tlevine

I have spent the last few weeks constructing the lantern. I used the brass photoetch from Admiralty Models for the carcass. Rather than post a step-by-step construction, take a look on their website. http://www.admiraltymodels.com/Tips.html The document is at the bottom of the page. The exterior was painted to match the wood and the interior was painted red. The candle is a roll of paper and the glazing is mica. The crank is brass which was cut and filed to shape. All metal was blackened.

The larger the number, the larger the diameter on DMC thread. When I started making my own line I purchased all of the sizes 20-100 and made test line do determine the diameter of the completed line. (All you need is a few feet.) The diameter will be different for right-hand vs left-hand line so if you plan on having the correct lay for the different lines you will need to lay up both left and right-hand test line. Remember, the line diameter will vary a little based on your individual technique.

One of the other reasons beginning modelers become discouraged is the length of time required to finish even a simple model. Most of us have built a number of plastic kits, either as a kid or an adult. Unfortunately, that leads to an expectation of accomplishment in a short period of time. To us, a quick model means completion in less than a year!

Pure eye candy. I feel better now that I have had my Remco fix.

There's a fore face? How high does it go?

Just a quick update. The carlings have been cut to accept the ledges. I have started making the inner belt of ledges. The outer belt will not be make until the knees have been installed.

Martin, I have a few ideas for the next build. Let's finally get through this one first! Since I will not be moving the model very much anymore, I decided it was time to make the swivel guns. There are a total of 16, eight per side. Five are on the quarterdeck and three are on the forecastle. I used barrels from Syren to make my life a little easier. There is an aiming handle mounted onto the cascabel. It is L-shaped, extending below the swivel gun. In order to solder this to the gun I wrapped a loop of brass wire into the neck and filed a flat surface into it on the bottom. This gave me good surface area for soldering. The ball at the end of the handle is brass tubing slipped over the wire. That will be filed down after soldering. There are two types of swivel gun mounts: a simple yoke and the one used on the contemporary model of Atalanta. The yoke bends forward. According to David in TFFM, this gave additional clearance to decrease risk of damage to the shrouds. The first step was to make a paper template of the yoke. I then cut out a brass template (the smiley face in the top of the picture. This was made undersized to allow me to trace around it with a file to get the correct size and shape. Shaping was done with carborundum wheels, a cut-off wheel and files. Holes were then drilled for the trunion and mount. The mount was shaped on the lathe. The mount and yoke were then soldered together. The pin was placed through the hole for the trunion and soldered onto the yoke. Next came blackening and finally mounting.

Thank you everyone for the likes. Christian, I will not be rigging her. I did a restoration of a four masted clipper ship last winter and that was enough tying ratlines to kill any desire to mast her.

There are a lot of small projects to complete at this point. The first project was to start the cleaning process. After five years, the hull inevitably gets a little grimy, especially since it travels with me weekly on the back seat of my car. I started with compressed air to remove most of the sawdust. This was followed by moistened Q-tips and bits of paper towel held in a needle driver. This process took about three hours and will be repeated a few more times in the upcoming months. One of my punch list items was to insert the nails into the ribbands. I had pre-drilled the holes at the time the ribbands were installed but deferred adding the nails so the blackening would not wear off. I have put the ring on the anchor and applied the puddening. There is a first layer of rope with four seizings on top of that. The elm tree pumps were installed earlier but I did not make the handles as I knew they would be damaged. Needless to lay, this picture was taken before cleaning. A bracket was shaped to the side of the pump tube and a slot was cut for the handle. The strap is from black paper. I shipped the rudder at this point and drilled out the aft plexiglass support to accommodate it. I discovered that the top of the rudderhead was taller than the rudderhead cover and so this had to be remade. I prefer the looks of this one as well. I also installed the binnacle cabinet and secured it to the deck with two ropes. There is netting in the waist which is secured to the stanchions for the hand rail. This was made with tulle. The ropes are threaded through the netting and the entire assembly is spray painted. It was then trimmed and tied to the stanchions. As you can see, the cannon barrels are not even. Several of them have been jarred loose and need to be reglued.

I told you this was going to be slow going! The upper deck beams have been fabricated. They will not be permanently installed until the lower deck has been completed. The lower deck beams have been notched to accept the carlings. The notched were made with a razor saw and 3 mm chisels. Four of the carlings have been temporarily placed between the beams. Hope to have another update soon.

Everything is looking good so far. Every so often take a strip of card (think magazine inserts or that paper that junk mail is printed on) and lay is across the bulkheads. It is flexible but has some strength, unlike regular paper. That will show will where more material has to be removed. When it lays flat from the midpoint to the stem and to the stern, you are done fairing.

Maury, we are our own worst critics!

I chucked 1/4" round brass rod onto the rotory table of my Sherline mill. Then I slowly milled down the rod to the correct dimensions. The rotary table assured that the corners were at exactly 90 degrees. One of the problems I had was that towards the end, especially when the metal got thinner, the flattened rod would deflect away from the mill cutter. I used my finger to hole the end up to help prevent that. The minor defection was then filed flat after milling. The shape of the arms was made with an abrasive bit on the Dremel.

Thanks, Kurt. I might actually make the July meeting.

I guess I need to buy the high melting point solder. I have already purchased the yellow oxide suggested by Druxey. Greg, I let the anchor sit in Sparex #2 for about 15 minutes prior to blackening. I did not heat it, so maybe that would have helped.

Druxey, where were you with that suggestion Sunday!

Thanks everyone for the nice comments and the likes. Next on the build list is the anchor. I am only making the port side anchor since the starboard side is only in frame. Previously I have made my anchors out of wood, painted to look like metal, but I wanted to make this one from brass. My options were to make the shank and arms from one sheet of brass (as Ed Tosti did for Naiad) or made separate arms and shank and then solder them together. I decided to to the latter as cutting out the anchor from sheet brass seemed overwhelming. My first challenge was finding the correct thickness of brass. I was unable to find any brass sheet or square rod of the approximate dimensions required. I found it necessary to purchase round rod and mill it flat to the correct thicknesses. Although not difficult, I found this to be very time consuming (probably because of my inexperience with milling brass stock). I was able to obtain brass sheet of the correct thickness for the palms. When looking at the pictures, keep in mind that this anchor, without the ring, is 3.25" long. After I was satisfied with the final shape, the next step is to solder everything together. These pieces of metal are huge compared with the rest of the metal work on the model. Since I planned on blackening the metal, that meant silver soldering rather than soft soldering. I know some modelers get good results with Tix solder, but I have never had any luck with it when the pieces are to be blackened and not painted. My fist step was to solder the two arms together. This is when I discovered just how much heat was necessary to get the solder to flow on these large chunks of metal. Then I attempted to solder the shank onto the arm assembly. I put the solder on the arm joint and applied the heat to the shank but could not prevent the arm joint from falling apart just as the solder began to flow into the shank/arm joint. I do not own multiple melting points of silver solder so I pinned all the pieces together on a ceramic block and soldered all the joints simultaneously. Although not perfect, I think it looks reasonably good. If I were to do it again I would not file the edge on the top of the arm until after the soldering. The joint would look tighter and I would have been able to have a smoother transition on the outer edge from the arm to the shaft. The anchor was pickled, blackened in 1:3 Birchwood Casey. Unfortunately you can see the difference between the brass and the silver after blackening. After I saw this I filed everything down where the silver flowed and although it is better, a discriminating eye can still pick out the difference. Fortunately, it looks a lot worse in the photos than it does in real life. After blackening, I applied a coat of matte clear finish. The stocks are relatively straight forward. There is an air gap between the two halves to prevent rot. In following David's drawings I noticed that the two halves are not mirror images. Only one half has the internal taper, the other half is straight internally. The two halves are bolted and treenailed together. The hoops are simulated by paper dyed with archival ink. I still need to install the ring.

Tom, the ship is being made per the as built plans. Maury, your eyes are too d*** good. I didn't notice it until you mentioned it. Well, it is too late now. Removing it would cause a whole lot of damage. I have finished the anchor except for the ring. Hope to have some pictures to post in a few days.

Well, I certainly have not added much to the build log lately but I have been busy. I have started going through the punch list, finishing small parts that I was afraid would get lost or damaged along the way. I also made the cat crown. I held off on making this while I practiced some more with relief carving. After the quarter badge I think I have had all the practice I want for a while! The color difference will go away after a finish is applied. There are eight stanchions (hammock cranes) on the quarter deck rail. These are made of square brass rod with brass tubing silver soldered to the end for the passing rope. Each one of these is a different height to compensate for the rise of the deck. Two holes were drilled into the base and bolts were passed through the holes into the rail. The bolts are actually brass lil pins whose heads have been filed into a flat square. You can just barely make them out in the second picture. To facilitate drilling the holes in the rail I removed the quarter rail temporarily. There is a scale 7" clearance between the quarter rail and the stanchion. Next on the to-do list is the anchor.

Although I also used spacers between between the frames, I would suggest that it is a lot easier to simply cut equal length pieces of scrap and put them between the frames. Key in doing this is 1) keep the hull in the building board when inserting the spacers as this will prevent twisting and 2) make sure the port and starboard spacers are exactly the same length. Although you are attempting to show this build with a minimum of tools, this could easily be done with a cheap hand hobby saw and a sanding block. The advantage of spacers over running a spile along the side of the hull is that I could fair the hull more easily. The pictures below show the hull in the building jig after it had been faired. The spacers are placed medial to the laser cuts for the ribs to prevent any damage to them when they were eventually removed. After the hull was faired, a temporary spile was placed aft to stabilize the transom as the rest of the hull was planked. As you and I have discussed off-line, my planking was done prototypical, and not per the kit instructions.

For obvious reasons I will be following this with a lot if interest. I am particularly interested in aberrations in the draughts.

Druxey, you had better believe that I am happy to be done with it. It suddenly hit me today that I am nearing the end of this project (except for the figurehead which is project all in itself). My goal is to have it completed to take to the NRG Conference in October.

Thank you folks for your kind comments and thanks everyone for the likes. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth I have finally completed the quarter badge. The lower finishing is comprised of five separate pieces: three carved pieces and two moldings. The patterns were taken from the plan. The round part at the bottom appears to be a carnation-type flower on the plan. I hope you don't have to use your imagination too much! The console brackets are the carved decorations on either side of the badge. Having practiced with the NRG/Passaro carving blanks made this go a lot easier than I had anticipated.

The next piece to install is the upper finishing. This is the carved "roof" over the quarter badge windows. These are covered with carvings. I ran into two problems: first, the design is impossible to determine from the plans and second, the lack of skill carving wood. I also looked at photos of the model held at RMG and could not determine the design from them either. Since the pilasters will be the same design as seen on the taffarel, I chose a leaf and vine design to complement them. The upper finishing is a bear to make as it must fit snugly to the upper stool and bell light as well as the hull. I roughly shaped it oversize to compensate for any mistakes made with the carving. The horizontal munions were replace before the final installation. At this point nothing, including the lights are glued in place. The next two photos show the carving on the upper finishing. I was unhappy with the shape of the crown on top and sanded that down, fabricated a new one and installed it after the upper finishing was glued in place. The last photos show the quarter badge after the pilasters were installed and after a coat of Watco's had been applied. The deep areas look overly dark because the finish was still wet when I took the pictures. I still need to add a small base and capital to the pilasters.

Before I started Atalanta I had four sets of plans made with the expectation of cutting them up, etc. Three sets have never seen the light of day. The fourth set (the one I use) gets rolled up and unrolled on the kitchen counter as needed. Coffee mugs make great weights to hold the plan rolls open! BTW most of my work is done on the kitchen table, with the exception of lathe/mill work and big-girl toys like scroll sawing and machine sanding.