Matrim

Tony,
As this is your first post, welcome to MSW!!  Perhaps you could post a little intro about yourself in the new members section.
 
Regarding your question, if the parts are wood, don't use CA.  
 
Welcome again.
 
Allan 
 

Do you have to use CA?

What do you use to assemble square pieces like 4 walls of a cabin or other boxy deck furniture? I use CA to assemble these parts so the square or jig would have to be glass or smooth metal.  Thank you

Ok after experimenting with the different sail making techniques, both paper and cloth, I settled on cloth. I drew out and cut paper patterns for each sail on the plastic form including the lines. I found an old cream colored bed sheet and stretched it out tight. Next I drew in long rolls of lines On the sheet with pencil matching the spacing on the patterns. For a bit of simplicity I spaced the lines a bit further apart then the molded forms. Next I drew all the patterns on the sheet matching the paper and cloth lines and included the sail number on a side tab. Then in a time consuming process I hand stitched all the lines within each pattern. After I finished sewing all the lines I cut out each sail. Using a 3 to 1 dilution of water and white glue I painted each sail formed over the plastic molds. When the glue dried I had a perfectly molded sail. I waited 24 hours to make sure sail was solid. I will now come up with a satisfactory color to lightly hit them with my airbrush. I think I will reinforce the bottom corners for rigging before I attach them to the yards. I am happy with them. As a purest I know the stitching is out of scale but I am willing to except that. 

About a dozen years ago, there used to be in my town, a local artist who specialized in custom art and figurines made of traditional pewter. A really cool old hippie dude, I asked him if he could make custom pewter casting s of a some cannon barrels that I had much earlier lathed out of brass. There were two types, a long 18-pounder  - British pattern - 'hung by thirds', of course - and a 32-pounder carronade barrel. His results were astonishingly good, as seen below. These were not finished in any way or cleaned up . The seams are barely noticeable, and the barrel cross sections are round, not squished, as I am told is often the case. The pewter finish is lovely by itself, before any chemical darkening or painting is applied.
 
Here are the long guns. the master above in brass and a cast gun below:
 
0-2 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
Here are the carronades. Note I had the trunnion and the fighting bolt cast  into it as one piece:
 
0 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
Together with a scale:
 
0-3 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
For comparative purposes, I have shown the long gun with Bluejacket's two large 1/4" scale cannon, what I believe to be a medium US Navy 32-pounder and an 8" shell gun, and carriage, from the antebellum period. Bluejacket's guns are cast from their own pewter-like metal with they call "Britannia", and have obviously not been cleaned up, and show a bit of flash:
 
0-5 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
My two barrels sitting on top of Bluejacket's carriages:
 
0-1 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
And I cast a lot of these barrels too. I had initially wanted to build an 18-pounder USN frigate, the Chesapeake, which sailed in 1811-12, when under Captain Evans, no fewer than thirty 18-pounders, and twenty-four 32-pounder carronades, 54 guns total. These were soon reduced under Captain Lawrence in 1813 to 49 guns. 
 
0-4 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
My barrels compared to Bluejacket's large carronade, certainly a 32 or a 42 pounder and carriage slide:
 
0-7 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
A pile of guns ...
 
0-6 by Stephen Duffy, on Flickr
 
 
 
 
 
 

Mike,
I am without doubt obsessed with the method and this vessel is far more recent than my eras of focus.  If your plans include a complete Body plan with delineation of each of the stations shown above, The Station Sandwich Method would get you a hull. 
How I would approach it =
I would use clear Pine sliced from framing 2x4.  No thicker than 1/4" ,  but it is easier and less open to mistakes if the sum of the thicknesses is an exact match to the distance between each station.
The interior of the hull is not of much interest so a solid hull is possible.  I would still make it somewhat hollow.   The moulded dimension would be enough to encompass any bevel that is between each pair of station lines.  I would not shape the inside.  It would be horizontal above the floor and vertical at the sides.  It saves on lofting time.
Rather than cutting each of the layers as a single piece,  I would use a rough version of wooden ship framing.  Do it at the first step as  a pair of layers with overlapping butts. 
One of the pair would be three timbers - a full "floor" and a "2nd futtock" on each side that extended to the deck.
The other would be four pieces -  two "1st futtock"s  that butt at the centerline and go beyond the floor/2nd futt join.  And two "3rd futtock"s that extend to the deck.
The smaller pieces are easier to scroll cut.  there will be no cross grain.  The butt line of the "1st futt" provide an easy way to locate where the keel is.
The  lofting process can be done easily using a drawing program.  The plans provide the precise outside shape.  Connect the dot straight lines define the inside shape.
Each piece has a pattern rubber cemented to it.  When the layers between two stations are all glued together, the pattern is left on the "frame" at each end.   Because of the locators. the patterns on each end are in precise alignment.  The bevel will be correct.
 
Locator points and the lofting of them:
On a wooden hull sailing ship, where the inside shape is important and relatively narrow,  a perpendicular locator to position two frames, much less the series of them between two stations,  will not go thru the actual body of more than one frame.  This starts to happen when you get much beyond the middle of a ship.  I solved this by placing my locators outside the actual frame.  It makes for extra wood for each timber and for more wood to remove when getting the final shape for each frame sandwich assembly.
This is not a factor with your hull. The thickness of each frame sandwich would be wide enough that an inside perpendicular would work as a locator.
You would need 3 sets of locators.
1 - to align the timbers of each pair.
2 - to align each of the pairs into the sandwich of layers between two stations
3 - to mate the two sandwiches that meet at each station.
For  #1  I would use  the 1.75" long steel quilters pins  they are #73 wire gauge and #70 hole is close without being difficult to remove after the glue has set.
For #2 and #3  I would use off the shelf bamboo skewers.  Measure the gauge and buy a few bits that are close enough not to wobble, are a push fit,  but no not need a hammer.
Glue in the bamboo.
 
The assembly method would be 
scroll cut the timbers  -  no need to get too close to the pattern line -   A good hand fretsaw would get your there,  a scroll saw if you have one,  I use an 1/8" blade with a Carter Stabilizer on a 9" benchtop bandsaw.
Join and glue up the "frame" pairs. 
Assemble and glue up all of the pairs in a station sandwich.
Using a sanding drum, shape the near outside shape and do the bevel for the sandwich.
Join pairs of sandwiches and fine tune the transition by sanding.
Starting from the middle and going to each end,  join the pairs of sandwiches to the whole and fare those transitions.
The bow and stern build and shaping are a different challenge.  I would use a buttock dimension series of layers there.
 
Pine is relatively inexpensive and readily available.  It is easy to work.
Worse comes to worst, the hull can be the subject of a serious sealing and undercoating.  With a good final coat of paint, it should look metal.  If you wish the metal plates to be hinted at, rectangles of paper can be glued to the hull before sealing.  Things like bilge keels - parts needing to be glued to the hull - mask the glue area before sealing.
 
Anyway,  here is an alternate method that breaks the hull shaping process into smaller and more manageable sub assemblies.    
 
 
 

Thanks for the replies. Here is the plan I have to get a better idea. Scale is 1/144.
 

Since we opened up the website for 120V machines we have been swamped with orders.  Today I put together 24 saws and that's not all we are shipping this coming week. So...please be patient.  We'll get them out as soon as possible
 
thanks
Jim   

The Revel plastic does not appear badly priced either.
 
https://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/revell-172-black-pearl-model-kit/
 

The Revel plastic does not appear badly priced either.
 
https://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/revell-172-black-pearl-model-kit/
 

The Revel plastic does not appear badly priced either.
 
https://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/revell-172-black-pearl-model-kit/
 

Please note that situations like this are why we have the "Banned Manufacturers" topic -- to educate folks about the intellectual property crimes perpetrated by certain unscrupulous kit makers, hopefully before those folks make a purchase unawares. Help spread the word.

I strongly recomend  getting the Revell plastic kit of the Pearl  then just do a few mods like I did - follow my build if you want to,   its a very accurate kit  and very well made  just needs the mods I did  to Improve it and bring it to life.
 
OC

OK, you’ve got the model kit.  You’re not going to get your money back.  There is nothing that you can do that will cause the supplier to change its behavior.  Build the model!  If the result is disappointing chalk it up to experience and use what you have learned next time to build something from a legitimate supplier.  Keep in mind that the kit represents an imaginary vessel.  
 
Roger

Be advised, SC (Shi Cheng) is on our banned manufacturers list. ALL Black Pearl kits currently coming out of China are unlicensed products and thus constitute infringement of copyrighted Disney intellectual property. Please read:
 
 
The Shi Cheng kit happens to be copied from the licensed Hachette kit designed by Chris Watton.

I have used both thread and pencil, but prefer pencil because it is easier to do and I like that you do not end up with clean lines. Although you may get (light) smudging when sanding, I like the look after staining with light oak. Maybe without staining it is less attractive so that could be a deciding factor.  Picture below is the stained deck using pencil.

Proof of life.   Still slugging away at this.  I have installed all the port sills and everything has had a good sanding.  More will be done just before planking starts.   I'm still working on the stern which is giving me pause.  Too many complex curves involved but I think I have it sorted.  Maybe one more time to get it right then planking.    I'm holding off sanding the interior at this point as the Lite-Ply is very fragile and one slip and a minor disaster for repair.  Live and learn.   Here's pics of the state of work.

 

Aha! As Terry Pratchett would say "A pune, or play on words". (And a particularly dreadful one - I love it!)
 
I'm afraid so. I'm just glad I noticed it when I did.
 
Thanks everyone for all the likes - I haven't acknowledged them for awhile.

Love it. Plus I will try and approach my ratlines with your approach as it will keep things tidier than my (doing it by eye)

it would have driven you mad if you had left it without correcting though...even though 99.9999999% of the world would not have...

it would have driven you mad if you had left it without correcting though...even though 99.9999999% of the world would not have...

it would have driven you mad if you had left it without correcting though...even though 99.9999999% of the world would not have...

it would have driven you mad if you had left it without correcting though...even though 99.9999999% of the world would not have...