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August 22, 2011. Work continues on the stern deadwood. I cut out the stern post and the inner post now to make sure everything lined up correctly. The stepping line was put in and the thickness above the stepping line was decreased to 12”.

Author: druxey. If deadwood details are not shown on your own draught, you need to be your own master shipwright and decide how to build it up. The Atalanta sheer and profile does not give the “breakdown” of this but does show the keelson and a sternson knee. In general, deadwood pieces might be up to between 2 and 3 feet wide, so take it from there. August 20, 2011. The stern deadwood has been made up and marked for the stepping line. The Atalanta deadwood configuration is different from the generic plan. There is a scarf on the top piece for the keelson. I tried different configurations for the other four pieces and decided that the spiled piece as shown on the Mylar would not work. Therefore I made five pieces with a simple curved run. The angle between the back of the deadwood and the keel is also about two degrees different. I forgot to mention it earlier but I had the “pleasure” of trying out the 90% isopropanol soak for debonding the glue joints when I was working on the apron. Works great! I’ll try not to need it again soon.

Author: dvm27. Wonderful work, Toni! You’ve left plenty of width in the steps for the cants. And, yes, the piece is correct. The error in the one illustrations’ scarph orientation…was corrected in the later reprints. When you consider David wrote the books without actually having built the model, the amount of mistakes are amazingly few. While building the prototype, most of the time when I thought he had erred I discovered the mistake was actually caused by my deviation from the plans or instructions. This is very precise work and one must constantly be on guard lest cumulative error occur. For example, just a minor deviation in positioning the steps of the apron could translate into major problems with the fore body shape or height of the top timber line. Greg Author: Dan Vad. Anyone who has the first edition should be warned to take the revisions into consideration. The revisions are available at http://seawatchbooks.com/AboutSwan.htm. August 13, 2011 Greg, everything was done with a chisel and an 11 blade. A Sherline mill is on my wish list, along with other goodies. In looking ahead to the aft deadwood assembly I noticed in TFFM that Atalanta has a modified assembly. I went back to the draughts and cannot see any detail regarding this. Does anyone have any thoughts regarding this? The fore deadwood has been attached and all the joints are trunneled. The trunnels will never be seen but they add a little strength to the joint. You cannot tell from the pictures but the forward end of the keel and the stem have been tapered. I have decided not to add any pigment to the glue. My fear is that it will cause any imperfections to be more obvious.

I like how you are rebuilding the log. This way you can keep everything in order and still keep building. I am very glad that I am so far behind you. There is a lot less to reconstruct.

Beautiful craftsmanship as always, Greg.

Author: remcohe. Getting the proportions right I find the hardest part (re: sculpting). A book from Katherine Dewey I find really helpful. The great thing about polymer clay is you can add and remove bits as often as you want. I find it really enjoyable and relaxing to do. It’s carving the figures in wood that I still fear to do. But as I like to say, I’ll cross that bridge when I get there (if ever…). August 13, 2011. The lower apron is done. Definitely the hardest part was mating the inferior surface to the keel. The stepping line was just a little fussy. Once I finished the piece I looked at the figures in TFFM. Three of the drawings show the forward step as I cut it. One of them shows the forward step configured differently. Considering how long it took to fabricate this piece, I got very oncerned. Greg’s photo of Pegasus shows the step as I cut it so it must be right! I have the original version of Volume One TFFM. There are several errata which have been addressed in the second version. Check which version you have and make corrections if necessary.

Thanks, teacher!

Author: dvm27 Moving along nicely, Toni. Be sure to use a piece that is a generous 18” for the lower apron. Having that full 3” step on each side is important when fitting and fairing the cants later on. Greg Author: remcohe While hunting for pictures for my own sculpting I did a search on Atalanta and found some pictures of her. http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=rs display res&critere=atalanta&operator=AND&nbToDisplay=5langue=en. May be of interest for you. Remco August 10, 2011 Thanks. One of the reasons I selected Hannah for my first scratch build was the lack of sculpting. Author: Chuck Here is a large image of the NMM model…it’s at a different angle and better lighting. And a piture of a sculpture of Atalanta done in the 1800’s in the almost exact pose.

August 8, 2011 The lower stem piece has been make and glued to the keel assembly. The lower and upper stem pieces have been added to the keel assembly and trunneled. The boxwood trunnels will stand out more after the finish is applied eventually. The top of the upper stem piece needs trimming as does the false keel. On to the apron!

August 1, 2011 I cleaned up the paper in the scarf joint. You no longer see the black dust in the adjoining wood. The boxing joint is a lot more difficult to make than it appears. The cuts are easy. But the shape of the joint must perfectly match the plans or else the angle of the lower stem piece will be off. The keelson is left long for trimming later. I finished the keel and trunneled the scarf joints. The “bolts” are boxwood drawn down to a 77 drill size. The effect is subtle, maybe too subtle. The photo was taken after a quick wipe down with water to simulate the effect after the finish is applied. I have not finish-sanded the piece yet so the imperfections in the width of the joint and the shape of the trunnels are temporary. Danny, I think I figured it out. But tell me why, when I type to the end of the line, the post comes out with the right margin all over the place.

Danny, I appreciate whatever you did and at the same time am totally clueless as to what you are talking about. I'll play around with the new options. What I needed to do with Dave's PDF files was take snapshots of the various posts and then type out my comments. I could not get them to convert to a word document. But this gives me the opportunity to review and (hopefully) improve on what I wrote before.

Thanks Ben and Hakan. It's good to see everybody back in the water.

I discovered the same thing when I started uploading the first installment. Please leave it in. Other people will learn from it.

While completing Hannah I decided to start thinking about my next project. I thought I would mast Hannah but after completing the fore lower mast it became obvious that this was too tall for my pre-existing display cabinets. (I have all my ships in a large glass and mahogany cabinet rather than in individual cases. This arrangement is not air tight but takes up much less space. I decided to try my hand at a Swan class, a 16 gun sixth rate sloop. There are several advantages to this selection: the research has already been done, plans are available, the ship is not too large and (most importantly) there are four volumes of wisdom from David Antscherl and Greg Herbert. I already own David’s Mylar plan and CD. The next decision was which one of the ships to select. There are kits for Fly and Pegasus. Some of the ships had too few plans available from the National Maritime Museum (NMM). Therefore I selected Atalanta. Atalanta was a Greek huntress and wrestler. The most notable story about her was that she agreed to marry the man who could outrun her in a race; but if she won, the suitor was killed. So much for mythology! Atalanta did not have much of a career. She was launched on August 12, 1775 from Sheerness dockyard. She was involved in one action on May 28, 1781 and was captured by the American ship Alliance off the coast of Nova Scotia. She was recaptured by the British off Cape Cod a few weeks later and was eventually sold and broken up in 1802. I sent away for plans from the National Maritime Museum and ordered my wood from Jeff at HobbyMill. I will be using Costello boxwood and possibly some other hardwoods for accents. The wood is gorgeous. Jeff has developed a wood package for a Swan build which will eliminate hours of “fun” at the thickness sander. (Ask for an extra sheet of wood (scale 6") for the hanging and lodging knees unless you want to thickness down one of the thicker sheets.) I do not have a lot of spare time but I am hopeful that I can complete the model within five years. It will not be masted. I have not decided about hull and deck planking. I figure that I have a few years before I need to worry about these decisions! Toni ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author: dvm27 Terrific choice, Toni. For those unfamiliar with Atalanta there is a lovely model of her in the NMM built in the Georgian style. It may be viewed at: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/explire/object.cfm?ID=SLR0340&picture=2#content Greg ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- July 24, 2011. The first thing to address was the building board. This was made with ¾ inch MDF and given a couple of coats of Kilz. After sanding it smooth, the centerline and the fore and aft dimension lines were drawn in and scribed. A copy of the plan was glued to the building board. The mirror image was obtained by copying the Mylar from the reverse. I used Elmer’s poster glue as it allows for removal of the plan without damaging the building board if I decide I don’t like having the plan on the board. The hull dimensions will be roughly 25 x 7 inches. Now to begin making some sawdust! The keel pieces were cut on the Preac and the scarf joints were made with chisels. I have never used chisels before and am still getting the hang of them. The key is sharpness of the tool. In TFFM it is recommended to make cuts on a flat piece of hardwood. I am using an old acrylic cutting board from the kitchen which has been sanded dead flat and is knife friendly. Joints below waterline are lined with tarred flannel. I used black paper which I already had for another purpose. I tested it first in a mock-up to make sure the color did not bleed with either the glue or the finish. I plan on using Watco’s Danish Wood Oil, which gives an almost dead-flat finish. Toni

Here it goes! I have decided to edit the original build log to make it more readable. I am eliminating all of the attaboy posts and keeping all of the comments and additional information posts. All of the pictures will be posted. There are also some places where the retrospectoscope has shown me a better way of doing things, etc. These portions will all be posted in italics. Once I get the entire log up, I will (finally) develop an index.

Good to be back, Remco. Thanks for the compliment, Dave. Dave (Midnight) had saved a copy of my build log and was gracious enough to reformat it and send it to me today. I will start working on rebuilding the log tomorrow. Thank you again, Dave.

Christian, I am hoping to get at least some of the log from midnight. Believe me, I am thrilled not to have to reconstruct the whole thing. And a fond welcome back to you, Druxey. Michael, the photo with the dog is a little misleading. I was surprised how small it looked compared with her. The size of the building board is 12" x 30".

It is a fun build. Nice break from something as complex as Atalanta. Everything I used to build this (other than the thickness sander) fits in the kit box.

Joe, Ryland, Grant and Mark thanks for your support. I will probably post an executive summary of the log to date. Hope to get to it later in the week.

The sheer rail was installed. The key to this is making it very oversized and then trimming it with a No. 11 blade and sandpaper. I also drilled two holes in the keel for insertion of brass rod for mounting. The frieze was applied with dilute yellow glue. When I start painting I will improve the appearance of the freize by the stem. I am going to take a break from this build to return to Atalanta. Toni

The hull planking has been completed. The center of the bulkheads were removed and the ribs were thinned out. Toni

The hull planking has been completed.

The next photos show the hull after nine rows of strakes were installed. As you can see, the stem snapped off. I decided to leave it that way until the hull was completed. Toni

Chuck suggested twelve strakes of hull planking. All of the planks were spiled. I used the tick-strip method of spiling. A strip of card was placed along the edge of each bulkhead. That card was then divided into eleven segments. Because the gargoard strake is a special case, I fit that strake by eye. Rather than a single run of planking (as suggested in the kit) I used planks that were approx. twelve feet long. One long and one butt edge was rubbed with pencil to hightlight the run of planking. The key to a good run of planking is the garboard strake. As shown in the instructions, the fore end of the garboard strake ends at bulkhead "F". Toni

This is my build of Chuck's (Modelshipway's) kit of the longboat. I am building this as part of the Chicago TriClub group build. The Chicago TriClub is comprised of the three Chicago groups: Midwest Model Shipwrights, Northshore Deadeyes and Nautical Research and Ship Model Society of Chicago. I plan on painting the model based on the prototype. Although I had originally planned on building out-of-the-box, I personally found the basswood strips too soft and fuzzy and so all the planking is castillo boxwood. I have plenty on hand from my Atalanta build. Two of our club presidents designed a building jig to help with installation of the bulkheads. This is simply some plywood with two wood strips separated by the width of the keel. There is a block with the stem width routed in to it anteriorly. This keeps the keel from flexing as the bulkheads are installed. Because this is a laser-cut kit, there is some char which needs to be sanded off. Also all of the cut surfaces must be sanded to that they are exactly perpendicular to the basswood sheet. Otherwise the keel scarf will not be correct and the bulkheads will not slip into their slots easily. Once all of the bulkheads were installed, I glued in spacers between the scrap portions of the bulkheads to prevent the hull from flexing once it was removed from the jig. Finally, the hull was faired. Toni