Arthur Wayne

Boy the paint really changes the appearance of the model. I think I know what scheme you are going with, will it have brown thwarts? In any event your boat is looking great, and at the speed you work you will have one heck of a collection in short order!

I don't know how I missed your post yesterday. Your model has really turned out quite nice! I had the same problem with the gaff jaws, one of the few aspects about this kit I find curious. Had I known you needed belaying pins I could have sent some to you. If you got the 14mm size you'll be in good shape, if not let me know. You're in the home stretch now!

I'm calling this boat finished! I considered making some additional items but as Sea Hoss pointed out above, there's no end to it all! Besides that, it's at the point now where it's starting to look cluttered already. I will make a glass display case but the Army is moving me very soon so, that will wait till I get to my new home away from home. I will also add a flag at a later date. The only things I haven't addressed already in my build log are: 1. Thanks go to Dr Paul Schultz for supplying me with an extra swivel gun. I'm sure we aren't the only ones finding it odd that the kit has 3 mounts for the same gun, but only supplies 2 actual guns. 2. I added a handle to the large swivel gun with brass rod and a turned wood handle. I don't know that much about such guns but it defies my experience how one would aim such a weapon. As always, thanks for looking!! And thanks for the help/advice to all that offered.

I knew you would get this figured out! I'm glad your building this boat, I'm planning to build one as well and having your log will be a big help.

Thanks Paul! I don't really know how long it took per oar, I'd guess around 2 hours of actual work for all 6. I'm glad their done though, just waiting for the WOP to dry so hopefully I will have them painted tomorrow.

I was out of town for a while since my last post and work has been bananas since, however I have been on leave this past week so I was finally able to get back to my build. I decided to make my own oars versus using the kit supplied versions. It seemed like an awful lot of work carving and sanding flat laser cut parts into an oar, and I had to make more than just one so this is what I decided to do. Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone else considering the same. I used the laser cut part for dimensions. I created a blade pattern using Adobe Illustrator that is a close enough approximation of the kit part. I printed these patterns out and glued them to 1/16" thick basswood sheet with Elmers stick glue. After cutting the part out I just wetted the paper pattern with my finger dipped in water and the paper peeled right off. Next I sanded the blade edges to a round contour. My next step was shaping the handles, I chucked 1/8" dowel (cut a few inches longer than needed, no worry about the chuck jaws leaving marks) into my drill and used a Dremel and sandpaper to shape. The biggest challenge is making all the handles the same shape, I threw a few failed attempts away. Now I cut the dowels to length, allowing a 1/4" extra for the blade end which I notched with a Dremel cutoff disk. Next was test fitting each blade, most of the dowels needed to narrowed a hair with a sanding black as the notch in the blades was a tiny bit narrow. This was also the time to mark the dowel with a pencil line on both sides at the blade end for shaping in the next step. The dowel was then sanded to taper starting at the pencil line and terminating to where the notch fits over the blade. It should be paper thin where it terminates. I did this with a sanding block, then smoothed off the rest by hand with sandpaper. Finally the blade was glued to the dowel with thin CA. I used Minwax wood filler to blend the dowel to the blade. This product is water based, dries fast, and sands easy. It took 4 applications with some quick sanding between to build up these areas. If I intended to leave the oars natural I would have done this differently but the blades will be painted so it seems a reasonable cheat to me. Overall I'm happy they all turned out to be reasonable oar clones. I only made 6! In my view after a quick placement in the boat, 6 may even be a bit much to pose in the model. There are actually 7 tholes per side, if I made 14 oars they would take up way too much room in the boat for the look I want because bundled together, they just look like a big clunky bundle to me. I'll apply a coat of wipe on poly and then paint these this weekend, after I settle on a color scheme. In the mean time, I'm working on the final bits and contemplating making a few wooden buckets and barrels, the kit provided cast metal bucket and barrel are not very nice in my opinion. I will be moving very soon so I remain hopeful to wrap this project up before move day gets here. Thanks for looking!!

Looking really good Paul! You have cut and formed a ton of wood to get this far, I envy your ability to get so much done so fast. I can't wait to see your next update!

Looks like you're off to a great start! You were wise to make the bulkheads as perfect as possible, it will save you a lot of work later in the build.

That framing jig is a great idea. I pondered how those frames could be installed evenly looking at other similar boats, now I know! Your boats looking really good Paul, have you started thinking about a color scheme yet?

Paul you are definitely a fast builder! I'm subscribing, although I have my next project lined up I plan to build this kit some day in the future.

Looking good, you have the hard part done now. Curious to know, were your thwart knees laser cut too deep to fit like mine were?

I'm just catching up to your build after being out of town a while. Your boat is looking super. I really like the color of the stain you're using, what brand and color is it?

Paul your model looks great! Impressive how quickly your build came together and how you personalized the build from the stock kit. I'm expecting you will have the Kate Cory half done by the time I get my own longboat finished up, and I'm looking forward to following along with that build as well.

I'm nearly done with rigging, obviously lots of lose ends need to be trimmed up. I abandoned the instruction manual for this part. Not sure what MS is thinking but they provide 1.5mm line for the running rigging, which is .5mm bigger than the standing rigging! It would look to big for the anchor line. I gotta think something got mixed up between the prototype and production. 1.5mm will not even fit through the blocks. Unfortunately, the rigging instructions don't actually refer to the rigging size so there's no way of knowing, other than what you get in the kit isn't going to work. I purchased rigging from Syren Model Ship Company and it was well worth the investment. For those interested I used .88mm brown for the standing rigging (and .20mm brown for seizing). I used .63mm light brown for the running rigging, .45 for the back stays, deadeyes, main sheet, flag halliards plus .20mm for seizing these lines. In any event this is how the model looked yesterday. I borrowed another design feature from the Medway Longboat, that being the traveler. Not sure why the stem doesn't have a 3rd hole for the deadeye rigging, had I noticed earlier I might have added it. I'm still working out a way to get the deadeyes for the shrouds to behave and line up a little better, they are Twisted Sisters right now. This is just shot of the shrouds up top. I ended up chamfering the holes in all the blocks so that the lines would ease out of the block rather than have to make a right angle turn. I did this with a pointed diamond encrusted bit in my Dremel and it took all of about 15 seconds per block. Not sure if I mentioned this earlier but I also rounded off the ends and softened up the edges on all the blocks which made a vast improvement in their appearance, at least I think so. At least my deadeye sets are level with each other, and there are only 2 on each side! This photo shows how chamfering the holes in the blocks helps the line exit in a more prototypical manner. Last but not least the stern. I ended up not using the kit provided horse traveler. I've been making fake coils of rope today, still striving for predictable repeatability. I have 1/3 of them done now, but will be playing Army in the field for the next 5 weeks so this boat is gonna have to wait for me to come home. I think just might make my goal of getting this done before I head off on a longer term adventure in September. As always, thanks for looking and please feel free to point out anything that doesn't look right.

The pirogue looks very cool Tiger65! A side project is always a cool thing to have going, sometimes it keeps the "other" projects interesting! Please do continue with your log, I think I read every Longboat build log start to finish before starting mine and always found something worth tucking away for use now, or later. Also if people keep seeing the same issues with the same boat, they will be able to better plan around it. If you plan to use the kit parts, your idea seems like it's the easiest method. I wasn't thinking outside the box, if I was I might have gone this route myself. Add Paul's mod to the locker and you should be golden.