etubino

Recovered from the covid isolation, not much trouble and found time to do some other activities
 

Back to the project I  am working on the middle and forward sections. I design them myself as these are straight pieces. Besides with some heat applied resin can be curved without the risk of distortion like plastic. I forget to add buckles for rigging so added some with brass wire. Etch primer were used then white color for the internal section

 
 
 

A Little Progress, 7 hours over 7 days
 

I started by making a temporary stand from poplar. The kit came with nice brass pedestals. I found some bolts that fit them, drilled holes in the hull and epoxied nuts in place.
 

The laser-cut parts for the superstructure popped right out of the surrounding wood, but they didn't quite fit in the space atop the resin hull. I had to do some cutting and sanding to make them fit. The resin hull seems solid but it sands like Styrofoam and is very easy to shape.
 
And that is the end of the wood work on this model.
 

The superstructure will be covered with photo-etched parts with lots of holes, so I painted the interior black.
 

Amati U-Boat 47 type VIIB

After building the Syren I didn't want any more rigging. After building the Arno XI Ferrari hydroplane I didn't want any more brass nails in the deck. After building the Anteo harbour tug I didn't want another double-planked hull. What to build next??? A submarine!
 
Amati offers an attractive kit of a German U-boat from 1939. You can get it for £225.00 from westbourne-model.co.uk, but I found one on eBay for much less. I've had the kit for 6 months and am finally getting started.
 
What's in the Box

The meter long box has two divided plastic bins on the sides and one large area in the center for flat materials. The bottom contains a cast resin hull of the submarine.
 

The full-sized plans are about 0.7m x 1 m, and are all in Italian. The hull seems to be two hollow pieces glued together, but I can't find obvious seams. Alas, there are no rivets, panel lines, or other details molded in the hull.
 

There is one sheet of laser-cut plywood parts used to build up the superstructure of the deck. There is also a heavy cardboard sheet, apparently used to identify the plywood parts.
 

There is also a large sheet of photo-etched brass parts used to make all the of the detail on the deck. It seems to be beautifully detailed.
 

One parts bin contains a resin cast conning tower, dive planes, and some miscellaneous small parts. The kit does contain two turned brass mounting pedestals but no wood base.
 

The other parts bin has a decal, and a nice cast sailor and anchor. The props and mounting hardware are, disappointingly,  plastic.
 


The instructions are 16 pages long and are written in Italian. But like Lego instructions they are mostly pictures, so I don't think they will be too hard to follow. The English translation is about 1.5 pages long.
 
I'll be starting on this after the holidays. Stay tuned for more.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Another awesome feature if this 1950's era kit is the holes in the superstructure decks to facilitate some rigging lines from young hobbyists.  She was definitely designed to make a nice display piece, regardless of age level.
 
I opted for stretched sprue lines for resilience (and tautness) and to hopefully reduce dust collection.  A little thick, so I left off a couple of the implied lines to keep a clean appearance.
 

 

Well it’s been awhile but I got some steam up and off dead center on my Liberty ship build. 

It is coming along....
 
Yves

Hello All,
I have now finished the Shamrock V. There was really very little rigging on it, and most of it was dependent on the sails, so once they were ready to install, there was not too much left to do.
 
After making my first set of sails, I decided to have a second go and see if I could improve upon my first attempt. I had used the pounce wheel to mark the seam lines, but I wasn't completely happy with the result. Tom Lauria uses a pencil, but I found that the pencil simply looked too much like a pencil line and tended to smear with the slightest touch. So I contacted Tom and he suggested I needed to use a much harder pencil.
 
Off to Staples I went and found a 6H pencil and this did the trick. It didn't smear at all and left a light crisp line. I still had a bit of trouble keeping the silkspan smooth and flat and I do have some wrinkling at the edges, but I know this is as good as I'm going to get it and I can live with it.
 

And here's the finished model. I didn't chronicle the rigging very much as it is as simple and straightforward as can be and the Amati plans are crystal clear in this department.
 



I don't know enough about yachts of this period to know how much of the detailing is accurate. I suspect some of the deck details are overscale, but I decided not to worry about it if that is the case. The only thing I did do was replace the standard issue wooden blocks with cast ones from BlueJacket which I think look so much better.
 
So now that my current commissions are over, it's back to the Agamemnon in earnest.

Again, many thanks for looking it and all the nice comments and likes. I really appreciate it.
 
Happy New Year to all!
David
 
 

Good Morning Everyone,
I've made good progress on the sails.
Roger, I appreciate your comment, and as a rule I prefer models without sails. However, I think this yacht needs the sails, and it's a good opportunity for me to experiment with them.
 
As I mentioned earlier, I found the kit provided material all but impossible to work with, so I had ordered some silkspan which arrived on Monday and I spent much of Monday and yesterday working on the the sails. I found the silkspan easy to work with and I believe I will have an acceptable result.
 
Following Tom Lauria's method, I painted the silkspan with some acrylic paint. When dry I pressed it flat with an iron. Tom mentioned using something called dry waxed paper. He doesn't mean regular waxed paper, which would leave quite a mess. Instead of dry waxed paper I used parchment paper which we already had and it did the trick. It can withstand quite a bit of heat and it protects the silkspan.
 
The next step was to cut out the sails. I made cardboard templates, but here I had to differ from Tom's approach, as I ruined my first sail. He outlined his sail with a pencil, but when I did that, as soon as I ran glue along the edge for the reinforcing strip, the pencil just smudged and made a mess of the sail. The next time I ran my pounce wheel along the template and this cleanly laid out the sail.

I marked the template where the seams go, according to the plans and transferred those marks to the material, but outside the edge of the sail.
 
Then it was a a simple matter of cutting out some reinforcing strips and gluing them along the edges of the sail.
 
When it came to marking the seams, I differed from Tom again. He recommended drawing on pencil lines to show the seams. However when I did this, the line looked too heavy and seemed, to my eye at least, to look too much like a pencil line drawn on the sail. I know that others have tried actually sewing seam lines on, but I wasn't about to get into that and it often looks over scale in any case.
 
So, I turned to the pounce wheel again and marked the seams with it. I'm pretty happy with the result. It shows up just enough, not so much as to be distracting, but still noticeable.
 

I then flipped the material over and applied the reinforcing strips and "seams" to the other side and then cut the sail out.
 
I then ironed the sails again, between two sheets of parchment paper, and I think they're finished.
 
There are four sails on this model - the three small ones which I've done and one large one. Unfortunately, I will have to re-do it as it's marked out with pencil and isn't too clean looking. Fortunately, I ordered enough material.
 


 
Anyway, that's my first experience using silkspan and I have to say that I found it to be a very nice product to work with.
 
Thanks again for looking it.
 
David
 

Good Morning,
A little more work on my Shamrock to report. I've finished up the deck details and have a good start on the rigging. The rigging on this model is minimal and quite simple to do. Also the instructions are quite clear so not too big a challenge -
 






I've upgraded the blocks to internally stropped ones, from BlueJacket.
 
This is as far as I can go until I add the sails. Most of the running rigging must be added at the same time as the sails.
 
I'm finding the sails to be a very big challenge. The kit provides some material that seems quite suitable to me. It's a very fine synthetic fabric which does not seem to be over scaled (to my eye at least.) But they only give you just barely enough, certainly not enough for a practice round. I followed the instructions in the kit and also followed someone's Youtube series about his build of the Amati Endeavour yacht, which appears to use the same fabric and method. His seemed to turn out beautifully, but it's lot easier watching it being done than doing it!
 
The approach is to coat the fabric with a 50/50 mixture of white glue and water. Cut out narrow strips to represent the reinforcing at the edges and other points and glue them on. Then cut the sail out. I have two problems, which aren't actually well reflected in my pictures below. First it's very difficult to get the sail to lay flat and not wringle. The first one below is by for my best effort and I even think it could pass as acceptable, however the others are not nearly as good. The second problem is that I underestimated how easily this gluey fabric would pick up every last bit of dust and dirt in my shop. As a result the sails, in addition to being wringly, also look pretty dirty.
 


I think it's possible that I could manage to get an acceptable set of sails using this method, but I would need about three times the fabric to allow for do-overs.
 
So, I have ordered some silkspan from BlueJacket and I'm going to have another go at it, this time following Tom Lauria's approach as he outlined in one of his videos. It's quite similar to the first method I tried, but he coats the material in paint instead of glue. I think I've ordered enough to allow at least one do-over. If I can't get a decent job with the silkspan, I'm not sure what I will do, but I remain optimistic!
 
Once I conquer these sails, the build will be virtually finished.
 
Thanks for checking in.
David
 

She got 1st place with some competition

Small progress due to another leave of absence ( holliday). Cut out the sections for the scuttles and oars so that the doors would lie flush with the hull and also the 4" scuppers . I only fitted the 3 forward ones as I thought I would ensure the main mast chainplates were fitted to try and miss these if possible. Regards the hinges for the doors, the ones supplied are far to flimsy but managed to find some extra ones left over from my Endeavour kit which is the same 1:64 scale so a bit of improvement I think. I am also in the process of gluing the upper focastle drift rail but still need to make the decorative scroll out of boxwood as per the quarter deck drift rail. Some cleaning and touching up of paintwork is required. 

I have sepent the last couple of weeks replacing the different walnut rails supplied by Caldercaft with 2.7mm square boxwwod and made the the scrolls out of 1.5mm thick boxwood veneer. This has been my first attempt at carving using both 1.5mm Vee chisel and a 1.5 mm gouge. Not too bad but I still could do with a bit more practice. I also used Amatis shapers to get what I thought looked a pretty good profile of the rails but not as accurate as depicked in the AOTS book. I did try and make my own shapers out of safety razors but they did not turn out as good as the Amati shapers or by some fellow modellers on MSW.I also made up the fenders from 2mm boxwood sheet, which I already had in stock.


I have followed the Caldercraft instructions as per fitting of the upper sheer rails but have fiited the rails at the channels and left out sections of this rails to allow for the positions of the fore and main channels. I have two more rails to do to fit on to the hull which is the smallest of the rails which are the quarter deck and focastle drift rails. I have tried using 1mm square boxwood for these but think this is too small. So I have ordered some 1.5mm and 1.8mm square boxwood to see which looks the better and whilst I wait for this to arrive, I can move onto a number of jobs which I have put on the back burner for one reason or another and I need to return to these to finish off the work on the hull. This work is mainly the sweep ports, ventilation holes and scuppers.
             Once again I will be following with the Caldercraft instructions and moving onto the head rails and what I also think will be another daunting task.

That's right, gang. She's done.
The rope coils and the jig I used:


Other photos:








I bought this kit on January 23, 2009 and got started that night. It wasn't long until I realized that I needed help so I did an internet search for Model Ship Rattlesnake and found this group. It's been quite a ride ever since. The log bounced back after the great crash of 2013 because I hadn't posted much and I had all my photos.
Hobbies are great and they wait for us to catch up. And, as always, the wood is patient.
 
For my next trick I'm going to bash a Hudson River sloop into a costal pirate. Should be fun.
 
Comments welcome - Kenneth

 
 

Milestone!!
All the rigging is complete.
The fore topgallant yard:



Overview shots:


My gosh - It actually looks like a ship model.
I have a short punch-list to do and it will be finished.
Ship's Name
Rope Coils
Flags Steps
Bumpkins.
 
Comments welcome - Kenneth

nice little dinggy

Thanks Ed -
Yes, it seems to be wrapping up. Two more spars and a short punch list to go.
No stain on the masts, just testors dullcote lacquer on the sanded wood.
Here's a shot of the rigging at deck level, it shows the newly added kevel:

I also put the boat back in its home.
 
Comments welcome - Kenneth
 

Hello Everyone -
I've decided to change things up a bit and build one spar at a time, install, then photograph. So, here is the foresail yard:
 


There's rigging tied to the rigging!

On to the fore topsail yard.
Comments welcome - Kenneth

Main mast spars ready - I think

This little vice really helps. The Admiral got them for me years ago in a two-pack

This is a very small space to attach blocks

So I had to remove the boat to get in there.

Work is proceeding. I'll take more photos and post as I go along.
The light at the end of the tunnel is getting bigger. Er, Maybe I shouldn't go to the light.
 
Comments welcome - Kenneth
 
 

I do not know if it was a mistake to start directly with the rigging. But I thought that right now I could get along well everywhere. And maybe there is more stability for the masts.
At the moment I stopped the rigging and finished the jib boom. Could you give me a hint here, how I'm doing the best?
In general, I have to say that I am really scared of rigging. Not because of the work itself. I dare to do that. And I have the patience, too. But the plans are so difficult to read. The German translation is a gibberish and riddled with pseudo-technical terms. Although I have hardly started with the rigging, I realize that I lack a lot of experience here. I very much hope that my model will not be totally devalued or fail.
I wish you all a nice evening and look forward to your response!
Your
-Heinz-

In the meantime I started with the jib boom. Since I do not want to use colors here, I had to buy new roundwoods. Unfortunately, my carpenter could only get me walnut wood, so that all masts and yards are kept in typical brown.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to get all woods in the right strength. So there is a lot of work to do, to mast the poles to the right thickness, to file, to sand ...
Of course I then had to come up with something with the metal bands. I made small wooden rings around the masts to simulate them. Unfortunately, I misunderstood the drawing / instructions and made too many of them ...

Eimer sind aber echt Geil Dafi!!!! Deswegen ist Dafisimus!!
 
Buckets are outstanding Dafi!

Eimer sind aber echt Geil Dafi!!!! Deswegen ist Dafisimus!!
 
Buckets are outstanding Dafi!

Malcom
 
I didn't see your last question, plaese acept ,y apologies. 
I guess so-