gjdale

Great job on the repair Kevin.

Well done Kevin, and I see from the photos that you have the domestic testing facility ready for sea trials too!

Well done on the repairs John. I think the cat may have been suggesting a need for a re-do..............? Whatever the cause, the latest work looks great.
 
So, I guess the cat is down to eight lives?

John,
 
Ultimately it's your decision to make. But I would ask myself, just how much is this going to bother me down the track? If the answer is, "not at all", then leave it as is. However, I suspect that this is not the case, else you wouldn't have asked the question...... In my experience, taking a few extra days now to fix something to your own satisfaction, and while it is still accessible, is well worth the extra time and effort. Your call my friend.......

Great progress John. The rigging will keep you challenged for some time, but just keep plugging away. She's looking fabulous.

I'll second Slog's vote of confidence in the Airbrush Megastore, Greg. Excellent service, great advice, good prices, and very quick turnaround. There's also a series of videos on their website.
 
Paul Budzik's videos on YouTube are also excellent and well worth taking a look at.

I'll second Slog's vote of confidence in the Airbrush Megastore, Greg. Excellent service, great advice, good prices, and very quick turnaround. There's also a series of videos on their website.
 
Paul Budzik's videos on YouTube are also excellent and well worth taking a look at.

I'll second Slog's vote of confidence in the Airbrush Megastore, Greg. Excellent service, great advice, good prices, and very quick turnaround. There's also a series of videos on their website.
 
Paul Budzik's videos on YouTube are also excellent and well worth taking a look at.

I'll second Slog's vote of confidence in the Airbrush Megastore, Greg. Excellent service, great advice, good prices, and very quick turnaround. There's also a series of videos on their website.
 
Paul Budzik's videos on YouTube are also excellent and well worth taking a look at.

I'll second Slog's vote of confidence in the Airbrush Megastore, Greg. Excellent service, great advice, good prices, and very quick turnaround. There's also a series of videos on their website.
 
Paul Budzik's videos on YouTube are also excellent and well worth taking a look at.

I'll second Slog's vote of confidence in the Airbrush Megastore, Greg. Excellent service, great advice, good prices, and very quick turnaround. There's also a series of videos on their website.
 
Paul Budzik's videos on YouTube are also excellent and well worth taking a look at.

Busy day in the shipyard!  I installed all the deadeyes and chainplates and covered the from edge of the channels with some cherry to finish them off.  I also glued the gun supports to the hull and assembled the swivel guns.  They were mounted (temporarily) on the starboard gun mounts.  There are just a few tasks left:  The horizontal portion of the catheads, finishing and rigging the anchors, and making the great cabin lights.  Almost done!
 
The ship will be mounted on the backs of some cherry seahorses fixed to a cherry base.  I still need to rout a profile on the base and glue the seahorses in place.  # or 4 coats of wiping varnish and it'll be done.

As promised,

Just prior to go on a business trip, I managed to finish the new deck
    Left old, right new, the planking pattern is much more even now.     Then got small pieces of wire, moulded on a head with diluted PVC glue in multiple layers to level up the still appearing unevennesses ...     ... splashed some paint on it and put them in place.     And then the exiting part: Try it out in situ :-)           Heyho, you won´t believe this, now the world looks much brighter again :-)   XXXDAn

Just realised that I screwed up the transom a bit.
For some reason I thought that inner planking and deck clamps in that area fully cover the transom wings. Also, I was expecting some sort of stemson, but at the stern. I thought that inner planking will terminate there.
Well, I was wrong. TFFM and other build logs indicate that transom wings are just left open, and inner planking terminates on the rear-most cant frame.
 
Like here, on Remco's Kingfisher:

 
Or on Albert's Naiad:

 
And here is what I have. Nevermind the glue spots on the clamps, they are not sanded or scraped yet, but you can see that they expect to terminate on some big timber in the middle of the transom (which, apparenly, does not exist), and the wings are ugly on the right side, because I was going to hide them under planking. Whoops!

 

 
Will try to reduce the impact of the screw-up by shaping the transom wings carefully, so they will look nicer. Shaping them in such confined space is a challenge, but seems like I have no choice.
Luckily, that area would be barely visible under multiple layers of deck framing, but it is not an excuse to leave it in such a bad shape!

Moving along, Pontos has a fairly elaborate set up for the torpedo nets. The AOTS book shows the rigging lines for them, which I shall now have to interpret to get correct.
 
The shelves on the gunwales hold the nets when stowed, but as they will be deployed, they stand out and are frustrating to place.
 
I have added the eyelets for the booms and the boat booms.
 
Finally the net davits, from which I will run the onboard rigging first before I set the booms and nets, again working inboard to outboard, then I can add the awning stanchions, the davits the last of the rigging and the flags, and the ships cats, before the final stage of adding the booms and nets.
 
 

Devised a possible new easier method to set up the transom pieces.
I used a couple pieces of packing Styrofoam saved from some purchases (yes I am a pack rat)
Drilled a 0.3125 hole in for a 0.3665 OD carriage bolt
The snug fit allows me to move the bolt up and down while the Styrofoam holds it snugly.
I use my scaled squares to level it off.
 


 
I also installed some bolts but need to research a bunch more.
 

Next I added a piece of wood across the top to help stabilize the build - well I guess you actually saw that in the previous post.
 
And then ever so slowly I took measurements from the plans for the top of the first plank and transferred those to the frame.

 
I then pre-shaped my planks using the method that Chuck shows in the instructions, however our one hair drier is for hair use only so I had to wait for everything to air dry - if only the husband didn't care so much about his hair - oh wait he shaves it all off....must be the woman of the house - oops that's me!
 
Anyway, once they were shaped and dry - and in retrospect I should have done it before soaking and shaping - I tapered the thickness of the front of the plank  so its silhouette was sort of like this: /| which allowed it to stick into the rabbit line a little bit better.
 
And photoey goodness!
 
 
 




 
So I'm a little confused about why there is visible light between the two planks since I not only clamped the planks down but also clamped the two planks to each other.  Oh well Its been 2 years since my last modeling - I'll get better - I hope.

Thanks for the nice comments guys.  I am pretty happy how it turned out.  As with anything I do, could be better but more than happy enough  for me to move on…speaking of which!
 
Yesterday I brushed on a decent coat of Humbrol Matt Cote which did darken it slightly but still looks good and it removed the couple of shiny patches on the port side.  Also feels a lot safer handling it now.
 
Tonight I had a look at the plans and the 4 lines of translated text about hull assembly and I may have been mistaken about skinning the anchor shelf before placing the top deck on.  After a look I decided to glue the top deck on first for a couple of reasons.  I may damage the skins with the top deck when placing on and there is a curve  at the rear of the shelf which would mean skinning it free hand without the curve in the deck to follow.
 
So its glued up now using my expensive state of the art clamping system LOL
 

 

 
 
Cheers
Slog

The cap rails on top of the bulwarks that run the length of the entire ship except the poop deck are completed. This was a tedious task since they are made from scratch with many little pieces. All of the parts including the little vertical support posts, the railings, and the bits on the forcastle are made from 4mm x 1mm walnut stock. The only exception are the railings that have the sharp curves at the ends. In order to make the bending easier, I used 2 strips of 4mm x 0.5mm walnut and laminated them on top of each other after bending, to form the 1mm thickness.
 
Now I will start at the bow and work on all of the deck fixtures and structures from stem to stern. This part of the build will take a long time.
 
Vince P.

Sept 05 2016
 
Completed sanding, relief cutting the stem and stern... and dry fitting the wing transom (to figure out how I might do it).
 
I need to add bolts to the stem post assembly and then add the horseshoe at the bow and the L (angle) bracket (knee plate) at the stern.  Attempted to make these from wire (flattening and filing) but this didn't work very well for me.
I've ordered some gauge plate to use instead and expect it to arrive this week.... so the transom pieces should go up permanently next weekend.

Thanks for the good words and all the likes folks.
 

First Frames
There are 5 double frames and 12 single frames in this cross section. I decided to start with the foremost frame, which is the double frame D1/D2. Figured this would be a good place to get techniques/methodology sorted out.
 
All frames will be made from 1/4" thick Swiss Pear. The stock is very slightly over-size for thickness. In making the first frames, I chose to leave the stock thickness "as-is" until the frame assembly is complete, and then reduce by passing the completed frames through the thickness sander. I may live to regret that decision, but we'll see how it goes!

Prior to cutting these out on the scroll saw, the timber stock was covered with low-tack painters’ tape, and the templates printed on sticky label paper and stuck on top of the tape. This is a tip I picked up from a scroll saw forum - it makes removal of the pattern very easy and there is no sticky residue to clean up afterwards. I have to say, having now tried this method, that it works a treat!



In laying out the pattern pieces, care was taken to ensure that the grain ran along the length of each piece (as far as possible).



The pieces were cut roughly to shape on the scroll saw, leaving about 3mm all round, and then the final shape was achieved using the Byrnes disc sander for the outside curves, and the oscillating spindle sander for the inside curves.

When it came to cutting the scarf joints and keel notches, I experimented with a couple of different methods, including hand saw and chisel, band saw, and using the mill with an end cutter. In the end, I decided that I was over-thinking it, and simply cut these as accurately as I could with the scroll saw, and then cleaned up with a (very sharp) chisel and file where necessary (which to be honest, wasn’t much).
 
The chocks were deliberately left over-size to provide a “handle” for cutting and shaping the “business” end. The bulk of the handle will be cut off prior to assembly and the remainder cleaned up on the spindle sander after assembly.

Here are the completed frame pieces cut out and ready for assembly:



Glue-up awaits, but if I've missed something important here, now's the time to tell me!

This will be my first full scratch build. I have chosen the Bomb Vessel Granado Cross Section as an introduction to scratch building as it has all of the components of a scratch build while offering something a little bit ‘unusual’ at the same time. This build is also a ‘group’ build as my very good friend Mobbsie in the UK has agreed to do this in tandem with me, and to make it a truly international build, we are also joined by Jack Panzeca from Texas.  While we will all maintain individual build logs, we will progress at a common (slow) pace and will therefore be able to help each other through any tricky bits.
 
Plans are by Jeff Staudt, based on the drawings by Peter Goodwin in the Anatomy of the Ship series, and also original drawings by Thomas Slade.  The plans are available through the Model Ship Builder (MSB) forum.  Although this is my first scratch build, I have to say that the plans/drawings by Jeff look to be first class.
 

 
We will also be guided by the build logs of several skilled modellers who have trodden this path before us.  I would like to pay tribute here to the excellent logs of Rusty, whose log of his 1:24 scale build is available here at MSW, and also of Mike41, who built the prototype model over on MSB.
 
We will be using timber from Jeff Hayes at Hobbymill, and have chosen a selection of timbers that will allow us to “paint with wood”.  My thanks to Jeff for his patience and guidance in helping me to put together the final timbering package.  Of course, as you would expect, the timber from Jeff is just gorgeous.
 
Here’s a picture of the overall wood package:
 

 
And here is one showing more clearly some of the colours that we have available through these timbers:
 

 
On with the show:
Framing Jig
We decided to start by constructing the Framing Jig - mainly because Mobbsie “cheated” by making his up earlier while testing out his new toys.    It is fairly straight forward to make - the base is 12mm ply that I had lying around, while the top is 3mm “aircraft grade” birch plywood (also spare stock I had lying around). The two pieces were cut to size and then clamped together while 10mm holes were drilled to take the adjusting bolts.  The pattern for the jig was then printed on sticky label paper and applied to the top, and the inside cut out on the scroll saw. After cutting on the scroll saw, the frame notches were finessed to size with a file, using a piece of 1/4” stock (framing stock) to test for a comfortable fit. The top and bottom were then temporarily joined with the bolts and the centreline transferred from the top piece to the base.  The centreline was scribed into the base and then drawn over with a pencil.  Additional lines were drawn parallel to this 1/8” either side to aid in locating the keel/keel supports.  Lines were also drawn across the base board to denote the ends of the frames. In the following pictures, you may notice a partially completed Stephenson’s Rocket lurking in the background ……… 
 

 
Two battens were glued to the underside of the base board to allow for the height of the bolt heads and make the base a little more stable.
 

 
A block of MDF was cut to size from the plans to make adjusting the height of the top easier, and the top was then positioned and the bolts all secured.
 

 
So far, so good.  Tomorrow will be the first attempt at making the keel components and cutting the rabbet.

The finished appearance of the swivel guns.

Great job on the repair Kevin.