CiscoH

i am building model shipways Armed Virginia Sloop and also using Bob Hunt’s practicum and ran into a similar? issue. i think the supplied waterway in the kit was thicker stock than it said in the plans which threw off all the subsequent bulkhead inner planks installed above the waterway. not sure if that applies to your question. i didnt sweat the angle between the waterway and the bulkhead because the above bulkhead plank covered any small gaps. looking great so far cisco

At last I have finished second planking on the starboard side! If my AVS was a real ship her timbers would be fully seasoned and the shipwrights long since starved to death. Hopefully the port side will go a little faster. Below I have 1 strake left; in this case the planking plan calls for it being divided into 2 planks. The front one is already done, the stern one is being fitted. I fit the butt joint first and worked my may sternwards; miniplane to pretty close, sand a little off, fit, when its hard to push in sand a litttttttle more and not too much, keeping in mind the glue will swell the plank a little. In the future I will try to have my last plank be more towards the garboard where its flatter. Here the rudder end of the final stern plank had to fitted into a tight curved space that flared at the end. Live and learn; it fit snug at the end. And here is the final result. I stole Cheerful's planking plan so it follows very closely. I'm leaving it as-is so the inevitable dings after I'm done the other side can be sanded out at the end. I still wish I hadn't finished the upper rails so well; I'm sure I've inflicted clamp marks presently hidden under the blue tape. Some water and the travel iron usually steams them out ok though. Heres the stem shot. I think it looks pretty good. I find it funny that even though in this shot the stem planking curves upwards, to fit them they had to be steam bent to curve downwards. Some sort of optical delusion. And the stern. I left the planking long so I could use a straightedge to cut across the bottom of the counter; even if I cover the transition with a thin molding strip I didn't want gaps. I am going to wait until both sides are planked before trimming the rudder planking flush. Then I'll add the sternpost last. Time will tell if this was a good decision. And now I'm off with the wife to drive the kids to camp. Have a great weekend everyone! Cisco

I like the waterways 👍

beautiful work Katsumoto you probably said it some posts back. who makes your rigging line? its nice and not shiny and looks very realistic

that 45 degree sanding thinger is pretty clever. i would have done it by eye and gotten a rounded uneven rabbit.

Looking great Tom. i’ve only built the 18th century whaleboat so far which had basic rigging (and only one mast) so i dont have extensive rigging experience. but on that model i did all my lashings without glue so the stay lengths could be adjusted as i went. friction was plenty to hold tension and i didnt end up with a wonky mast pulled out of true so it worked well for me. the supplied rigging rope was polyester (i think) and so far seems immune to humidity changes. my parents came back from Iceland 2 weeks ago with your viral friend. the current strain seems to be much less virulent and they did fine. hope you do as well cisco

well heck. after reading this post of course i had to order the book. it arrived yesterday, perfect timing for some relaxed 4th of july reading. thanks bobcat for the review it is much appreciated

Yes

Good Afternoon fellow modelers. This wasn't a very productive month for me - too much going on. For starters I flew out to Estes Park Colorado with 5 of my college running buddies to celebrate our collective 50th birthdays. A week of hiking each day at 7500-10,000 feet altitude, mountain biking, an insane Frisbee golf course on the side of a mountain, and a vacation from our grown-up selves. An amazing trip but sadly far from any ships. In the below pic I am most of the way to Black Lake and trying not to slide down the snow embankment into the river. My AVS has added 2 strakes I think. 4.5 to go on this side. I haven't sanded the starboard side yet so the planks look a bit rough. In hindsight I wish I had left some final sanding on the upper rails. I flip the ship around a lot and am probably dinging it up with all my clamps. Another thing I noticed; a lot of thinner planks look more realistic than fewer bigger ones. I tried to divide up the hull up into similar sized bands but some of the planks near the garboard are a bit wider than the upper ones. Something to keep in mind for the future. and thats it for today. Cisco

now Thats a great wife

thats a great workshop. it appears a lot bigger on the inside, a cool trick. great luck on your build cisco

great build log Dan! i love the idea, however historically ambiguous, of an armed Hoy. your fabrication skills are impressive. cisco

Happy Sunday everyone. Its beautiful here in Middletown Delaware. Dan I got to say hi briefly at the meeting. You were neck deep in management stress at the time. Hopefully I'll get to talk to you more next year. Not much progress this week, too many other spring responsibilities. I am slowly (very slowly) working my way towards finishing the upper planking belt. There are 6 rows in this belt and I managed to mess up the 5th by not paying attention. I put in the front plank no problems and left it a little overlong so I could trim it back later. And then I waited a few days and forgot I hadn't trimmed it yet and measured the next plank. So once the original plank was trimmed back my second plank was too short. And it was one with the stern bend so it wasn't amenable to being skootched forward a bit to make it fit. So I had to make an entire new plank, which was ok just annoying. Luckily I could use the short plank for the next row, it fit the transom bend fine. Then I re-marked the hull with new tick strips. Most of my previous marks had become off a little bit. And i realized I missed a butt joint in my last strake; it should have been next to my index finger in the above picture. I'll add it later with a simple incised line highlighted with pencil. One more strake in this belt. At the bottom of the above pic you can see the plank I cut too short and my new tick strips; in the below pic I have shortened it to the correct length, fitted it, and clamped it in place with my usual wedges and Dewalt setup. No gaps! I hope. Thats it for today. I noticed that the planks in my lower belt are a bit wider than the ones in my upper belt, something to ponder for the port side. Stay tuned for next week's mistakes! Cisco

but on the up side i got to read from your first post all the way to today. its great seeing many years work all at once. keep up the posts they are very good thanks cisco

your shellac finish looks so good! deep vibrant colour without obscuring the wood. a while ago you asked how long mixed shellac lasts. its usually a few weeks, maybe a month or 2. eventually it gets gummy and wont fully dry out when put on a surface. anyway, great looking hull. thanks for posting cisco

pre-ordered👍🏽

Thanks for the kind words Alistair and B.E. They are appreciated! Last weekend my fellow shipbuilder Jason Long and I made the 5 hour car trip to Connecticut for the 40th Annual Joint Clubs Meeting. Despite raining all the way up and most of the way home it was great fun to rub shoulders with lots of accomplished builders and see some truly amazing models. We decided to go out for lunch to The Yolk Cafe which had to be the most colourful local hangout I have ever been to. And the end presentation talk was fascinating, especially the final ship he talked about that appears on greek pottery exactly as it looked on the sea floor. I think the lady who goes by Shiphotographer took pictures of all the models and she usually posts them so I didn't take too many photos. I liked BlueJacket's case, which it turns out they sell. Its very clean and minimal, with classic molding. I noticed when downloading my pic that David Antscherl was in the background; that was totally by accident. I also really liked the two half hulls; the top one was clinker built! At my present skill level I build clinker style by accident only. My AVS proceeds slow and steady as I work through the top band. I am finding it somewhat challenging to get tight seams and butt joints. Not helping is my planking stock, which I cut myself. The edges have to be squared up and I haven't found a perfect method yet doing it by hand. Also I am constantly out thinking myself making the edges too angled one way or another. The holly, being a white wood with minimal grain, can be really hard to see edges. And I will never do a 2 layer planking again; not having easy access to the bulkheads makes clamping more difficult. Clearly I have many excuses. Here's where I am as of this morning: I recently ordered Dave's Hayling Hoy book which I find great reading. But on page 80 he states "Shaped planks should lie on the frame without stress and not require pins or other methods of forcing into place." So I have a little way to go until my learning curve starts to flatten out. Have a great weekend! Cisco

I saw the model in person (hope I've got the right model/builder) on Saturday. No flaws anywhere! And set up next to Chuck's Winchelsea. A bold, and warranted, move.

Alistair what did you use for caulking on the holly main deck? I have been using pencil which is a subtle line; yours looks more pronounced thx cisco

Yessir Aliluke. I am using water based polyurethane (that won't yellow even though the wood eventually will to some extent) to have the clearest finish possible. I am visualizing an entire ship made from holly, as close to a bone ship model as I can get with wood. It may look good, it may look "interesting...", we'll see. And if I get frustrated i can always fall back on thick coats of black paint to hide all my sins.

Thanks for the positive feedback Ron, and for getting me to page 4. I'm not anywhere near your level but its something to aim for. Good Morning fellow shipbuilders. This week I have 5 almost identical pictures which I promise I won't do again. It was an instructive week though. First off I finished my lower belt and was feeling pretty good. I stayed very close to all my pre-penciled tick-strip widths and managed the stern stealer without gaps. The planks are slightly different thicknesses due to me hand-slicing from various pieces of stock and haven't been sanded yet so your eye picks up on the penciled overhangs, making them look like gaps. No gaps so far. Life was good until I realized my 3 butt shift planking pattern was, looking at my model in the above pic, a 2 butt shift. Looking at my planking plan, which I kept right next to the model so I wouldn't screw it up, I realized I screwed it up. The butt joints of the topmost plank on the plan was correct, but not on my model. Leave it be or deconstruction? After a day to feel sorry for myself I decided to pull it. After cutting a new butt-joint in the proper place (this meant luckily I wouldn't have to re-do the stem section) I got my denatured alcohol and a qtip and selectively painted the middle of the offending plank. I was worried the alcohol would be a mass destruction event and all the surrounding planks would release which thankfully didn't seem to happen. I did have a little trouble with the edge joint which came a way ragged in some areas and had to be smoothed with a file. I was worried about making this middle plank which has to be the exact correct length. In the past I seemed to trim them a little too long, or more often they fit perfect until I put glue on, then the planks seemed to magically get longer. So I aimed for a tight fit, sneaking up by filing a tiny bit off at the butt ends at a time. I also couldn't perfectly smooth the few ragged areas where the planks edge-glued together so had to file the mirror shape into the new plank's edges at 2 areas. The stern end of the new plank had a curve and a twist in the same section which I did first by edge bending with a travel iron, then twisting with a blowdrier. Somehow this worked; in the past the blowdrier usually let me add a twist but straightened out any previous bends. Guess the planking gods were feeling merciful. Wedges are as always my friend. There are a lot of holes because I couldn't find the underlying bulwarks right away. Pins in planks only are too wobbly. And here it is after drying, butt joints in the correct place. The replacement plank was a little thicker than the plank below it so there is a shadow line enhanced by my overhead lighting. Not a gap or bulge. Cause I ainte redoing this. Now have to pack up the family and off to breakfast with my parents. Next I start the upper belt, as per Dan's recommendation. Anyone coming to the 40th annual show in CT I will see you there. Jason (JLong) and I are carpooling up the night before. Have a happy Sunday and thanks for reading and leaving positive comments and politely overlooking the dumb stuff I've done. Cisco

thanks Paul. the pin and wedge system shown above works better for me than anything else i’ve tried. also still not to page 4 drat it all

Good Evening fellow builders! The more I go to work the more I like model shipbuilding. And I'm hoping this update may push my log through to page 4. When you're almost to the end of the page it takes a while to scroll down. Aliluke- I went over your log many times before choosing to do my AVS. Your version is beautiful! As I recall you lost the text in the Great Crash of '13 and re-posted pics to MSW Take 2. I built Model Shipway's 18th century longboat and thought the blocks and rope the kit provided were ok, once I filed the edges of the blocks round instead of leaving them square. For this endevour I hope to push it up a notch and get aftermarket rope from Chuck or Ropes of Scale. Or better yet make my own! I took an Admiralty course with Greg, Chuck, and Dave last year on ropemaking. Have to at least try... but thats going to be future Cisco's problem. Ditto for the blocks. Dan I appreciate you checking in on my progress. I messaged you a while ago about using bone and you were very helpful; I am still planning on using some bone in this build for the deck furniture. Thats another learning curve to struggle through; I'm not up to trying bone planking yet. Thank you for your planking pic tutorial- as you suggested I am planning on doing the bottom belt first, then the top, then fill in the middle. I agree it might be easier to put in stealers to shift planking to follow a straight line, versus my plan of shifting planking to make the stealers fit. For now I'm following my current drawing, but based on how that goes I may alter the other side. By the way that last plank you made that fits over the stealer, in your last picture- that is impressive Sir. Fitting a straight plank on 2 sides without big gaps gives me fits, nevermind one with a dogleg. And this weeks progress- 3 whole rows of planking and hardly any pondering. I still like my wedges to push planks snug. The pins that came with the kit are handy as stops for the wedges, as long as they are pushed through planking into a bulwark. Otherwise they bend sideways and the wedges pop out which is frustrating. And so far the DeWalt clamps reach. These planks I have been starting out with wider stock and shaving them down to a little fat, then bending with both a travel iron and a hairdryer, then final fitting on the bottom edge with files, then bring to final width with my Veritas MiniPlane. I realize the above pic looks like big gaps at the stern but thats ok. One of those planks is a stealer which isn't glued in, on the other most of it will be trimmed off. In the above pic the plank above the stealer was hard to clamp. None of the wedges wanted to stay put and kept popping off, I think because the plank had a twist that wasn't perfectly bent, so when I clamped one end it levered the other end just enough. You can see my pins but only 1 wedge (under the dewalt clamp). Still, it eventually worked. Here's the current state with 3 of the 4 rows of planks put in the bottom belt. The final layer of this belt will come up to the top of the blue tape. So far it looks like the plan I came up with last post, and my but joints are where I wanted/drew them. Thats all the planking excitement for this week. I got 2 books last month (I have to strictly ration myself otherwise the house would be full of books and no room for people). Building the Wooden Fighting Ship is pretty good, lots of pictures, I learned a lot. Naval Warfare is also good, although most of the book is really about the advent of steam power and the transition from wooden to metal hulls. So the cover is a bit deceiving. Ok my wife's cats are galloping through my office, knocking over stacks of books and manacing my Legos so its time to go shoo them out. Until next time have a great evening! Cisco

i wasnt sure what i could write that didn’t sound superior or patronizing, which i certainly dont mean to be. if i’m seeing the picture correctly the planks are all even width, a nice curve into the bow, and regularly spaced butt joints. some broken plank tips at that severe bend that seems to happen right before inserting into the bow rabbit. i find it challenging (ok, a PITA) making those 3 dimensional bends at the bow. live and learn, then move on. and by posting youre helping everyone who reads your log. like me.

wow.