gjdale

Thanks again for all the kind comments and the likes.

The Warehouse
Not much work in the Shipyard over the Christmas break, but back into it now. The next order of business is the construction of the Warehouse, which is attached to the front of the main building. All of the techniques used in the construction of the main building are repeated here, so I won’t go into detail. The exception is that the Warehouse doors are steel, so a good rust covering is achieved by applying a combination of two orange chalk powders (one light, one dark) over the brown base. The effect seems to be quite realistic (at least to my eye).
 
I didn’t appear to have any of the stained strips left over from the main building, so had to raid my stash to find some substitute timber. I found some of the correct width, but a little too thick. That was soon remedied by passing them through my thickness sander. Of course, even though I applied the same technique, this batch came out a little differently to my first batch. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been in the application of glue, and I ended up with a number of glue stains on the walls. I gave them a sand, some further treatment with a wire brush and applied more chalk/alcohol mixture and that made them a little better.
 

 
Subsequent to this photo being taken, I gave them another go with a wire brush to bring them closer in tone to the main building.
 
Here is a close up of the left wall with the rsuty steel doors.
 

 
The walls were then glued together and the whole assembly glued to the front of the main building. The roof was tar papered in much the same way as the rear dormer and the roof was fitted after a view block had been inserted.
 
Here are few overall shots to show progress to date.
 
Rear Wall:
 

 
Right Wall:
 

 
Left Wall:
 

 
And Front Wall:
 

 
The gap is where the Yard Master’s Office will go, and that is next up…

Absolutely beautiful work Grant, I really like your weathering methods. I will savour your log later completely, where I just stumbled into right now.
 
Cheers Rob

Thanks Elmer,
 
And a Happy New Year to you and yours as well.

Thanks again for all the kind comments and the likes.

The Warehouse
Not much work in the Shipyard over the Christmas break, but back into it now. The next order of business is the construction of the Warehouse, which is attached to the front of the main building. All of the techniques used in the construction of the main building are repeated here, so I won’t go into detail. The exception is that the Warehouse doors are steel, so a good rust covering is achieved by applying a combination of two orange chalk powders (one light, one dark) over the brown base. The effect seems to be quite realistic (at least to my eye).
 
I didn’t appear to have any of the stained strips left over from the main building, so had to raid my stash to find some substitute timber. I found some of the correct width, but a little too thick. That was soon remedied by passing them through my thickness sander. Of course, even though I applied the same technique, this batch came out a little differently to my first batch. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been in the application of glue, and I ended up with a number of glue stains on the walls. I gave them a sand, some further treatment with a wire brush and applied more chalk/alcohol mixture and that made them a little better.
 

 
Subsequent to this photo being taken, I gave them another go with a wire brush to bring them closer in tone to the main building.
 
Here is a close up of the left wall with the rsuty steel doors.
 

 
The walls were then glued together and the whole assembly glued to the front of the main building. The roof was tar papered in much the same way as the rear dormer and the roof was fitted after a view block had been inserted.
 
Here are few overall shots to show progress to date.
 
Rear Wall:
 

 
Right Wall:
 

 
Left Wall:
 

 
And Front Wall:
 

 
The gap is where the Yard Master’s Office will go, and that is next up…

Thanks again for the kind comments and all the likes.

Roof Construction (continued) 
Shingling continues….
 
The first task for the other side of the roof was to complete the Dormer roof with Tar Paper and glue into position. In this photo, I haven’t yet finished the weathering of the tar paper. Shingles were then placed as per the previous side, up to the level of the chimney.
 

 
The Chimney was then placed temporarily in position while the flashing was added on the top and sides of the chimney.
 

 
The chimney was then removed while flashing was added to the lower side.
 

 
Shingling then continues, working around the flashing, up to the level of the Cupola, where the lower flashing for it was added.
 

 
And shingling continued up to the ridge line, again with a special row added along the top edge. In the photo below, you can see that some additional weathering has also been added to the dormer roof.
 

 
Ridge capping was then added to the main roof and the two dormer roofs. The Cupola roof was also built and shingled at this stage, but I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I forgot to take any pictures of the construction process.
 

 

 
Rafters were then added to the two large gable ends, and to the two dormer gables.
 

 

 
Rafter “tails” were then cut and added to each side of the main roof.
 

 
As well as to the sides of the dormer roofs.
 

 
That completes work on the roof for now. There will be more details added a little later in the build, but for now we turn our attention to the construction of the Warehouse and the Yard Master’s Office….
 
 

Thanks Glen, Sam and Egilman, and again to all of the likes.
 
Moving right along...
Wall Construction – Dormer Details (cont’d)
This Dormer has a door that will open onto a landing atop a set of stairs. We begin by giving the door pieces all the same “peeling paint” treatment as the windows.
 

 
The hinges, door knob plate and door knob all get a coat of paint (AK11110, Leather Brown in lieu of Floquil Roof Brown). We are then instructed to “dust a little rust chalk powder on them”. The instructions don’t mention the exact colour for the rust, but earlier in my Sierra West log, a couple of the “gurus” had mentioned that Rembrandt 411.3 was their “go to” rust colour, so I went with that.
 
Here they are with the points of my tweezers for scale reference. These things are tiny!
 

 
And here they are attached to the door, with the mylar window glass also in place.
 

 
The door is then glued to the wall and the outer frame attached. I followed a suggestion in the instructions and left the door slightly ajar.
 

 
The three walls are then glued together, taking care to keep them level and square to each other.
 

 
The next step is to fit both a floor and roof piece inside the wall structure, which will give the whole thing much greater stability. However, I have encountered an issue that I have sought some extra guidance on before committing to this step. I’ll update here once I’ve resolved that one.

Thanks very much Ken and Sam, and also to all of the "likes".

Wall Construction – Dormer Details
The next step in the instructions invites us to add some nail holes to the Left Dormer wall. Now, nail holes in the model railroad world are a bit like treenails in the model ship world – a big can of worms with arguments about what is realistic and visible at certain scales. Just as we would argue that treenails on a ship’s hull would be largely invisible at 1:87 scale, so too in the model railroad world are the varying schools of thought about adding nail holes in walls. Some advocate for the maximum detail, others say “not at 1:87 (HO) scale”. To further confuse the issue, the instructions say to add them with the point of a compass, while the kit designer himself says he doesn’t generally add them in HO scale, but provided the option in this kit for a bit of variety.
 
So after prevaricating for several days, I built a “test wall” from some scraps and tried out two different methods. In the picture below, I have used a sharpened mechanical pencil to make the nail holes/heads on the left, and a needle point instrument to make the nail holes on the right.
 

 
I was initially drawn to the more obvious variation on the left, but after putting it out for some opinions on the Sierra West Forum, one of the “gurus” suggested that if done on the entire wall, that version would become overpowering. I decided to heed that advice and went with the “less is more” solution.
 
My “nail gun” for inserting these was a home-made scribing tool -  a piece of turned brass with a large sewing needle epoxied into the end. The weight of the brass gives this quite a bit of heft and makes the job a lot easier. Shown here next to a mechanical pencil for scale.
 

 
I went ahead and added nail holes to all of the walls. Here is few shots showing the completed nail holes. 
 

 

 
 

 
The nail holes are there if you look for them, but they aren’t immediately obvious. I believe this is as it should be and is what the “gurus” were trying to get across to me – the art of subtlety.
 
Moving on now with a little more confidence, albeit still at a glacial pace! Corner trim was added to either end of the Left Dormer Wall. The windows for this wall were then prepared in the same fashion as the main windows, including the final stage of dusting with dry chalk powder to tone down the white paint.
 

 
We are then instructed to make some window blinds by painting some plain paper with Floquil Depot Buff and then dirtying it up with some chalk powder. My substitute paint choice was AK 11033 (Dark Sand) and again I used Rembrandt 408.3 chalk powder for the “dirtying”, applied in the same way as the final stage of the window frames (ie a dry dusting).
 

 
The strip was then cut to length for individual window shades of varying length and glued in place on the inside at the tops of the windows.
 

 
The outer window frame was then added, with separate headers and ledges added as the final touch to give a greater 3-D effect. 
 

 
That completes the windows for this wall. The door for this Dormer will be next – quite a challenge with some tiny hinges and a door knob to add as well….
 

Thanks Elmer,
 
And a Happy New Year to you and yours as well.

Thanks again for all the kind comments and the likes.

The Warehouse
Not much work in the Shipyard over the Christmas break, but back into it now. The next order of business is the construction of the Warehouse, which is attached to the front of the main building. All of the techniques used in the construction of the main building are repeated here, so I won’t go into detail. The exception is that the Warehouse doors are steel, so a good rust covering is achieved by applying a combination of two orange chalk powders (one light, one dark) over the brown base. The effect seems to be quite realistic (at least to my eye).
 
I didn’t appear to have any of the stained strips left over from the main building, so had to raid my stash to find some substitute timber. I found some of the correct width, but a little too thick. That was soon remedied by passing them through my thickness sander. Of course, even though I applied the same technique, this batch came out a little differently to my first batch. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been in the application of glue, and I ended up with a number of glue stains on the walls. I gave them a sand, some further treatment with a wire brush and applied more chalk/alcohol mixture and that made them a little better.
 

 
Subsequent to this photo being taken, I gave them another go with a wire brush to bring them closer in tone to the main building.
 
Here is a close up of the left wall with the rsuty steel doors.
 

 
The walls were then glued together and the whole assembly glued to the front of the main building. The roof was tar papered in much the same way as the rear dormer and the roof was fitted after a view block had been inserted.
 
Here are few overall shots to show progress to date.
 
Rear Wall:
 

 
Right Wall:
 

 
Left Wall:
 

 
And Front Wall:
 

 
The gap is where the Yard Master’s Office will go, and that is next up…

Thanks Elmer,
 
And a Happy New Year to you and yours as well.

Thank you OC, James and Kevin for your responses.
I have had a PM or two with Rod (rvchima) with reference to his build. (Thanks once again Rod.)
 
Rod advised Decals first and then Hatches followed by a paint touch-up.
I made up a tracing paper template for the Hatch positions first.
I have separated the decals from the sheet and carefully trimmed to the Decal edges and Test fit with the template, looks about right.
 
I painted Gloss Polyurethane on the Rear Decking, (I'll do the first), and I'll let this cure overnight. Ill affix the Decal with Mirco-Sol and do the Micro-Set after this. 
(It's been a very long time since I played with Decals....😀)
 
With regards to your replies above, paint and masks I did consider but purchased Decals from "Custom Hobby Decals" anyway as I felt it was a little too late in the game to be worrying about major paint works.
 
I am well aware also that the Ship had her markings painted over on May 21st 1941 I had already painted the Baltic Stripes on the Hull and I did not wish to have a huge Grey stripe across the Decks.  😀
 
So, I guess the model will be representative of early morning, May 21st 1941 before the crew got out the paint. 😀
 
In the last couple of days, I attempted to fix the Stern Anchor Chain in place, I did not like the result so removed and will attempt again after Decaling. (Just as well I have plenty of small chain as the kit did not provide very much....)
 
Anyway, enough from me today. I'll post some photos as soon as I have something decent progress to share. 😀
 
Happy New Year to all!!
 
Cheers and Regards,
 
Harry.
 
 
 
 
 

Beautiful work brother and a happy new year to you....

Thanks again for all the kind comments and the likes.

The Warehouse
Not much work in the Shipyard over the Christmas break, but back into it now. The next order of business is the construction of the Warehouse, which is attached to the front of the main building. All of the techniques used in the construction of the main building are repeated here, so I won’t go into detail. The exception is that the Warehouse doors are steel, so a good rust covering is achieved by applying a combination of two orange chalk powders (one light, one dark) over the brown base. The effect seems to be quite realistic (at least to my eye).
 
I didn’t appear to have any of the stained strips left over from the main building, so had to raid my stash to find some substitute timber. I found some of the correct width, but a little too thick. That was soon remedied by passing them through my thickness sander. Of course, even though I applied the same technique, this batch came out a little differently to my first batch. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been in the application of glue, and I ended up with a number of glue stains on the walls. I gave them a sand, some further treatment with a wire brush and applied more chalk/alcohol mixture and that made them a little better.
 

 
Subsequent to this photo being taken, I gave them another go with a wire brush to bring them closer in tone to the main building.
 
Here is a close up of the left wall with the rsuty steel doors.
 

 
The walls were then glued together and the whole assembly glued to the front of the main building. The roof was tar papered in much the same way as the rear dormer and the roof was fitted after a view block had been inserted.
 
Here are few overall shots to show progress to date.
 
Rear Wall:
 

 
Right Wall:
 

 
Left Wall:
 

 
And Front Wall:
 

 
The gap is where the Yard Master’s Office will go, and that is next up…

Thanks again for all the kind comments and the likes.

The Warehouse
Not much work in the Shipyard over the Christmas break, but back into it now. The next order of business is the construction of the Warehouse, which is attached to the front of the main building. All of the techniques used in the construction of the main building are repeated here, so I won’t go into detail. The exception is that the Warehouse doors are steel, so a good rust covering is achieved by applying a combination of two orange chalk powders (one light, one dark) over the brown base. The effect seems to be quite realistic (at least to my eye).
 
I didn’t appear to have any of the stained strips left over from the main building, so had to raid my stash to find some substitute timber. I found some of the correct width, but a little too thick. That was soon remedied by passing them through my thickness sander. Of course, even though I applied the same technique, this batch came out a little differently to my first batch. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as careful as I should have been in the application of glue, and I ended up with a number of glue stains on the walls. I gave them a sand, some further treatment with a wire brush and applied more chalk/alcohol mixture and that made them a little better.
 

 
Subsequent to this photo being taken, I gave them another go with a wire brush to bring them closer in tone to the main building.
 
Here is a close up of the left wall with the rsuty steel doors.
 

 
The walls were then glued together and the whole assembly glued to the front of the main building. The roof was tar papered in much the same way as the rear dormer and the roof was fitted after a view block had been inserted.
 
Here are few overall shots to show progress to date.
 
Rear Wall:
 

 
Right Wall:
 

 
Left Wall:
 

 
And Front Wall:
 

 
The gap is where the Yard Master’s Office will go, and that is next up…

***Please note***
 
Any further posts regarding chain pumps will be deleted from hereon in. It's superfluous to the discussion and serves only to derail what I'm trying to achieve here. I've even received PMs demanding to know why I removed member's posts after me needing to cull my topic (for the third time!). It must stop. Now.

Today I have started planking the outside with the first two planking rows on the starboard side. This is pretty much testing my patience and perseverance. No. 25 consists of four parts and no. 24 of three parts. No parts is fitting exactly from the start as they are longer and wider as needed. So you’re able to make custom adjustments but this takes a very large amount of time. As the cnc-milled rabbit is only about .5 mm deep you have to taper / flatten all parts of no. 25 to fit into that rabbit too. Took about 3 hours to finish one row and there are 23 more rows to go … I caught myself thinking about starting another project several times and this might be the final task to decide if I will continue building this model next year or just switch to a more suitable project like the Cheerful which has been waiting for me in the shelf for about 3 years now.


 
As the cherry stripes are slightly rotated around their own axis from center to bow and center to stern to fit the hull several clamps are needed to fix them in position until the glue has cured. 
 

 
Another problem is that the plans do not show exactly where the overlap of the clinker-planking begins for each row - so it’s about 3 cm at the bow and 5 cm at the stern for no. 24.
 
So that’s it all for this year, have to help my wife preparing the New-Year-Party. Stay tuned .. and happy new year!
 
Andreas 
 

Post Twenty-five – fettlin’ the crew
Working these figures is hard on the fingers, drilling out the flash between the legs, holes drilled to secure the heads to the bodies, drilling and filing of the hands to fit over the oars.
The figures are then filed to reduce their bulk, to make them a better fit.
After a couple of days, the basic figures are complete, and an opportunity to get an impression of how the set up would look.

9862

9858(2)

9856(2)

9855(2)
 

9853(2)

9849(2)
I think it’s going to work, a little more fettlin’ of the individual figures, and then a chemical black wash.
 
B.E.
31/12/2022
 

Mocking up templates to start making the Quarter pieces, not sure if I will be able to make them from a single blank or will have to split them into 2 or 3 pieces.
 

 

Got the molding glued to the port side. I soaked a few inches in hot water for several minutes, clamped it in place around the bow and dried it with a heat gun. Worked very well. Now that was completed I could finish the treenails on the port side. I’ll clean them up tomorrow and reapply a coat of WOP. 
 
Best Regards …. Rick

Well EURYALUS is mostly dismantled. Unfortunately There are only a few frame sections that can be reused as the majority of floors and futtocks were not constructed per the drawings.  The Stem too was undersize and I suspect that copies of drawings made as templates may have not been full sized.   Oh well.
 
I have made a start on the new stem and stern deadwoods.  I realise now that my Dremel attachments are not up to the task for such which stock so I have purchased a portable oscillating spindle sander to assist in the shaping of internal curves.  Happy with what I managed to achieve today.  Once the parts are glued up the apron halves with the deadwood I can then finish the tapering/shaping of the stem pieces and cut in the rabbet.  I still have to taper the bow pieces and fit the apron laminations for the bearding line.

Had some time to spend in the shipyard and accomplished a few tasks. Iron work has been blackened and attached to the thwart and the thwart has been installed and also the last of the thwart knees. Windlass and the bars are also completed and a couple coats of WOP applied. The iron work was a bigger challenge than I expected. So far, so good. Up next is the fixed block on the stem. 
 
Best Regards …. Rick

Some progress on the mid-ship section. 
 

 
This part took some time for completion because of two major issues: lack of ladders to go from the gangways to Quarterdeck/Forecastle and the length of the booms supporting the long boat and pinnaces. Fortunately, Tom from CAF Model was very quick to correct the problem and sent me some extra parts to remedy the situation.
 
The assembly of the gangways is done in the following way: 
 

 
It is overall very delicate, but once glued to the bulwarks, it is not too bad.
 
The first issue is illustrated below: How do you go from the gangway to the Quarterdeck (or Forecastle, for that matter)?
 

 
 
 
Obviously, something is missing. Tom was kind enough to design some small ladders with 2 or 3 steps and that solves the issue: 
 

 
The second problem was the short length of the booms used to stow the pinnaces: 
 

 

 
About 5 mm on each side, were missing. Again, Tom designed for me six additional booms to remedy the situation: 
 

 
One of the kit boom was used as a beam at the front of the Poop deck. Overall, we now have a mid-section that looks decent: 
 

 

 

 
I have only assembled half of the main capstan, as I need room to work on the forecastle.
 

 

 
Overall views: 
 

 

 

 

 

 
To complete the quarterdeck, I still need to assemble six small guns: 
 

 

 
Et voila the entire beast. Time to migrate the working crew to the boom and forecastle: 
 

 
I hope you are enjoying the progress of that huge model, as much as I do... :-)
 
Yves

Have started tapering the planks now. Four rows below the whale on port and starboard and the garboard and next on the starboard side.  I need to smile the planks now but in the basic of a nice piece of pear from which to cut the spine, I am trying out steam bending in both planes, effectively edge setting to fit the bow profile.  Instead of seeming the planks flat around the form, I am bending them width wise to, then tapering to form the spiled shape, and finally wetting them and using a soldering iron to form the bend around the bow.

Now for part 2, progress on the pizza oven itself. Here's a reminder of where that's been dormant since October:
 

The next overall step is to pour a 3.5" concrete slab over the whole top to provide a solid base for the oven itself. Before that can be done, I needed to provide a base that spans the inside hole, block the open holes within the concrete blocks, and build a form around the outside.
 
Step 1: Interior
 
I built a frame of scrap pine 2x4s (all pine used in these steps was also saved/salvaged from the porch work this summer). This fits snugly in the interior and will support a piece of Hardiebacker concrete board that will seal the opening. Notice that it's recessed about 3/8" below the surface of the concrete blocks to allow the board to fit reasonably flush with the upper surface.
 

This is supported by scrap pine supports underneath, set up on thin wedges. There's no hardware anywhere, it's all cut to fit tightly and hold together on its own. Once the concrete is set, I'll knock out the lower wedges and all the parts should disassemble themselves from below. That's the goal, anyway.
 


Here's another view:

Step 2: Exterior framing
 
Next I built the framing that will form the outer walls of the concrete slab. The slab is meant to be 3.5" thick, so I first built a lower layer of 2x4s flush with the concrete blocks, but adjusted to be absolutely level using shims:
 


You can see that the foundation slopes to the south (following the base slab), so the wooden frame appears to tilt upward to the south. No big deal, it'll be slightly thicker at that end.
 
Once this was in place, and level and tight to my satisfaction, I added a second layer of 2x4s to create the actual walls of the concrete form:

I then screwed on cleats to connect the two levels of framing into a solid mass. I also screwed on extra 2x4s horizontally to the upper frames, to help ensure that they don't bend outward under any pressure from the concrete:

Step 3: Blocking the interior holes
 
I still needed to block the remaining interior holes in the concrete blocks, which I didn't want/need to do with solid material like gravel or concrete as that would be too much expense and work. So I made a series of wooden plugs nailed onto thin supports, using scrap cedar from on-farm-milled lumber (like the rest of the kitchen). These drop into each hole and fit closely enough that I can use masking tape to seal off the remaining gaps:


These will be forever entombed but I don't care, they're scrap wood that would go onto a bonfire otherwise. And here's a view of the finished result:
 

All that's needed now is to cut the filler board for the center and tape over all the smaller openings. But I won't do that until we're close to pouring, which could be anywhere from the next two weeks to the next two months depending on weather.
 
It's really exciting to get this step done as it creates a feeling that we're much closer to having an oven, even that if that could still be months away. But now we can take advantage of the first long-enough warm spell to pour the slab with very little further prep. I already have six bags of concrete in the garage just biding their time...
 
Thanks for your continued interest in this slow-moving project!
 

Post Twenty- four
After nine days the crew have arrived and a motley crew they are, Vanguard figures they certainly ain’t.

9830
White metal figures, as rough as rough can be, they make the Amati range look classy.
On the left is the basic figure (the heads are separate) the figure on the right I have started to clean-up.

9827
At this stage the figure has been thinned down the legs separated, and a head drilled and fixed to the body.

9835(2)
For scale, the figures are a bit chunky, but they sit on the thwarts ok. The figure I have started to fettle already looks a better fit, but a long way to go.

9836(2)
In their basic form the figures certainly won’t pass muster so it’s down to my fettlin’ efforts on the test figure to determine whether I can retain the will to live with the prospect of twelve to do.

3829
This  screen shot  shows apparently  how they should eventually look but they bear little reality to the raw figures.
 
I have little experience with these 28mm gaming figures, but I pity those that do if this is the standard of stuff they have to work with.

9839(2)
I will persevere with the one I’ve started and see how I go.
 
B.E.
29/12/22