Ian_Grant

First piece of deck glued down to the removable frame, and hopefully not to the nearby hull frames. This deck runs aft from the breakwater to beneath the forward superstructure where it is full width, to hide the seam. The next piece will run the remaining length of the removable portion.

Here it is weighted down while glue sets; sadly I lack sections of railway track. I'm considering bringing in some of my extra bricks from the garage when the next, longer, section of deck goes on.

I can't glue down the forward and aft fixed decks until I do a float test and decide how much unaccessible ballast to add - I'm shifting the main battery forward one compartment compared to the original location to allow the smoke unit to take its place between the fwd and aft stacks. (Assuming I can fit in  the unit and its piping). I expect less ballast to be required at the bow.

1 hour ago, Kevin-the-lubber said:

Oh yes, of course you did. You should be able to print some pretty small, finely detailed items even with the 0.4mm standard nozzle and finer still with a 0.2mm. I printed my original Victory side entrance steps on my filament machine.

Hmmm.... I've been wondering about ladders! Teenaged me used some brass coarse representations of ladders I found somewhere. Probably will need more to meet increased accuracy requirements. I see a 0.2mm nozzle in my future......

4 hours ago, ddp said:

not all plastic stuff as most of my 1/144 scale warships are balsa frame with 1mm thick styrene plastic skin for the hull & superstructure. my 1/144 scale County class Destroyer is balsa frame & skin as it was my 1st big model ship. did a billings boat decades ago & i think i have it somewhere that is if my cats did not chew it up. but my biggest wood scratch building was my friend's 25'x35' garage that i had to partially redesign before helping him build it.

That's a big garage - hope some of it is devoted to a workshop!

8 hours ago, Kevin-the-lubber said:

How about filling them near enough with a clear epoxy glue, or anything else that sets more or less clear, leaving a very slight recess. Then put a little dob of clear enamel in the recess. This photo shows, on the left, objects printed with transparent resin (the layer lines cause opacity) and on the right, the same but after I brushed on a little clear enamel. As I needed the enamel to be watery thin, I just sprayed some from a rattle can into a little receptacle.

 

How are you getting on with the Mingda?

 

Nice Victory lanterns, Kevin!

I bought the Bambu A1 instead, in the end. We were away and then Christmas loomed; I haven't done a damn thing with it other than printing a "boatie" which my daughter immediately claimed. Last thing I recall I was having trouble getting my PC to "see" the printer through our WiFi. Will need to look into it as I'm getting close to needing some 3D printed superstructure parts.

6 hours ago, Wintergreen said:

Slipping wiht a sharp chisel either makes a hole in the boat or in oneself. The latter is messier... pls avoid.

Good catch of the twisting structure and a sensible choise to rip out att correct. If not, it would haunt you later in the rebuild I think.

Yeah, and slipping while using a bandsaw makes a mess too, which I discovered last year on another build. 'Nuff said. 😭

I woke up with the idea of temporarily fixing the ends of the taper at where the wood wants to be naturally and simply belt sanding the high side and the plywood gusset until level, instead of messing up the angles which were a pain to achieve. Think I'll go with that. If I blow it I can always try again with new pieces.

6 hours ago, Wintergreen said:

Keep it up!

Thanks!  And thanks for the encouragement!

Ian

6 hours ago, Kevin-the-lubber said:

Ian, in case it’s of any use, for the veneer deck on the Cutty sark I split this into 5 sections by zig-zagging the cut to follow the plank lines. The joints are virtually invisible. The key was to set the kerf offsets right for each orientation of line. This method is a little tricky with very thin veneer as it needs sheets to be near enough dead flat, but should be fairly reliable for 1/16”. (Which has got me thinking….).
 

I subsequently found (via YouTube) the method of lasering pieces (using Lightburn) that are too long for the bed, using lasered datums. It’s fiddly and I haven’t used it for decks, with their ultra fine tolerances, but it worked a treat for some big, crafting stuff I was doing. But if you are using a library laser maybe there are limits to how much you can control the cutting?

 

Are you printing the portholes? 

Hi Kevin,

Our library lasers have adjustable beds several inches down (actually up to about 10" if your material is REALLY thick) in the enclosure, with hinged glass covers to enclose for fume control. There's no way to "slide" the material over in increments, even between runs, due to the enclosed structure.

See some of Epilog's  machines here:

https://www.epiloglaser.com/en-ca/

In practise one places one's material in them, then adjusts the bed up and down depending on the material thickness to get the laser's focus correct. They have a little L-shaped tool that "hangs" off the laser head and when one's material is just touching said tool, the focus is correct. There's no way to "slide" the material over in increments unfortunately.

No, I ordered micro metal eyelets to glue into drilled holes in the ship, 1.5mm opening with 3.5mm flange. Close enough for RC......😏

Still wondering whether/how to add "glass" to them...🤔

Ian

8 hours ago, ddp said:

your decking pattern appears to be the same as done on 3d printed warships which i think is wrong. border planking would be done 1st around structures & hull edges then the 1st planking would be laid on the centerline then infilled on either side of the centerline so will have staggered butt joints not what you have done.

Perhaps, but I deemed it too hard to draw the exact outline of the hull in Inkscape in order to get border planks exactly accurate. I'm not an Inscape savant and random curves are difficult. If I could have done that borders round the superstructures would have been fairly simple. As to the butt joints, I ended up drawing a 5-butt shift because that was convenient in the grid setting I chose in Inkscape. Don't know if that shift ever existed.

Good enough for RC I think.

Ian

It's been a while. Not much work done over Christmas but I am making some progress now.

Used the laser cutter to etch deck planking on 1/16" baltic plywood.

Here's the largest piece 24"x18" with tw0 replicas of 8" wide decking, and two smaller pieces for the foredeck forward/abaft of the breakwater. I lasered these two apart following the curve of the breakwater as it seemed the best way to keep the crack less noticeable. "Planks" are 1.5mm wide, a scale 20ft long.

I added strips of wood just below the bulwark stringer because the new portholes fell just below it and I wanted more to glue them into than the 1/32" ply skin. You can see these new-looking pieces below, and also blocks further down into which to anchor the torpedo net booms. Teenage me just glued them into the skin but old me is fussier.

While paring material off a bulkhead, my 1/4" chisel slipped and of course went clean through the bottom. One more patch to add.

While waiting for my micro eyelets for portholes I started the frame for the removable deck portion, which encompasses "A" and "B" turrets, both superstructures, and the central "Q" turret.

Here we see the plywood mount for "A" and "B" turrets built into the framing.

In order to make the frame, I temporarily screwed the outer strips to the inside hull, with a slight gap, letting them bend naturally. Then I filed/sanded their tops flush with the sheer line, finally adding cross members. Hope is that after adding the deck ply, the whole will retain its shape when I remove the screws (other hope is that I can glue the deck on without gluing it to the hull....that would be a major hiccup!!

The fore deck continues to the aft end of the aft superstructure, where it forms the deck in this superstructure's central well boat storage.  Sadly I just noticed the tapering aft end shown here is slightly twisted off level athwartships wrt the rest of the deck. Sigh. I'll need to cut out the large plywood stiffener and fix the beams, then reapply the stiffener.

Temporary screws through the hull, holding the frame's outer members.

Thanks for following!

God, that's a lofty rig!

5 hours ago, BANYAN said:

Braver man than m e John, all that extra rigging to put in place (sail control/handling lines)   She's comiing along really nicely; I'll bet the museum staff are chuffed with it.

 

cheers

 

Pat

I once counted up all the buntlines on the 5-masted Preussen; I forget the total but it was huge enough to convince me to omit the sails and some associated rigging on my model.

Glen, you're getting fast at rattlin' down. They look great!

Topgallant shrouds did not usually have ratlines; I know - it's a puzzle to me too. Perhaps the "ladder" just gets too narrow to be useful?

To man the topgallant yard they could lower it to the cap and access from the top of the Topmast ratlines.

Very cool video. There's a lot to know about properly running this technology!

Thank you Keith! May your family have the same! Looking forward to MSW's various 2025 build revelations..........

3 hours ago, Wintergreen said:

Oh, a re-comission. Interesting. I have an old Wasa (Billings) that I ponder doing the same to. Well, not RC, just rebuild to some higher standard than mine teenage me mastered.

I must say your teenage you did a darn good job with that hull Ian! Okay it lacks details but the lines are there. Well done Sir!

 

Keep it up!

Thanks! Lion was my 4th RC build but the first scratch, so I had some experience with kit hulls. Luckily my dad's friend Jim worked in a large drafting office and he had the David MacGregor plans enlarged for me, to the size I wanted.

Re-doing a sailing ship sounds pretty daunting I must say. I had that old Wasa kit in the 70's too but I made a pretty poor job of the planking. I gave up when I got to the point of "Carve these two balsa blocks into a pair of lions as shown". 🙄   Might be easier to buy a newer Wasa kit; that old one was very inaccurate.

The engine looks really good now. Great work!

On 12/17/2024 at 7:29 PM, Kevin-the-lubber said:

........... though I'd take Turin or Perugia over Rome every time. I'll also do the train thing again, found it much less stressy than driving and ridiculously cheap.

One more Italian anecdote:  When we booked the vehicle they said we would get a VW "T-Roc", an SUV model I never heard of; maybe the European version of Tiguan?  Anyway when we clunked along the cobble sidewalks to the car place in Florence with our luggage, the guy took our reservation form and consulted his computer. Then he said, and I quote, "We don't have any Volkswagens left so I'll give you an MG". Huh? "How the hell are we going to fit with our luggage into an MG?", was my immediate thought. 🤔

Turns out "MG" is a Chinese auto manufacturer, which I also never heard of. Did they buy the "MG" brand?

Glen, sorry to disappoint but I don't know either. 😞 Hey, I'm an electrical guy not an aeronautical fluid dynamics guy........

On the subject of the Coriolis effect, when we visited the equator in Ecuador they demonstrated it using a plastic sink on legs.

On the equator, the water simply ran out with no spin.

Four feet north of the equator, the water spun out CCW.

Four feet south, it spun out CW.

I was amazed at this demo and will never forget it.

Thanks! Summers are for RC boats and days can be hot here. I was advised by the local 3D shop to use PETG not PLA since as you say it can warp. ABS is not an option for us due to fumes which would be deadly for our parrot; nor is my printer enclosed for fume safety. I'm not planning on  printing hulls; I just want to print some parts for the superstructure, and the stacks.

Looking forward to seeing more of your build!

Ian

Just out of curiosity, do you print these in PETG for outdoor use, as opposed to PLA?

First to reply only 17 minutes after the post!

It falls on me then to have the honour of congratulating you Glen on a truly spectacular SIB accomplishment. Whirlpool looks great and the final result is uncannily close to the first picture you showed us. Fantastic! Your best yet, and that's saying something....

Nice mechanism!

Glen, nice colours on Big Country; reminds me of a (very large) calico cat. 😏

Sorry to hear. It's a very hard decision to make. My wife's a vet and we've had many pets, few of whom just passed peacefully away in their sleep.

The Pearl looks great!  Eagerly awaiting the confirmation of success!

That's great!  It is pretty slow as I imagined. Thanks Bro!