FriedClams

Nice work, Mark, You pulled it of, lovely colours of the wood. She starts to look like a real ship. Although, ... did they have aircraft carriers in those days ...

I agree with the previous speaker!

I think the cradle will be a good idea. The hull looks wonderful and I know it will be gratifying to finally cut the build board away. Good work.
 
Russ

Beautiful!

Been a bit since the last update.  Thanks for following along on this journey of discovery and sawdust and for the likes and the comments.
 
A bit of a minor/major milestone... the ship is in the cradle... YIPPEE!!!!!
 
The next step is start removing the build board and trimming down the frames to the sheer strake(s).  
 
I considered pedestals versus a cradle as I didn't want to stress the keel, etc .nor did I want to attempt to put a large baseboard on at this point.  The cradle just seems (to me) to be steadier and stronger.  I noted that I do seem to get some wobble on my Constellation which is on pedestals.  It could be my method of mounting is faulty or just the way it is with them.
 
The cradle is 1/4" mahogany (see photo).  After finessing it into position, assembling it and re-finessing, I drilled a 3/32" hole through the cradle and inserted a brass tube of the appropriate diameter.  I mounted the cradle into position, and drilled (using the tubing as a drill guide) a 1/16" hole through the keel, frames and keelson.  A brass rod was inserted with a light coating of epoxy.  When set, the cradles were set into place with more epoxy on the brass rod and in two places on each end of the cradle.  The structure seems sound and steady. 
 
I tried to design the cradle so as not to hide the lines of her and I think I pretty much succeeded.   At some point, the hole where the crosspieces go through the cradle will be covered by a small carving on each.  I'm leaning towards a fleur de lis.
 
Anyway, here's the pictures.
 

 

 

 

Great restoration, very beautiful work.

Jeff, I am filling the scratches with enamel paint first then sanding down the paint fill, there is only the large gouge left now to finish filling. I am leaving the paint a couple of days at a time before sanding it off, as Denis mentioned it is tedious but I think the end result with be worth it. As far as masking it off, it would have required removing all the brass portholes first and that would have been a major job and would have been a lot more expensive to do.
 
Not a word John, and it was manufactured in the USA
 
 
I am not sure that it is the "correct way" so much as trying to do the minimal amount of rework as possible. I am waiting for my Micro torch set up so that I can silver solder the bottoms of some of the stanchions back together. The style and pattern are as far as I can tell unique to Bassett Lowke. They appear to be made of nickle silver.
 

 
Denis not quite mass production they are a lot of work and are all done by hand control on the lathe and mill except 3 screws.
 
Michael
 
 
 
 

That restoration is coming along very nicely Michael and I am learning a lot from it.  I have been asked to do some rigging repairs on a few models in a local exhibit but I must admit we did not do it very sympathetically (as you have done) and it is easy to see the new pins and rigging repairs in some areas; no hull work to date.
 
You have opened my eyes as to how to do it correctly.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Hi Michael,
The Novus brand is synonymous with my eldest Son's car club. They use this stuff all the time for detailing vehicles. I never would of thought about trying to remove the scratches. Talk about a time saver. I would of thought to just mask off the hull and repaint it. Good thinking on your part! Hopefully you can rub it all out and repolish the surface. Also a trick the car guys use is a clay bar. The clay picks out all of the crud in the paint FYI ... Jeff

Like the systematic approach to polishing. It is important to not cross-contaminate between different grades of polishing agents.
 
The jewellers, watchmakers and other metal-workers have a whole arsenal of different abrasive materials that contain pumice, chalk/limestone ('rotten stone', Wiener Kalk = Viennese Chalk, Tripel or tripoli), and red iron-oxides (Parisian Red). One can have these as liquids (as above) or bound in waxes to charge felt-wheels.

It's good to see the 'Albertic' back, Michael.
 
 
Doesn't it tell you exactly what the ingredients are on the container?
 
John

Druxey, I have had really good results in the past with a drop of this stuff on a small pad of Matt Board.
 

 
It is a good plexiglass polish, and the liquid carrier gets absorbed into the card and softens it a little leaving the polishing compound a little thicker on the surface. It would not surprise me if this is not made from either of the two materials you mention.
 
I will add another foot for the mini sander so that I can maintain the same level of control and pressure that I have been achieving with the sanding pads.
 
Michael

Good to see you back. Polish with what, Michael: pumice or rottenstone? The repairs above looks great!

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year, and thanks for all the support and positive feedback on this project so far.
 
I have been working away at filling the paint damage with just paint I did not want to use any different types of material other than the enamel paints over the wood and restored metal.
 
A couple of shots to show this progress.
 

 
Just a small bit left on the black where the almost 1/8th inch deepest gouge was. Once it is filled I will paint over the repaired area and then polish the surface to bring it to the same level of finish as the rest of the black on the side, to blend in the edges.
 
Michael

Very nicely done indeed, Bob.
 
John

Nice work Bob. I too need to get back to building now the festivities are over.

The holidays are over, and finally it's time to get back to modeling.  As if that was all there is to do.  Before the holidays I did some work on boat number two, but never got around taking and posting pictures, so now it's catch up time.  Here is what I did.  Now to do more.
 
Bob
 

 

As always Nils - wonderful work.
 
Gary

How can one not be a wood junky, Mike?   I've done some jewelry boxes also my Admiral...   a few "big boy" tools are good to have.  But not too many as they get in the way.

Mike
Too bad you are half a world away as I'd offer up time with my tools in my play room.
I completely understand and appreciate the feeling of discovering the beauty hidden inside ordinary wood.

Hmmm, normally we would say slightly oversized, with these tools it's largely undersized . Nice work on the wood, wth those tools

I am very interested in the machines of my colleagues! Thank You, Mike!

Semi-offtopic: got a bit distracted from the build with an idea of doing some small-scale woodworking (jewerly boxes, that kind of stuff). Part of the plan is to also build a nice display case for the Cromwell. The model looks quite nice even when not finished, plus in the case it would be better protected from dust. Plus it is better to build a case while you have an itch to do it
 
Ordered few boards of some basic hardwoods - walnut, cherry, maple. While the wood dealer is milling them to desired dimensions, took some small piece of scrap to practice with milling my own wood. This was a walnut from the edge of a trunk, with a bit of sapwood.
 
Everything is sooo out of scale My tools are tiny. So I can only build tiny boxes.
The piece I got was not square and not symmetrical. Obviously, I do not have a jointer, so squared it on a table saw.

 
Of course, the saw is too small, so finished squaring with a plane. Which was also super small. That felt, hm, awkward for sure!

 
Resawing this piece into planks on Proxxon bandsaw was just pathetic. Super slow even on a max speed and the sound was disgusting. The bandsaw was definitely not up to the task.
 
But after passing it through planer the wood turned out to be beautiful. Very deep walnut pores and grain, but guess that is a feature?
That contrast of sapwood and heartwood is striking, something I can use on some box to create a nice effect if matching the boards correctly.
 

 
Walnut on stained white oak.. I turning into a wood junkie...

Great work, Mike. Pretty clean and beautiful, thanks for sharing your build log, I put your log as a reference for my project.

Ed..wonderful remark.  I appreciate the clarity and specificity.  I was wondering how you came about Webb's original spar plan for the YA?  I wasn't sure that Webb designed and installed his own spars as well.  Many builders simply contracted that aspect out based upon their requirements for their ships performance design.
 
I've had a bear recovering such information for some of my McKay builds.  It's as if all that information is now lost to time.  Apart from the generic.
 
Like you, I rely heavily upon Crothers research and deductive conclusions.
 
Again...thanks for all your time in responding.
 
Rob