CiscoH

Update time! I spent the afternoon watching my son (age 7) playing his second ever football game, which was right after his second ever football practice. He had little idea of what was going on, along with the other kids seemed to do the opposite of what the coach said, and all had a great time. Then I left him at a friend's house for a sleepover, wife and daughter are napping upstairs, and I am gifted with that rare thing called "free time." Sluicemaster; I meant to practice my hooked scarfs on some scrap but the ones I did for real turned out well enough. I also seem to do really well on the first ones, almost as good on the second, and then the third try I'm either out of karma or overconfident. So I never ended up doing any trial runs. In terms of the practicum (LaukStreetShipyard.com) I have found it very useful as another source of information- the entire thing is 150? pages long. But it also has added some confusion, see below, and I haven't followed all of his advice. He spent 2+ pages talking about how the bullwark planking didn't measure correctly on the plans, which it is pretty clearly because the kit supplied waterway is much thicker than the plans say it is. So you either adjust the other planking widths (what he did in the practicum and what I will end up doing because I didn't understand all this until After I put in my waterway and I ainte fixing it) or measure twice and thin the waterway before installation. I didn't think it was too big a deal but it got him pretty fired up. As Captain-Hook mentioned above, I also have Dr Feldman's "Modeling an AVS" which the kit is directly based on. An enthusiastic read and one of the written sources that got me into this hobby. And the AVS is a good beginner choice due to all the build logs here; Captain-Hook's is one I have referenced many times. So on to this week's "progress" The practicum gets very confusing at the stern. I followed the directions as close as I was able but still must have messed up somewhere. My curved fashion pieces seem too short compared to the sheet plans that came with the AVS and Dr Feldman's pictures (in black and white and a little grainy so hard to see tiny details well). The wales are supposed to end with the top flush with the fashion piece and the bottom even with the bottom of the counter. Below is the wale even with the counter: A pretty big gap. So I chiseled off my old fashion pieces and remade them longer. Below i have just glued the first one in place. Here is a stern shot with the new fashion piece, to port, old fashion piece to starboard. There is a gap as the hull curves downwards but I will cover that space with the remaining counter planking; Dr Feldman does a similar thing. In hindsight I should have made the inside of the fashion piece curve to match the hull but I'm not remaking them for a 3rd time. Next I cut out my wales from holly stock, same as I did in earlier posts (smooth one edge of the billet with my handplane, bandsaw off a piece, bring it to 1/8" thick with my blockplane, then cut off strips with a steel straightedge and an xacto). Very labour intensive. I'm not sure how well that will work with the really thin holly strips for hull planking but thats a future problem. One nice thing about holly is it bends even easier than basswood. I soaked the 1/8" strip in water for 10 minutes then bent it around a glass and left it overnight. Worked perfect. I was concerned about clamping the wale without having it slip about so I put in the kit brass nails along its top border as seen below. This way when clamping, which pulls the strip upwards, the nails would keep the wale in place. Hopefully without denting it. I also cleaned any glue buildup out of the bow rabbit and thinned the last inch of the wale so it fit the rabbit snug. Then I did a trial run figuring out clamps (I need more of the dewalts). I also am really glad I didn't fill in the stern windows (on purpose) so they could be used as clamp purchases; very vital here to clamp the final inward curve of the wale. And that yellow porcupine is currently drying in the basement. I felt that the fashion pieces were too fat so I managed to trim the top edge in place (I cannot believe that worked); if you look closely above you can see the ghost border. Next up is the port wale, then the inside and outside scuppers. Hope you all had a calm, enjoyable weekend. Thanks for reading. Cisco

Night and day difference between the kit supplied and your scratched carronade carriages. in my opinion absolutely worth it great job

Rainy Sunday morning, wife and dogs all asleep, kids and loaner kid playing board games, perfect time for an update. Jason I have no idea whats going to happen with the cap rails. My hope is once its planked on the inside it'll be fat enough to just glue, but maybe I'll pin it as well. Future Cisco's problem. Sam/SRC I completely agree. For me point of this hobby is to do as much as I can myself with hand tools. But i have to admit its fun seeing what other people are doing with computer aided technology even if I don't want to. The printed cannons have looked pretty interesting... So on to my AVS. This week is a more detailed description of making the port side waterway. In theory it should have gone smoother after practicing on the starboard side. In theory. Here goes: First, after making the straight section of the waterway and forming the first hook scarf, I created a card model of the front section from a cut up yellow folder. Miraculously I managed to keep the scarf orientation the mirror image of the port side. After some adjustments to the scarfs I traced the card onto my 1/8" thick holly stock. The I cut the traced portion out with a hand jigsaw. Sorry this pic is a little blurry. The camera didn't know what to focus on. Then smoothing out the curve to the penciled line with a spokeshave. After fitting the new part I traced the first scarf and chiseled the majority of the waste (holly is very crumbly so you can get away with a lot) then used files as before to sneak up onto the lines. Once I had a reasonable fit I did the same for the final bow waterway piece. After sanding all the pieces I ended up with the following. I left the pieces a little fat for final fitting. The picture makes the scarf joints look tight but holding them up to the light there were definite gaps. You file one side to tighten the fit and it makes the opposite side open up some so it was a definite Walk Away situation before you oversanded. Next I made the gap filler- holly dust mixed with pencil graphite; then mixed with white glue. And here is the waterway after glue-up. The gap filler beads over the joint and has to be gently chiseled and not sanded; otherwise the graphite stains the holly grey. After some chiseling I got to the below stage: I then traced both edges of the miter with my compass and cut to the lines using my spokeshaves and some sandpaper wrapped around a dowel for the very curvey areas, then glued the waterway in place same as last post. I want to keep the holly as white as possible so I used water based polyurethane as a finish. This area seemed like it would be hard to get into the corners in the future without creating glops of finish so I took care of that now. I found a qtip with a piece of cut off t-shirt rubber banded on worked great as a applicator (I hate cleaning brushes) and I used another piece of clean t-shirt to wipe it down right afterwards; my version of wipe on poly. Seemed to work great. I have soft white LEDs above my bench which makes the holly look yellower than it would in daylight. And thats it for this week. I haven't printed out the next chapter of the practicum yet but I think its second planking. Stay dry Cisco

looks really good! the stain takes it up a notch too nice job

Dave it seems you're moving pretty darn fast to me. Any pics of how you're clamping/bending the hull planking, and what are you using to represent caulking lines? pencil or paint? and what are you gluing with? thanks, Cisco

An update! Hope everyone is enjoying the fall weather, if your located on my latitude. I've done a lot since my last post. First, I visited the house of another MSW member, Jason Long (JLong), who lives 20 minutes north of me in Delaware. I got to see his Fair America, which is much further along than my AVS. A great time was had discussing all things shippy and I hope to have him down to my place in the near future. Second, a few weeks ago I attended my first Admiralty Workshop hosted by Greg Herbert and Dave Antscherl with special guest host Chuck and it was a lot of fun. We all made rope with Chuck, then learned how to splice and tie and wrap and seize. My ancient iphone can't take clear pictures of work this tiny so when I finally upgrade I'll try and post some of it. At the end we spent an afternoon getting a tour of the Naval Academy museum in Annapolis by Grant Walker (hope I got his name right, on the right in the below pic). I don't know how but Barry Rudd, the gentleman in the blue shirt behind Grant, seems to be in every picture of this event. I sat next to him in the workshop and he was a very nice guy, and clearly a regular at these events. The museum recently acquired a collection of miniature model ship that have to be seen to be believed. Very tiny and protected by glass cases so ham-fisted people like me can't pet them. The one below is plank on frame and about 2 inches long. Crazy. We also toured the main museum area and got a behind-the-scenes history of various models. I personally find the cases and stands as interesting as the ships themselves. But on to my AVS. Since last post I sanded, mostly, the first planking smooth. I hadn't installed the waterway earlier as the practicum directed because I was worried the bulkhead extensions would be too fragile when clamping the hull. So time to rectify that and thin the extensions. I used a chisel, then an xacto, and finally some sandpaper. The bulkheads curve upwards and the grain likes to runnout so it took a while. Once that was done I went about replacing the kit supplied waterways (walnut) with holly. Initially pretty easy, just trace. Since my billet of holly was pretty narrow I had to make my waterway in 3 pieces scarfed together. To make it more exciting the scarfs are on the curved section, and the kit supplied waterway didn't precisely fit my AVS; my prow was more rounded, so I had to do some finagling. Below is the 3 pieces before being glued together. I followed Cheerful's directions for forming the scarfs. Drawing on and cutting out the first half of the joint wasn't too bad, but it was a bear making the mating joint. I ended up overlaying the first joint and tracing it onto a lower piece of wood with a very sharp pencil, then using my chisel first for rough removal, then files to sneak up to the pencil lines. I still had some tiny joint gaps which I filled with a mixture of white glue, holly dust, and graphite (rubbing the pencil point on sandpaper then dumping the results onto the holly dust and mixing all 3 together). This worked better than I planned. It seemed to fill the gaps and made the joint more visible. After gluing the pieces up and using spokeshaves, a thick dowel wrapped in sandpaper, and the flat of my chisel as a scraper I got my final version. To glue the waterway in had 1 final challenge- the deck isn't flat. After struggling with clamping I came up with the following- I placed clamps along the bulkheads a bit less than 1/8" above the waterway. Then I cut the provided 1/8" thick walnut waterway, which I didn;t need anymore anyway, into a series of short wedges and used these between the flat clampheads and the waterway to push it flush with the deck. And thats it for today. Now I have to make the other side. thanks for reading, Cisco

src/Sam- sorry about the long delay responding. I can't easly find where I said LunchBox plane, but usually that means a 12" tabletop planer that you plug in, mine is a Dewalt I got at Home Depot years ago that still runs great. But for finish stuff you need hand tools; I've had several 2 Cherries chisels for a long time and we get along very well. As long as I don't forget to sharpen then.

Mustafa- looks great! where are the cannons from? and is that beech you are using for the carriages?

Michele- any pictures of the carving process? thx Cisco

alright Greg I have it from a reliable source youve done more work. Pics please; esp close ups of the stern where i’m trying to figure out how far down the fashion pieces go. Great planking job by the way- did you use pencil for caulking on the holly deck?

Paul you are a speedy builder! can u do some sideshots of your binder clamps? they look like they work better the ones i’ve been Mcgyvering. also what glue are you using for the planking?

Are you using heat (small travel iron or a hairdryer) while bending? you can get away with a lot more stretching than with water alone. having said that i think youd have to join several sections to make it look realistic and i like your bending jig

Tarjack- its been years- any progress to report?

First, thank you guys for comments and likes. Keeps me going knowing someone is reading these posts. Jason, who lives pretty close, I hope to get to hang out soon. Mikiek I am contemplating your method of yellow/superglue for second planking. Dan/Shipmodel thank you for your responses and advice. I am hoping to incorporate some bone details in this model, maybe a binnacle to start. Baby steps... In my last post I mentioned I was trying to power through finishing first planking. I had a hit a bit of a rut trying to make everything perfect and it was time to move on. So now I have officially finished first planking even if I resorted to wide planks. I had left the counter planking unfinished so I could roll the stern planking upwards, trim the ends flush, and then insert the final 2 counter planks. I thought that might be a better plan than trying to cut each stern plank individually. I don't know how some people get such perfect straight intersections! Below I used a compass to trace a pencil line parallel to the bottom counter. I found it easiest to cut by hand along the pencil line with an xacto, going very shallow and deepening it repeatedly. Then I used a 1/4" chisel to pare the waste away working down from the top. Slow n steady. I eventually cleared all the waste wood on the left side. I found it easier to glue two narrower strips vs one wide one because the space I am filling is concave. Below is both sides excavated, glued, and filled. Of course it'll all be covered by the second planking but I think the stern plank/counter intersection looks tight which is what I was aiming for. Next is sanding and more sanding and then some sanding to smooth it all out. In other news I managed a late entry into this year's Admiralty Workshops (someone cancelled and I was on the wait list) so I will learn how to make rope with Chuck. At my usual glacial building pace odds are I will forget everything by the time I get to rigging but if I keep good notes maybe some of it will stick. And at the end we get a tour with the curator of the Naval Academy Museum; that is just freaking cool! well goodnight all and thanks for reading Cisco

Ted- great series of posts! i really like your documenting how you built your fixtures. very helpful to the rest of us keep it going! thx cisco

Looking good to me! keep the posts coming flutlo6180

Looking really good Fred. Cheerful is my next planned project, assuming finishing the AVS doesn’t do me in. I will follow with interest and thanks for posting

Greetings fellow Ship Modelers! The heat here in Delaware finally relented and we could go outside again without heatstroke. Went to ModelCon last weekend which was fun but brief as I had my 7 year old son with and he was hot and bored bored bored. Thank you to the 2 guys who entertained him for a few minutes while I met/talked to Chuck - great guy, very social, and he dealt with a complete stranger walking up acting like I knew him with remarkable calmness. I suspect it happens often. I brought and displayed for a few hours my 18th Century Longboat (you can see it in one of Chuck's photos looking forlorn between 2 enormous model battleships) and while it didn't draw a crowd hopefully someone(s) appreciated it. Then my son and I toured the battleship New Jersey, pretty cool, and went across the river to tour the Olympia and the submarine whose name escapes me before deciding it was way to hot for humans and heading home. With my AVS I had an epiphany and changed gears some. I realized that if don't make more progress I risk bogging down and never finishing. Its not a race but without some forward momentum she might become an unfinished hull in a box in a closet somewhere. And THAT would be tragic. So I stopped trying to make perfect planks mimicking the second planking and instead decided to fill in the rest of the first planking with wider wood strips to make it go a bit faster. So far I have been using yellow GorillaGlue which has good tack but has to be clamped. I know many use and are happy with superglue but my previous background in woodworking really regarded superglue as a method for tiny repairs but not to be trusted for actual gluing. Maybe I'll start experimenting but not for this build. Clamping has been problematic at this center area of the planking because nothing easily reaches and the gap is small. And so far I have resisted screwing or pinning into the bulkheads as some do. So the one thing I did discover this post is pretty simple- putting something on the deck to provide a bearing surface for the spring clamps works really well! In the pic below I put 2 clothes pins on the deck against the bow planking and they provided a perfect grippy area for the spring clamps. Without them the clamps just sproinged out of position and it was getting very frustrating. Here's the outside shot; you can see its an awkward place to clamp. And my metal spring paperclip things I used for the other planks now won't fit in the narrow space. Its hard to see through the clamp forest but the last 2 rows are with wide planks but again this is first planking so no one will ever see it. Hope you all are well! Thanks for reading Cisco

Seriously cool Brad! the ship and the workarea.

and any pics of your work area? i wondered about traveling after retirement in a similar fashion but was worried my hobbies would suffer from lack of space. but obviously you have made it work

Happy weekend! My update today includes absolutely nothing about my AVS and starts with this book: Pretty good, not too deep, entertaining. I bought it and then saw it at my local library the next week. Mr Dolin includes a substantial bibliography for his many quotes. Next up, assuming nothing happens between now and tomorrow morning, I am attending my first ever ModelCon in Philly. And to up my stress levels I am participating by displaying my first ever (so far my only ever) shipmodel, Model Shipway's 18th Century Longboat. I initially made a substantial base with 2 levels and an ogee border which in hindsight totally overpowered the model. So last 2 days I have been making a newer small base more along the lines of the box picture. Here is the original base (after I had already sawn off the posts holding up the ship so there has been some damage). Its made of walnut. I wanted a lighter wood but I felt the kit block of basswood was too light and flimsy. So I cut out a piece of holly I had been saving for years that turned out to be not dried properly so it spalted and turned a greyish cast. Useless for planking but a good test subject for making a base. The pictures in the Longboat instruction manual looked like there was a small rabbit or bullnose on the edges of Chuck's base. How he did this wasn't covered in the text so I did my best. This detail is very shallow. Initially I made a scratch stock but it tore out on the crossgrain. So I cut the borders of the fillet with my mortise gauge: The I cut the fillet with my rabbit block plane with a piece of wood clamped on as a fence After cutting all 4 sides I started the roundover with my chisel I found if I removed most of the crossgrain material first with the chisel there was little tearout when using the scratchstock to finish the roundover Home stretch. I finished the base with waterbased polyurethane wiped on with a papertowel. This was a practice run for when I plank the AVS with holly as I wanted to try a finish that doesn't impart any colour change to the wood. It worked great. I smoothed off nibs by rubbing the dry surface with a papertowel. In the future I may try a synthetic pad as well but it was getting late and I had to get this done by tomorrow. I remade the posts next. Previously I had tried to form the tapering posts by chucking them in my drill and shaping with files. The finished products looked kinda squat and didn't exactly match. This time I used a dowel from the kit, cut simple holes in the base with my drill and friction fit the posts. I drilled holes into the top side of the posts and used cut-off wire nails to reinforce the post/ship connection. Version 1 was too tall Version 2 looked better to my eye so I used a touch of epoxy to connect the ship to the posts, touched up the white paint, and called it a night. And thats it. Hope to see some of you at the ModelCon tomorrow! Cisco

as a very new modeler i am struggling with the same bending planks around the sharp curve of the transom below the counter on my Armed Virginia Sloop. So far i have found Chuck Passaro’s videos the most helpful for sideways bending. But to form the sharp bend inwards below the counter i have found soaking the end of the wood overnight in water then clamping the plank in place until it dries works best for me. i use an oversize plank so i can remove a lot of wood to make it fit better. and i still lose 25-50% of my attempts to breakage.

that looks great! and yes the last plank is always a funky hourglass shape

looks great!