Ian_Grant

All you really need is an inexpensive dovetail saw, a marking guage, and a couple of freshly sharpened chisels. Nonetheless, I use a jig now too. Mine is just an economy jig; couldn't justify a Leigh jig for variable pin spacing 😢

Bill you and I have much in common! One more project that I have photos of.....this desk that I am typing at. Cherry, which has become my favourite wood. It's nice to watch the wood darken and redden over time. First four shots are when it was new. Fifth is a more recent pic of its current glorious patina. All dovetails hand cut. We really must move to a new thread..........

Yes I made the legs. Routered the flutes too. Here is the fireplace as it used to look with the old bricks. I did all the woodwork around it decades ago. Before that it was just a vertical column of bricks to the ceiling. I wanted to make this rather narrow room look wider by having the mantel span the lot, introducing a strong horizontal element. Excuse the mess.😬 If there's no furniture woodwork thread we could start one. I saw where one guy has his bathroom reno logged.

Bill, since we're trading woodworking tales, here are a few pics of my my last project: Chess table from cherry and maple. I'd been meaning for years to build one for a nice chess set I bought in Bavaria years ago but finally decided to do it when we re-did our family room. Also tiled over the old exposed bricks around the fireplace and installed new doors, and laid down vinyl interlock tile. The chess men came in a box, cradled in two layers in red velvet compartments. I sized the drawers to re-use these nice pieces. The drawers are stacked and open on opposite sides. It can't be seen but the corners are dovetailed using a router and jig. They use soft-close Tandem Plus slides ($$) which mount along the bottom, out of sight. Here are the slides during construction. The very fine trim around the bottom edge would have been wrecked by my 18ga nailer so it was a perfect excuse to buy myself a new pin nailer. What a great little tool - I didn't even fill its holes they're so small. The inlay around the playing field is banding from Lee Valley. I fell in love with this 12th century chess set when I saw it. Very viking-looking and I love the expressions on the faces. It's a replica of the "Isle of Lewis" set which was found on a beach where they had been buried. I've seen the originals in the British Museum.

Thanks Bill, clear and understood. Yes, I have a complete wood shop including a 3hp Unisaw. I was interested to see your shop but I noticed you don't seem to have dust collection. I highly recommend a system of some sort. Many years ago I added dust collection with a home-built cyclone separator and final filter. This was after going to wood shows to shop for a system and seeing a puff of dust from the filter bags every time they turned their systems on. That demonstrated that fine particles were passing through their filter cloth, the very particles that can lodge in your lungs. Around that time an issue of Fine Woodworking had an article on cyclonic dust separators which included a photo of a guy feeding dust and chips into his separator's inlet port with a dustpan, with nothing visible coming out of its disconnected outlet. Lee Valley had a little book about dust collection with detailed math about pressures and flows and sizing ductwork. From this I learned that most of the systems you see for sale have insufficient outlet filter surface area for the airflow; if the pressure per square inch is too high then fine particles are blown right through the filter material. After all, it can't be airtight! That's why many syatems now have pleated bags which give some more surface area but really not enough still. I bought some "filter socks" from Oneida Air Systems which was just starting up at the time. A set of these gives vastly more surface area than any single bag, leading to lower pressure per square inch and no dust coming through. Hear are some shots of my system. The design for the cyclone I think was in an issue of "Woodsmith" but don't quote me. I bought a 1.5hp filter system just to get the motor and blower; the rest of the pieces I never used. The overll system sits next to my unisaw. Duct from saw to filter can be seen between saw and outfeed table. It's a very short connection to keep it efficient. The "y" connection allows connecting a hose from other machines. The sliding shutoff s select between the two. Detail of the inlet ducting. Green motor and enclosed fan are at the top. They suck air up the internal pipe in the separator. The conical part of the separator. Junk store all around it 😬. There's a removable collection bin on wheels beneath it. Fan duct to home-made plenum is at the top, keeping the connection very very short. Normally the plenum would be at the bottom with the socks held above it to allow dust to drop off into the plenum for cleanup but I decided minimal duct length was higher priority. Even after all these years there is very little dust accumulated at the bottom of the socks; hardly anything comes through the separator. I have to be careful to empty the collector bin outside, with a filter mask on, because there is always very very fine dust in it. Bill I recommend such a system. There are many available now including cyclone lids for standard garbage cans, although I don't know how well they work. As an aside, in a couple of these pics you can see my final prototype for the servo-driven rowing mechanism for an RC Roman galley I have been working on, 44 oars a side, sitting on the table. There's a video of this rowing, with water, in my last post about this prototyping. If you are interested just search for "Arduino" and my log will come up.

Bill I'm curious about the joinery in your case. For my Victory I had a local plastics place make me the four sides and top in plexiglass with no framing. In fact, the front/top/back are one piece bent on a radius to form the top edges. But this was quite costly. Next time I will build one too. Did you dado the plexiglass into the wood? How is all the wood joined at the top corners, given that your strips are small in cross section to keep the case airy looking?

Bill, she looks great! Your case looks great! She has pride of place....

That Airfix hull looks pretty nicely molded to me. I thought it was looked upon as inferior to the newer Revell of Germany Wasa? Or has Airfix retooled it?

Nice stern painting at this scale especially! I agree with shipman, it would be a LOT of work to cut out the windows to replace with etch. I didn't even do that for my Heller Victory.

You're probably right; the aluminum is riddled with holes actually. And will never warp. Possibly my best plan is to design the hull to give me the estimated displacement, then if the built hull turns out to be a bit heavier, eliminate the drawer slides thereby saving the 0.76 kg. If it's lighter, I could add internal ballast. Or eliminate the slides anyway and have more ballast. I will probably be quiet for some time now. Need to review the library's materials on using their machines then get myself approved for them. Will post when there is something to show. Don't anyone hold their breath.....😵

I guess we'll find out! Yes, a crew will be needed. I'd like to have the two helmsmen, some marines, an optio commanding them, a couple of archers in the tower, crews on the scorpios (artillery), commander gazing forward,..... I've been talking to my brother, the 3D printer guy, about that. For example, I found this guy on the internet; he's "fully rigged" which Andrew says means you can pose him as you like before printing; as opposed to printing then having to cut him up to move his arms etc. You could even scale him to get men of different heights. For $40 you get the file then print as many as you like. He'd do for the marines and could be modded for the optio. I think I will be learning about resin molding in the future. https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/maya-roman-legionnaire/371829 Glen, that's hilarious! 🤣 But actually you have the little guy on the stern....😄

Bill, they used to paint the u/w hulls with "white stuff", their version of anti-fouling paint. It was a white sulfurous resin. I plan to sand off all the exaggerated wood grain below w/l when I get to SR and just leave the plank seams, for what it's worth. Oh and by the way, you should move the w/l up the hull which means sanding off Heller's molded w/l guidance. I have no experience with silver solder but it seems to give far stronger joins than lead/tin. I think there is a whole thread on soldering on this site.

First the ship, then the second bank of oars. I'm finished with the software for now so I'm going to dismantle the oar bank to weigh the aluminum channel; if it's fairly heavy compared to plywood I will modify the bank to a wood plate sliding on Lee Valley "Slippery tape" and try that out. If successful I will go with that approach. As I mentioned earlier I need to beef up the u/w hull to displace the resulting expected weight of it all. What I am coming up with to attain the necessary volume is a most inelegant midships shape 😬. When I have a hull I will be measuring its displacement ASAP to verify. I'm even thinking about just covering the hull framing in two layers of plastic wrap or silkspan or something, just to try to make a quick measurement of weight required to get it to waterline. Here is video of another model; 1.3m and 6.5kg displacement. Not sure if he has a propeller "assist" in her. My estimated hull is a couple of inches longer and 1.8 kg heavier, half of which is the darn drawer slides.

Modified code again to replace the rectangular stroke with parabolic entry and exit on the power stroke with flat central portion. Now that I've seen rectangular, trapezoidal, and parabolic strokes I conclude that the stroke shape is not important; the vertical movement is so much less than the sweep movement that the eye cannot discern the difference. Since I now had the parabola formulas in the program I decided to have some fun with the stroke as shown in this video. I'm very happy with my code; it has been robust in the face of frequent changes and obviously is not a wobbly house of cards which is what I was afraid I would end up with. Perhaps "C" itself forces you to write in a structured way..... I will now move on to a hull design and build (finally, I hear people saying......). One last thing to show - I built a water tank to see the oars row in water. Not for long as they are glued with yellow carpenter's glue and are not varnished or painted as yet. I'll need to sand the corners off the blades before applying finish. Anyway here is a brief video. You can see where my garbage bag liner sprung a leak 😆. No danger of the mechanism flying off to the side..😄..I must say it's hard to imagine this having the power to move what will be a fairly heavy hull. I hope to God after all this effort, and effort to come, that it does.🤞✌️

What a pretty model! 👍👍

It does look great! Glen, what size is that chest - what's the grid on your cutting sheet?

Maxx, I too would like to build an RC square rigger, after I get an RC galley going. I did an RC topsail schooner as a teenager back in the late 70's when the average sail winch was about the size of three hockey pucks😄. She sailed but I had trouble tacking her; mostly failed to get past the wind's eye. I decided my fin was placed a little too far aft but then I moved out and life "intervened" as they say. Here are some pics of my RC sailing models as they are today. The yacht was refitted a few years ago. That's a drive from a plastic model tank which was used to adjust the square topsails on the schooner. So I'm quite interested in your model. That is some honkin' motor!! Is it just back-up for when the wind dies down? Are you going to have full control of all the square sails? I'm curious about your winches; did you order winch or drum type? I'm guessing drum since you have no bulkhead cutouts to give an arm room to swing. My old winch was a big drum which was troublesome if hauling in a slack sheet since tangles could ensue. There is a great book by Phillip Vaughn Williams, "An Introduction to Scale Sailing Models" which outlines different ways of rigging winches. Excellent read! Looking forward to more of your build.

....if you say so.....😄

And he used to be MichaelD. Perhaps he is dodging the tax man? 😄

Oh yes I'm sure they would!

Hello Jack; I live in the west end near Pinecrest Cemetery, so, nearby to you. Yes Great Hobbies at Hunt Club and Merivale has wooden ship kits, mainly Occre, and even a few fittings. They're about it for wooden kits in this town. They're mainly into RC cars and electric airplanes by the look of it. I can never seem to spend less than half an hour there even if I just dropped by for a small item. OOPS! Later Edit.....They do carry Amati, Billings, Corel as well as Occre for on-line ordering; that's why i remember only seeing all those white Occre boxes. They do have those cool OCcre metal locomotive kits which I was tempted by last time. 😲 Welcome to MSW and I look forward to seeing a ship build occurring right here in Ottawa! There aren't too many of us I think. 😄

Looking very nice , Bill. Change of plans from your "wall of ships"?

I've been wondering about that too.....

Looks great! I took a look at those after-market parts links you mentioned, wow are they ever nice for upgrades. I particularly like the belfry railings which I understand from Hackney the kit omits completely.

Hi William, this kit does indeed make up to a beautiful model. Like many here I made this kit in the 70's as a teenager and still have it. I agree with Wawona - get a wooden deck; those raised ridges where caulking should be are irritating. These decks were not available back then, and even if they had been who would ever have known without the internet? 😃 Since this is your first ever sailing ship I wouldn't sweat too many exacting details on the rigging. Using the supplied plastic blocks with a touch of paint will spare you the task of stropping many many aftermarket wood blocks (and their cost), because the supplied blocks have an eye molded in as a strop. The model builds up beautifully with them. The Revell rigging instructions are actually very good and when followed result in an impressive amount of rigging. I still have mine; glancing at them I believe they omitted standing lifts on the upper topsail yards (on my instructions from the 70's anyway). I didn't know then to add them. I agree too that the shrouds and deadeyes are best replaced. For one thing the deadeyes on the lower shrouds are spaced apart about 8 scale feet which is ridiculous. The molded shrouds/ratlines do not look realistic (my ancient kit had these molded in a "soft" sort-of-thread-like material which is far too thin and does not tie off at the masthead at all realistically; perhaps they are changed to rigid plastic now?). Bear in mind though that you will have to tie all the ratline clove hitch knots! 😬 At a guess allow maybe 12-15 hours??? Not too sure about it. I know my Victory's ratlines took a l-o-n-g time. I have kind of stalled my Preussen build since I reached that stage - not sure if I can bear rattling down 5 masts at 1/150.... I also agree with Wawona about the plastic eyelets. You can buy copper replacements almost exactly the same size here, if you are not comfortable with making them at this scale: https://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/cgi-bin/sh000001.pl?WD=eye copper&PN=4703-Eyepin-Copper-2mm--100--A4703.html#SID=367 Good luck and enjoy building your model! You can be as fussy with it as you are willing to spend the time and effort. You will be rewarded with a beautiful display. ps that's a nice secretary desk but with the bowsprit on and when rigging you will need a larger surface without the side uprights to bump things like yard ends etc 🙄 ...spoken from experience