canoe21

Hello shipmates!! A Xmas update...
 
Cheers
Dimitris

Hello everybody!! The stern deck is ready . Next one will be a structure that belong under the bow deck.. :)
 
Cheers
Dimitris

Hi shipmates!!Thank you all for your likes and nice comments!! During the weekend i was  able to do some progress on the build.. First, the planking on the deck has finished. It is sanded and painted . Second ,one structure that belongs under the stern deck is also done. The next one will be the installation of the stern deck . Also the planking and painting.I would like to wish you all a very merry Xmas and a happy new year.
Some photos...
 
Dimitris

Greeting Lawrence
Thanks a lot for your advice. I hope you had a cracking Xmas. I have spent little time on the site over Xmas, as I was away from home and only used my phone to check what was going on. I have already finished the second planking so need to work with this. I am off to see my friend later today to see what coloured varnish he has to hand, but it will need to be Matt. So I will see how things go later, but I do not want to paint the hull white if that is possible. Have you made a decision on your case yet ?? Best wishes DAVID

Holiday's over....back to the never ending ratlines!

My shipyard is idle today as we get ready to host 40 guests for a Christmas party. I'm 16 months into this build and I've learned a lot from all of you...that's a nice Christmas present!

First loosen the screws with the knobs on top.  Adjust the plate on the bottom to the width of strip you want.  Place cutter on sheet with edge of strip pressed against plate.  Slide cutter along sheet.
 
Bob
 

 

 

Thanks pops! Here is the original part compaired to the one I scratched. I think it's a generic part used in more kits.
 
Yeah the ones in the kit was the same size, but I shaped one down.
 

 
Here are reference pictures:
 

 

 

 
Landström also have great drawings on it.
 
 
/Matti

Hey all! I did the anchors yesterday. I planned to scratch them as the kit version was to round in shape and they where the same size. When looking closer I realized they could be reshaped to a better shape and that one could be resized quite easily so that's what I ended up doing. The plastic was easy to work with.
 
I made the wooden parts out of wood instead of the plastic ones that came with the kit.
 
The rings are rope with CA to make it hard, with smaller thread looped around it.
 

 

 
When I was working o the rigging the other evening I used a lamp to see the details. When we looked up on the ceiling it gave a pretty cool shadow effect.
 

 
/Matti
 

We have 4 sides to the compass box now.

 

Good afternoon
Foremast work continues, still to be fully shaped and pinned 

Good afternoon all
 
WORK IN PROGRESS
 
after three attempts i got the main mast nearly finished, looks a bit wonky , (because it is), still to pin the pieces together
 
then a quick trip into the sunshine, although the sun is quite low and throwing all the settings out on the camera
 
hope to have everything sprayed the right colours within a work or so

Hello Lawrence.
Good to hear from you on this Christmas morning and to receive your good wishes.  I don't know about easter as I don't spend nearly as much time on Half Moon as I did on Victory.  A little bit here and a little bit there and some day it'll be finished.  I'm anxiously awaiting your getting going on the schooner and I know your log will be very informative.  So please have a fantastic new year and of course, the same to bernadette. Best,
Jerry

these past few weeks,  leading up to this wonderful day,  has been quite hectic........but that doesn't mean that I haven't been doing any modeling.  an already started kit has come into my possession,  which kicked off a super cool idea.   after assessing what I will need to do,  it has been tabled,  until I finish some of these projects I have in the works.  Christmas was good to me too.....getting a couple of kits that are unrelated to ship modeling......but I also got the Academy 1:400 scale kit of the Titanic
 

 
....that too will be a future project.   a couple of days ago,  I put some time in at the table,  on the Andrea Gail.   I had some bollard pins in inventory,  so I made up the bollards for the A.G. and the trawler Syborn.
 

 
I still haven't drilled the holes for the portholes yet,  so I thought I'd make the railings for the fore deck,  drilling the holes for the stanchions.  there are a few short ones behind the pilot house,  and two that run along the fore deck,  to the bow.
 

 

 
there is a cap for the tip of the bow,  that I made next.
 

 
the bollards were cut to size,  and dug out the last ship's wheel I have on hand
 

 
going back to the railings,  more were added
 

 
getting to the port side,  the rack and podium still need to have the adjustments made to it.  I need to trim the ladder and open up the railing leading to the fore deck.   the adjustments were made
 

 

 
...and those railing were added at this time
 

 
next will be the stern reels
 

Hi Matti,
 
The 1st photo in the last post is really cool. So will you add workmen to help show what's going on?
 
I'm glad that medication will cure your condition. The doctors confirmed what we already knew - you are a nice guy with a big heart! Heal well my friend, you are in our thoughts. Happy Holidays.

Hey all! I´ve got ill since posting last time, a small inflammation in the heart. I now eat medicine that will cure the inflammation and after that I should be fine again.
 
Anyway I made some small progress on the model last days. I have decided what setup I want and I will make her when she got her masts in place, perhaps during the early summer of 1628. I think the unfinished look is interesting and dynamic.
 
So I have made the second step of the main mast and the rigging for how to raise it after info from Fred Hocker. When it was in place I could glue the tops and then continue with the ropes that connect the shrouds to the tops.
 
I have also prepaired the railing. Fragile stuff so fingers crossed I will be able to add them later on.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
/Matti
 
 

Thanks Lawrence! I have some catching up to do on your Victory. My head spins looking at all the work that went into that. Happy Holidays!
 
 
With a gentle twist, the piggin seperated from the dowel. I did a little sanding and now I'm looking for something suitable to make the bands from. I'll probably try paper first.
 

Hi Ferit! Thanks for stopping by. Hope things are going well for you.
 
I got in a little shipyard time tonight and worked some more on the piggin. This mini coopering is sort of tricky! OK, that was bad!
 
I tacked the bottom of the barrel to the end of a dowel with a small drop of white glue. The edge of the bottom is beveled. The inside faces at the stave bottoms have a beveled notch that lock into the edge of the bottom. I wrapped some tape around the dowel to help flare the staves out.

 
This works pretty good but I have a bit to learn to get a better feel for the proper amount of tapering needed on the stave edges. I think this will clean up ok once I complete the circle and can sand it.

 
Best wishes,

Here's a quick look at what I've been up to today. Making a piggin! Still got a few staves to make.

 
The staves were tapered with a hand plane set for a really light cut - 1-1/2 thousands! haha! Fun times!

Well Ferit, as you can see here, I get paid big money!

 
JSGerson- I'll try to post the steps with pictures when I get home this evening.

Here's some info on the making of the tiny staves for the piggin using simple tools. The same method will be used for the bucket and lantern case. If you are a serious scratch builder, you would just use your Jim saw and thicknesser instead to make the custom size strips, and skip ahead to the tapering step. For a kit builder just needing a few custom sized strips of wood to bash a kit or scratch some items like these, this is an inexpensive solution to keep you going. You wouldn't want to make a ship's worth of planks this way.
 
The wood I used was cedar because it has a warm color that looks right for buckets, is easy to work, and best of all, it was free. There were some odd pieces of wood left in the garage by the previous owner of my house, and an old fence picket that had split was one of them. No doubt, the previous owner never got around to making buckets with it.
 
1) The first step was to whack off a length of the picket and cut that into rough strips. I whacked off a 15" piece just so I could have longer strips for stuff should I ever need them in the future. If you don't have a motorized saw of some sort, you could just cut off a 3" piece with a handsaw and then use a little razor saw to make some oversized strips. I used a bandsaw and a fence to cut longer oversized strips. I cut the strips so the grain would be quartersawn (the dark thin grain lines are perpendicular to the face of the strips). This was more for the looks than anything else. The dark rough piece was the face of the fence picket. The strips cut from this small cut-off of scrap wood is good for a dozen buckets or more!

 
2) The strips were brought to a 1mm thickness with a hand plane. Instead of trying to plane the 15" long pieces, shorter 3" long pieces were planed. It is really easy to snap a longer piece of a wood like cedar when planing this thin, and I can manage the short ones easily at my drydock work station. When you are planing this thin, you need something thinner but strong to hold the piece against, Don't use sheet metal! If you plane too thin, that could damage your plane blade. A thin piece of hardwood works great. This is a little veneer of Indian Rosewood that's about 40 thousands thick (.040") and is very tough.  I just butt the end of the strip against the veneer, hold the veneer with my left hand and plane with the right. Pretty easy and not much workspace is needed.


 
There are all kinds of small modeler's hand planes out there and I have an assortment, but I swear by my Stanley 12-960 low angle block plane.

 
My 2 cents on hand planes: Although the 12-960 dwarfs the little planes, it's features and adjustability make it much easier to use with very controllable, precise results. First off, the mouth (where the blade pokes through the bottom) is adjustable in width. You need a very fine opening to take the tiny shavings we will be making (about .0015"). If you look in the picture above, the 12-960 has been adjusted way tighter than the smaller planes without adjustable openings. The 12-960 has an easy adjustment (the big knob on the back) to control the depth of the cut. The others have a single set screw that you loosen to reposition the blade, and you may or may not end up with the ajustment being better once you re-tighten it. It takes a lot of practice to get a set screw holder type plane adjusted to within .001" tolerance, which is what is really needed for precision small scale stuff. The blade can also get rotated a little crooked when re-tightening set screws. With the 12-960, there's another adjustment that can correct a crooked blade. Once you are all finely adjusted, if you catch a gnarly change of grain in hardwood, a set screw holder can slip and mess up your adjustment. The 12-960 has an indexed holder that positively locks into a notch in the blade. Speaking of the blade, the 12-960's blade is about twice as thick as the others and is made of better steel that holds a sharp edge longer. I find this plane a joy to use. I bought mine about 15 years ago and it was made in Sheffield England then. I think they are now made in Mexico and hopefully they are still the nice tool that mine is. There are more expensive versions of this plane from L.N. and Veritas. but it's hard to beat this one at about $35. You can actually plane end grain with this low-angle version.
 
Once the strips were planed to thickness, the edges were trued up and planed to 3mm wide. I did this by simply holding the strip in my left hand and planing with the right. Sounds iffy when you say it, but it's actually very easy. You don't bear down on the wood, you just slide the plane past the strip and it scares the wood off the edge! No blood lost.
 
3) The 3mm x 1mm x 3" long strips were cut into lengths a little longer than the staves needed to be (about 9mm long for 1/25 scale). I then tapered the staves with the plane so the narrow end was 2mm wide. In hindsight, the fit would have been better if they had been a bit under 2.5mm. This was done by taking a short cut off the end to be the narrow end, followed by slightly longer strokes until the whole 9mm length is one continuous cut. Very little pressure was applied and it worked out to about 6 passes on each side. This looks scary, but I did it by holding the little stave in my left hand and planing with the right. Keep in mind that the blade is set for a .0015" shaving, so your fingers would pretty much have to touch the bottom of the plane to get cut! No blood in my bucket!


 
I back-beveled the edges of the staves with 220 grit sandpaper glued to a flat piece of hardwood. I have a courser grit at the other end. These sanding sticks are really handy and don't load up as bad as a small file. The bottom of the bucket was shaped from a wider 1mm thick piece of cedar. The bucket bottom (about 8mm dia.) was glued to the end of a dowel, it's edge beveled, and the bucket assembly continues as was shown in the earlier posts. The beveled notches on the inside stave bottoms were cut with a #11 Xacto blade to receive the bucket bottom. The tape around the dowel flares the staves out. It was necessary to adjust the stave tapers with the sanding stick because they were a bit over-tapered. The bands were cut from a thin plastic container's label (like the label on a plastic bottle of soda) and blackened with a Sharpie and stuck on with white glue. Geez, I guess I wrote another small book.



 
Best wishes
 

Hello J...
Thanks for the quick reply.  I understand what you did but i believe i was referring to the planking above the little bow (Beak) deck,  I have already worked that area and what i did was to soak the wood until I could knead it like dough until it bent into the shape i wanted.  It seemed to work out very well.  Here's a couple of pictures showing what I mean.  Have a great evening.
Best,
Jerry

A better view  of the painting.  The launch presented with grapnel and line, a heavier line for the horizontal windlass, oars lashed to the thwarts and the rudder unshipped in the stern.
 

 
Next will be a cutter.  Gil

Winding down on the Launch, which will likely be the only boat on the skids, which will allow a clear view of the upper gun deck. Progress includes painting, cutting in oarlocks in the wash strake and fashioning the rudder with pintles.
 

 
And the painting.

Hi Lawrence. 
 
It was real good to hear from you and I can assure you my Victory feels no jealousy as no sound can reach the inside of the case so nothing can be heard about Half Moon.  And please rest assured that when it comes to modelling, no one can put you to shame.  Please keep me posted as to your progress on the scratch build.  My best to Bernie..
Best,
Jerry