John Allen

Thank  you Shipman, Druxey, Keith, John, Richard and Pat for your much appreciated comments, and thank you to everyone who has visited and or liked my log.
 
Shed work has been severely disrupted recently by a influx of house guests, fortunately they have now gone and I can get back to work. I did manage to do a bit of investigation during their stay and also a minuscule amount of manufacturing. So here are the results:-
 
 I did a bit of a review of the bowsprit detail as shown on various photographs. I still needed to make the mast band as per the next photo:-

This band anchors the turnbuckle which tensions the forestay:-

The anchoring lug leans forward.
The turnbuckle detail can be seen in the next photo:-

The stay runs out along the bowsprit and a number of features seem to be interposed between the stay and bowsprit:-

It took some time to understand what these were but eventually I dug up the following photo:-

I think what I am looking at is odd bits of strapping/sailcloth wedged in place to prevent damage to the bowsprit. If anyone has a better interpretation please let me know.
The forestay itself is also a bit of an enigma. In the following photo you can see the stay rounding a sheave before heading skyward:-

In another (I think more recent) photo the forestay seems to be looped around the cranse iron and presumably the turnbuckle has become redundant?????

Anyway I think I am going with the earlier arrangement.
 
As for the bowsprit hoop it was tuned from 1/2" rod and then drilled with 3 holes before being cut in half and parted it off.

I decided that the lower half of the ring could be omitted (as it can not be seen). This makes assembly simpler.

The forward leaning anchoring lug (mentioned earlier) was turned as a mushroom before being shaved flat on the mill. The off centre hole for attaching the turnbuckle was then drilled. 

The lug was then freehand filed to shape and a stem turned for mounting through the bowsprit hoop.


Hopeful this weekend will be more productive but I must take some time to catch up with all your builds. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

That flight was one of the longest of my life. That plane was what we called a "Freedom Bird" It was loaded to the brim with Gi's coming home after 11 months in combat. The mood started out high, especially after the guys saw the stewardesses they supplied us with. I think most of the guys considered them more like Goddesses. But in this particular flight we hopped from one location to another all of the way across the Pacific. The only one we were allowed to get off on was Oahu Hawaii, where we got off to change planes. WE arrived in Oakland California sometime in the early dusk boarded a bus and went to the processing center too late to do any processing. The next morning I was a civilian! Possibly the largest cultural shock of my life.  

looking good

looking good

looking good

looking good

new to this brass black product but just tried it and it is very good and works instantly. Not cheap (£14) but worth it in the long run

I have stained the deck and interior of the deck house.  This is so I can start to install the machinery and other details.  I stained the deck with a brown shoe polish and alcohol stain and the interior of the deck house walls with a black shoe polish and alcohol stain.  I think they would not have bothered to paint the interior walls so they just got smoky and had dirt and machine oil thrown on them.  I have test fitted the paired boilers in the deck house and the window frames.  I have made the spud which is a huge 17 inch by 17 inch timber that will extend 27 feet above the deck.   I am building the framework for the mechanism that lifted the spud.

Thank you very much for all the thumbs up. 
 
started to work on the first gun tower. As it is a partly kit, I decided to remake the tower again, did not like the one that came with the hull.

after studying old pictures and looking for some existing models I came to the following result. 
below a few pictures. 
(Still work in progress) 

 
 

looking good

Every time I think about this it makes me laugh...
My brother and I were visiting our nephew at the water plant where he worked one night when we observed a bunch of armadillos foraging on the plant grounds. My brother said he heard they were good to eat and suggested we catch some, take them home and cook them up. After chasing them around for a half hour or so, we finally managed to catch a couple of them. They appear to be slow moving, but if you try to catch one, they can run like rabbits. We bagged them in a croker sack, took them home and started to clean them. These darn things are so well armored, and their claws so sharp, we couldn't find a way to kill/clean them that seemed worth the effort. So we gave up and released them unharmed. It was comical as heck.
 

Lou, we'll be there as you travel that road.   And indeed having companions in a journey is a blessing.
 
I've heard of such things.  One of my uncles in WWII at one point were eating just about anything they could find including horse, mule, and assorted small critters.
 
Well.. it has been a trip.  I'm leaving one of my favorites.  I may have posted the same music somewhere else, but this one, when I saw the movie, hit me hard.....  Peace to all.  See you in the build logs.   I'm taking a few days to clean up the workshop, do some shopping and then figure out where I was on it. 
 
 

Great looking model, Mark. Thanks for sharing the build and your memories with us.
Semper Fi

And...... she's done and on the shelf.  Pics below. My only comment is that there really should be a better way to glass than thick plastic.  <sigh>
 
And one last tale from Vietnam.   We had made a delivery of assorted goods (c-rats, ammo) to platoon in the field.   On the way back to base, we're lumbering along at about 500 feet and maybe 100 knots speed.   Kind of relaxing.   The left door gunner, who was the 1st mech for chopper (I was at the right) suddenly yells.. "taking fire request permission to returnn....".   That's all he got out when the pilot broke in with "Hell yes." and started banking to the left to help the gunner out.   As we started the bank and he started working the .50, I moved over to his side and started reading a second box of ammo.   I looked out and he's shooting at a water buffalo that surrounded by 6 guys in black PJ's shooting at us.   He nailed 4 right off the bat, we're loosing altitude (intentionally) when the water buffalo explodes.   I looked at him, he at me, and we both just went "Wow".   While this was going on,  Huey Cobra showed up just after the explosion and he dropped down low and slow and then reported back that there's 6 bodies and one crater.   Hey... we felt good.  Better them than us.   We landed, checked the plane and wandered off.   The next morning, I bumped into the Colonel (our pilot) and he told me to go look at the side of the chopper.   On the 1st mechs side, under the window where the gun was, there was painted a "kill" like the WWII fighters.... but this was a water buffalo with an "X" through it.   Loved it and wish I knew were my albums were as I know I had a picture of it.
 
So much for wandering down memory lane for now.  It's been both fun and hard, but worth the trip to me.   I'm now going to go focus on the Bellle Poule.  And thanks to everyone who put up me remembering like some old guy... wait... I am an old guy.

Thanks Craig, they were quite the find. I almost didn't buy them as they came from somewhere in the back side of France from a company I had never bought from before. I also bought some after market gunners that look promising from another company but have been afraid to look at them closely. One struggle at a time.  I am glad I went the extra effort as to me this trip back is the people. The Huey, while important is after all just the vehicle that gave us the ability to do the job, and more importantly got us back.
 
They are 3D printed and like you say are SUPER detailed. I like them because their visors are down so I am hoping that it will make their faces easier to paint in a realistic manner. (Another thing I have never done before that this build is full of, people) Their short coming, at lest for the pilot is that his hands are formed in a closed position and it may make it hard to place the collective in his left hand. The cyclic handle is already in his right hand and will need to alter the cyclic column to fit. Just more tiny nit fiddle stuff that is getting to be common on this build. Nothing has been a install and move on to the next part. EVERYTHING has been a custom alteration/fit.
DOH! What a duffus! I have a ton of gray sprue. For that matter I have the legs of the original jump seats that I can use to fill the holes! I have of course read about doing it that way for years but I have never had to deal with this much modification before and therefore the idea has never been used by me personally! Thanks for kicking my soft skull and jolting my even softer brain, or whatever is in there! Whatever is visibly left will just look like the cargo tie down rings that were there anyway!

I like what you've done with the cockpit, Lou. You're doing great!
The pilot figures look awesome, very detailed.

Well, as i said earlier, I think I have made a little progress since I last posted an update. Not finished like Mark but certainly further along than I was. 
 
In my last update I was still having formal combat with the pilot seats and assorted small and ill fitting/designed photo etch parts. I finally pretty much got all that worked out and ended up with seats that seem to cover the look properly. At least for how I will display this model. I then had to build and install the center jump seat that had to be set up to allow proper seating of the pilots. So I had to make a side trip and set up the pilots in their seats. This of course made me have to cut and file pilot butts to fit in said seats. They probably would have fit in the stock kit seats but of course I had to use the after market seats with the kit floor in my build. So far the pilot has gone through a buttectomy and is sitting pretty much where he should. I may have to so some more for a more custom fit. At some point I was careless and broke off his helmet mike and will have to replace it at some point. Hopefully I don't do the same with the co-pilot when he gets his buttectomy. At any rate it was becoming clear that possibly I have been wasting my time these last couple of weeks making the seats from all those tiny PE parts and re-learning all those cuss words from my shaded past. Everything is becoming so crowded that you can't see much of it at all!  By the time I add the cabin overhead and roof none of it will be visible at all!
Everything you see in the pictures is just sitting there, not glued into the cockpit. The only thing actually "In place" is the middle jump seat. I had to drill new locating holes in the deck to obtain the proper location. Then I got it wrong as there was not enough room for the pilots and seats forward and I had to re-drill holes about one and a half mm further aft. I rechecked the fit and clearances and took the following pictures:
 
This was the first location. It cramped the cockpit too much so I knew I would have to move it. The holes in the deck are the kit holes that would have been used if I had used the kit seats, which by the way are total garbage in every way.

The next view is from the front, showing how little can be seen even before the pilots are seated.
 
After you seat the pilots virtually everything I have done over the last couple of weeks has disappeared!  the co-pilot on the right still needs to be altered to get him to fit the seat properly.

So all in all I am happy to have made some progress at last and that even though the deck is beginning to look a little like Swiss Cheese from all the unused kit holes, and mis-drilled location holes I am also happy with the results. The holes can and will be filled in and the "Look" looks like I remember it. There are of course a few exceptions but they are small and I can live with them I think. I am also getting a bettter idea of what will be possible to see and what won't and will probably stress out a little less about those kinds of things in the future. At least I will try.
 
Next is the altering, locating, and assembly of the remaining jump seats and their painting, along with filling and repainting the poor abused deck.
 
Thanks everyone for looking in and helping.
 
 

Today is "Go out and buy her expensive jewelry day". Otherwise known as her birthday. Within a few hours of my writing this I will be a thousand dollars poorer and immune for a couple of days from your petty efforts of blackmail John. In fact I should be good until Mother's Day, or is Anniversary next? Better get that straightened out or this build will never get done and you can forward my mail to the camping trailer in the back yard that we bought last year before I broke my ankle.
 
As for display room in this house? The dolls themselves would probably rise up in the night if there was even a rumor that they were getting displaced by mere models! The only one that would stand a chance is the Titanic! In fact she asked about that build just yesterday. 

Lou,
 
Looking good. I need you to ship me some Halibut, or I'll tell Laurie your raiding her stash and you told me your replacing the display areas for her dolls with your models. Second thought add some King Crab to the order.

Lou,
 
Looking good. I need you to ship me some Halibut, or I'll tell Laurie your raiding her stash and you told me your replacing the display areas for her dolls with your models. Second thought add some King Crab to the order.

Lou,
 
Looking good. I need you to ship me some Halibut, or I'll tell Laurie your raiding her stash and you told me your replacing the display areas for her dolls with your models. Second thought add some King Crab to the order.

Lou,
 
Looking good. I need you to ship me some Halibut, or I'll tell Laurie your raiding her stash and you told me your replacing the display areas for her dolls with your models. Second thought add some King Crab to the order.

Very generous of you, Ron!

I was asked if I could make the files for the Skipjack Hand Dredge Winches available to my fellow modelers. I have decided to do so. Here are the SketchUp files for both the 1/32nd and 1/64th versions. They are to be printed in Shapeways "Fine Detail Plastic", the "Smoothest" option.
 
Here are views of the CAD drawings, for reference. The dimensions shown on these CAD views may not be accurate, as I refined the design when I went to SketchUp, and never went back to correct them.
 
The parts I had printed looked good, but I never actually completely assembled them, so some fitting may be needed. For both models the winch shaft and the support rods are to be fabricated by the modeler. The square nuts go on both the inside and outside surfaces of the legs to lock the support rods in place. The small nuts are for the top of the bearing covers, and were used to hold the bearing covers in place. These are not shown in the CAD drawings, but you can see them in the photos.
 

 

 
 
The 1/32nd drawing meets Shapeways standards, at least as far as a couple years ago. Here is a shot of the layout. Note that all the parts must be sprued for them to print it. When I had my copies printed, this was not required.
 

This is a shot of the 1/64th file as it is now. To be printed, you will have to add sprues, as for the 1/32nd ones. Note that you will have to cut the clutch housing off and attach it to the disk, with the two lands that mate with it. On the 1/32nd file the housing is printed in place, engaged. The winch shaft on this scale is part of the printed parts, but must be trimmed to length.
 
The file for this size only has one winch, so you will have to copy a second winch assembly in and sprue them together. I'm not sure why I have an extra set of feet in the sprue, I'm sure there was some reason, I've since forgotten.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Hand Dredge 32 New Layout For Spec Changes_21 Two Winches.skp Hand Dredge New SketchUp 64thFor New Specs_05.skp

I tried the stick... along with lots of bad language.  Didn't work.   Window shot out by ground fire duly noted in log book.
 
I'm basically two parts way from finishing.  Overall, pretty darn happy with it seeing as it's been so long doing plastic.