CiscoH

Nothing is more rewarding than dealing with the public. And i too hope Chuck produces the Battle Station as a regular kit. Its small but packed with detail and perfect for introducing the use of Syren rope and other Syren materials to rig a practice cannon. I won mine at the CT conference and could have gotten a mini table saw but picked the kit instead. And I have so far really enjoyed building it.

I really liked the Old Blocks. Very Minecraft-y

excellent planking Jeff! the Confederate is a big ship and your smooth run of planking looks very even and tight. i’ve only planked one ship so far so i’m no expert but like you i had numerous re-dos. i felt like i didnt get better at planking, instead i got better at fixing mistakes. keep up the great work cisco

that looks great SkiBee. my AVS hull looked like a different beast once i sanded for the first time. and i’m glad my build log is helping you out

signed up for the print and digital option

I was thinking of trying to start a Northern Delaware club in the next year. The closest club I'm aware of is in Philly but thats too far for me. Also, its in Philly. I saw the post about a southern Delaware club and was thinking about it but realistically I would never go because its 1.5 hrs away. When/if I finally free up the time I'll post here and see if it gets any traction. My shipmodeling buddy Jason (JLong) lives in Newark DE and we hang out every month or two so I guess its already a club of 2 people.

i just got an order from him this weekend. Joe couldnt have been quicker to respond so he must have missed your email somehow

Mike- the Conference was in April in New London, CT. About 6 hrs from here.

Well Howdy MSW. Its hot and humid here in Middletown Delaware on Sunday afternoon. Most of this post is fixing my last post, oh well. I was not fully satisfied with my previous attempts at making moldings. The process was fine and good practice, but the wood I used (I think maple?) had a mottled pattern. It looked ... ok. After staring at it for a while I decided to hold off on making the upper molding until inspiration struck. In every misfortune lurks opportunity; this was the perfect excuse to order some wood. I'd heard good things about Modelers Sawmill in New Jersey so I gave it a try and ordered 2 billets of AYC and 2 of Boxwood (which I have never used before). Joe, the owner, was excellent and provided good communication and suggestions. The order took a few days to show up, was nicely wrapped on the outside, celophaned on the inside (to limit moisture exchange -> which leads to warping). An excellent experience - highly recommended. Joe even included 2 extra billets of AYC because of some discoloured areas. I normally assume 25% wastage from imperfections so this was above and beyond. Now that I had the wood I had to do it justice. I cut a strip from the boxwood and used the same scraper as before to remake the lower molding. Once it was scraped I trimmed it down to size. It was definitely better. Below the old molding is on the left. You can see the mottling/spots it has. The boxwood on the right is much cleaner. The old lower molding popped off distressingly easily. I changed from white glue to yellow in hopes the boxwood version would stick better. Next I made the scraper for the upper molding. My interpretation of the Battle Station plans indicated a double bead, the upper one bigger than the lower, with a small fillet at the bottom. This scraper took a lot more time to construct versus the lower molding; every time I had it almost right I tended to over-file. Here is the final result - the profile I used is on the bottom left side. The profile is cut pretty deep into the hacksaw because i had to redo it so many times. Then the same process as before. Scrape the boxwood, plane it down to the correct thickness, and yellow glue it in place. The upper molding sticks up a bit so next I added a strip (the cap rail?) to bring it flush. Now that I have my finished height I can make the inner molding next. And thats where we are. While waiting for my wood to arrive I had started on the cannon carriage but it can wait for my next post. I like Boxwood. Its hard, a bit stringy, and on the billets you can see the grain pattern but its not obvious once cut into strips. It will be my molding material of choice in the future on any AYC projects. Happy 4th of July weekend for those of you that celebrate thanks for reading Cisco

Beautiful Frank! Those 45 degree miters are challenging to get right. Even a little off and its glaringly obvious; I can't see any bad joints there atall.

the interior looks like a real, full-sized ship! astounding attention to detail Matthias

looking good Skibee. Getting the planking to fit around that very sharp curve under the transom strained my abilities to say the least. like you I used layer #1 as practice for the second.

Good Saturday afternoon MSW. Got a lot of pictures for you today. First up is finishing the treenailing. I got my Elmers natural wood filler in the mail and used a scrap of wood to press it into the holes I had drilled last post. Doesn't look great while drying. the I scraped and sanded and much better I dinged up the wales some but will touchup paint them at the end. Next up was the moldings. This took me a while. The kit includes a plastic material that has been laser-cut with all 3 moldings but I wanted to create my own. After lots of searching (both in Chuck's Speedwell instructions and David's and Greg's original Speedwell books) I was unable to find the exact profile in cross-section. So I winged it; the pictures looked like a simple double bead. The plan shows the lower molding to be 1/8" ish wide and maybe a little thinner than the channel. Worried that the channel I make might not be the same thickness as the channel shown in the plans I built mine early. Pretty simple- a sandwich of 2 thin laser cut pieces top and bottom, the middle is a thicker piece. Sand off the char and round the middle piece. I made pegs to align the parts and used white glue sparingly placed so it didn't squeeze-out. The channel turned out to be a bout 1/8" thick so good, on to the molding. AVC is soft for scraping as I've said in the past so I cut an 1/8" thick strip of what I think is maple. Then I cut the edge to follow the diagonally running grain. Next I made my scraper, going with a hacksaw blade this time. It took a couple tries. After clamping the hacksaw blade in a metal vise I used a cut-off disk in my dremel at low speed to make the initial grooves and refined with some small cheap files (not my nice Vallorbe's). The pattern I used is the lowest. And here I'm scraping the wood by running the blade gently tilted in both directions (it had a definite direction it scraped easier). then cut off the molded section with my Veritas String cutter. I cut it a little thick and refined with my veritas miniplane and then some sandpaper sticks until the molding was thin enough. To glue it in place I used white glue sparingly to minimize squeezeout. The tiny piece of molding on the other side of the cannon port was then shaped to fit the channel and then glued in place. And finally the painted frieze. The kit includes 3 strips and thats a good thing because I messed up all 3. The first two by not cutting evenly and tearing the edges. The third I sprayed on too much Krylon digital photo and paper protectant (Chuck had recommended this in his 18th century whaleboat kit that ModelShipways sells and it worked well for me). But it was too easy to "spray 1 more time" and ridges of solidified spray formed along the edges of the strip. Below you can barely see the ridges but they were there and bugging me. The directions recommend using a glue stick - the one I could find was blue that is supposed to turn clear when it dries, but my son (who is 10 years old) remarked while walking by that the blue doesn't truly go away. This seems to be his area of expertise so i practiced using one of my failed strips of frieze and some scrap wood with a very thin coat of white glue and it worked great. After taking this picture I scraped the painted frieze off and printed a bunch more (6 just in case) and sprayed them with ONE coat of Krylon and resisted with all my might spraying more. They look fine so I'll pick one and glue it on. And thats where we are as of 2:42pm today. thanks for reading Cisco

I agree the lowered topmasts look most interesting and least obscuring. Gets my vote, if you were looking for opinions

I found the stern window assembly to be the most challenging part of the build (so far anyway). mine never looked exactly right. once the fashion pieces are added everything flows a bit better. yours is looking great