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Glen McGuire

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Everything posted by Glen McGuire

  1. Glen McGuire
    Hmmm. May have to try that on the next project. Thanks for the idea, Gary!!
  2. Glen McGuire
    You are correct, Roel. I repurposed a stainless steel skewer from my backyard grilling stuff. It's very rigid, which is needed to hold the double bend in the surgical tubing (duct taped holds the two together). As for drilling and tapering, you are right again. I taper then drill. I've tried drilling first, but the area around the hole would get so thin and weak that it kept breaking off when I would put it the rod in my drill lathe to taper.
  3. Glen McGuire
    LOL! I guess it depends on when you go there! At least you didn't suggest I add a bunch of tar balls!!
  4. Glen McGuire
    I'm trying to keep pace with @Knocklouder and his King of the Mississippi paddlewheel build, but I'm afraid Private Gnomer Pyle (greatest name ever!) has him steaming far ahead of me. Part of my problem is that every time I look at my picture of the Banshee II, I see something new that I need to add. The latest is bands and a spine around the smokestacks. For the bands, I took a piece of 0.5mm brass wire, wrapped it around a piece of brass tube that I had cut the smokestacks from, and clipped it off. The spines are made from music wire that measures slightly thicker in diameter (.6mm) than the bands. In the 2nd pic below, you can also see that I added some gratings to the deck. Those were made from window screens. After finishing the smokestacks, I noticed a screw-up. On my Banshee II picture, the spines face each other. But I have both of them on the aft side of the smokestack, which seemed logical to me when I was making them. I went and looked at a bunch of pictures of dual-stacked ships. Most of them do have the spines facing each other, but I saw a few that were oriented like mine. So rather than redo it, I'm going to take a bit of artistic license here and leave it as is. Personally, I think it looks better with both on the aft side. I like the symmetry. Next, I got some work done on the ship's boats. I took some small basswood blanks, hollowed out the inside of each, and affixed them to toothpicks for final shaping of the outer hull and painting. Then I added a thin stripe (aided by some pinstriping tape) along the top edge. I'm still not sure I've got room for the ship's boats hanging from davits off the side. One more thing added to the TBD list!
  5. Glen McGuire
    LOL!!! 🤣🤣🤣
  6. Glen McGuire
    Two steps completed over the past few days - putting some water (epoxy resin) in Sailor Jerry's bottle and constructing the masts with booms and gaffs. Here was the setup for pouring the epoxy resin into the bottle. I tinted the water more greenish than usual based on my own experience visiting Galveston. There are 2 masts of almost equal height with the aft mast being slightly taller. Each has two steps, a gaff, a boom, and no yards. I started by making the hinge and lower step. These are small bamboo rods that start out at about 2mm in diameter before any tapering. Next, I shaved a couple of notches into the top and bottom pieces of the masts to help them fit together securely For the gaffs and booms, the trickiest part is trying to drill a tiny hole dead center near the base so it can be tied off to the mast. I use fly-tying thread (Uni 72D 8/0W) to secure the gaffs and booms to the mast. Here's both masts dry-fit into the hull.
  7. Glen McGuire
    That paddlewheel paint job looks great! And did you replace Marvin with a new ship inspector??
  8. Glen McGuire
    Also, happy Father's Day to all the dad's out there. I just got a wonderful gift from my son. Very cool reference book!!
  9. Glen McGuire
    Thanks, Pat. The answer to your question is yes (I think). The plan right now is for the ship to go in stern first as usual. Next, I'll put the aft smokestack in followed by the sidewheel subassembly. Then I'll insert the fore smokestack, then raise the masts. However, I may have to raise the foremast first to get it out of the way depending on how it lays down and how much it's in the way. TBD on that.
  10. Glen McGuire
    Nothing to add to the sentiments above, Keith, just prayers that Maggie will find her second wind and keep trying to push forward.
  11. Glen McGuire
    You ain't alone. I hate to think how many hours of my life I've spent looking for stuff I just had my hands on. Regardless, superb work on some detailed fitment.
  12. Glen McGuire
    In the close-up picture, it looks a little bulky. However, when I see as part of the whole boat in the latter pics, I thought it look fine. But definitely your call on that as things can look different in person vs pictures. Regardless of what you decide, the boat is really coming along nicely! Such a cool project.
  13. Glen McGuire
    You ain't the only one, Gary! You'll notice I only stuck it in far enough to make sure it would fit, then quickly retracted before I did something really dumb! Yes, it would've meant getting another bottle of that rotgut. I took a swig of Ol' Jerry's brew and I don't think it compares very well to the Bundy rum all the Aussies keep talking about. 😝😝
  14. Glen McGuire
    It immediately made me think of you and @gjdale. I'm counting on one of you to make a tiny working steam engine to spin those wheels for me!
  15. Glen McGuire
    Those golden arches are making my cow nervous, Keith. Remember, we don't use the "B" words around here (Burger, BBQ, Brisket, etc).
  16. Glen McGuire
    Finishing up the sidewheel subassembly. First, I cut a slot for the wheels' axle to rest in. Next was cutting notches in the bulwarks to fit the structure that connects the 2 sidewheels. Next, I built the structure and attached the sidewheels to complete the subassembly. Finally, I dropped it in place for a dry-fit test. So far so good. At this point, I figured I'd better see if the subassembly would fit thru the bottle's neck. And......of course it did not. But it was close and only took a small bit of shaving to make it work. Next to the sidewheels, I think the most iconic thing about the ship is the dual smokestacks. So I wanted to pay particular attention to them. These are also subassemblies that will be installed onto the deck inside the bottle. I had some 4mm diameter brass tube which was a good size for the bulk of the smokestack, but I needed a slightly larger diameter piece for the smokestack to rest in at the base. I scrounged around and found these stainless steel straws I'd gotten as a weird Christmas gift a few years ago. They were 6mm in diameter and perfect for what I needed. Hopefully the person that gave me the straws will not figure out what I used them for! The 4 vent pipes are 1mm music wire. Here's everything so far, dry-fit in place. Mini-Dimples the Ship Inspector finally decided I'd gotten far enough along for her to look things over. She gave it two horns up, but said she's still skeptical about this thing getting successfully assembled inside the bottle.
  17. Glen McGuire
    Here's what I envision Ian and other engineer types doing in their spare time... https://x.com/HumansNoContext/status/1799367028580532379
  18. Glen McGuire
    Exceptional work on those small parts, Thukydides!
  19. Glen McGuire
    Thank you, @Keith Black, @Knocklouder, @BANYAN, @Ian_Grant, @Canute, @Rick310, @berhard, for the comments. Very much appreciated. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was not thrilled my work on the wheel covers. So I decided to bite the bullet and make new ones. It was a 4-hour time investment, but I like the new ones a lot better. There were 2 things I wanted to fix. First, I needed a little more material across the bottom to fit an axle since the wheels must actually be able to spin! Second, the vent slots were bugging me and it took me a while to figure out why. After staring at them endlessly, I finally realized they needed to fan out to conform better with the round shape of the cover rather than simply being rectangular slots. The first pic below has the original ones on top and new ones below. The bad news is the width of the sidewheels make each half of the split hull too wide to fit inside the very narrow bottle opening. So the new plan is to connect the 2 wheels with their housing structure to make a one-piece subassembly. Then I can insert it sideways into the bottle, turn it 90 degrees, and drop it in place onto the hull. The further I go, the more complicated this thing gets! But I do not want to scale down the sidewheels to make them fit. To me, they are what makes this ship (or these types of ships) really unique. When this project is done, I think the sidewheels will be the thing that catches your eye, so I want them to be prominent.
  20. Glen McGuire
    Rifles?? You're going to have to splain that one to me, Keith!
  21. Glen McGuire
    Thanks, Keith and Pat. I think y'all are being generous, but I'll take it! For the last few days, I've been bouncing around ideas in my head for how to make the paddle wheels, but couldn't come up with what I thought was a great plan. Finally, I said WTH and just started building one, kind of making it up as I went along. I started with a 3/16" dowel for the hub which I decided was a good diameter. Then for the blades, I scrounged around and didn't find anything around here really suitable. So I went to where I go when I'm desperate - my unstarted Artesania Latina kit for the USS Constellation. And there I found exactly what I was looking for. The planking strips are super thin (0.5mm) and the perfect width (5mm) to fit in the wheel housings I'd just completed. The pics below show the sequence of steps involved. First was to put the dowel into a vise and, using a fine kerf saw, cut a slot to slide the blade into. I did this one slot and one blade at a time. My original plan was to do 6 blades. With a hub of only 3/16", I figured that's all I had room for. But things went surprisingly well so I decided to try and double the number of blades to 12. Trying to go from good to better is usually when I get myself in deep trouble. But I closed my eyes and kept going! And somehow, things worked out pretty well. With a big sigh of relief, it was time for some tedious work - making the outer ring near the ends of the each blade. I didn't really have a plan for this either when I started, but I figured I'd try something with the planking strips again. I took one and cut a bunch of pieces that were about 2mm long purposely varying the length of each by a hair or two. Then it was a matter of trying different ones till I found the perfect fit between each blade, then inserting it. And the final result: I'm really happy with how the wheel turned out. Now I just have to do it again.
  22. Glen McGuire
    Doesn't look like luck to me. Very high skill required to get the results I see. Superb work, Pat.
  23. Glen McGuire
    Superb work, John!
  24. Glen McGuire
    I ordered some of the Bare-Metal foil that @Landlubber Mike suggested. Thank you, Mike! While waiting for it to arrive, it's time to take on the first real challenge - the sidewheels. I'm starting with the housing that covers the actual wheels. The first chore was making the semi-circle part that covers the top half of the wheels. I penciled them on a 1/4" thick piece of basswood, reamed out the middle, cut them out, and sanded to their final shape. You can see I began making 4, expecting a yield of 50%, which turned out to be right. Next step was the side covers. They were relatively easy to cut, but carving out the vent slots was a bit of a challenge. They did not come out perfect, but I think they will do. Everything in the last pic above will be covered in the Bare-Metal foil and painted gray.
  25. Glen McGuire
    I know it would be more trouble, but I vote for the old and grungy weathered look!

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