texxn5

Today was such a beautiful day here (sorry for all you New Englanders and northern folks) 80 degrees and bright clear sunshine. This was an opportunity to photograph the Morgan outside, so I'm taking the opportunity to show her off a little. I also made the Mizzen Top Mast, finishing it and making the Main Topmast. I used my Proxxon DB 250 Lathe to turn the Mizzen and Main Top masts and Royal. This is done from one dowel so I set it up in the lathe and used sandpaper to reduce the diameters down to the proper size. One nice advantage of this lathe is that the longer dowels can go through the center of the motor freely. You could stick a 5' or longer piece through it and just turn the area you want.

Now she can really be called a "Tall Ship"

Today has been finish-up day. I finished building the Mainmast comonents, Topmast, Topgallant Mast and Main Royal, painted, served and dryfit everything together. The only thing left for them is to make the 2 Lookout Rings and paint the lower part of each mast Yellow Ochre - if I ever get my paint--10 days now and it's scheduled for delivery on Feb 4....kind of ridiculous, sure am glad I had plenty to do in between. So all the masts are done for the most part - next will be the Shrouds....hmmm got to learn how to serve for real now.

Hello Lawrence, good to see you getting caught up. Thanks for the likes and kudo's. The outside pictures really did bring out the color scheme much better than the flash that might or might not work inside. I've had the Lathe for a while but the makeshift mill is kind of new. I had the drill press which is a MicroMark which ws made by Proxxon for them. I added the Compound Table, Precision Vice, and bought some Mills after I became a Proxxon Dealer. The Drill Press set up is not as precise as the MF 70 Mill, but will suffice for the type of work I have to do with it. Perhaps someday I'll upgrade to the real Mill. Having the Proxxon Store has allowed me to obtain a few things that otherwise I would have been unable to do. The extra income sure helps an old retired guy...

Now she can really be called a "Tall Ship"

Today has been finish-up day. I finished building the Mainmast comonents, Topmast, Topgallant Mast and Main Royal, painted, served and dryfit everything together. The only thing left for them is to make the 2 Lookout Rings and paint the lower part of each mast Yellow Ochre - if I ever get my paint--10 days now and it's scheduled for delivery on Feb 4....kind of ridiculous, sure am glad I had plenty to do in between. So all the masts are done for the most part - next will be the Shrouds....hmmm got to learn how to serve for real now.

secure your shrouds between two points then do your worming and then the parceling.. then serve.....don't forget to tar the worming and parceling.. use black tar for the serving... black tar is a mixture of pine tar paint black and shellack...then you will have real shrouding..... only kidding.......but that is the way it is really done will email you some pictures of the process....

Now she can really be called a "Tall Ship"

Today has been finish-up day. I finished building the Mainmast comonents, Topmast, Topgallant Mast and Main Royal, painted, served and dryfit everything together. The only thing left for them is to make the 2 Lookout Rings and paint the lower part of each mast Yellow Ochre - if I ever get my paint--10 days now and it's scheduled for delivery on Feb 4....kind of ridiculous, sure am glad I had plenty to do in between. So all the masts are done for the most part - next will be the Shrouds....hmmm got to learn how to serve for real now.

Once all the rods were in, gluing the end slats to the pillars fixes everything in place. After adjusting the position of the other slats, I fixed them in place with a drop of thin Zap at each joint.
One more side window, and then the two small end windows to go. All the windows for the top are already done.
Looking forward to painting, adding the "glass" and assembly this weekend, perhaps.
 
This thing has been a real challenge to make - everything is so darn small!
I hope with some sanding and a good paint job it will look the way I wanted it to.

I put a piece of wood into the window to hold the work while I was adjusting. It had rapidly become clear that otherwise slats or rods would squirrel out and I couldn't finish one until I came up with this. Not necessary on the single panes for the top since those could rest on the table during construction.
Then I lined up the slats, being careful to retain the orientation from the drilling in the jig.
 
I decided to use very small diameter steel rod/wire rather than copper, because it was smaller, and wouldn't bend during adjustment. The perfectly straight rods give a better look, in my opinion.
After cutting a piece slightly smaller than the distance between the pillars, I then would ease the rod through the same hole in successive slats. Trying to put all the rods through the holes and then dropping the assembly into place seemed like a better method, but it didn't work for me. The holes in the slats (smallest drill bit that my drill press would handle) didn't "hold" the rods, and they would inevitably slide out during the manuvering. After multiple tries I had to go to this method, which is maddenly tedious but I was usually able to succeed in one or two tries. Magnification helped to align the rods and the holes in successive slats.
Very difficult, especially for someone who has an espresso addiction and two espresso machines in the kitchen.
The slats could be moved around to allow a fine tweezer access to guide the rod to the next slat hole. One twitch and the whole thing flies out to begin again. It worked best to put the first and last rods in. Once they were all the way in and the rods could drop between the pillars, things were more stable for the following rods.

I made a simple jig to hold the five strips in alignment (reinforced with a piece of tape) that I could put into the x-y apparatus on my drill press. This allowed me to be certain the holes in each strip were in alignment and allowed me to drill cleaner, more well spaced holes than I was able to do with a twist drill.

The Hull has been declared "done" and mounted on a base.
Will begin working on deck structures next.
Plan to take my time and have the discipline to toss and start over if I'm not happy with anything.
I've been working on this for a year and see no need to rush.

Now she can really be called a "Tall Ship"

Today has been finish-up day. I finished building the Mainmast comonents, Topmast, Topgallant Mast and Main Royal, painted, served and dryfit everything together. The only thing left for them is to make the 2 Lookout Rings and paint the lower part of each mast Yellow Ochre - if I ever get my paint--10 days now and it's scheduled for delivery on Feb 4....kind of ridiculous, sure am glad I had plenty to do in between. So all the masts are done for the most part - next will be the Shrouds....hmmm got to learn how to serve for real now.

These pictures show the versatility of the Lathe. Working with the short end of the stick so to say, and the extra length sticking through the center of the lathe.

Here's the DB 250 Lathe set up and the Mill for cutting in the fids, sheaves, and squaring the mast tops.

A couple more

A couple of more

Some more sunshine pictures

Today was such a beautiful day here (sorry for all you New Englanders and northern folks) 80 degrees and bright clear sunshine. This was an opportunity to photograph the Morgan outside, so I'm taking the opportunity to show her off a little. I also made the Mizzen Top Mast, finishing it and making the Main Topmast. I used my Proxxon DB 250 Lathe to turn the Mizzen and Main Top masts and Royal. This is done from one dowel so I set it up in the lathe and used sandpaper to reduce the diameters down to the proper size. One nice advantage of this lathe is that the longer dowels can go through the center of the motor freely. You could stick a 5' or longer piece through it and just turn the area you want.

A couple of more

Thanks for the visits and the likes from everyone. Today was a continuation of stepping the rest of the Foremast. These are just dry fitted for now. I turned the Fore Topgallant and Royal mast today on my Proxxon DB 250 Lathe mostly using sandpaper rather than chisels to graduate the diameters of each. I then stained the natural areas, made the Futtock Shrouds for the Topmast Crosstree and served them, then made the Topgallant Crosstree painted and finished it. The Lookout Ring has not been installed yet. She's starting to get tall now and looking like a ship.

I think I'm going to continue building all the mast parts before moving on to the shrouds, that way as I keep moving up I'll be prepared to continue with the shrouds and not be held up by having to make mast parts. I'm not going to glue them together so that the shrouds will be able to be hung off easier, so I will just dry fit them. I stained the areas that need to be stained so that if I should get glue on anything it won't soak off into the wood and look "crappy" when staining it. So here is the Fore Top Mast. First I set up the mill to cut in the Fid, then moved on to make and stain the center section, then finishing all the trusses and sling band finishing with painting the rest of it.

Well, this turned out easier than I thought. Good catch Lester, it wasn't bad to retro the serving lines to the fixed mast tops. Fortunately they weren't glued to the hull, so all I had to do was put them in my Proxxon Vice and roll them by hand on the bench. I was able to complete that in one day so I'm very happy.