capnharv2

Thanks again Popeye.
 
Construction of the Aft 3rd Deck is similar to all the others. The Bulwark in the middle of it took some fun folding :

 
I started fitting it by gluing on the shallow curved central section :

 
To get the tight corners to sit flush I used a couple of heavy brass weights :

 
Supporting the two end sections so they were in line with each other :

 
The bulwark fitted and edge painted :

 
  Danny

Thanks very much Nils and Popeye .
 
After looking at the pics of the main mast I got the feeling that I'd used the wrong spar for the longer lower one. Sure enough, wrong part number . I carefully removed the one fitted using a new scalpel blade to cut through the CA glue. It came off with no more damage than a bit of lost paint :



 
I fitted the footrail to the right spar and reattached it :

 
That looks a lot more like it :

 
  Danny

Thanks Harvey. Does seem to have been awhile since I first started her and thank  you for followering her build.  Still have a lot of work to do on her and who knows maybe I finish her gun deck this year. ;o) Gary

Gary,
 
I've been following (and enjoyed) your build of the Alfred (almost) since you started it (both here and other forums). You've done some amazing work, and we're glad that you're back!
 
Harvey

Sorry Danny, but I had to look up the drill size. . .
 
.15mm is .0059", which (according to Wikipedia) is a #97 drill size. I can't use a #80 without breaking it, so how do you drill holes that small?
 
I assume PCBs use this size and smaller all the time, but they have accurate locating/drilling jigs and are set up for mass production.
 
I don't think I have the patience anymore for card models, but it's fascinating to see your work. My compliments.
 
Harvey

Thanks Grant .
 
It's called Zap-a-Gap, and is available in thin, medium and thick types. It comes in plastic bottles in three sizes. I don't buy the thick type, as the medium thickens up a bit after time. My local hobby store sells them, and they are also available on-line.
 
Harvey, the answer is - CAREFULLY . Actually I have 0.1mm drills as well, but they are a bit on the fragile side and I haven't really found a use for them yet. These are tungsten drills and work really well on paper. I've also used them for drilling PE, and to date I've only broken three. Most times I just use them by hand as they are, but they also fit into a pin-vise when needed. They are available on-line, and I get mine from THIS SITE.
 
  Danny

Sorry Danny, but I had to look up the drill size. . .
 
.15mm is .0059", which (according to Wikipedia) is a #97 drill size. I can't use a #80 without breaking it, so how do you drill holes that small?
 
I assume PCBs use this size and smaller all the time, but they have accurate locating/drilling jigs and are set up for mass production.
 
I don't think I have the patience anymore for card models, but it's fascinating to see your work. My compliments.
 
Harvey

Spar Deck Guns Installed....
Although still much to do before moving on and celebrating, the guns are all installed with partial rigging.  

Now working on the short tackle rigging seen here....
Note, I had to find a way to attach the bulwark hooks since I had made a strategic mistake by adding the belaying rings as I was building the bulwarks.  
The biggest problem being that the pin rails are blocking any possible access to several rings.
My solution - instead of using tiny hooks to attach the blocks, I went with a length of black beading lines which can be pulled through the rings, securing each with a touch of CA gel, and then snipped off.
Seen here, the top photo shows the assembly, and the bottom photo shows the tackle sets after wrapping.  Note the measurement jig used to control the exact length of each tackle set.
 

And here is the installed tackle....
Obviously, I have not began fitting the rope coils, which will be the last task to polish off the guns.
Also note that I have not begun working on the out haul tackle for the eight guns not affected by the cut away sections.

Sorry Danny, but I had to look up the drill size. . .
 
.15mm is .0059", which (according to Wikipedia) is a #97 drill size. I can't use a #80 without breaking it, so how do you drill holes that small?
 
I assume PCBs use this size and smaller all the time, but they have accurate locating/drilling jigs and are set up for mass production.
 
I don't think I have the patience anymore for card models, but it's fascinating to see your work. My compliments.
 
Harvey

Thanks again for the replies John, Mark, CDW and Popeye.
 
There is a small winch on top of the hangar. The kit supplied one was a woefully simple thing made from a "U" shaped piece of card and two plain wheels. I had a lot of PE ones left over from the supply I bought for Amatsukaze so of course I used one of them . The PE set for Bismarck did have the wheels for them, but I used all the IJN ones as they fitted together properly. They are slightly larger than the kit ones, but overall look far better :


 
I had to redrill the tiny holes in the wheels and frames. The smallest useable wire I have is 0.2mm, I think the holes were about 0.15mm. To drill the holes I used one of my tungsten PC Board drills. The centre pipe is a piece of 0.5mm tubing, the 0.2mm wire goes through all of it to hold the whole thing together before CA glue finished the jib :

 
After painting. Speaking of paint, I've found this Lifecolor stuff to be excellent. I was previously using Tamiya Acrylic but it's rubbish - dries out on the brush and doesn't cover brass very well at all :


 
The winch fitted to the hangar. I'll give it a 2nd coat of paint now that I've seen the thing in closeup :

 
  Danny

These plastic side hinge pin pieces should be the last bits to glue onto the gun doors. That is 4 each for the 32 double doors and two each for the 34 sigle doors, you do the math, I would be to intimidated if I actually knew how many it was, lol!

spar deck furniture is done

Thank you Henry .
 
There are boat racks similar to the ones I made earlier fitted to the large hangar. Below is a step-by-step sequence showing how I make these rather tricky items. I learnt a few things NOT to do on the first lot, these have turned out much better .
 
Here are the parts for all four racks :

 
A closeup of the parts for the two racks in this post :

 
First step is to cut out the middle of each part. I use a 2mm wide chisel ground from an Xacto blade. I sharpened the chisel several times during this procedure. I can't emphasise enough how vital it is to use SHARP blades, especially on thin and delicate parts :


 
Once the middles are cut out I use a BLUNT Xacto blade to score the fold lines. I've specially ground this blade with rounded edges. It works great, much better than the awl I was using previously. It's a good idea to score any fold lines prior to cutting the piece out, as it's easy to miss one or more after the fold marks (the little lines outside the edges of the piece) are in the bin :

 
When the middles are all cut out I edge "paint" the cutouts using a Pitt Pen, approaching them from the back side to avoid smudging the printed side. Doing it now means less handling of the delicate pieces, the less handling the better as it can damage them after a while :

 
After leaving the pieces to dry for 10 minutes they are cut out, once again using a SHARP new scalpel and a steel rule for the straight edges. I replaced the first blade about half-way through this job. To avoid crushing the pieces for the last few cuts I pressed them down with my steel rule and free-handed the curved edges :

 
Folding the pieces in half presented a new problem. I could have simply cut them in half and then glued them back-to-back, But that would have presented another problem in that one edge would have been square and the other at an angle.
 
This happens with every cut, due to the thickness of my steel rule (it's the thinnest one I could buy, only 0.55mm thick). The blade has to be held at a slight angle away from the rule to make a square cut, but due to the bevel on the blade the right-hand side of the cut finishes up at an angle. If the cut isn't square the piece won't stand straight when it's glued on.
 
Trying to make a fold in a piece that's only 1.8mm wide using 0.2mm paper is not easy - usually. It's nearly impossible to hold one side down with a steel rule and then use a single-edged razor blade to fold the other side up - the rule keeps slipping. To get around this problem I used my PE folder. It clamps the card down without any chance of it slipping and deforming the edge :

 
Once they are bent a little PVA glue was brushed thinly to one side and the piece squeezed together with my fingers. Any slight mis-alignment could be adjusted before the glue dried. Then I pressed it down again using the PE folder. The results were excellent :

 
The pieces were glued to the roof of the hangar, and a small brace was fitted to each end :


 
All the first lot of racks fitted :


 
  Danny
 

The next sub-assembly to make was the Large Hangar. I added a LOT of extra framing - the kit framing would have been virtually useless on it's own :

 
The whole design of the hangar was awful. Why they designed it to have two joins right at the top is beyond me, a much better alternative would have been to have the two side walls and roof in one piece with the front and back walls as separate pieces. Corner joins are relatively easy. Despite that it still came out well :

 
Attached to each side wall are two louvred boxes and two plain ones. First thing was to fold up the boxes. Some of the pics below are of the four plain ones, but the louvred boxes were made using the same method.
 
First I used my PE pliers to fold the sides and top of the box. I overbent each one, this prevents a lot of "spring-back" when gluing :


 
Next I cut a backing piece for each box from 0.5mm card the exact size of the inside of the back of the box. These were stuck to my MDF block with double-sided tape. One side was glued to the base and allowed to dry before the other side was glued :

 
Then the top was glued down :

 
The louvres take a while to fit. First they were all cut and edge-coloured. Next I applied a thin bead of PVA using my squeeze bottle :

 
The bead of glue is till too large, so I "shaped" it using a small paintbrush until I had the right amount (less is better than too much) :

 
Each louvre was placed in position using tweezers :
 
Most of them fell into place without further adjustment, but some needed re-aligning using a toothpick :

 
The two larger boxes finished. The smaller ones weren't much harder too make, but I had to use the toothpick on most of them :

 
  Danny
 
 

Thanks for that Pav .
 
The top deck of the conning tower is completed. I didn't take any progress pics of it's construction. It has a rather tricky edging around it, which is double-thickness and very narrow so it took some rather careful cutting out :

 
Another tricky part to cut out was a support for two shields (?) above the bridge. Same double-thickness stuff :

 
I also forgot to take pics of the Radar Turret during construction. These pieces were a bit of a puzzle to work out, as the miniscule drawing of them in the instructions didn't give much of a clue :

 
But I managed to work them out :

 
The 2nd of the three Radars. There are 9 pieces that make them up. Something I realised when making this one is that I'd only put less than half the pieces in the one I built before, I'll correct that tomorrow :



 
The radar turret completed. Those two pieces I mentioned earlier in this post are the inboard supports for the range finder arms :


 
The antenna-like piece on top of the turret is a light tower. It's not shown at all in the kit, but I picked up on it in the 3D book. I made it from 3 pices of 0.3mm wire and a section of spare ladder :

 
And some overall views of the conning tower to where I am at the moment :


 
The light only looks like it's skewed, it's the macro lens distortion :


 
Overall pics of the forward superstructure :



 
  Danny
 

There are a pair of 4-Barrel 20mm Guns on the next deck, so I've made them both. There were none of these in the PE cards, but they were supplied as laser-cut. It was a full day's work to make them. Here are the parts for both guns, and the very sparse instructions :


 
About half of one gun completed :

 
And both of them finished and ready for paint. I used four of the spare handwheels from one of the PE sets to replace the plain round ones in the laser-cut :


 
  Danny

Michael,
 
It's under the compass app. When you get the compass, just slide it over and you will see the level.
 
It's fun to play with.
 
Hope that helps,
 
Harvey

Thanks for the comments and well-wishes.  Things are getting better but this time of year, they also get more hectic.
 
Well, I've been spending time in the shipyard.  A bit slow but made some progress.  The inside of the gundeck is planked halfway up and then I stopped to do the beakhead (? as I'm spacing some of the terminology at times).  
 
First thing I did was fit the two beams to support the planks and also added a couple of small blocks to helps support the planks a bit.
 

 
Planked it with boxwood....
 

 
Checked the fit with my dummy bowspit....

 
Sanded like crazy and then added two small pieces of ebony around the planks and sanded everything some more.  It still needs some more sanding but that's for later this week when (or if) I get boarded finishing the inner planking.  I need to do some filling so I'll collect the sanding dust and fill it then.  Once the real bowspit is in, I'll do the leather piece to seal the gap.

 
Back to planking....  

The ladders have arrived from Tom's Modelworks. While waiting for them to arrive I made the bollards for the decks and started the winches for the decks. There appears to be three different kinds of winch set-ups; two for anchors, 6 for mooring and two that I will call general purpose. All start out with the same basic construction with add-ons for specific purposes. 
 
After grinding a parting tool down to 1/32" to cut the gaps between the rope reels, I started by turning the basic reel set up starting with 3/16" brass bar and then started one of the frames for sizing. I used a turned piece of aluminum and moved the cutting tool horizontally to cut grooves for fins on the electric motor. 1 started 9 to go as well as finishing up the ladder ways.

 

 
My build time and updates will now be sporadic at best until New Years; my son, his wife and the twin grandsons travel tomorrow from NYC and will be here until the 28th. This will be their first time seeing the Constitution completed that will eventually be at their home on Long Island. 
 

Michael,
 
It's under the compass app. When you get the compass, just slide it over and you will see the level.
 
It's fun to play with.
 
Hope that helps,
 
Harvey

Thanks Grant, Ed and Gaetan, its good to be back. Have missed you guys and seems a lot has  gone on since I have been gone.  Ed the ship that was in the back ground is the Bonhomme Richard, 1779. Built her in the nintys and was the one I built before starting on Montagu. Believe I finished her right around the time the misses had our daughter, which would make Richard  about 19teen years old. My how  time fly's when your having fun. Gaetan you are so right and building it got me back out in to the workshop and close to Montagu. Seems she kept calling my name, Gary build me and they will come. Thats my story and am sticking to it. Have added a photo of Richard here for you Ed. 
gary

Thanks Carl, I'm starting to get the hang of working with PE .
 
Speaking of PE, I've made the Main Battery Gun Control one. It's only two parts, but no instructions whatsoever of it's construction are in either the kit or the PE sheet. Luckily I have the 3D Bismarck book to fall back on. The PE is a reasonable facsimile :


 
Painted and fitted. I've finished this sub-assembly as well :

 
An overview of the forward superstructure up to this point :

 
  Danny

Hello Every one. I finally went back to work on Montagu after a long break due to work and a few health issues. I was building some plastic models but nothing like building and working on Montagu. Also have done some changes to the work shop and do believe that I finally have the ship yard just the way I like it. Other then a few larger tools and a new  drafting board hung from the ceiling not much more to do but get to work on Montagu. I did finally get around to making my hobby bench and not only was it a joy to build but is even more enjoyable to work on. Hope you enjoy the photos of Montagu. Also added a gantry to the building board that was taken from Eds idealy and book. should come in real handy. For the last couple of days I have been working on the port side channel wale. At first I did it in pear but didn't like the color of it against the frames and changed it to boxwood and looks a whole lot better. If you have any question's let me know, and glad to be back. Gary
 

The funnel is finally finished, and I've also finished the two aft searchlights. These are fitted, along with the two 20mm guns I made earlier :




 
I also decided to add real louvres to the flat printed ones. They have a real sense of depth now . I made them from strips of 1mm wide card :


 
  Danny

Pictures show both balls a rusted color; I will have to check with Evan. One of the things the ship will have done in dry dock is a complete repaint. I finished up machining all the tiny signal lights, I had to break out my magnification glasses to make them. Here are a couple of images, one with the penny provides a sense of scale.

 

 
Now back to work.