos' and the subsequent modification that was posted. Tony

There are some excellent resources on deck planking you can download from the 'Article Downloads' section on this site. Very simple to follow. Tony

A very nice build, Skippy. Well worth following. Tony

I'll make sure you're in the loop, Mark, should ever I find another source. I seem to remember from MSW 1.0 that Jim Byrne's slitting blades are better than the MicroMark ones (longer lasting). So should I ever figure out the adapter I'll probably buy the blades from Jim. Tony

That's all sound advice, Joe. I'll do some digging and delving here in the UK. Otherwise I have a brother-in-law who lives in Palo Alto who sometimes comes over here, so he might be able to order and bring the stuff. I might even have a go at slicing a 1/2" dowel and drilling through with a 10mm drill bit using one of the techniques described in Drilling jigs for dowel and metal rodding on this forum. Tony

Yes, Joe, I know that they are the same machines -- although the MicroMark one is not FET but FS/E -- which makes some of the nice attachments that MicroMark offer unusable on my machine. It was that understanding that made me have a look at MicroMark in the first place as I thought they might have an adapter. If you by any chance have used some of their fine kerf blades with the adapter for the MicroMark saw I'd be glad to hear of your experience. Or have you stuck with the blades that have the 10mm spindle hole? Tony

Ebay's a good idea, Martin, and I'll certainly look there. It's the adapter I need, though, to fit blades from other manufacturers, since I have the Proxxon blades. Proxxon seem to have their own unique 10mm spindle which is not the norm for other manufacturers. Tony

Hmm, Wacko (I like the sound of that more than Joe, and hope no offence taken). Might just be a good excuse to buy a lathe. Costs a bit more than the shipping, but maybe if I put long term costs to the Admiral for budget approval.... Thanks, though, for the suggestions. It was the shipping and import costs that put the Byrnes machine out of reach for me. But I really do like the Proxxon, and I have gradually become more adept at using it. I'm now down to doing 1.6mm strips of 0.5mm walnut without a problem, and probably will manage smaller. It's what made me think of doing gratings as I am a bit dissatisfied with the main grating on my ship at the moment. Tony

I would like to buy a Byrnes saw blade of .030 kerf to use with a Proxxon FET table saw. The only trouble is that his saw blades are for a 1/2" spindle and the Proxxon uses one of 10mm. Jim has told me that he only makes adapters to go to 1". I have seen an adapter in MicroMark for $6.50 that will do this, but as that is based in the USA and the shipping for that alone to the UK is $18.50, the price would be exorbitant for such a simple and small adapter. So my question is whether anyone knows of such an adapter in the UK (or perhaps Europe) that would make such an adapter. My search on the web so far has not turned up anything. Or is this something I could make? I don't think I have the tools to do it -- I imagine a lathe would be necessary. The reason, by the way, is to make 0.8mm gratings. At present my saw blades are 0.6mm, 1.1mm and 1.2mm. I haven't seen a method of making gratings with an under-sized blade, but if you know of a method of doing this then please let me know. Any advice or suggestions welcome! Tony

Thanks a lot, Wayne. I do agree about the kit -- a really nice kit for beginners. I hadn't seen your Sherbourne, so I've been mulling over that and your Granado. It'll be a long while before I can achieve the crispness and tidiness of your finish on both the wood and the rigging (which has yet to come for me). And the tiller you made on the Sherbourne has made me think of re-doing mine. It seems I have a thing or two to learn about tillers! Also a very interesting remark you made about blackener benefiting from heating. I'll be trying that next time. My own feeling is that once I have completed the Sherbourne I'll want to move into building from plans rather than a kit. The experience with the ship's boat has shown me the challenge, the possibility and the sheer joy of achievement in working from plans. Tony

Just a further comment on 'easy'. I think what I meant by 'hindsight' relates to the thinking involved. When I start out on any of these numerous 'mini-projects' that are part of the overall build, I am often very hazy about how exactly I am going to do it. So off I trot doing a search on the forums, looking at other builds, reading books. Then I think a lot about it while walking or sitting in a plane or having a beer until I can visualise in my mind's eye just how I can take each step, with which tools and, most importantly of all, with which compromises (and as a novice I accept many more compromises than those who have already been through such processes many times over). I'd say that is the hard part. Once it's all visualised, it then becomes 'easy' until I realise that my visualisation is not quite correct and I come across an unexpected outcome. So the process of visualisation starts all over again. The building part, being a mix of foolhardiness, dexterity, learning how to use good tools, patience and perseverance, seems much easier. Tony

Thanks a lot, guys! I very much appreciate the comments. I don't know about 'easy', Carl. It's always easy in hindsight and after finding a way to overcome a problem -- and this is one of those very rare occasions in which the photos look better than the model. Mark hits the 'mark' (groan, I put that in before realising the pun) when talking of 'perseverance': that, and learning from mistakes. Next time round it will be much easier for me. Thus I've certainly unglued and re-done quite a bit of it a few times over. For example, I realise now it was a bit presumptuous to dig out a rabbet: the planks never did quite fit into it so I messed up the keel irreversibly (unless I carved it out all over again). Then the sternsheets were first made out of a single piece of cherry that didn't fit correctly and looked totally out of place -- so I had to re-do those from walnut strip. And the thwarts went through two iterations before I could get their width and spacing better (for some reason I had mis-set my vernier calipers first two times round). All that and the problem I had with the sides coming away from the keel a couple of times as a result of the pressure I was putting on this fragile little shell. However, I thought such tribulations would be regarded as commonplace by the experienced crowd here, so I thought it better to leave all that out. Thank goodness for isopropanol and its power over PVA glue! And thank goodness as well for all the experience on this forum that gave me the courage and ideas to go about the whole endeavour! Yes, John, you're right. The tiller needs a lot of work. I mention in a photo that it's only on the way to completion but didn't clarify that in the text. I just thought I'd post the photo as I was pleased at thinking of a way to attach it! I hope the final result will be a little more realistic! Thanks again for keeping to pop in and give encouragement! Tony

The Bank Holiday weekend in the UK allowed me to make a little bit of further progress on the ship’s boat. First on was the sheer strake. I reckoned that would be good to place first because then I could estimate the number of planks between that and the keel. I then cut out the garboard plank, as seen in the photo. Shaping the planks was a bit easier than I expected – but this was mostly because I didn’t spile them correctly and just tapered one side of each plank! Having finished the external planks, I could remove the shell from the mould, cut away the ribs from the point where the gunwale joins, and then add the gunwales. That was a moment of magic for me -- it really did look like a boat shape! It may not have the magnificent carpentry of the other ship's boat builds that are on this site, but I had managed at least the rudiments and it certainly boosted my morale and my appetite to continue! I made the gunwales by gluing a 1mm square strip of walnut to a 0.5 x 1mm strip, then bending appropriately. By the way, I now use a small soldering iron to do the bending. I do this after soaking the planks and allowing them to saturate. It really is quite a nice sound to hear the hiss of the steam as I apply the plank to the iron, and watch it (the plank, that is: not the iron) dry and bend. After putting on the gunwales I cut strips from masking tape to show me where to place the stringer supporting the thwarts. You’ll see the strips in the photo. Then I laid a false keel along the keel top, and started the floor planking. The next stage was to cut away the rowlocks into the gunwales. This is not really accurate, as the gunwales I added are thicker than the plans recommend, but I compromised! The sternsheets, sternsheet transom (made from strips of 0.5mm walnut) and the seats were then added. The rudder was then cut out, a handle made from 1mm square cherry, and 0.6mm holes drilled into the handle and the rudder in order to join them with a sliver of walnut. I’ve had a bash at the thwart knees, but so far have not found a nice way of doing them. I might give up on that score. I’m also debating about the position for a mast. However, the most immediate work to do will be the gudgeons and pintles for the rudder, and the oars. The only real problem is the mix of walnut and cherry (apart from an obvious asymmetry in the height of the sides and the spacing of the ribs). That came about just because of the wood I had to hand. I had started the ship's boat more as a proof of concept -- not really believing I could make one. Now it's beginning to look like a real boat I am loathe to do it all over again. I decided I'll put it all down to experience for the build of my next ship's boat! And now, back to the work that pays and funds the ship modelling (among other things). Tony