Ras Ambrioso

Excellent work Roger. Your research has been very informative. Carry on.

Following the Valerliy recommendations I filled the bow and stern sections. Then proceeded to shape both ends. I removed the half hulls from the mounting board and temporally connected them. It may no look as neat as Valerliy but, the planking is done. Then we started the filling with putty. And now my ship looks like my first wife while putting on makeup in the mornings. Ugh. Sanding comes next. I have had these plans since 1996 and thanks to the examples in this forum and your kind advise I can see my Amapá taking shape.

Well, now I made real progress. My grandfather used to tell me that if you are going to do something, do it right. In my career as a construction engineer I found that sometimes, to fix a problem, you will have to start over again. Valeriy suggested just to bring the planks to the last former and then add the filler for the bow and stern. So I followed his advise and dismantled my bow and stern and started again cutting out my newly finished round stern. This allowed me to finish the starboard planking. Not as perfect as it should be but it will be improved with a lot of sanding and filling. The biggest problem is with the propeller shaft tunnel. I hope I can match a hull finish like the one my friend from Turkey shown below This photo is from tozbeckler build: the Protected Cruiser Mecidiye. The result of this exercise is that I learned a lot about bending planks.

Banyan, welcome to my build. I went to your build and was fascinated by the historical references you made on your ship. And to do it at 1/72 scale is quite a challenge. Thanks for your comments.

Another WOW model. I am going to follow you project. Will live to see your development of the carronade at 1/72 scale. thanks for your comments on my cruiser Amapá.

Thank you Valeriy. In looking back, I should have done that but, by the time I thought about it I had already sanded down to meet frame forcing me to carry the planking to the end. Like I said before, this is a living experience learning while we build. Always the next model will be better. I probably have the to do the other stern the same way to keep the symmetry but I will definitely will do what you tell me in the bow area. Thanks again, you are not only a master craftsman but a great teacher.

After much thought, I have reached the conclusion that scratch building is hard. God bless those guys like Chuck Passaro, that make the kits for us and foresee all the problems ahead. There is nothing like laser cut frames snapping into perfectly located slots into their proper place in the keel. In this model, my first scratch build, I have made several mistakes that have made the fairing and planking of the hull more difficult. I fabricated the frames using 1/8" basswood (first mistake: too thick) , cut them with a band saw and trimmed each in-pair (port and starboard) with a sander. So far so good. I had glued a paper copy of the ships profile to the keel piece and had both sides attached to the building board facing each other. Great! Then I used the wrong glue to stick the paper to the wood (second mistake)and then glued the frames to the paper that was glued to the keel piece (third mistake). The next day, after the glue dried, the whole thing came apart. Darn! Thanks to this forum comments, I finally arrived at the proper glue to use and did the fairing. After all these fiascos, started planking with mixed pluses and minuses. This ship has a split deck with a lower deck in between and I decided to use a full sheet to plank this section as can be seen in the photo below. Good! Started planking towards the keel using various techniques to bend the strakes. The most successful was the use of water soaked wood and hot air blower. But I could not bend all the way at the rounded stern without a snap. Then, I remember something out of these forums and made a mold of the curve. Success! More strakes on the stern And then fourth mistake shows up. When I cut the frames I didn't subtracted the plank thickness and the results will be a ship with wider beam. Oh well ! This, also interfered with the propeller shaft extending further back towards the propeller. I worked around the tunnel using smaller strakes working around the concave curves of propeller tunnel. Good! This quarter of the planking effort has been a real education and hope that most of these flaws will be corrected with miliput and wood filler. Did some experimentation with the idea of simulating the steel plated hull with shellacked paper and it seems like a possible alternative that may cover some of my indiscretions. So, again, thanks for the inspiration and advise given in this forum.

Congratulation VTHokiEE. Good job. Hope mine comes out as good. Thanks for the sharing your experience with us

Very interesting build. I will be following it.

I have been a little under the weather these last few days and have been unable to work on my favorite project. However, I had some pictures of my progress after following Valeriy's advise about the Titebond. This shows the beginning of the filling of the bow and stern sections And here I added a vertical reinforcement to each frame just in case. I have received the material (cherry) to make the planking strakes and hope to get started next Monday. I had a lot of trouble gluing the paper to the wood. I used Loctite and a 3M sprays and they dried up in a couple of days. My last attempt was made with Elmer's contact cement and this seem to be holding up OK. I would like to hear you opinions and preferences for this work of permanently gluing paper to wood. I also want to welcome my new friend, Ton Kittichart from Thailand, who is planning to build Amapá's Thai cruiser the Suriya Monthon.

Looks pretty good to me already. For mine, I have bought the cherry in 3" wide sheets at Micromark. I will cut strakes as I spline them.

Very happy to see you back. I am still working on my other projects but I am definitely going to build this half hull and certainly appreciate your doing it ahead of me. Sorry I cannot help you with your counter but I am not very knowledgable in the 18th century modeling. Welcome back

Well, success. I followed Valerliy advise and used the Titebond and managed to install all the frames without any drama. The glue sets quickly but with enough time to check the squareness. The frames were positioned using both the frame station line and the waterlines. I have ordered cherry planks and tomorrow will set battens to delineate the belts. My intentions are to finish the hull with some overlaid plating. I will be trying different methods as described by members of this forum. Thanks for the help and encouragement.

To those that follow me, the following advise on what not to do. Today I went to release the angles holding my frames in place and learned a couple of new lessons. First, I ran out of the metal pushpins and used some of the common office plastic headed ones. Well, the pins were pretty secure on the building board and, while using a plier to remove these plastic headed pins , the heads broke off. Then, after I successfully removed the angles, I found that the frames were firmly attached to the paper plans and not the half keel below. It seems that the glue I used, the Elmers school glue that comes in a stick, did not set on the half frame below. So I have to do the excercise again. This time I will follow the advise of Valerliy and use Titebond and a square to set my frames.

Thanks Roger. I have had the similar problem with Elmer's. Two ways of fixing it: one is to close it right away and remove the drop of glue left on the tip. The other one, the most tedious, is to unscrew the cap from the bottle and rinse it with running water while working the cap up and down tripping the hardened glue off.

Just by chance I found your build. All I have to say is its amazing. A beautiful piece of work and a clear explanation of the process and its occasional personal responses to the problems in the way. Years ago I bought a kit to make one of these models on a bottle. But never had the courage to do it and the kit was lost in one of my many moves. This is what I love about tis forum. It has awakened my interest in this amazing hobby: kit builds, scratch build, ships in a bottle, etc. etc. etc.

Thanks for the advise Valeriy. I have titebomnd glue but never used it in models. I did use Gorilla glue but it does take a little to set. I do like you idea of using staples to attach the pieces to the board. thanks again, I am one of your fans.

Mark, I bought a 3ft long aluminum angle and cut the little pieces with my cutoff saw. It created a lot of burrs but I I filed them down.The whole thing cost about $4 and I still have two ft left of the angle. I will check for the angle, tho.

A little progress. Finished matching the two half-keels and secured them to my work base. Dry-fitted some of the frames using the angle gadgets I got from Micromark. I only got 8 pieces in the package and I need 22. So I went shopping for an aluminum angle and some push pin and, voila, I got my 24s. I will use these dry fitted frames to determine my planking belts and, using battens, mark the needed bevelinf of the frames. My angles and the purchased ones.

Thanks Mark. I will sure do. And you give me an idea for the presentation. I have a lot of pictures of these guns in service in different navies. I could set it on a planked firing over the Bulwark. Great!

I am with you BobG. Beers are the reason we survived the dark ages.

Now for the news. Amapá's keel, or shall I say half keels, had been laid after the "fifie" left the dry dock for commissioning. The half keels were attached to a building board and the bow section was glued in place. The roughly cut frames were dry fitted to the working board. The half keels still need to be trimmed. To do this, I will clamp the two sides together with screws using the board's attachment points as setting holes. This will make the two half keels identical. That way, when the frames are all in place, all I need to do is to remove the half frames off the board and join them together. The result is a fairly thick keel but, who is watching? Following the advise from Toni in other posts I intend to do the fairing and the planking while the half keels are fastened to the board. I have been researching the 1/64 scale Hotchkiss QF firing gun mounted on the forward deck of Amapá. Since I also like to build miniature guns, I plan a little side project to build a 1/24 scale model of this gun under a separate post. And yes, I intent to post the build in the non-ship category if it is alright with the administration. This will be a metal model with a lot of lathe and milling machine work. Thanks for following.

Roger: Thanks for the information on the shellac. I am very familiar with Kiltz since I have used on the ceiling of my previous home. W ill try it out soon. Thanks again

The ship has all of its rigging installed (except the sail) and will leave the dry-dock to complete its commissioning. There was a little ceremony, but I couldn't find 1/32 scale champagne. I had a beer instead. The ship hails from the the port of Wick in NE Scotland (WK) and its number was my employee number in three of my work places. One of them was for an American company on Cuba at the age of 19. All my employee numbers ended on 26. Is that a coincidence, or what?. The fifie is named after my dear wife, the Admiral, who patiently waits for me to also do the apartment chores. After a short rest from this build I will return to complete several deck details including the crew. See you then. Now, on to Amapá

Continuing my fix of the aft mast stays, today I completed the port side. The rigging of the bullseyes is not as per the kit's plans but it made it easier for me, with my shacky hands and poor depth perception. Tomorrow we will do the starboard side and rest for a while. I need to buy a smaller pair of scissors to be able to cut the knots closer. One more tool to add to the pile. In our shop, the work bench is 8ft long and, when I am working, I have it full with my stuff. Other residents that pass by and ask me why I need so much stuff to make such a little parts. I will be taking a week off Fifie to work on my other project Amapá. Thanks for following me.