CiscoH

what Aliluke said. i broke a bunch of the tabs off too

super clean planking Jeff. Looks excellent!

Good Sunday evening MSW. Here in Delaware Daylight Savings has struck so its dark at 5:30pm. The drama those with kids call "Halloween" has receded, time for an update. Today is Windows Part II and I am afraid there will be at least one or two more to come. Like everything in this hobby they are a lot more complicated than I expected. My big difficulty, besides simply the challenge of working with such small parts, was making the same size windows. Its easy to make several Almost the Same Size frames but with all 4 of them side by side tiny differences are glaring. So I tried to think up a way to make my parts identical. I also wanted skinnier muntins; my previous beefy 2/64" ones weren't going to cut it. My first solution is pretty practical and thankfully simple - a pair of stop blocks. First I glued one on the closer side of my angled jig. I pushed each frame part snug against the stop block and cut the angle with a Veritas mini-chisel as before. Then I glued another stop block on the other side of my jig to push against so my second cut was at the correct interior frame dimension. Repeat with another piece and now I had the 2 side pieces of the frame, both exactly the same. I made another jig that cut the exact same angle but with closer stop blocks to make the bottom and top pieces of the frame (the window frame is slightly taller than it is wide). Once I had my 4 frame pieces I formed the half laps same as before. Once glued up with clear-drying white elmers glue I sanded both sides of the window flat with 220 grit. The window frame is skittery and likes to escape fingertips but I finally got the frame to a consistent thickness. Then as before I marked the center of each frame with my drafting compass and gently pressed the larger chisel across the frame on the pencil marks. I used the veritas mini-chisels to cut a tiny wedge at each chisel incision. In my previous post I used a file to cut the muntin mortises but my smallest file is 2/64" wide. I couldn't find a thinner one so I went back to using my hobby saw (see the last pic in this post, its the red handled one everyone has) which is exactly 1/64" thick. If you go slow and gentle it will sit in the tiny wedges and cut a perfectly even 1/64" mortise. Then I used my veritas mini-plane (what would we do without Canadian ingenuity?) to sneak up on a 1/64" muntin. I would get it pretty close then use some 220 grit on a small stick to smooth the muntin to its final 1/64" dimension. I found it easier to work with if I left it big, as you can see below. Once it had dried I carefully trimmed the muntin down until it was even with the back of the frame (chisels must be sharp and mind the grain) and very very carefully cut a mortise in the muntin with first a chisel and then the hobby saw, supporting the fragile parts with my finger from underneath, and then shaped and glued the second muntin, oversize, in place. One it dried overnight I trimmed it up, a little more sanding to get it the correct shape, and inserted it into the stern. Here I have both port side windows installed. David Anstcherl talks about lining up the muntins so they make a perfect arc across the stern. I don't think I have that in me this go around. Below is my hobby saw and the 2 starboard windows with their vertical muntins drying in place. Next up, assuming the windows look good, is trimming down the interior stop blocks so they don't show through the windows, trimming my panes of "glass" (I'm using mica) and then making some exterior frames to hold the windows in place and smooth out the silhouette of the raggedly cut window holes in the stern planking. thats it, thanks for reading Cisco

Doug- that is exactly what i did on my last build. faired the bulkheads, added the first layer of planking, and realized this was an opportunity. i both practiced my plank layout, practiced bending and twisting the planks into place (with heat and a little water), and treated it as a chance to re-fair my hull. the second layer i made no attempt to overlap seams although it happened a lot by chance. having a solid wood base made the thinner second layer adhere so well i dont think staggering the seams would have made a significant structural difference

great post explaining your process!

check Blackening Revisited by DVM27 about 3 pages in on this thread. my personal experience is blackening brass is very frustrating and there are a lot of Mystic Formulas out there. i sand the brass with 220, rinse in alcohol, and use the same blackener you do. i’ve had better luck distilling the black at least 10:1 with distilled water (10 parts water to 1 black). it takes 10-15 minutes to blacken and i turn the pieces over periodically. i still get small splotches where it doesnt cover, especially on soldered areas where i didnt get all the flux off, but the very dilute blackener seems to stick better than concentrated. then i use black paint on any areas that didnt cover.

i had to add several strips and sand some bulkheads down to get them even. the false deck and sterncabin plywood panels will hide a lot on the topsides but you do want a somewhat level base. i did the same on the bulkheads lower portions to get a smooth run for hull planking. moving right along

I may be opening a can of worms here but how do you navigate copyright in this instance? Its a ship that isn't fictional, but the author's imagined ship kind of is. Replacing carronades with long guns isn't too controversial, but other details (like the enlarged mainmast which I know you are not including) theoretically could be. Also i am very interested in following along the kit development process. Its like magic how fast you develop your kits from scratch! I'm inching along on my 2nd kit build and after 2 years have almost made it to main deck furniture.

Happy Saturday afternoon MSW. Today I continue trying to make windows. Last time I made an oversized practice window which below I have trimmed down and I think it looks ok. Here are my 2 oversized test windows and the kit walnut one. This time around I made a new window the correct size although its still a practice version. First off I copied the angle of an outside window and made a cutting jig, similar to what I did with my mitered coamings. I used a large chisel initially but later used the largest of the 3 mini veritas chisels and it worked fine too. Everything is very oversize to be trimmed down at the end. The most difficult part wasn't cutting the angled lap joint, it was making the 2 opposite pieces of frame the same size. Still working on the best way to mark this. One other challenge is figuring out which direction the angled miters are cut. Doodling pictures did not help me visualize; I bet if I had worked in Sketchup I would have eventually gotten it but thats even more free time gone. It turns out if you cut all the angled joints on the right side of the above jig it makes the Left-side window (because I wanted the side members of the window (stiles?) to run all the way up/down. Presumably when I cut the joints with with mirror image left side of the jig it will make the right-side window. I formed the half-laps same as last post, which led to: I marked the frame with triangles and then put it together with Elmers white glue. Once it was dry I flipped it over and used a compass to determine the centerpoint of each side and then the big chisel to score a mark across the frame, then gently chiseled out the score to a V shape. I purchased the smallest Vallorbe rectangular file I could find which turned out to be 2/64" thick. I used this to file the V cuts into square. Despite the tiny size it still makes the rabbits look too big. But this is a test window so I soldiered on. I added one window muntin. Cut to fit the size of the slot its noticeably thicker than the previous test window muntin. Once it dried I filed the transverse slot and added its muntin. And once that was dry I trimmed the window frame down to its proper size. I thinned the muntins by filing then equally each side which worked pretty well. The window is surprisingly rigid considering how tiny it is. And here is the new window overlaid onto the left side of the stern, kit window on the right for comparison. It looks like I need the thin the frame edges even more but I am planning on adding some exterior window trim pieces which will take up some space. I have to enlarge the stern window openings at the top some and I think I will put backers in on the top and bottom where there is a little more room. Next up adding some window trim and deciding if I keep the muntin angles like the kit or change them so they follow the curve of the stern planking. Or something inbetween. thanks for reading Cisco

your gunport standardization and lining techniques are excellent. keep up the informative posts

Finally another AVS build! Looks good so far. In terms of hull planking I used the thicker basswood base layer as practice. the second thin layer went much better due to all the Learning that went into the first layer. In Clayton Feldman's book (the original builder of this model) I believe he only used 1 layer of hull planking so you could simply skip the walnut. either way I look forward to your progress. cisco

Y’now if you had used… sorry wont do that. in all seriousness i am amazed by your computer skills and how you managed to loft and produce an accurate frame. did you cut the stem pieces with the laser or by hand?

i do almost all my work with hand tools. mostly the powered stuff is in the garage but thats only used to cut billets into strips. if i bought strip wood then there would be no need for noisy powered tools.

Happy Saturday MSW! Today I will document the start of my attempts to make Windows. The AVS comes with laser cut windows in walnut which are actually pretty good. I decided to start my window construction by copying one of them. There are 4 windows spread in an arc across the stern, 2 on each side. As I had suspected before the laser cut windows were made at 2 different angles; the inner windows are more angled than the outer: Inner Window: Outer window: Each side is of course a mirror image of the other; thats 4 different windows that are similar enough there is no way I won't end up making some of them backwards, upside down, etc. I followed David Antscherl's basic construction techniques from Swan? or possibly Speedwell. Anyway his method was my inspiration. As usual I am making everything from holly, and since I don't have any milling machines its all by hand. I decided to make it a little easier on myself and build an overscale window to practice first. It is Really Challenging holding these tiny pieces of wood steady. Almost as bad as the ring hardware. So my first thought was build a practice version a bit bigger than the final to work out my technique. I think it was a good plan, and overall I felt using the biggest piece of wood for each part I could helped holding and manipulating. Then trim to size later. To get my window angles I used one of the lasercut kit windows (an outer one) to guide my chisel. A gentle score was all thats needed, then the chisel blade slips naturally into the score mark and is easy to deepen. I used half-lap joints to form the oversize window frame. As per David I glued down 2 strips of wood that were 1/2 the thickness of the window frame parts and used my chisel to Gently pare the half laps to size. The only way I could hold these little parts is with my fingers and I was cutting Towards said digits so I went very careful. Sharp is essential and pares away little slivers of wood nicely. Dull blades jump and and skip and go where you didn't plan. This time there was no blood. Once the frame was dry (and I had to recut one side as I made the original part the mirror image of what it should be) I tackled putting in the grill, clearly the trickiest part. I lightly scored the frame with the same wide chisel used above and gently pared out the grill mortises using a combination of chisels, a very fine hobby saw, and some fine vallorbe files. I fitted the rail first which took several episodes of thinning with the veritas miniplane. The rail is 2/64" thick if anyone was wondering. And then the really hard part, fitting the muntin. This involved cutting a half lap joint in both the sash and the muntin so the grill parts end up level with each other. Everything was done with the optivisor. I put a thin piece of wood under the rail so it wouldn't deflect then scored Very Gently with my chisel and cut out the mortise. And here is the muntin in place. The grill is inset into the window frame which is what I wanted, and not flush with the outside of the frame. I really feel that having some reveals looks more authentic even though it always means more exacting work. Since this is a practice round I will leave this window as is but if it had been a final version I would let the grill dry and then sand the frame down to its final width. Heres the window laid on the AVS stern and while the frame is obviously too large I think the grill looks more in scale than the kit version. Anyway I dont think I can make the grill any smaller so thats what I'm working with. If I was Really Crazy I would try to scrape moldings onto the grill and inner window frames instead of leaving them as simple rectangles. But at present I am Not That Crazy and I think holly is too soft for that kind of detail. One thing I discovered is my 12 pack of Vallorbe Escapement files 4 cut (super fine) doesn't have a single rectangular file. There are 2 rounds and 10 curved, half round, triangular, but no rectangular one that would have fit nicely into these tiny mortises so I am off to OttoFrei.com. Legitimate (as in I actually need it) tool purchase ahead. Next up is figuring how I am going to mount the windows. As it is right now the window frames don't have anything to keep them from falling into the stern gallery so I am thinking about gluing some backing strips for the windows to push up against. But first I have to figure out exactly how thick the windows will be, what about glass, what about an exterior frame, etc, so some deep thinking ahead. Stay tuned. thanks for reading Cisco

great build! i love the extra details