gjdale

Thanks for the encouraging words everyone  It's good the get thumbs up from people who know of which they speak.
 
Grant, hopefully you paid the extra to get the PM-V11 chisels? That steel is downright spooky in how long edges last before having to resharpen. I got the PM-V11 iron for the first smoothing plane I bought from them, and all subsequent purchases have been with the PM blade/iron option. It's one of the rare cases where paying the premium for the best is actually a money saver, you sharpen so much less with PM-V11 tools that you make back in time more than every penny spent. But be prepared to understand our ancestor's cries of "wizardry!" when you chop through miles of hard exotic wood and find the edge is still super sharp, a part of your brain will want to put it down and back away and run go summon the village priest.
 
Regardless they're great chisels even going with A2 or O1, and will make tons of nice furniture. Also don't forget it's in the woodworker's handbook that whenever you buy new chisels you have to go hand cut some dovetails with them
 
Also WRT Mikhail's tools, as above unless you're intending to try carving consider getting a reduced set of just the straight and skew chisels from Mikhail, I'd guess maybe $150-$200 for I think 11 tools. All of the skews are single bevel and come in left and right hand versions in three sizes. Send a PM to me when you're ready and I will give you his email address.
 
Rick, you were doing yellow glue right? I'm still using CA. I put glue on an inch or 1.5" length, hand clamp, move on, I always want to be managing the smallest practical joint with the least glue possible at any one time, bad glue lines for me are almost always the result of trying to glue too much at one time. Also there are many butt joints here, several of which are nigh invisible that allowed me to work with shorter lengths presenting simpler glue problems.
 
I in fact wanted to do yellow glue here, but of all my small clamps only the c-clamps provide enough squishing power to get good joints, I am strongly considering making my own small cam clamps for ship work. I have always like cam clamps since I first learned woodworking, a standard 8" version should be able to do ~300lbs and if you're using them every day all day you can get amazingly fast at declamping and reclamping with them. Further, unlike spring clamps, they can apply a range of force from 0 to their max. I think that might be the best solution for this type of clamping, if nothing else before I start another ship I'm going to spend some time on infrastructure like making clamps based on my experience building this ship.
 

It's of course a double-edged sword issue, like pretty much everything. You get so much more adjust and also abort time- you can recognize a major issue and still easily pull the piece off and clean up both sides. But it also means you have to clamp the hell out of everything and that really gets complicated.
 
What I'm doing is much less complicated and zero need for clamps, but I have to position everything exactly right the first time, even with slow CA they grab almost immediately. But as you see you can get very good glue lines when you use all 10 fingers to clamp a 1.5" length, and the other advantage is it's quick, you can walk your way down a plank in a short time as you only need to hold each section 30 second and then give it another 30 seconds to harden a bit- I finished the other side of the inner bulwark planking, most of the time being spent fiddling fits to be much better than they need to be.
 
So that's done, need to do starboard side rabbet for outer planking then can start the outer planking.
 
In an effort to get Grant treated for rabies due to excessive drooling, here I am cutting the stem rabbet for the starboard side. Rick, I also think this helped me with the planks at the bow, and I'd recommend anyone do it- but obviously do it before the stem is attached to the hull when it would be very easy.
 

 

 
 
It provided a very positive lock for all the inner gunwale planks.
 

 
 
Here it looks like the fashion piece came second, so I score this a win.
 

 
 
And the bow looks nice and clean with the rabbet.
 

 
 
And overall starboard side. Pretty much same as other side, very good glue lines except for the top strake. Which is really annoying as I was really trying to make that better on this side, but it's getting painted so moving on. Just bothered I'm not still sure what happened there.
 

Blocks look good Sjors 

Great work Jay. Those new tools look gorgeous - I'm drooling over my keyboard reading your posts! I've just received a set of Veritas chisels (for larger scale woodwork). They look and feel wonderful - cant wait to start using them.

Thanks Chuck. You're right - deleting and re-doing a custom stream takes no time at all, so all good there. It takes a little playing around to understand some of the terminology in the filters, but a bit of trial and error gets you there. I'd noticed how you'd refined some of the other streams too. Might be worth mentioning, that once you've created a custom stream, if you click on the "tick" icon at the top of the page, the system adds a "permanent" short cut to the desktop for you (at least, permanent until you uncheck the icon).

OK, here we go.....................I dug out the Commander box this morning and emptied out the contents to do a quick inventory and while I had it all out of the box, I figured I would give anyone who is interested in building this kit just what is in the box. This kit is not for the faint of heart, but if you have a little building experience you shouldn't have too much trouble building it. But I will have a better determination of that once I get her built. Now the box weighs about 18 pounds and is quite hefty. Now once I had all the parts laid out I quickly realized what a substantial kit this is for the money. I have seen this kit selling for as little as $240.00 and as high as $400.00 which is quite a price spread, so shop around. I purchased mine off of Ebay for no where near that amount. So keep your eyes open, you might find a deal on this kit because I think people buy the kit with good intentions of building it, but once they get it home and realize how much work is involved they either sit on it for a few years or they eventually sell it. You will also have to purchase the running hardware separately, which will set you back about $75.00. 
 
I have had a couple of people ask me for the plans once I'm finished with the build. I DO NOT SELL PLANS of ship models that I have built. If you want a copy of the plans you can purchase them from Dumas for about $25.00. Plus, these plans aren't worth a hoot for scratch building as they are not to scale. So I will be using the plans as well as the instruction booklet to build this kit. Stay tuned for updates.   

Thanks Chuck. You're right - deleting and re-doing a custom stream takes no time at all, so all good there. It takes a little playing around to understand some of the terminology in the filters, but a bit of trial and error gets you there. I'd noticed how you'd refined some of the other streams too. Might be worth mentioning, that once you've created a custom stream, if you click on the "tick" icon at the top of the page, the system adds a "permanent" short cut to the desktop for you (at least, permanent until you uncheck the icon).

Great work Jay. Those new tools look gorgeous - I'm drooling over my keyboard reading your posts! I've just received a set of Veritas chisels (for larger scale woodwork). They look and feel wonderful - cant wait to start using them.

Blocks look good Sjors 

Thanks Chuck - just what I was looking for!

What is an activity stream?   It is a fancy word for the custom search of the content on this site, which at the click of a link you can view precisely what you want.   Currently there are only the default streams set up.  You can view these by hovering over "Activity" in the menu as shown below.  Note the "MY ACTIVITY STREAMS"
 

 
 
 
Click on "MY ACTIVITY STREAMS" and you will see the default streams.  They are pretty good but I know you will want a more targeted stream of content you are interested in.  For example you can set up a custom stream that will show you only unread activity in build logs for three people you specifically want to check out regularly.  And you can filter other restrictions.   Just click on "Create new Stream as circled below.
 

 
You will get to a filter screen where you can name your new customized search....see below
 

 
Then select the other customized features you want.  Below you can see I selected individual forums and even made it specific to just two members.....and content that I havent read since my last visit.  You can set it up any way you want....
 

 
After you save your customized stream (lower right is saved button)  it will now appear in the drop down as shown below....this is the test stream I just set up.....
 

 
If you click on it....it will show you only what you asked it to show you.  See below for my custom activity stream.  There is no content because I made it very narrow with only two members as you see.  Read the description of my custom stream below the red circle.  Also note that the icons in the red circle let you select this as your default stream or you can edit it or delete it.   It will remember your selections and now all you have to do is click on it whenever you want to see this particular stuff.
 
Even more awesome is that you can set up as many custom activity streams that you want.........

 
 

First I decided not to issue this at all, but after having seen here elsewhere Chuck`s tutorial about casting the thin carvings out of PU, I decided to publish also my method to cast cannon barrels. I have used this method many times before when building my car & tank models, so I had a little experience about the chemicals and working methods also before starting to cast cannons.
 
The first thing was naturally to turn a pattern for the barrel in the lathe:
 

 
 
 
 
Next thing to do is to make a spruce, a channel through which the liquid resin is poured into the mold. For this a piece of 3 mm iron wire was used:
 

 
 
 
 
And then we can start making the mold. First a small box was made of 3 mm MDF. The pattern together with spruce was installed into one of the walls of this box, approximately at half height of the short wall. Then liquid silicone rubber was poured into the box so that the level is at the middle of the barrel. Sorry that there is no picture of this phase.
I was using Oomoo 25 silicone rubber, made by Smooth-On. It consists of two parts A and B, small amount of each is measured into a small container, mixed thoroughly and poured into the box. When cured, releasing agent was applied to the lower part of the mold and new batch of silicone rubber was made and poured to the box and let cure.
 
This is how the first half of a mold looks like, when dismantled from the box. The pattern with spruce is still on its place:
 

 
 
 
 
And here you can see the both halves of the mold. A cone is provided at the top of mold where resin is poured. Small air venting channels are also cut at the top of the barrel to have air to escape when resin is poured into mold:
 

 
 
 
The mold is closed and polyurethane resin is prepared by using equal amounts of part A and B of the Smooth Cast 305 resin from the same manufacturer as the rubber. Parts are stirred very carefully and poured into the cone of the mold. It would have been possible at this phase to add some metal powder to the resin, to have the barrel really look like cast out of metal. I have however found out that if metal powder is added into the resin, it will become very stiff and doesn`t flow very easily into the spruce & fill the barrel cavern completely.
 

 
 
Resin has been poured and it can be seen that it has raised into the air venting channels too, which proves that the barrel cavern is filled as well:
 

 
 
After the resin has cured and mold opened, the spruce and barrel look like this:
 

 
 
Now it remains only to clean the barrel, drill holes for the axle pin, ignition powder and naturally for the cannonball, and glue a small glass pearl into the back of the barrel:
 

 
 
 
 
And finally paint the barrels. I wanted them to look like old patinated bronze, so I mixed Model Master gloss black enamel paint with AK Interactive`s old bronze metal color. Diluted them so that the paint could be airbrushed on the barrels. And finally, when dry the barrels were wiped lightly with a soft cloth to get the look of old patinated bronze:
 

Blocks look good Sjors 

Great work Jay. Those new tools look gorgeous - I'm drooling over my keyboard reading your posts! I've just received a set of Veritas chisels (for larger scale woodwork). They look and feel wonderful - cant wait to start using them.

I realized that before I could add the shroud lines that the pendants had to be installed first. So first I had to make thimbles for the ends. I started with 3/16" rod, drilled the end with a 1/8" bit then cut the groove in the thimble for the rope. Once the rope groove was cut I then cut a guideline for the saw blade to cut the thimble off. With this small a part I inserted the shaft of a Q-tip to retain the thimble on when the final cut was made and saving it from flying through the air. After all were cut they were stained with patina and then rope added.

 

 

 

 
The pendants were then added to the masts at their appropriate lengths. Will post a picture later on.
 
Next I made a setup to use my Sherline lathe as a serving machine for the shroud lines. I glued a clip to a brass rod for the chuck and glued another clip to the point of the live center. I used an Allen wrench in a tool post with a small clip to hold the thread spool in place. The thread was then held at a length of 5 inches between the clips and served by holding slight tension on the thread once tied securely to the chuck end of the line turned on the lathe at a very slow speed feeding the thread to the underside of the line being served. It takes a little practice to get the feel but once it is the serving goes quickly. I found that by using the second hand fingers sliding the thread back and forth as you progress it evens out the thread. The lathe speed is almost as slow as you can go. Here are pictures of the set up I am using.

 

 

 

 
Now back to rope work. Slowly but surely.
 
 
 
 

Thanks Popeye
 
And Rick, the reason I cut the scarf joint while planking the inside of the bulkheads is because I will be doing that joggling of the deck planks. I hope Tony is still listening, he did a pretty fancy job of the planking on his. I've got a good top view of a well-done Cheerful, if nothing else I'll just copy that here.
 
So we left off with the resolution of the Great Gunwale Debate, and BTW Rick haven't heard a peep back from Amati.
 
While we were arguing back and forth with that, I did the port-side rabbet for the second planking. If you remember I did the first primarily with my rotary tool, this time for safety's sake I decided to use edge tools and it was a good reason to use Mikhail's tools. People shouldn't see them as carving tools, more than half the set is straight and skew chisels and I'm sure he would sell a set of just those. All of the straight and skew chisel tools are fabulous micro-joinery tools.
 
First mark it out more carefully than the first one.
 

 
Cutting the top and bottom lines with Mikhail's knife.
 

 

 
Finishing with the same riffler I used before. This one seems specifically designed for model ship planking rabbets.
 

 
All was well on the bow end.
 

 
But as mentioned above, on the stern end the plans don't account for the thickness of the planking they told you to put on the transom, leaving it overhanging the rudder post where the final planking is supposed to end. So either we get a jaggy line or cut a piece of the rudder post out, I did the latter, starting with scoring the line.
 

 
 
And then I used Mikhail's straight and skew chisels to cleanly remove the required wood, and lemme tell ya cocobolo isn't the most carving-friendly wood.
 

 
 
Here I went back to the gunwale/bulkhead planking... what the hell are they? Both? Anyway the inner planking of the deck wall things
 
And Rick, the answer is cut those puppies into as many pieces as possible  Well more accurately, fit and mark as one plank but I rapidly concluded that particularly working with a hard wood like boxwood that I would want to glue short pieces if possible and remove as much waste as possible before applying pieces to the model.
 

 
 
Here is another demonstration of my new tools, cutting a rabbet for inner bulkhead planking into a stem piece that's already installed. 
 
I also want to know why, within ten minutes of sitting down in the shop area, my fingers always look like I've been fighting in Stalingrad for three weeks.
 

 
 
And successfully test-fitting a plank.
 

 
 
As mentioned, for practice I cut a scarf joint in one of the strakes, just eyeballing the first half.
 

 
 
Looks more or less right.
 

 
 
Clamp it and the other half down and mark it with a knife, pencils are way too fat for this.
 

 
 
Cut to the marked line, and theoretically it should be dead on.
 

 

 
 
Overall view of progress.
 

 
 
I am using my scraper to basically level each plank as it's glued on. Or you could wait to the end and try to level four boxwood planks at the same time. Your call
 

 
 
Rick was right, you do get some good ripple removal from the inner planking. But like everything there are limits and I'm still glad I spent time getting them as close as possible to right back when I did the original bending.
 

 
 
And as noted, it doesn't fix everything. This is one pernicious ripple that doesn't want to go away, highlighted in red.
 

 
 
I played around with clamping before glue, and glad I did as it had to be placed in exactly the right place to correct close the gap.
 

 
 
And now we have a completely fair line and no gaps and without any need for sanding or filling to get it that way, that makes me happy.
 

 
 
Obviously I'm leaving the openings somewhat rough until the outer planking goes on and we can finalize them. This is the stern area done, and I can only see one out of four glue lines and the fit with the fashion pieces looks good so overall happy.
 

 
And full view with port side inner planking done. The very top strake ended up with a visible line most of the way, not sure why, it looked as good as the rest dry fitting. But that's maybe a half star reduction, overall I'm pleased with the results, although this is as easy as planking gets. Proof will be in how I do with the bending and twisting of the outer planking.
 

 
 

Funnels look terrific Nils - up to your usual exceptional standard!

Funnels look terrific Nils - up to your usual exceptional standard!

Funnels look terrific Nils - up to your usual exceptional standard!

My next model will be the immigrant ship ‘Meteor’.  Built at Bremerhaven as the ‘Admiral Brommy’ in 1851, she was purchased by the Hamburg ship owners T.E & C. Vidal in December 1852 and re-named ‘Meteor’.
 
She was not a large ship – her principal dimensions were; Length - 135.70 ft [41.36 m]; Breadth 29.17 ft [8.89 m] and depth of hold 20.54 ft [6.26 m].
 
She sailed from Southampton on the 17th March 1853 carrying 326 emigrants bound for Australia.  Amongst these were Robert and Rachel Laing – my great, great grandparents.  The ‘Meteor arrived in Sydney on 3rd July after a voyage of some 108 days.  The voyage was described by the Sydney newspapers as ‘excellent’ as only two children died during the passage!
 
The final fate of the ‘Meteor’ is unknown.
 
There are no plans for this ship, however the German Maritime Museum at Bremerhaven were able to provide me with high resolution copies of two excellent paintings of the ship – one as the ‘Admiral Brommy’ and the other (incidentally dated 1853 – the significant year for me) as the ‘Meteor’.  I will be using modified hull lines of a similar ship of the period and the two paintings to build a plank on frame model “in accordance with the best available historical information”.
 
It may be a while before anything happens on this build log, as I first have to sort out the very faint and difficult to read plans I have and convert them into something I can use to shape the frames.
 
In the meantime, here are the two paintings of the ship.
 
John
 
 

small update...
 
funnels are complete, painted and eyelets for the 10 guy wires /per funnel attached.
Two of the base structures still require the lighting windows on the beveled sides.
the resin based buff color for funnels and vents is of "Glasurit", semigloss, called desert sand (Wüstensand)
 
Nils
 

 

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

Young America - extreme clipper 1853
Part 199 – Setting up Futtock Shrouds
 
The lower futtock shrouds are lashed to mast eyebolts as shown in the first picture.
 

 
The picture shows the first two secured.  Before lashing the lower ends, eyes and thimbles had to be worked into the shrouds with the lengths set to provide relatively consistent lengths to the lashings.  This was done by hooking each shroud to its deadeye strap and then grasping the rope at the desired length with round tipped pliers as shown in the next picture.
 

 
The rope was then looped over the jaw to set the position for the eye.  This picture demonstrates the problems caused by a lot of handling of the masts after blackening of the copper ironwork.  All the ironwork on the masts was retreated after all the pre-erection detailing – as will be seen in later pictures.
 
The next picture shows an eye with the thimble inserted with glue applied at the splice joint – as described in the previous post.
 

 
The next two pictures show the six futtock shrouds installed on the lower fore mast.
 

 

 
The ironwork has been mostly re-blackened in these pictures. 
 
The next two pictures show a test I felt compelled to make to satisfy myself that the lower shrouds would clear the futtocks.  I felt some trepidation about this, not knowing what I would do if there were interferences.  Fortunately there were none that miniscule movement of the collar could not cure.
 

 
The next picture shows the positioning of shrouds 3 and 4 that straddle the center futtock.
 

 
The white rope used in the picture is some reject 4-strand linen rope that approximates the size of the served 10 ½" shrouds.  The uneveness reflects the difficulty of making four-strand rope without a central core.
 
The foremast is now ready for installation and work is proceeding on the other two.  In the next to last picture a mast coat may be seen at the deck covering the wedges.  This will be described in the next part.
 
Ed

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

Hi Nils,
thank you for your nice reply.
 
And this is how the result looks.