gsdpic

After completing the planking, I took a couple weeks off.  Over the last two weeks or so I have done the following:

1.  Sanded the hull.  And sanded it some more.  And some more.  I think I am pretty much done though if I look at it again I am sure I'll find some other not quite smooth spot to sand.

2. Worked on the transom.  My transom piece is a bit larger and squarer than called for in the plans, due to the couple of planks that I probably should have carried farther aft than I did.  But I think it looks fine and no one will really notice, especially once I paint the hull.

3. Did the "waist plank".  That is what the plans called it, though I have not heard that term before.  This is the top plank, above the level of the deck.  It is only 1/32nd inch instead of 1/16th, so it is indented slightly from the other planks.  And of course aft, the timberheads notch in from the edge of the hull causing the waist plank to indent even more.  I created each of these in two pieces, leaving a seem amidship.  But that was easier than trying to deal with one long piece the length of the hull.   The kit provides strip wood that is 1/2 inch wide.  I tacked that to the hull with a couple dots of CA, then drew a line on the inside of the plank at the top of the hull, then cut along that line to get a nice fit above the cap rail.

Overall I am relatively pleased with how things have come out.  I am not quite to the skill level of building a hull like this and leaving it a natural finish; I am still depending on paint to cover a few things.  But I am getting closer.

Speaking of paint, that is probably the next step, to paint the outside of the hull black and to paint the inside above deck parts white.  I probably should have painted the inboard side of the waist planks before installing them but a bit late for that now.  After the painting, I need to figure out the coppering of the lower hull.  I have some things I hope to try in that regard.

Enough words, on to the pictures.  The hull here is just press fit onto the pedestals and balanced on the unfinished base board.

Yay, I have now finished the planking and the treenails above the water line, which is all I plan to do.  I am investigating ways to put copper on the bottom and am planning some tests for the finish above the water line.  

I have also started sanding down the hull on the port side, causing the treenails there to almost disappear.  Overall I am pleased with the planking.  It is far from perfect, and I am not ready for a model left in natural wood state, but it is workable.

I continue to be a bit concerned about the transom.  Those top two or three planks should have hung out farther I think.  I'll probably need to do some patching there and that will likely prove difficult.

Just as another data point....the 1/48th scale yacht America from Bluejacket supplies 3/64th inch basswood dowels to use as treenails  for the hull planking.  3/64th = 0.047, which would be 2 1/4th inches scaled up.  I did not do any research to verify, though I assumed that is larger than scale, but probably the smallest diameter basswood dowel that is practical to make and use.

Thanks all for the looks, likes, and comments.  I am getting anxious to be able to sand down the hull planks.  I've got three more planks to do and about 500 treenails.
 

I took a little hiatus the last two weeks for a brief trip down to San Antonio and for some out of town visitors.   But yesterday and today I completed the planking, but not the treenails, on the starboard side of the hull.  I still have 5 planks to do on the port side of the hull.  After I do those five planks, I'll draw a rough water line and do all the treenails above the water line.  

I have now completed the second "belt" of planks, consisting of the 5 top planks, working down from that cap rail.  And on these planks I have been doing the treenails.

There were a few other tricks here.  The top couple of planks needed to be more than 24 inches long, so they were made up from two pieces of wood, with a butt joint somewhere near the middle of the hull.  In hindsight I should have done the same to the third plank down.  I fear I am going to need some patching up around the transom and that has me a bit concerned.

Also, a few of the planks sat on very curved sections of the frames.  For those, I hollowed out the back of the plank using a rounded chisel, to help the planks better sit on the frames.

As for the treenails....I just glued and clamped the planks as usual.  Then once dry, I came back and drilled a bunch of holes using a #56 bit in the dremel.   Then, using the 3/64th dowel supplied in the kit, I dipped the end of the dowel into some watered down wood glue, then stuck the dowel into the hole, clipped it off with a wire cutters, and then pushed it in a bit further with the back of the wire cutters.  It really was pretty easy and not too time consuming.  Though I am assuming once everything is sanded down, even a thin coat of black paint will pretty much hide all that work.  Note that from about the 8th frame forward the planks were narrow, and so I just put in one treenail.  The remainder of the frames working backwards had to treenails at each frame for about 55-60 treenails per plank.

The remaining space on each side will be filled with 5 additional planks.  I'll re-measure the gap to get new widths for the planks.  I'll continue to do treenails as those five planks are also above the water line.

Enough words, here are a few pictures:

Wow, Peter, that video you pointed to is nuts.   Must've taken him twice as long to build the model, stopping to take all those pictures.

Wow, that does look like a challenge, and it looks like a lot of parts.  But it says "Easy to build" right on the box, so it must be.

The thread may just be for the cables for the control surfaces (rudder, ailerons, etc) as I believe one of the claims to fame of the Dr 1 was that it did not have the traditional (at the time) rigging between the wings to stabilize them.

I'll pull up the first chair and follow along....

I managed to put one more plank on each side each of the last two days...I cut the planks, soak them, and clamp them on in the evening, then the next morning I glue them on before heading to work.  So I now have that lower "belt" of 5 planks done, leaving 10 planks on each side yet to do.   I re-measured every third frame from the top of the top plank to the underside of the cap rail, and divided by 10 to get new plank widths.  I am still pretty much on plan, as the widths I need are pretty similar to what I have been using.

The area around the stern and transom has been (and continues to be) a bit tricky.  I need quite a bit of edge bend on the planks there, and the lower planks also had to twist.  The third picture below shows a straight plank clamped on to show the amount of bend required.  Those little screw-in plank clamps have been very useful....they do sometimes dent the wood, though putting a couple drops of water on the dent and letting it soak in and dry pretty much takes care of it.

Next I think I will start working from the top down.  The top few planks are slightly longer than 24 inches, so will require two pieces each.  There is also a bit of edge bend on those top planks, as the ends are higher than the middle.  Oh, I also said I was going to try to do treenails on the planks above the water line.  I should probably practice that on some of the lower planks before I do it for real.

Enough words....pictures:

Just a quick update on slow progress.   After getting a quick start on the planking, I took most of the rest of February off, and have just recently started working again.   I first installed the cap rail and the rear quarter cap.  That gave me a well-defined area that needs to be filled in with planks.  After measuring and considering my options, I decided I could use 15 planks on each side with no stealers or other tricky stuff.  The planks are a quarter inch wide at the stern, and taper to 0.15 inches or so near the bow  (I measured at every third frame, and have a calculated plank width at each of those frames).  I now have three additional planks done on each side.   I plan to do two more on each side, for a total of five, and I will re-measure things and see if I am still on track.   After that, I will likely transition to planking downward from the cap rail.

The first two pictures show the cap rail and rear quarter cap.  The next two show my additional three planks.  Note that the outer edge of the rear quarter cap is only rough cut.  Once I do the planking that butts up below the cap, I'll shave or sand it down to a smooth profile matching the planking.  I see I forgot that I need some touch up painting on the inside of the stern rail after my latest re-shaping effort.

Good to see you posting again.  That cockpit and cockpit seat are really nicely done.

Really cool build.  Looks as much like a piece of sculpture as a boat.  I'll follow along the rest of the way...

58 minutes ago, Tim Curtis said:

Planking looking great. Are you going to fully plank the model, or leave some frames exposed?

You seem to have got the stern to a good shape as well.

 

 

Thanks.  Still planning on fully planking the model, both hull and deck.  I think I just prefer the finished look.

Planking

So I have started the planking.  I have actually gotten farther than I said in my prior post.  I have done the garboard strakes on both sides, as well as both broad strakes on both sides, so six planks in all.  From here, I think I will do the sheer strakes and that should give a well-defined area that needs to be filled in with planks.  And from here, all the planks start out at 1/4 inch wide.  So once I get the sheer strakes on, I'll measure things again and lay out the planking to try to get consistent taper on the planks.

The kit also includes thin dowels to use as treenails.  I think I will use them only above the water line, though I may practice some below the water line.  I plan to try some form of coppering for the bottom of the hull and the top, above the water line, will be painted black, though I may try to do a thin enough coat that the planking and treenails are visible on close inspection.

Before the planking, I also carved down the stern block a bit more, so I included some pictures of it.

A few observations:

- as usual, I thought the hull was fair "enough" before starting planking, but I am still finding high and low spots as I apply individual planks.  I've been using a chisel to shave down some of the worst high spots before putting the planks on.

- this is the first time I have used the little screw-in planking clamps.  They work well on this model; not sure if they would work as well on a model with 1/8th inch plywood bulkheads.

- the garboard strake was a bit of a bear to figure out, as I think may often be the case.  In hindsight, I wish I tapered the last third of the plank a bit more.  You can see this in the last picture below.  Not a big worry if I cover the lower hull with some sort of copper.

4 hours ago, Tim Curtis said:

How is your America build going?

 

Slowly    I typically only find a few hours per week to work on it.  I have the garboard strakes cut to some workable shape, and glued on.  I am working on cutting the first "broad strake" above the garboards.  I have one for the starboard side pretty close and have started to work on the other.  Once I get both of those done and glued on I'll post another picture.   The strakes have a pretty good twist from almost vertical to almost horizontal....once I get them cut, I soak them in water a bit, then clamp them on and let them dry.  Once dry I glue'em on.

Oh, I guess I also did a bunch more carving away at the stern block to make it a bit smaller and thinner.

Making fantastic progress on your build.  Looks really well done.  I like your scratch built chainplates.  I might have to remember that and try it myself when I get to that point with my America. 

Just quick update.   I've fixed my mistake, I think.  I also noted how the plans show stern and rail cap really flaring upward above the transom.  It is more noticeable here than on other models of America that I have seen, and perhaps more pronounced than shown on contemporary paintings.  It also seemed the transom area is less thick and heavy than mine was.   So, in addition to fixing the issue with the frames, I took the carving knives and sanding block to my stern filler piece, and cut it down a bit.  I also put a few additional pieces at the top of the rail around the back to give it least a little bit more of an upward flare.  I failed to take a "before" picture, but I can show what it looks like now.  I think I still need to take a bit more off of the stern, though it is a bit tricky carving it now that it is attached.

Another America builder, though a different kit.  I'll follow along...

Thanks for the looks and likes, and Tim, thanks for the encouraging words.   I am well along into fixing the issue, and while I am at it, I am reshaping my stern a bit...err, reshaping the stern of the model ....to try to better match part of the plan.  More on that in my next post.  During the last two weeks, one thing that has taken away from time working on the America has been watching a bunch of tennis matches from your home town.  The television coverage in the US always includes plenty of "Visit Melbourne" type commercials.  Looks like a beautiful place.   Maybe some day....

Whoops

I started to think about the planking, trying to figure out how to do it and where it would go.   I wanted to establish the location of the sheer plank, so I knew just what space I had to fill with the planks.  And looking closer, I discovered a mistake that I made.  Fortunately it should be pretty easy to fix, and the fix will be covered by the planking. 

On the last 20% or so of the hull of the America, the bulwarks are notched in a bit from the side of the hull.  This feature has already been a bit of a thorn in my side, as I felt the pre-cut frames in that area were a bit off, so the tops of the frames required more shaping than the others.  And that is also where this mistake occurred. 

Here is a scan of one cross section from the plans, with the indented bulwark circled in red.

And here is a picture of the stern of my hull:

See the problem?  In the cross section, the deck beams extended to the outer edge of the frames, and the sheer plank and quarter cap lined up with the deck.  On mine, I chopped the deck beams off to line up with the outer edge of the bulwarks.  And worse, I also carved that stern piece to line up with the tops of the frames while it should have lined up with the tops of the deck beams.

So, I'll have to glue in some small chunks of wood on top of the frames, and around the edge of the stern piece, to raise up the outer edges in this area, so that everything lines up the way it is supposed to.  Once I do that, I'll be able to identify the exact position of the top of the sheer plank all the way across the hull.

4 hours ago, mojofilter said:

Looking very nice!  She's nice and big at 1/48.

Will you plank hull or deck first?

Thanks for the likes, looks and comment.  Yes, she is a nice size....the hull is just about 24 inches with 5 1/2 inches of beam.  I think she'll actually be a bit too large for the place I had intended to display her.  Oh well. 

Planking the hull first, per the instructions.  They actually also have you do a lot of the deck furniture as well, before planking the deck.

Ready for Planking

Been a little while since I posted, but I have been working a bit on the America.  I now, finally, have the waterways cut and installed, and also have painted the timberheads white, and I have done a few other things.  Here's a summary

- finished cutting waterways and bow and stern edge pieces

- cleaned up the bow filler block and added some 1/32nd bass wood sheet on the outside.

- on the inboard side of the bow filler, added some pieces, also 1/32nd bass wood, along with some fake hawse timbers, all primed and painted white

- sanded, shaved, and in some cases augmented timberheads in the seemingly never ending effort to get them to flow nicely from one to the next on the inboard side, outboard side, and top.  Even looking at these photos I still see a few little jogs and wiggles.

- went through several iterations of priming, sanding, and painting the timberheads white.

- glued in the waterways; used some glue/water/sawdust wood filler to try to fill in some of the gaps between the waterways and timberheads

- sanded the outer edge of the waterways.  I intentionally cut the notches a bit deep so that the waterways would stick out a bit, then sanded that edge down to match the frames, in an effort to avoid having any gap between the waterways and the inboard side of the planking.  I see in one of the pictures I have a little bit of repair work to do on the waterways near the bow.

With all of that, I am ready to start the hull planking. 

I know, I know, all you are really interested in are the pictures....here they are:

On 12/26/2017 at 6:26 PM, JustBlowingInTheWind said:

Man, those pictures are BAD!

The pictures appear to have a lot of JPEG compression artifacts.  If you have a way to reduce the JPEG compression, it will likely help.

Back to Work

After a couple little side projects, and some family time for the holidays, I resumed work on the America.   The next task on the list is to work on the waterways.   There are four pieces, two on each side, due to the way the deck is split into two levels near the middle.   Doing these is a bit fiddly due to cutting out around all the bulwark stanchions.

But first, a funny thing happened.  When I ordered the wood for my carving experiments, somehow, completely mysteriously, the appropriate sizes and amounts of cherry wood strips to do the deck of the America magically appeared in my cart when I placed that order.  I think it was a Christmas Miracle    So, I thought I'd try using cherry for the deck instead of the supplied basswood.  It is a bit harder to work with, as it seems more brittle and prone to split, but I think it will look good.  Once the deck is complete, I'll just do some clear wipe on poly.

To do the waterways, I started by creating a paper template, using some heavy paper (from a page of a newly obsolete 2017 calendar).  I first cut it to match the curve of the bulwarks, then I used an xacto knife to cut a bunch of little square notches for the stanchions.  That is shown in the first two pictures below.

Next I glued the template to the cherry wood sheet, making sure to glue the top of the template to the underside of the wood.  After that, I roughly cut out the piece.  I then filed, sanded, and shaved down the notches until I had a reasonably good fit.  That is shown in pictures 3 - 5.

Obviously I still need to cut down the piece to the correct width.  It will probably be very fragile once I do that, so I am going to wait until just before I install it.  The fit is just ok....there are some gaps that I'll try to fill with sawdust/glue after I install the waterways.  You can see on the fourth notch back from the front I had a problem with the wood splitting and the notch is bigger than it should be.  That is the main one I'll have to fix up some how.

I have also decided that I'll be painting this model, so before I glue these in, I will paint the stanchions white.

I'll follow along, though at the rate you are going, it won't take long to wrap this up.  The deck furniture looks very neat and tidy.

I'll also steal the idea of putting the glue on a notepad.