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Another quickie: In between recruiters calling today (should have a phone interview sometime this week, and one really awesome recruiter who takes the time to know her clients), and laundry, I managed to redo (again, for the umpteenth time) the stern mooring blocks. (It's amazing what a difference using the right size drill bit can make!)

Robbyn, thank you. How is that garden coming?
 
Carl, Yes sometimes I feel like Janus, but looking on "two" many directions at once! Sorry, couldnt resist the pun. The gap at the top is just gravity pulling the transom away from the hull, there are 6 brass pins I am using both as locators and as reinforcement when I took the picture there was nothing holding the part in place other then the friction of the pins so it fell away a bit. The real problem is I never beveled the bottom edge for some reason, probably because I have been working on multiple subassemblies at once and didnt pay enough attention to the edge. I have corrected the angle and glued a new trim strip to the stern ring. I will get a picture of that tonight or tomorrow, hopefully I can get the transom glued up this weekend.
 
Russ, catheads huh? I have heard the term but didnt really know how it applied, any idea where the name came from?
Maybe i made a mistake and they are supposed to look like this??

 
Ok, enough play, time to go to work.
Sam

Here's the right and SAFE way to do it.   And I'm wondering if this bad and then the correct way should be posted in the tools section as a reminder...???
 
The jig and workpiece are properly secured to the mill table using clamps.
 

 
The cutting bit is run down to correct depth and bingo.... no movement, a perfect cut at the perfect width.
 

 
 
Sidestory.. I'm debriding the wounds earlier and applying fresh bandages and my Admiral saw the mess and winced.  A bit later she sees me working at this and says: "Nothing slows you down, does it?".  My response was the usual "It's just a flesh wound".   She looks at me and said: "No more Monty Python movies for you".   This from the lady who after surgery is back lap swimming....  

Robbyn, thank you. How is that garden coming?
 
Carl, Yes sometimes I feel like Janus, but looking on "two" many directions at once! Sorry, couldnt resist the pun. The gap at the top is just gravity pulling the transom away from the hull, there are 6 brass pins I am using both as locators and as reinforcement when I took the picture there was nothing holding the part in place other then the friction of the pins so it fell away a bit. The real problem is I never beveled the bottom edge for some reason, probably because I have been working on multiple subassemblies at once and didnt pay enough attention to the edge. I have corrected the angle and glued a new trim strip to the stern ring. I will get a picture of that tonight or tomorrow, hopefully I can get the transom glued up this weekend.
 
Russ, catheads huh? I have heard the term but didnt really know how it applied, any idea where the name came from?
Maybe i made a mistake and they are supposed to look like this??

 
Ok, enough play, time to go to work.
Sam

Rich, Shawn, Thanks.
Starting to feel better, I can at least drive to work and dont have to lay down in the back of the GF's to go to the chiropractor. I do have to wait for traffic to  ease up before I leave for work and leave work before it starts so I am only working 4-5 hours a day. Was actually able to work on the ship for a few minutes yesterday and today. Nothing to show here but it felt good to start getting back in the saddle again.
Cog, I wonder if acupuncture could be a kind of voodoo, pins and needles..... This has been my first experience with it, mixed thoughts on effectiveness.
Shawn, new jobs are always fun. One if the reasons I tend to stay at a place for a while.
Anyway, hopefully by Friday I can have something worth a picture.
Till then.....
Sam 

Robbyn, 
Your start on rigging looks great, you'll figure out how to keep everything lined up. I will be observing and taking notes quietly from the back row, If all goes well I will be rigging myself by the end of spring and your log will be a great tutorial I am sure.
 
I know what you mean about "furry little vacuum cleaners." Mine has run off with more than a few parts. She thinks my work table is her personal toy box. 
 
I see there are some here who are still trying to convince you to let the second-build-gremlins out, you must resist!!! Ladies get jealous when you give attention to others. Maybe what you could do is take a hi-rez picture of the open box with all the contents, cut it up into tiny odd shaped pieces like a jigsaw puzzle and start a new build log. Post a piece a day and let the "trouble makers"   put it back together with the promise you will start building after the first post of the completed picture. 
 
Then again, I understand there is a "doghouse" out back? Your just an extension cord and can of air freshener away from all the room you need.......
We really need and emoticon for "running and ducking" or "hiding under the desk" on this site.
Keep up the great work.
Sam

Sarah, thank you!! I dont think I could have done the hinges with out photo etching them. They still need a lot of clean up and I need to decide pretty soon if I will blacken them or leave them bright. Decisions decisions!!!
Sam

Thanks everybody!
Russ, I wasnt sure about the color at first and its a much more labor intensive staining process than I really wanted to do, but its really grown on me. The contrast of the light box wood against the mahogany is even working for me. I was very close to gong with a slightly darker wood, I am glad now you talked me out of it months ago, thanks.
 
Rich, thanks. Its good to be building again. I still cant sit for very long before things start locking up on me, but I can work on little things. Perhaps some gun carriages are in my near future. So your gonna be jumping out of a perfectly good airplane again? Nice! That is something I would like to do again one day. I dont know what I enjoyed more, the rush of freefall or the absolute silence once the chute opened.
 
Carl, thank you. Yours will get there too. Take your time, I will learn to be patient one day and not bug you. ( I dont want you to demonstrate you technique on me) 
 
Yesterday I got the second stain on the mahogany parts and then dug out the tripod and macro lens. This morening I glued the stern ring on the transom, dont have pictures yet. 
 
The top picture is grain filler only, the bottom is final stain.
 

 

The hinges need some additional clean up, havent decided weather to polish and lacquer or to blacken them.
 

 
Thats all for now.
Sam
 
 

Robbyn,
I would egree with the advise your getting on spraying, all those nooks and crannies on a ship just get overspray in them and its very hard to clean up, not to mention the reasons others have mentioned. Brushing isnt a big deal, especially if you plan it out in advance and try to do your finish as you go. For your clear coat invest in two or three good brushes, they are not cheap but will last forever if you take care of them.It never hurts to practice on some srap wood to get a feel for how the clear flows and dries. Look at me, I am still on my first build and telling you how to do your finish!! I am basing all this on years building cabinets and furniture, I have sprayed more than a few Stickley  style reproductions and spraying around all those spindles is for me a challenge, I much prefer a rubbed oil or brushed clear for that.
 
What ever you choose you have a very large following here that will keep you out of trouble.
 
Thanks for the well wishes, you wanna trade injuries, my back for your hand???
Sam

Robbyn,
Yikes I go away for a couple of days (weeks?) and you have a half completed ship, have started soldering(!) AND your a moderator!!! Were you on the over achievers list in collage as well as the deans list??
Everything looks great. 
As far as soldering, it appears the more experienced here are using irons, perhaps I am missing something but I use a small butane pencil torch, my parts dont move around on me. It is an almost instantaneous joint, A little dab-0-flux, a tinier snippet of solder, light the torch touch the flame to the part and your done.
Regardless which way you go, each time you solder something you will get better and better, what you have done looks good.
Sam

I understand completely JP. My work room is also the spare bedroom and gets converted 3-4 times a year. I keep telling my GF she needs to get a better job so I can retire and she can buy me a bigger house where I have my own workroom. Last time I said that she picked up the chef knife I had just sharpened and said she was going to show me a better job. Being "from Mars" I dont translate Venetian well, do you think that means I will be getting me my room soon? I hope so......
Take your time, finish your gift and enjoy your guests, I wont even check in on you ten seconds from now this time. I will wait at least 15.
sam

Ok, I waited ten seconds and there are still no pictures. what gives.....?

I have seen several topics about this, mostly on the old MSW, but also a couple here about the difficulties of staining basswood without splotching. It got me wondering just how tough basswood was to stain. So this weekend I went out and purchased some basswood strips and set about to staining them. 
 
One of the things I learned building and finishing cabinets and furniture over the years is that sanding plays a huge role in how your stain comes out. The stains available at most hardware and building stores are a pigment based product in an oil or water based carrier. The pigments lodge in the pores of the wood and in the scratches left by the sandpaper. The finer you sand the less nooks and crannies there are available for the pigments to lodge in. A lot of woods, Cherry, Maple and evidently basswood have inconsistencies in their structures and evidently some woods have variations in their sap content. This causes them to take stain unevenly or "splotch". 
 
One of the most common methods of combating this is to use a pre-stain conditioner. Its really nothing more than linseed oil thinned way down in mineral spirits. You can make your own by taking one part boiled linseed oil to 9 or 10 parts mineral spirits. Saturate the wood with it, let it set for 5-10 minutes and wipe up the excess. Apply you stain in the next hour, before it dries and you get a more even stain.
 
Another method and  my preferred method is a washcoat of thinned down finish. I usually use  1 pound cut of shellac. A one pound cut is simply 1 pound of shellac flake to one gallon of denatured alcohol. depending on the size of a project I may only make a quart at a time. 4oz of flakes to one quart of alcohol. brush it on, let it dry 30 minutes and scuff sand with 320, wipe off the residue with a tack rag and stain. You get a very even stain, although quite a bit lighter than if you stained on unsealed wood. 
 
Another method I have used is to glaze. Seal your wood make your glaze and work it in. I have my doubts as to its applications in model ship building, its messy and all the details in a build make me think glazing is a recipe for disaster.
 
I started by simulating a deck or hull. I didnt bother cleaning off the glue since I wanted to see if it was possable to sand out a glue smudge.
 

 
I clamped them down overnight  

 
then removed the clamps

 
Next I started sanding, I sanded the entire board to 150, then 3/4 of the board to 220, half of the board to 320 and finally the last quarter to 400. Normally on a piece of furniture I would only go to 220, but with all the directional changes on a hull I felt 400 would be better. At that point you are getting to where the scratches are becoming close to the same size as the stain particles. 
I applied my washcoat to the center horizontal 1/3 of the board and minwax stain conditioner to the bottom 1/3. I left the upper 1/3 untreated. My stain was Varathane Golden Mahogany, just something I had in the garage. On the untreated portion the stain splotched pretty severely. On the conditioned side you can see an improvement, especially in the 320 and 400 bands. The wash coat is the most even, but considerably lighter.

 
Next I applied a couple of coats of Varathane Poly clear satin. 

 
After looking at my results I got curious. Dye stains can also be a great tool for splotch prone woods. Dyes color the wood on a molecular level so you get a very even color. You wont find dyes at your local home depot or hardware store. You need to go to a specialty wood working store like Rockler, Woodcraft, or my favorite, Homestead finishing. An internet search will turn all of these places up here in the USA. I am sure there are places in Europe and Australia, but I dont  know the names. One of my favorite brands is the transtint dyes. They will break down in any carrier; water, alcohol, lacquer, alkyd, oil, whatever. Thy are a bit pricey. $20 if I recall for 2 oz but the last a long time depending on how you use them.

 
I had some brown mahogany water based dye here so I mixed up a very small batch; 1/8 tsp in 4 oz of water. I sanded the entire board to 400, then applied the dye to the left side of another board and the same golden mahogany to the right side with both conditioner and washcoat.  The dyed side came out very even. although I dont know if this is a good color for basswood.

 
Then I applied 4 coats of blond shelac to the top half and 4 coats of linseed oil to the bottom half. Something really unexpected happened when I applied the shellac, the brown dye turned greenish brown. Also if you look closely at the bottom of the board you will see a small green blob that is a small spot of the clear poly I used on the other sample. Prompting  my use of the  linseed oil. This is a great example of why you should always do a test board when staining and finishing. I think a garnet shellac would offset the green but I would need to get some flakes and see. Also a light red dye would shift the green to a brown. 
 
[
 
After all of this I am starting to think that maybe the best solution is to either wash coat or not stain at all. One of the furniture makers I worked with years ago swore if you wanted a dark finish go with a dark wood. If you want a light finish go with a light wood and clear coat. 
 
I hope all this helps somebody, it seems like this question comes up frequently
 
Sam
 
 
 

Sarah,
Just getting caught up with your log. Looking good! I know what you mean about working with splinters of wood, sometimes I feel like the splinters I dig out of my hands from work are bigger than what goes into my build! AS for instructions, who needs instructions?? Dont tell me your one of those people who stop at the gas station and ask for directions are you?!?!?!   
Sam 

JP
That sample does not look bad at all. 
 
There are a lot of things that can cause your stain to be uneven.
 
Sanding technique is one. Make sure you follow the same sanding schedule for everything. Virtually all of the stains you get in the local paint/hardware store are a combination of pigments and dye in a carrier. The pigments lodge in the pores and tiny scratches left behind when you sand. If you sand part of your hull to 220 and another part to 320 for instance the area you sanded to 320 will be lighter. How MUCH you sand with a particular grit affects it also. If you REALLY sand one area you run the risk of burnishing the wood and the stain wont penetrate. Also, as I am sure you are aware, sanding cross grain is not recommended, those scratches pick up the stain and leap right out at you. Its posable to break that rule if youre carefull. I sanded my hull to 400 because there were several places where it was very difficult to sand with the grain, at 400 you really have to look to see the scratches. Keep in mind though on dense fine grained woods sanding to that grit can make it so you get very little color.
 
 
Some woods just have a structure that makes them difficult to stain. Birch and cherry are two of the biggest offenders. In the ship modeling world it is starting to become apparent to me that many of the preferred woods for modeling are difficult to stain. I would agree with the others about the prestain conditioner. As others mentioned it very easy to use and you get very nice results. If for some reason you (or others) cant find it or are too far away from a paint store, you can make your own with nothing more than 1 part linseed oil and 10 parts turpentine or paint thinner. 
 
You can also use a technique called washcoating. It is very similar to stain conditioner. I use a 1lb cut of blond shellac. That is 1 pound of shellac flakes to 1 gallon of denatured alcohol, more than you will use in your life probably. You can scale it down to whatever amount seems appropriate to you. I make a pint at a time, so you scale down to 1/8. (8 pints in a US gallon) and 2 oz of flakes. Easier is to buy your shellac and thin it down. Buy the smallest can you can find and pour out about 2 oz in a sealable container then add about 4-6 oz of alcohol to that and you will be good to go. Brush on a coat, let it dry, scuff sand to 320 and stain on top of that. You can do the same thing with water based clears but I dont know how much to thin them since I dont use water based finishes as a rule. As a guess three or four to one should be about right.
 
 
Always make a test board first. I would strongly recomend you make a board at least 4x6" or larger with your planking material and experiment. You really wnat to try to use the same material you're in your project. That way you can find out in advance if your going to have any problems with staining.
 
This is the test board for my build. I used the display base that came with the kit since I will be building another display board. Ideally you want to use some of your planking to make your board, I was practically out. Left to right is Varathane Chestnut, Brown Mahogany, Traditional Pecan, no stain and then Gold Mahogany. From top to bottom is a washcoat, grain filler and stain. Second row is grain filler and stain, no wash coat. Third row is washcoat and stain, no grain filler. Bottom row is stain on raw sanded wood. It is kind of hard to see in the picture, but the biggest color change was with the wash coat, it blocked a lot of the pigments from settling in the pores.  

   
There are a lot of other ways to combat splotch prone woods, gel stains, dyes, glazing, chemical staining (hazardous if your dont take the required precautions) but require many more steps to get a finish. 
 
Looks like you are well on your way. I have most likely given you more information than you needed. I am generous like that! 
Have fun!
Sam

One other thing to watch out for. If you use ammonia on a wood with a high tannic acid content like oak, cherry, mahogany or even walnut, the ammonia will stain the wood. It can be a nice stain, especially on oak, but if your not aware of it, and just dab it in places you could be in for a nasty surprise. It was one of the reasons I brought up the oxalic acid in the first place.
 
A lot of furniture makers, especially those who specialize in Mission or Arts and Crafts style furniture use a process called ammonia fuming to stain the wood. In my experience it is most effective in oak, cherry, and mahogany. I dont imagine to many of us will build a scale model out of oak, but I see a lot of mahogany and some cherry here. Always test on a sample first. JP, I should have warned you about the ammonia first. Sorry.  I have been working 12 plus hour days seven days a week for four weeks and my head is not screwed on right at the moment. Fortunately no harm, this time.
 
Ron, I have some wood finish books here that delve into the bleaching and stian removal on woods. I will try to look them up and post them here. If the Admins feel the information is worth it I would be more than happy to have it posted in the data base
 
Sam

Edit 03/25/2020
I have been very humbled to hear of several new builders of this kit mention this build log as a reference. thank you, I hope it helps you out. That being said, at some point I threw the instructions away and began using Lees Masting and Rigging as well as Antscheral Fully Framed as inspiration and guidance. There are most likely many details that are incorrect for the ship. I used the building experience more to learn techniques to build a model I was satisfied with visually rather than an historically correct museum build.
So, carry on and enjoy!!
 
Well..... where to start?? Unfortunate about the hard drive crash. I guess Murphy lives around every corner. And to think I was going to save my build log before the change...... It could be worse, MSW could be gone forever or my actual build could be gone forever. 
I am working ridiculous hours at work, sometime in the next week I will get a couple of pictures up and start posting again.
One thing I see that I love already.... SPELL CHECK!!!!  Woo Hooo!
Ok back with a real post soon.
Sam

Edit 03/25/2020
I have been very humbled to hear of several new builders of this kit mention this build log as a reference. thank you, I hope it helps you out. That being said, at some point I threw the instructions away and began using Lees Masting and Rigging as well as Antscheral Fully Framed as inspiration and guidance. There are most likely many details that are incorrect for the ship. I used the building experience more to learn techniques to build a model I was satisfied with visually rather than an historically correct museum build.
So, carry on and enjoy!!
 
Well..... where to start?? Unfortunate about the hard drive crash. I guess Murphy lives around every corner. And to think I was going to save my build log before the change...... It could be worse, MSW could be gone forever or my actual build could be gone forever. 
I am working ridiculous hours at work, sometime in the next week I will get a couple of pictures up and start posting again.
One thing I see that I love already.... SPELL CHECK!!!!  Woo Hooo!
Ok back with a real post soon.
Sam