FriedClams

That's a good catch about the broom.  That is in keeping with the NRG's motto - Advancing Ship Modeling Through Research".

Good going Keith, I would never have thought of that.👍

There’s a patent for a push broom!? Amazing!

Thank you, Paul.
 
 I was going to add a figure using a push broom and I thought I better check Google and check when the push broom was invented. I'm certainly glad I did because the push broom patent was applied for in 1950. How bizarre is that!  

Keith, that is a great looking crew!

Simply EXCELLENT!  
LJP

It just keeps getting better and better Keith!!
Rick

Thank you, Phil.
 
 Thank you, Roel. I hope and pray your life is not at risk because of shortsightedness and greed by those that have authority over you.
 
 Companies would be run much differently if the director's children worked in those high risk areas.
 
 
Thank you to everyone for the comments and the likes. 
 
 
 Lula has her crew. There are eight crew members including Captain Bill.
 
 The boilerman can be seen at the front of the boiler and the lead deckhand is the person walking toward the bow on the starboard side. 

 
 The deckhand hanging on the grab handle is the youngest member of the crew. A lot of his foolishness is overlooked and forgiven because he is also the strongest and least fearful of any man onboard.  

 
The engineer and his assistant are replacing one of the seals on the hand pump that went wobbly. There are four deckhands including the lead deckhand. 

 

 
 Next on the list are the chain supports for the cylinder timbers. What jolly good fun awaits. 
 
 Thank you to each of you for your support and for following along.
 
  Keith
 
 

Nice job, Glen.  She's in the bottle and looking good!
 
Gary

Nice job, Glen.  She's in the bottle and looking good!
 
Gary

Very nice work Paul !
Your buildlog is very interesting to follow, well done
 
Nils

Gentlemen, thank you very much for your kind comments! Although the planking was fun I’m glad that I didn’t have to do below the waterline 

The hull looks really spiffy, Paul. Very impressive. 

Excellent job on the planking, Paul.  That's as good as I've seen.

Very nice work! That stern looks a bit tricky to plank but it turned out well.

Looking good, Paul!
 
John

Hi Everyone, hope you are all doing well. Thank you very much for the Comments and Likes! The hull planking is finished. As the planks ran off the bulkheads and below the waterline, 1/8" blocks of basswood were added to define the waterline and add to the structural integrity of the hull. They were glued into place after the planking was installed to make it easier for clamping.
 

 

 
Once the blocks had been installed the planks were planed down so that they were 1/16" proud of the blocks. The process started at the stern and moved forward.
 

 

 

 
I had some Cleco type side grip clamps that had been used for metal work. They have a strong grip but didn't mark the AYC. They were good for the straight lengths. I got them from Aircraft Spruce. They are about 6.00 CAD each plus you need the pliers to put them on and take them off.
 

 

 
 
 
 

 
I started making the tabs that are glued to the back of the planks longer so that they extended from both sides. This made them interlock with the previous plank's tabs.
 

 

 
After the planking was completed they were sanded back to the waterline and the hull was mounted back onto the build board.
 

 

 

 

 

 
I went over it with 120 grit paper but it still needs more sanding. Once the sanding is finished the rub rails can be attached. Hope to see you when the dust settles.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

After watching the three YouTube vids I'm emotionally spent! I don't know how in the world you manage this SIB business, Glen. I'd either be dead from a heart attack or at the very least have that bottle and model smashed into a million pieces. 
 
 Congratulations on getting the Kentoshi-sen successfully inserted. What a story, thank you. 

Very nicely done! The ingenuity it takes to get a ship into a bottle really is something else.

Thank you @Thukydides!  
 
The insertion process was a doozy.  It took me 8 or 9 hours to get the ship assembled inside the bottle and another 3 or 4 to get the water effects finished up (not counting drying time).  There were quite a few self-inflicted wounds that caused the process to take so long.  But it the end, we got er done!  I took some videos of much of the ordeal.  So if anyone wants to see how the sausage was made, here's the 12 hour process condensed down to three 8 - 9 minute videos.
 
Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NnI9r-tPeQ
Part 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_T9eUPj0f0
Part 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXudxchH3-Y
 
 
 
Here's the picture version of the process, starting with the 2 halves of the hull ready for insertion.  You can see the rigging lines as described in the post above - attached to the sails/masts, running thru the eye pins on the hull halves, then back out of the bow where the ends will remain outside the bottle after hull insertion.

 
 
Here's the 2 halves of the hull joined up inside the bottle.  Rigging lines are nice and tidy.  You may notice that I actually textured the water behind the ship BEFORE insertion.  Wow!  What a concept!  It only took me 3 years of doing this stuff to figure that out.

 
 
Tiller and first deck house installed.

 
 
 
Now the real first test - installing the main mast and tensioning the rigging.  Lines still nice and tidy.

 
 
 
I got the main mast installed ok, and without tangling the rigging lines, but managed to detach the top of the sail from the top of the mast.  Ugh. 

 
 
 
However, using a new tool in the tool box (a barbecue skewer), I was able to push the sail into place and glue it to the top of the mast.  It's not tied on, but I globbed enough CA glue on it to keep it secure.

 
 
Then I realized I'd made another unforced error.  I was so anxious to try and get that first mast/sail assembly in place that I forgot to install the little Monopoly house that goes in front of the larger house (Monopoly hotel?) already in place.  So I had to thread the needle and fit the little house between the rigging lines and into place.  Quite a bit of difficulty doing that (as you can see in the video), but I eventually got there.  

 
 
 
I got the 2nd Monopoly hotel into place with no difficulty.  Then the horror show began.  It took me 2 long tries to get the fore mast into place.  At one point, I ended up pulling it back out of the bottle, untangling the lines, and re-inserting.  On the second try, I finally managed to get the mast in the deck hole, but made a gawd-awful mess of the rigging lines.

 
 
 
It took 3 or 4 hours to get the rigging lines for the fore mast/sail untangled, tensioned, and tied off.  Ugh.  But in the end, the mule finally won out.  That ended day 1 of the process.

 
 
 
Moving to day 2 of the process and smooth sailing the rest of the way!  Day 2 was spent completing the water effects and adding the ornamental carving on the bow.  I had textured the water behind the boat before insertion.  Now it was just a matter of adding the texture around the sides and in the front.  I wanted to texture the water first so I wouldn't have to mess with reaching underneath the ornamental carving and risk knocking it off or damaging it. 
 
For texturing, I dabbed on some clear acrylic medium gloss gel to make gentle waves.  After it dried, I added some touches of white paint to many of the wave tops for whitecaps.  After that dried, I went back over many of the whitecaps with Tamiya clear blue paint.  It has a transparent quality and is a shade lighter than my epoxy resin base.  It had the dual effect of softening the whitecaps and adding a lighter blue color to the tops of the waves giving a layered effect of blue coloring, much like real waves (although kind of hard to see thru the camera lens).

 
 
 
And with that, the insertion process was complete!  Only one thing left to do - celebrate with a tipple of Bundaberg courtesy of Pat (a.k.a @BANYAN).   Mini-Dimples heard me busting out the Bundaberg and decided to make an appearance.  She rates the ship and the rum 2 horns up!

 

The ship is looking so good Glenn. Though I think what I find most interesting about these builds is the creative ways you go about splitting them into sub assemblies to fit them into the bottle.
 
Looking forward to seeing her in the bottle.

@lraymo - Thank you for the kind words!
 
Almost time for the moment of truth!  But how to manage the rigging was driving me nuts.  The problem being that, because of the 3 large deck houses, the masts/sails had to be installed after the hull was in the bottle - meaning that the rigging could not be tied off to the ship in advance.  The masts/sails would have to have their rigging attached before insertion.  After insertion, all the lines would have to be tensioned and tied off inside the bottle. 
 
So the plan I came up with was to put a series of eye pins on each half of the deck just inside the bulwark.  One end of the rigging lines would be attached to the masts/sails.  The lines would then run thru the eye pins on each half of the hull and back out the bow.  I would insert the 2 halves of the hull into the bottle with the rigging lines running thru the eye pins and then join the hull halves inside the bottle (careful to keep the rigging lines from falling in between the halves of the hull).  To insert the mast/sail assembly, I would push it into the bottle while simultaneously pulling the other ends of the rigging lines thru the eye pins trying not to tangle things up during the process.  If everything went well, I would be able to drop the end of the mast into it's hole in the deck, raise the mast, tension all the rigging lines, then cut them off.  Arnold says...

 
 
Before I got started, I figured I'd better take some pics of the ship with everything dry-fit in place.


 

 
 
In the next post, I'll show how the insertion process went.

Phil, on my boat I would say yes.  To keep the end grain from absorbing water and quickly rotting away they must have done something to impede that process.  Being a low-tech fishing boat of the 1940s, I have this image in my head of a guy slathering the board ends with pitch/tar and then pushing the vertical strip into the mess and nailing it down.  But that’s just a thought based on zero evidence of what they actually did.
 
But considering the USS Cape, wasn’t the military using epoxy decades before it was widely used commercially?  If so, I wonder what purpose these vertical boards would have served except for added mechanical protection against crushing/splintering the plank ends.
 
 
Yes, sometimes I feel like I'm building a bulbous shed.
 
Your sheathing is more extensive and complicated than mine and your plank widths are wider which further complicates the process, so I don’t envy your task.  But you’re making a great job of it and the added interest it gives to the hull will make the effort worthwhile.
 
Gary
 
 

Just catching up, Phil and you're doing some very nice work on this model.
 
 
 
I have never seen anyone install this type of sheathing on a boat before - except that this is exactly what I'm currently doing on my F/V Pelican.  How coincidental.
 
So, I can offer what I know as it pertains to mid-century wooden F/V in New England.
 
The sheathing was installed below the gallows frames and extended down well below the waterline.  The sheathing was ¾” oak and protected the hull from the heavy steel edged “doors” (otter boards) when the trawl gear was deployed and retrieved.  This sheathing is sacrificial and was replaced/repaired as needed.  They are not tapered and there are no gaps between boards.  The Roann (built in 1947) is a small eastern-rig dragger and part of the Mystic Seaport Museum collection.  In the image below, one can see that the starboard sheathing not only covers the hull below the gallows but also extends in a narrow band at the waterline forward to the stem.  On port side, there is only the narrow band which extends to midships because there are no port side gallows frames on this boat.  My understanding is that because this class of offshore F/V fished year-round, the forward waterline sheathing is there to protect the hull from floating slabs of ice in a time when harbor freeze-overs were not uncommon.
 

 
Here’s is the sheathing that I've applied to the Pelican as per the plans and images of other vessels by the same designer.  This is complete minus the trim to protect the end grain, and the waterline band still needs to be extended onto the stem.  Because this boat had four gallows and could drag off either side, I will be sheathing the port side identically. 
 

 
If not helpful, I hope this is at least interesting.
 
Gary

Nice progress, Jeff.  I particularly like the rolled canvas and the way it slumps off the end of the rack. You've a good eye for details.
 
Gary