gjdale

Congratulations on a truly fine model John - the museum is lucky to have you!

Lovely work Bug - Augie would be proud!

Jay, There are some tutorials on Spiling somewhere here that would be worth your while reviewing. Essentially, tapering and bevelling really only account for two dimensions. Spiling takes into account the curve in the third dimension. That means that your planks will actually be curved when looked at laid flat on the table, but will appear straight (ish) as they follow the curve of the hull. Hope that makes sense.

Neat idea Jay. It strikes me that small pieces of sandpaper could be used as an alternative to file pieces - maybe a little cheaper in the long run

Thanks Slog, Mobbsie and Popeye, and also to all the "likes". Only a minor update today - have been distracted with other activities lately, and the last couple of days have been over 40 degrees C, so not a lot of energy for anything! But we have made some progress nevertheless. Chrome Plating - First Adventures To complete both the Wheel assembly and the Cutwater, some chrome plating was called for. Following the lead of others over on the RC Groups forum, I acquired a Caswell Chrome Plating Kit. It was relatively inexpensive and, as it turned out, quite easy to use. The kit consists of a small transformer with two leads extending from it. The black lead has an alligator clip attached and this gets attached to the part being plated. The red lead plugs into a small wand that has its end wrapped in a bandage, and this is soaked in the plating solution and then rubbed onto the part. And then the magic happens. It’s as easy as that. Not much to show, as I didn’t take photos of the process. Here is the end result though (the camera is not kind – it looks a whole lot better at “normal” viewing distance). Mmmmmmm……shiny…….

Congratulations on completing a very fine model indeed Bob.

Well done on the perseverance Jay! I saw a heard of very nervous looking goats go by just now......... I hope the next phase goes a little more smoothly for you.

Just found your build log Jay, and have enjoyed getting caught up with your progress - nice work! I'll pull up a chair and follow along from here.

This looks really interesting - I'm in. Might actually need one of these to rescue my RC Chris Craft!!!

Great to see you back building Anja! And you're off to a great start.

Order directly from their website - very reputable and reliable company, and no problems with international postage.

Congratulations on reaching another major milestone Nils. She is looking just fantastic.

Great work Elijah - well done!

Thanks Bug and Carl, and also to those who hit the "like" button. To complete the Horn Ring, the spokes were silver soldered in place and the whole thing given an initial clean-up. In this picture, the square cross-section of the rim is evident, as is that of the spokes. All components of the wheel assembly are now ready for final clean-up and painting / plating. The CutwaterI had previously made a mould to assist in making the cutwater but it turned out to be too small, so another mould was made. In making this mould, I first sprayed the bow with a spray-on / peel-off automotive plastic paint. This gave a nice smooth surface for the mould while ensuring plaster did not get stuck to the surface of the boat. This worked well and the peel-off paint behaved exactly as the manufacture claimed. I also embedded a couple of dowels in the plaster, with the ends passed through and epoxied into a scrap of 3/4” plywood. This provided a useful “handle” to hold the mould in a vice. Paper patterns for the two halves of the cutwater were printed on sticky label paper and attached to a piece of 0.015” thick brass sheet. The brass sheet was itself attached to some thin plywood scrap with double-sided tape and the pieces were rough-cut on the scroll saw and then finish-shaped on the disc sander and spindle sander. Following the lead of others in the RC Groups Forum, I embedded a number of 6-32 threaded inserts into the mould, and made some hold-downs from some scrap aluminium flat bar. At this point, I took a slightly different approach to the task of soldering the cutwater halves. I had read of others having problems with having sufficient solder on the internal side of the cutwater, and of course I’d read their solutions as well. I did a little further reading/research on soldering and decided that it might be possible to use the properties of the solder itself to solve this problem. The key point I noted was that solder will always flow towards the heat source. To make use of this, I placed one of the cutwater halves on the mould and then wedged a ribbon of solder “wire” partly under this half before placing the second cutwater half. This meant that the two halves of the cutwater were held in place with the ribbon of solder firmly touching each half. I then painted some flux along the outside of the join, and applied heat from my small butane torch, starting at one end and moving slowly but steadily along as the molten solder wicked through. This worked very well and I should have left well enough alone….. I decided to add a little extra solder in a couple of spots but really only succeeded in adding a few globs of molten solder to the outside faces. Oh well, a little extra clean-up! In the next shot, you can see the solder on the internal join – prior to clean-up. And finally, here’s a few beauty shots of the completed cutwater after a little clean-up with files and sandpaper. I did a quick test-fit on the actual bow of the boat, and it fits neatly. The cutwater is now ready for plating and final fitting.

Nice progress Daria. Good to see you wearing the proper safety gear too!

Looking good Mark. Sorry to hear of Janet's health issues - best wishes to you both for improvement there.

Thanks again folks for all the kind comments and the "likes" - they really encourage me to keep striving. A fairly major update today as I've completed manufacturing all the parts for the new steering wheel. Wheel Building continued - the Hubs If I thought that the hard part was over ….. The first step was to actually design my hub components. Although Kip had very kindly sent me a copy of his “chook scratchings” from the design process, I needed to make a couple of design changes to suit my slightly different approach (primarily the fact that the steering shaft will thread into the rear hub). I had several exchanges of email with Kip throughout this process and that was a huge help in getting my head around the task. Here is a copy of my own early chook scratchings. From here, I decided to make up a set of CAD drawings of each component to further understand what I was attempting to do, and also as a useful check on my own measurements and calculations. Needless to say, there were many changes to both this diagram and the CAD drawings as the manufacturing process got underway – “no plan, no matter how good, survives first contact with the enemy!” Once I had the design principles clearly in my head, the manufacturing process actually went quite smoothly…….for the most part. In fact, it went so well that I forgot to take many progress shots. In the next picture, I am drilling the banjo spoke holes into what will become the banjo spoke hub. This started as a piece of 5/8” brass rod, that was first bored to leave a wall thickness of 1.5 mm. The banjo spoke holes are all 0.5 mm in diameter and I managed to drill all twelve without breaking the drill bit. Ironically, the drill bit broke just as I was removing it from the mill. The manufacturing process required some thought as to how to hold various pieces on the lathe while they were being turned and shaped and fitted to their final dimensions. After a bit of trial and error, I concluded that several mandrels of various key sizes, both solid and centre-bored, were the most useful thing to use. I found that gluing these temporarily with CA to the stock being machined held the piece securely while being worked. The parts were then separated by the judicious application of heat from the MAPP blow torch. Here is a shot of the various mandrels I used – in some cases a combination of two mandrels were required. The rear hub was shaped by first cutting a series of steps (staircase effect) and then smoothing with a round file while still on the lathe. The Horn Ring Hub, Trim Piece and Cap piece required a radius on the end. The Radius Cutting attachment for the lathe worked a treat for these parts. The Horn Ring itself is square in section and this was formed by using a 1/16” square brass tube. After first annealing with the MAPP torch, it was bent around the same wooden buck as used for the wheel rim. The buck was first turned down to the appropriate diameter, and I must confess here to having a couple of goes at this before I was satisfied with the size. As the tube is hollow, it allowed me to insert a piece of 0.8 mm brass rod inside and extending across the join. This really helped when silver-soldering the join closed. The piece was then returned to the rotary table on the mill and 0.85 mm holes were drilled at 120 degree intervals for mounting the spokes. The spokes for the horn ring are also square in section and the same brass tube was used for this. By inserting a piece of the 0.8mm brass rod through the pre-drilled hole in the horn ring, right through the length of the spoke, and into the horn ring hub, the hole assembly becomes self-aligning. The horn ring hub itself was probably the most difficult of all of these parts to make and I had three attempts at this before I was finally satisfied. The Cap Piece, as well as having a radius turned on the end, also had a 1/32” slot cut with a slitting saw to receive the Throttle Lever, which itself was cut and filed from a piece of 1/32” brass flat bar. The picture below shows all of these parts, starting with the Wheel Rim and a selection of banjo spokes at the rear, the Horn Ring, Horn Ring Hub and Horn Ring Spokes (temporarily mounted and ready for soldering), and then across the front from left to right are the Rear Hub (note the internal threading to receive the steering column), the Banjo Spoke Hub, the Trim Piece, and the Cap Piece, with the Throttle Lever in the foreground. Putting some of these components together for the camera, here is a of shot of the Horn Ring assembly mounted on the Banjo Spoke Hub, mounted on the Rear Hub, with a temporary Steering Shaft. And lastly, the same assembly with the stainless-steel sleeve that goes over the steering shaft. That completes the manufacture of all components for the new steering wheel. The next job will be to solder the Horn Ring assembly together, and then chrome plate the Horn Ring assembly, Cap Piece and Throttle Lever. The other components will be painted an off-white (ivory) colour, and then the whole lot will be finally assembled. Once that is done, I will return attention to making the cutwater….

Very nice Rusty.

Nice work on the ratlines Bob. It may be tedious, but your experience shows!

Nice to see you back at it Bug.

Thanks for the heads up Ben - just placed an order!

Thanks Sam and Carl, Sam - the soldering was done with a small butane torch (probably the same as yours). The big MAPP torch (that Carl refers to) was used to anneal the brass rod prior to bending to shape for the wheel rim.

Thanks Keith and Slog, Keith - yes the polishing kit has arrived, but I'm holding off on that task as I need to re-do the mould/cast of the bow for the cutwater. Hope to get that done in the next week.

I like the contrast of the black trucks Rusty, but hey, it's your ship!

The spoke holders were cleaned up and given a bit of shape by filing. Here is a shot of the completed spoke holders, with spokes fitted in one (temporarily). The next job was to solder them to the wheel rim, again using silver solder. To hold them in the correct position, a shim of scrap aluminium 1/32” thick was shaped and drilled to accept some pins. Here is a shot of the soldering set-up. The first two spoke holders went on just fine, but the third one didn’t want to play nice. However, sheer bloody-mindedness and determination won the day in the end. While I was at it, I re-did the main rim joint as well, as there was a slight misalignment that had been bugging me. To protect the soldered joints from de-soldering while the next joint was heated, I used a heat barrier call Cool Gel, made by LA-CO. It comes in a spray bottle, but I just squirted a bit onto the soldering mat and used an old paint brush to pick up and apply the gel to joints to be protected. This was the first time I’d used this and it works really well. Here are a couple of shots of the completed joints. I’ve included the spokes in one of them to give an indication of how they will look once they are all together. They have been given an initial clean-up, but I may go back and do some more yet.