FlyingFish

Progress on the barrels- Whilst I wait for some resin printed barrels to arrive, I thought I'd have a go myself anyway. UHDPE was no good - if I had a CNC machine or metal lathe it might have worked, but this is slippery difficult material. So ditched that and found some 25mm beech dowel, and did a little turning on the DIY lathe. Decided to see how these will look compared to the 3d printed ones, then make a decision. Anyway, there will be a pause now until the next post as after 2 years of this blasted pandemic our children who live abroad are coming home to visit for a couple of weeks! The shipyard is therefore closing for a bit so that I can put first things first!

Winch fitting for mast...

Enjoying the build - that's a very fine shaped hull.

Thanks for the likes and views. Mast build. A design ramble for those looking to build Orca; otherwise skip down to the build photos! The mast can be confusing for two reason; Orca I and II had different masts; the latter even being offset from the centreline. Working from movie stills mean you need to be very careful which boat you are looking at if you want fidelity to the original vessel. There are some clues… Orca I (doorknob) Orca II Orca I (brackets on mast) Orca II Orca I (lights on lookout step) Orca II Orca I (Mast base and ‘skirting’ to wall) Orca II …and there are many, many more. Orca I has a mast base that appears round…. But in the middle it is flattened at the sides. It tapers a little and gets rounder at the top. Does this all matter? Well there are many Jaws/Orca aficionados who will be eager and able to point out mistakes and variances from the original, so better do my due diligence. Back to the build... Wanted to scratch build the mast, not rely on dowel or metal rod, so started with a square section of home grown Poplar, then planed to octagonal, the 16 and 32 sides. Yellow ball, corner pocket... Then flattened the centre section to size and tapered and rounded the top according to my measurements. Primed and mast base fitted. Working up from the base - the derrick pivot, mast rings and winch attachment come first. Mast hoops, winch mount; mast derrick gooseneck and eyes for the shrouds from the diamond spreader all soldered in brass for rigidity. Span block mount and diamond spreader made in styrene, block fitted with loose front hook crafted from soldered soft copper rod and ultra fine black wire. Lookout platform, lamp bracket and top mastband with four eyes for rigging : The whole thing so far, ready for detailing and finishing. Last job today was the shark-tail wind vane (maybe?) atop the mast. I’ll add the flag later.

Good to see the progress Keith. Always impressive, and the brass-work so neat; very inspiring!

Rock-Away fighting chair. Whilst scratching my head about the barrel build, thought I'd have a bash at the chair. It's a tricky little job; at 1:20 it's about 2 1/2" (65mm) high. Pity Quint didn't sit on a box like other anglers... Getting there... Still have some tapered machined rod holders either side to do.. but that will do for now.

Coxcoaming the pulpit rails and Upper cockpit ladder. Well as if this boat wasn’t fiddly enough! Quint obviously whiled away the hours waiting for a bite by decorating handrails with coxcoaming. This did have a practical purpose of adding grip to wet rails, but I wish he’d used gaffer tape (in character) rather than 3 strand rope wrapping (like a yachtsman). Well, you want a bit of grip in this situation, I guess. If like me you hadn’t heard of coxcoaming it means any sort of binding on a rail to dress it up. It can be a simple single French hitch, as below, or perhaps a three bight spiral which is a bit fancier. Orca’s appears to be St Mary’s coxcoam which has three bights hitching over themselves down the rail. Google it if you want to see it done, and practice on a bit of dowel first, before dropping down to the correct scale. Here’s a useful link if you want to have a go yourself. http://www.frayedknotarts.com/tutorials/coxcombing/smary.html So I made the rope from 3 strands 60 gauge French twine on the rope walking machine, waxed it to give it a bit of colour using black wax (saved from the Christmas Vintage Cheddar Cheese) and set to with a glass of wine at hand. Felt like those wonderful old Scottish or Norwegian Crofters knitting away, or the knit for victory movement in the war. Spielberg paid a local expert to add coxcoaming to Orca; here’s a fancy bit from the top of the ladder: So using a fly tying bobbin from my main hobby.. Now that’s the look of concentration!

Thanks DCN, that's very interesting. I've never done any moulding before, but I've contacted the guy who supplies these to see if he (she?) can do one in 1:20 and ship to UK. Certainly an option worth exploring.

So work has stalled - I have known for a while that one component would be problematic, and I'm still not sure how to resolve it. Yep it's those pesky barrels. As this is a scratch build I want to fabricate these from... well, scratch. I don't have a 3D printer, nor know anyone with one, and I don't have a lathe. They are a very complex shape. My first idea was to get some plastic rod and make a simple lathe... So did that (my Pa's old Stanley hand drill serves as a tail stock)... ...and an ancient drill with variable speed to drive it. Made some tool bits to go with it. I know that turning the basic shape is straightforward, but milling the rest a bit of a nightmare (I don't own a mill). However, undeterred, I bought some UHMWPE black rod and then discovered it can't take a paint finish at all. Tried everything so far, special primers; abrading the surface; etc. The originals were made from black PE and of course we want the yellow paint to be pretty beat up, but so far it just falls off! Wondering whether to use some hardwood dowel (I have some 20mm birch dowell), or try some other plastic... All ideas welcomed from this deep well of expertise.... 🙂

Thanks for the likes and comments, appreciate your time stopping by. Flying bridge fabricated today. ...and primed with the light prism for DCN.

Thanks DCN, will include! I think it's one of these:

That's a great idea DCN, I'll look at that. Framing of top decks coming on. I wonder what they would have stored in those lockers...?

Interesting build! I'm intrigued by the shape of the bow - surely this shape creates enormous water resistance? Or maybe that's an advantage if you want to slow down quickly... Getting something like this from China must be quite a 'drag'?

So after all that fiddly stuff, time to cover it all up. The admiral (head shark hunter) thinks I should find a way to open the deck to show the interior, what do you think?

...and the pilot house: