CiscoH

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!

I was posting comments on a build log and the author asked if I had my own log for the AVS and I said "yes," and then I realized I hadn't posted in weeks. Work goes knuts once the summer starts and takes more and more of my energy. But enough whining lets have at it- So I haven't been happy with my port side first planking. As you can see lots of gaps at the prow which for some reason didn't seem to occur on the starboard side. Whenever I clamped at the prow the plank would slide upwards and leave a gap and each time I thought I had pushed it back but once everything was dry there it was. I am at the end of this band of planks so I wanted to get my head back in the game and fix it for the final band. And I didn't want a gap forming at the stern end where the plank curves up into the counter, which it always tries to do. You can see in the pic below I had to add a tiny wedge to close the gap in the last plank. There will be a second planking on top and I already work at the speed of Government Bureaucracy so I am not alcoholing off my mistakes but I want to get my technique better. My method of getting the steep bend in the stern plank is to leave the tip of the plank in water overnight and the next day very slowly bend it around and clamp it in place until it dries. The problem with this plank is it needs to bend sideways AND backwards, a 2 dimensional bend. When I have pre-bent it sideways (a la Chuck) and then put it in water to soften it for the backwards bend the water undoes the first bend. So this time I tried wetting and clamping in place a much wider plank than what the final dimension calls for so I could trim it down. Below is the plank after drying, it splintered a bit due to the extreme bend. BUT when I lay it in place there was enough extra plank so i could shape the sideways curve by strategic wood removal instead of bending it into place. To keep the gaps from opening up I tried using wedges and the little brass pins that come with the kit. That worked great. Here the stern plank is in place after after shaping and narrowing. The glue has already dried; this was a post-op demo shot. And here is the stern plank, with 2 wedges, And the final result, no gaps that I could see and the stern I call that Good Enough. I haven't sanded yet so it'll look better I promise. 6 planks in the final band, after I add the plank below the strake which also has a tight curve to navigate. I worry my stern wood removal technique wouldn't work in wood with a strong grain lines, like the alaska yellow cedar, because you would see the grain runout. But I'm planning on my second planking being holly, which conveniently doesn't show grain. Thanks for reading, I apologize for the myriad close ups of basically 1 plank but hopefully it will help someone else including Future Me when I've forgotten how I did this. Cisco

I do have a log, not yet updated this month. at present i think its the only one for the AVS currently active on this website, but there are at least 15? or so that have been done here in the past. i got the practicum which is helpful, too

I just read your entire log juhu- masterfully done! Thank you for posting

that half-lap jig is genius. I assume there is fine sandpaper on the bottom face of the block. Do you cut the shoulder of the half lap with the hobby knife and then sand up to it? and how are you rabbiting your planks?

looks great Sluicemaster! I don’t fully understand why a kit would have you plank 3 layers. My Armed Virginia Sloop has 2 layers and it has been helpful learning how to (and how not to) plank on the first layer but in the future I really only want one layer. Chuck’s planking videos were a game changer for me too keep up the great work

This looks like an excellent project for the First Timer* Great job Paul I am impressed * haha no

the digital tour starts at the front door. Go through the doorway that says Enter Here, then bear right. There is a yellow sign on a stand at the entrance to the stairwell. You have to literally keep clicking to go up the stairwell to the next floor where all the good stuff is. I couldn’t find a shortcut. Simply breathtaking exibit. I especially like their collection of stands and cases

That’s some tight planking, especially at the prow. Great job

Really great build! I especially like the sails which usually don’t add much, in my opinion, but in this case they are so well done it pushes your Victory up a level. Well done Sir!

Holy molly that was dense geometry i followed some in the beginning but it got a bit intense thankyou for posting!

Just read your build from the beginning- really great! Thank you for posting.

amazing build log! Thank you for posting

And I though regular planking was tough

fantastic job Svein Eric, thank you for the great close up shots. Can you elaborate on what you repaired in the lower bow planking? I'm at the exact same spot on my current build thanks, cisco

Thanks for reading my post Oldsalt1950. I worry if I don't make at least slow constant progress I might lose momentum and then Bam! 20 years later I find a sad half completed AVS pushed to the back of the closet shelf. But so far I am really enjoying the mix of challenge and fun that building model ships brings. mikiek I get your point. I suspect I took the garboard too far forward which is what led to it curling upwards at the stem; I had read that a lot of beginners do this. When I did model shipway's longboat Chuck specifically stated (i think) to end the garboard just forward of the stem/keel joint, which at the time seemed too far back. Every subsequent plank had to be bent downwards just aft of the stem to follow this curve. It turned out looking fine to me at the time but since I painted the hull white I can't see my planking job well enough to re-asses it. If I'm understanding you correctly you would know when the garboard is in its proper place when the next plank up can rest on it without bending. I'll try it on second layer planking. Luckly AVS only has 2 layers. Only crazy people do 3.

Well its been a while. Work went bonkers, kid obligations, all the usual excuses. But the last 2 hours have been full immersion staring beady-eyed at my AVS, planning like crazy even if I didn't actually build anything. So first a review of my previous efforts planking: Front, I mean bow area Few small gaps, the closeup makes it look rough but overall I'm happy. I haven't sanded yet so the different thickness plankedges cast shadows that make it look worse than it is. I left a deep rabbit along the stem to fit both this first planking and the second thinner planking. It was hard getting the bow tips of the planks flush with the rabbit but I hope to fill the remaining rabbit with the second planking. I may have to widen the rabbit in areas if the remaining gap isn't equal the entire length. Next the stern: This area has been giving me fits trying to figure out landmarks. The practicum adjusts the first layer of planking so its not at the same level along the gundeck as the kit instructions and I got all sorts of confused. Having glared at it for a long time over several days I think I have it figured out, more below on that. BUT the planking it pretty tight here which is what I was concentrating on. Now to plank the other side and do it a little closer to the kit plans. I am not really following the practicum at present so any mistakes are all Me. Here's a pic of my stern with the kit planking picture. Keeping in mind the kit picture shows the final planking not the underlayer, I can see that my garboard strake tip curves upwards, while the kit plans show it, well, not curving upwards. I realized when I bent the bow end of the port garboard strake to fit into the rabbit it had the unintended effect of bending the tip upwards as well due to Obscure Geometry. So of course all the subsequent planking follow this upward curve. Stern shot with the kit planking picture: 1) my fashion piece doesn't come down low enough. 2) I brought my hull planking up way high on the counter. This was a bit on purpose; I plan to place the final lower counter planks after i plank the hull and use a scalpel to trim across to get a good fit. But I brought the planking up about 1 counter plank past what I had planned because of my confusion over landmarks. 3) the kit shows the stern planks coming into the bottom of the counter at about a 45 degree angle. My planks come in at about 60? degrees which made it hard to fit against the sternpost. And now to the starboard side to try and Do Better. The kit instructions divide the remaining space into 3 belts. I measured off the plans with strips of paper to get ballpark locations of each belt, then tried using tape to smooth out the lower belt line. I tried using a thin batten for the upper belt line; I think the batten gives a better run but its harder to keep still. After a lot of measuring and dividing with tic strips I got to a pretty good place. You can see below my proposed stern planking is more 45 degrees where it meets the counter. The pencil line across the stern is the final future lower border of the counter. And below's my final marking for the bands. It doesn't agree perfectly with the kit, especially at the lower stern planking with the 2 stealers. But I'm going with it for now. I will do the lowest band next, then re-evaluate for the other 2 upper bands. The practicum has you make the garboard strake wide at each end and thin amidships for reasons that escaped me, which is what I did on the this side. In the future I plan to leave the garboard wide its entire length so its more like the kit plans. I also trimmed the bow end of the garboard strake so it doesn't curve upwards, so hopefully I will have a straighter run of bow planking on this side. And thats it for today. I was sorely disappointed to not attend the Northeast ship model show in CT this weekend but my wife said I would much rather attend the yearly fundraiser for my kid's school tonight, which she had a part in organizing. Next year I guess. Enjoy spring, those of you in the Northeast USA, and thanks for reading Cisco

Those hammock cranes look great!

How are you clamping your second (and third) layer of planks? I saw a few holes from brass knurled round thingers, but most of your planks don't seem to have those holes. If your answer is "superglue" no problems but I hadn't seen which glue you use, or maybe I missed it. In the not to distant future I have to put the second layer of planking on my AVS build and I no longer have bulkheads to clamp to.