AnobiumPunctatum

Weekend progress. Have most of the stem assembled. I used the ultimation sander to clean up the ends. I removed the 120 grit sand disc that came with it and replaced it with 220. The 120 is a little too much for this. I glued the two halves of the lower keel together and the first section of the keel which forms the boxing joint. The inner parts are just dry fit for now.
 

 

One completed keel assembly.

Still needs finish applied, I may opt just to use sanding sealer.  I'm not a huge fan of wipe-on poly.
 
Everything pretty much fell together once things were tweaked just a bit.  

Couple of things...
Be very careful with the knee of the head, I sneezed and broke one. When trimming the apron blocks, be sure to use a very sharp blade and very small slivers, as I chucked a couple I popped the first frame out of it's sprues (and yes I think USPS played football with my box, as most everything was detached).  I'm going to look like Popeye after sanding all the char off these frames.
 
I need to probably tackle putting the build board together before I get to far ahead of myself.

Shawn

Thanks everyone for the feed back and likes!
 
I'm not much of a wordsmith, so please excuse my crude presentation.
 
I'm getting pretty close to having the taper finished, hopefully.

Shawn
 

Building has been continuing, I'm about ready to finish gluing the front apron.
 
Looking forward at the rising wood.  However laying it on the plans, the slots for the floors progressively get wider and wider and don't match my plans.  Sorry about the bad picture, maybe time to learn how to take a photo with the camera I bought six years ago?
 
Thoughts?
 

 

Just a quick little update.
 
Needs some clean up and on to tapering.
 

Welcome...
 
I was very excited when i was able to get chapters 1 & 2 for this new project.
 
I already have my first question.
 
When test fitting parts of the stem assembly the instructions suggest only sanding slightly on certain edges of each piece. 
 

However when I removed the pieces with no sanding, there is a slight gap.  Is it appropriate to correct the other end?
 
 
 
 

The Keel Assembly
 
The main challenge here is to make a tight fit at the boxing joint between the keel and stem. I had to shorten the curved stem just a touch to get a good fit. The rest of the keel assembly is a matter of gluing the various sections in the right order and on the right side. Very little tweaking of the edges is needed.  While I was waiting for my kit, I built a set of simplified "Ed Tosti" clamps.  I find these work better than commercial clamps to apply even and adjustable pressure to the parts being glued. They are kind of fun to make too.

Lower Apron and Angled Wedges
 
Here I encountered my first difficulty.  The stepped lower apron is attached to a sacrificial piece of wood (handle). This makes it easier to glue the wedges one by one.  Without the handle, the lower apron would certainly break during this operation.  I found that even with the handle, the lower apron remains quite fragile. If you force the wedge in position, you can slightly modify the curvature of the apron or even break it loose from its handle. This happened to me and resulted in a poor fit of the lower apron to the keel assembly as shown below.

I was able to correct this by gluing a sliver of wood between the apron and the keel as shown here.
 

This gap may also have been the result of the stem being glued a hair too low (less than 1/32th). Anyway, I am glad that I took the time to correct this. 

Hello all,
 
I recently started this project and will be reporting on my progress in this blog.  Stay tuned. 
 
Jean-Marc

Don't forget that many of us don't have access to a mill, much less a CNC mill. So Chuck's offerings give us an opportunity to have the best results, despite not having a machine shop.
 
Best Regards .... Rick
 

I don’t think so. There is also a lot of support for you there. 
 
The description of how you make and prepare your gratings shows again what I mean in my last post. I can prepare the gratings with my small CNC-mill and build the jig following your really good description. Thanks very much.

It woul be a lot of fun to make a build log of your kit there.
I love your ideas and how open you share your knowledge. Without this I was not able to finish the frame design for my Alert. I also learned a lot to continue with my Sloop Fly. Thanks for that.

I own a small CNC. What has changed is the precision for cutting out parts. So you begin to think about problems, which you not have, if you cut out parts manually. The model is further build by the model builder. The quality depends further on the knowledge and experience of the builder.
I prepare my parts directly from my own reconstruction with the CNC. By all the precision It is not possible for me to build my model in the quality you are showing here. I simply love it.
 
I do not like competitions for my hobby and will never participate in one.
 

steps.....
 






 

I own a small CNC. What has changed is the precision for cutting out parts. So you begin to think about problems, which you not have, if you cut out parts manually. The model is further build by the model builder. The quality depends further on the knowledge and experience of the builder.
I prepare my parts directly from my own reconstruction with the CNC. By all the precision It is not possible for me to build my model in the quality you are showing here. I simply love it.
 
I do not like competitions for my hobby and will never participate in one.
 

I don’t think so. There is also a lot of support for you there. 
 
The description of how you make and prepare your gratings shows again what I mean in my last post. I can prepare the gratings with my small CNC-mill and build the jig following your really good description. Thanks very much.

I don’t think so. There is also a lot of support for you there. 
 
The description of how you make and prepare your gratings shows again what I mean in my last post. I can prepare the gratings with my small CNC-mill and build the jig following your really good description. Thanks very much.

I don’t think so. There is also a lot of support for you there. 
 
The description of how you make and prepare your gratings shows again what I mean in my last post. I can prepare the gratings with my small CNC-mill and build the jig following your really good description. Thanks very much.

Yes; Christian is absolutely correct: Whenever possible, run the grain along a piece, not across it. Avoid cross-grain! As you had it is weak and prone to snap.

I don’t think so. There is also a lot of support for you there. 
 
The description of how you make and prepare your gratings shows again what I mean in my last post. I can prepare the gratings with my small CNC-mill and build the jig following your really good description. Thanks very much.

I think you are doing more than an outstanding job with this kit beauty or for the ship modeling world. Everyone may know my opinion for that matter! 🙂

I own a small CNC. What has changed is the precision for cutting out parts. So you begin to think about problems, which you not have, if you cut out parts manually. The model is further build by the model builder. The quality depends further on the knowledge and experience of the builder.
I prepare my parts directly from my own reconstruction with the CNC. By all the precision It is not possible for me to build my model in the quality you are showing here. I simply love it.
 
I do not like competitions for my hobby and will never participate in one.
 

That would be so nice but it probably would put the builder at risk of being abused.
 
Anyway....those gratings
 
You will basically get all of the laser cut parts in this chapter.  There are only four hatches with gratings.  They are not very large.   Here are all of the elements needed.  You will get two layers for the jig.   The two layers are glued together to form the jig.
 
You also get a right angle jig which is 3/64" thick.  The thickness is very important.
 
Lets get started.
 

Start with the coamings.   They are laser cut and 1/8" thick.
 
The fore and aft sides are already shaped with the round-up of the deck....or camber as usually described but is an inaccurate term.
 
Use the right angle jig to glue two sides together...dont worry about the laser char just yet.   Then glue the remaining two sides together using the same jig to make a nice right angle.
 

Glue the two right angles together to form the coaming.  Sand the sides clean which are left a bit longer as you can see in order to remove the char and leave a nice bright smooth surface.   Also sand the top sides to clean the char.  You can see the cleaned coaming below.
 
Then you can start working on the grating.  Again just like my other smaller scale grating kits.
 
Insert the laser cut grating strips in the slotted jig.  NO GLUE of course!!!   This is just for alignment.
 
Then start adding the cross battens.  These are glued in position.  They may be too tight as you want a press fit.  So just run the small strips 1/16" x 1/16" through your fingers with some fine sandpaper.  Not much.  Just enough so the battens fit into the slots. see below.  There are seven batten strips and seven laser cut grating strips for three of the hatches.  The fourth is made the same way but is much smaller on the fcastle.
 

When all the strips are glued in position,  remove the grating from the jig.  Snip off the edges as shown below.  Then sand all four edges clean.  Try and not distort the perfect square shape.  In the photo two sides have the ends snipped off.   The smaller hatchway will have fewer battens and more to snip away.  Also sand the top surface clean and smooth.  Once again try and maintain the proper shape with the round-up.  You will know when its all done when the char is cleaned from the laser cut grating strip squares.

The photo below shows the top of the grating and sides all clean and nice and smooth.  It makes a nice grating.  The holes are 1/16" or 2" on the real ship and perfectly in scale.

You should but dont have to sand the bottom side as well.   Here is a look.  The battens are clearly less thick than the grating strips and these are pretty close to actual construction methods.  Or at least the impression of it.
 

And almost done...you will see how nice and tight the grating fits in the coaming.   Dont over sand the edges and you should test the grating in the coaming as you sand the edges.   In fact, the coaming normally has ledges on the port and starboard sides inside the coaming.  These create a ledge that the grating sits on so it doesnt fall through.  You can add those if you like.  But in my case the gratings fit so snug that they were not required.  I simply glued the gratings into the coamings making sure the top of the coaming was flush with the grating.  I sanded it smooth with some 400 grit paper.

The four corners of the coaming are very sharp at this point.  You dont want that.  They should be rounded off.  But they are only rounded off down to the deck level.   That is when you take that same right angle jig and use it.
 
The jig is the same thickness as the planking.   So you can place the coaming into the corner and use a sharp #11 blade to slice away the corner.  Slice it down to the top of the jig only.   You can make a stop cut at the jig level before slicing off the corner.  Then just round off the corner.
 
 
Dont slice off too much.   Just a little bit to round off each corner.
 
To finish it off I drilled three holes with a #76 bit.  I used 20lb black fishing line to simulate the bolts on the top of the coamings.  Three on each side.   They cut flush with the top of the coamings with a sharp blade.
 
All done!!!
 
 
 

I own a small CNC. What has changed is the precision for cutting out parts. So you begin to think about problems, which you not have, if you cut out parts manually. The model is further build by the model builder. The quality depends further on the knowledge and experience of the builder.
I prepare my parts directly from my own reconstruction with the CNC. By all the precision It is not possible for me to build my model in the quality you are showing here. I simply love it.
 
I do not like competitions for my hobby and will never participate in one.
 

Have a look at the wood grain for the chocks. In your pictures it has the wrong direction. You should turn the template by 90 degrees.

It woul be a lot of fun to make a build log of your kit there.
I love your ideas and how open you share your knowledge. Without this I was not able to finish the frame design for my Alert. I also learned a lot to continue with my Sloop Fly. Thanks for that.