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Glen McGuire

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Everything posted by Glen McGuire

  1. Glen McGuire
    The comedy of errors continues. I finished up the split pieces of the hull as well as the main deck and a veneer spacer. I did a width check on the main deck to see how it would fit thru the bottle opening. It was pretty close but looked manageable. But it also looked like something was missing. Hmmmm. Then it hit me. I somehow forgot about the channels. UGH. No way would it fit thru the opening with channels added to the width. So not only did I need to add channels, I also needed to narrow the width of the main deck as well as the entire lower deck assembly. And when I sanded the gun decks down to size, it erased most of the gun ports I had carefully cut and drilled holes for. Long story, short - Lots of rework on the entire hull and main deck. However, there was a silver lining. I had not noticed before how much the profile of a galleon tapers from the waterline to the deck. It's sort of like wide hips and a narrow waist. So all the rework gave me a chance to give the hull its proper narrowing from waterline to deck. Anyway, here's some work-in-progress pics. The first pic shows yet another screwup courtesy of a slip while sanding. In the upper right and corner of the stern, you can see another patch job. Fortunately, this will be covered up by the quarter gallery. The last pic shows the lower hull assembly after rework. I stuck in a few cannon barrels and oars to get an early idea of what it's going to look like fully equipped. I really like the cannons with open ends vs the solid wire I used on previous models, even though it's so tiny I'm not sure the effect will be visible once it's inside the bottle.
  2. Glen McGuire
    Thanks, Pat. It works particularly well with this ship as you will see later when I get it painted. The oar deck and gun decks are different colors so having them as separate, individual layers sure makes the painting easier!
  3. Glen McGuire
    Thanks, Grant. I wish that was the last one. Unfortunately I know there are many more to come! This hull plan is proving to be a struggle. But the mule is out and we are gonna git r done!
  4. Glen McGuire
    Thanks, Benjamin! Long ways to go on this one!
  5. Glen McGuire
    It's a very long and complicated process. I'm still in the concept phase! Back to the adventure of the Adventure Galley. The hull is taking shape, although as usual, it's 2 steps forward and 1 back. I've got 8 layers - bottom layer, oar deck, veneer spacer, lower gun deck, spacer, upper gun deck, spacer, main deck. The first pic shows all the layers stacked and sanded into the basic outline of the hull. The 2nd pic shows the hull with the bottom sanded flat at the water line, the bow and stern shaped, and the quarter/poop deck assembly resting in place (unglued). Afterwards, I sliced the whole thing right down the middle. And then a screw up. If I ever drew something correct the first time it would probably start snowing in Laredo. I got the gun ports cut for the port side lower gun deck. The 1st pic shows the technique using a thin diamond cutting wheel on my Dremel. Then I started on the port side upper gun deck. After 4 cuts I checked my alignment with the lower gun deck and the stagger was way off. The upper gun ports were not squarely between the lower ones. Ugh. One of the most helpful comments I've ever read was on someone's build log when I first discovered MSW. I wish I could remember who made the comment. The builder was distraught because they'd made a wrong cut, but the commenter said something to the effect of, "Relax, it's wood. You can fix it." Such great advice. So rather than me cutting and bending and drying and shaping another gun deck layer, which would have taken forever, I plugged the holes, sanded them down, and cut new holes. Thank you again to whoever made that comment! In the last pic, you can see the gun ports of both decks properly aligned.
  6. Glen McGuire
    😵😵😵 Uh...uh...uh... I think I'll stick with carving penguins.
  7. Glen McGuire
    Gosh no!!, I've got enough of that stuff to last for a few lifetimes of modeling! But the weave is too small for the railing on this ship. Actually, my first thought was using music wire (about 1/64" diameter). I soldered a short piece as a test. The wire is pretty good from a scale standpoint, but the pictures of the ship show an obvious wood railing. So even though it's going to be a little thick, I decided to go with wood. However, I do reserve the right to go back to wire if the wood rail doesn't look good when I attach it!
  8. Glen McGuire
    I started gluing the hull layers together (1st pic). While waiting for the glue to dry, I worked on a bunch of miscellaneous things. No real logic to the order, just different things I knew needed to be done at some point. So I will have a bunch of semi-finished piece parts lying around waiting for completion and their turn in the eventual assembly process. Cut the hidden hinge (John Foxx special) on the foremast and main mast: Carved the ship's boats and made some pieces for the wooden railing which will circle the poop deck and some other areas. The railing pieces are made from bamboo shoots run thru the drill lathe to < 1/32" (fragile): Started making the 34 cannon barrels. I'm "borrowing" livestock needles originally bought for my cows (22 gauge) and cutting them into 5mm pieces. I like them because they are hollow giving them a bit of realism even though nobody will ever see it once the ship is in the bottle.
  9. Glen McGuire
    While the layers of the hull dry under the high-tech bending jig, I began work on the oars - 14 on each side. I tried carving out tiny oars from wood but they are just too small and fragile at the size I need. So another plan B – brass eye pins. The 2 pics below illustrate the transformation of 9/16” eye pins to oars. I snip the eyes off, mark the pin part for the paddle length, put the pin in the vise, and squeeze. Voila! Instant oar. Unfortunately I have to squeeze them one at a time since the jaws on my old vise are so pitted. I drilled some holes in a small piece of basswood that’s the same thickness as my deck layers for a test look at the bank of oars. Now if I could only get @Ian_Grant to start working on a micro-servo mechanism to move them in a rowing motion…
  10. Glen McGuire
    I've got 6 pieces of varying lengths in my garage. It's amazing how many times I use them for something. I won't call them duct tape, but they come in handy for more things than you would imagine!
  11. Glen McGuire
    If anyone did this, they missed a fascinating design and build effort! Such a cool project.
  12. Glen McGuire
    If I was a design engineer, the manufacturing floor would string me up. Nothing I draw on paper ever works when I try to build it. But hey, design changes and revised cost estimates are the lifeblood of defense contractors, right? My grand build plan described above is yet another example. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about my model (hopefully I’m not the only one out here that does that) and realized my plan was not going to work. The shrouds and backstays would have to be attached inside the bottle. There are probably more skilled builders that could pull that off but I did not want to try it myself. So I came up with plan B. My puzzle will still have 4 pieces. The first 2 pieces are still the split hull, but will only be built up as far as the bottom of the main deck. The third piece will be the upper and lower quarterdecks along with the poop deck. The fourth piece will be the main deck. Attached to it will be the masts, channels, shrouds, backstays, and the quarter/poop deck assembly. So the assembly plan will be insert the split hull pieces and glue together. Next, insert the main deck assembly and glue to the hull. I’m pretty confident this will work. Now, to see if I can build this thing. The first step is making the layers for the hull. The ship’s profile has a prominent upsweep from the center to the bow and stern, more pronounced towards the stern. So I’m in the process of bending my deck layers with my heavy pieces of railroad track. Coincidentally, the curvature of the top surface of the track is very close to the upsweep I need. Next is the upper and lower quarterdecks and the poop deck. As you can see, my change in design plan caused rework on the quarterdecks where I had to fill in a cutout I'd left for the mizzen mast to slide into. The last pic has the assembly and mizzen mast dry-fitted in place.
  13. Glen McGuire
    Could not agree more!
  14. Glen McGuire
    Thank you, Benjamin! Glad to have you aboard for this! @gjdale @Ian_Grant OK, I will definitely check out Blackadder and report back!
  15. Glen McGuire
    I love the quote! But you got me again on "Blackadder". Had to google that one. Now I just hope I don't end up looking like Prince Regent on this project, who apparently was a "fop and idiot" from what I just read. 😃
  16. Glen McGuire
    Hope you are doing ok, Mark. Looking forward to seeing the next steps on this beauty!
  17. Glen McGuire
    Oh wouldn't that be nice, Mark! But I reckon that would be cheating too. It'd be like planking a regular ship model with a can of spray-on planking!
  18. Glen McGuire
    With the treasure chest done, it's time to start building the ship. However, It’s taken me a while to figure out how to build this ship the way I want it to look and get it inside the bottle. There are 2 main challenges. First are the oars. They add considerable width to the overall profile so there’s no way to fit a solid piece hull with extended oars thru the bottle opening. So that's going to necessitate a split hull. I did my first split hull with the Zheng He treasure ship on my last build and that went ok. Hopefully I’ll have the same luck here. The second challenge is the height of the rear portion of the ship. The quarter deck and poop deck are very tall. At the scale I’m using, the height from waterline (the bottom of my hull) to the top rail is 1”. My bottle opening is 13/16” so that’s a problem. I could shorten the poop deck and make the whole stern area much shorter so it fits. But to me, a tall poop deck is an iconic look for an old pirate ship. So I need to make it work. Here’s the plan I came up with which involves 2 things I have not tried before. WOOHOO! First, I’m going to build the hull and quarter/poop deck as 2 separate pieces - actually 3 since the hull will be split. Second, I’m going to cut out a large portion of the deck that contains the mast holes. The deck cutout will be inserted at the end. So all in all I will have 4 pieces for assembly inside the bottle. The assembly inside the bottle will have 3 main steps: Insert the split hull pieces into the bottle and glue them together (step 1). Insert and attach the quarter/poop deck piece (step 2). Insert and attach the deck cutout containing the deck fittings, folded masts, and sails (step 3). Below is my pencil sketch of the idea. Simple, right? What could possibly go wrong?
  19. Glen McGuire
    On to the rivets. I tried rusty nail heads as mentioned above but they just didn’t look right. Too flat. Most images of classic treasure chests I found had rivets with rounded heads. So I started digging around for ideas and decided brass upholstery tacks were the answer. I picked up 2 packs of 25 off Amazon for about $7 total. After cutting the pointy part off at the base of the tacks, I thought they looked too rounded (come one, make up your mind!!). So I flattened them just a bit with a hammer. Now, how to age/rust them to match the straps. Hmmm. Here’s where I went back to @gjdale's Foss' Landing build log and reread his well-written instructions on using chalk and alcohol to weather wood strips. Even though I needed to age brass instead of wood, I thought his idea of chalk dust might work for me. But instead of chalk dust, I decided to make actual rust dust from the same gutter pieces I used for the straps. Grant made a great point that weathering is as much about the texture as it is the color. My thought was that the rust dust would give me the both the color and texture I wanted. So I used a putty knife and scraped a bunch of rust chips into a bowl. Then I took a hammer and pounded it into a fairly fine powder. To affix the rust power to the tack heads, I tried CA glue, white glue, and epoxy. None of them worked very well. Then I got the idea of painting the heads and sprinkling the dust on while the paint was still wet. I mixed a couple of Testors enamel colors (rust and flat black) to create a rust color that pretty well matched my rust dust. I wanted a color that blended with the rust dust in case any of it showed thru. Then I sprinkled the rust dust, waited for it to dry, then sprayed it with clear coat to seal and lock everything in place. Here's the chest with all the rivets attached and set in some sand to get a preliminary look. I'll probably go with a more whitish sand for contrast in the final setup.
  20. Glen McGuire
    Seriously? OMG. Now you know who not to ask for any help on this project.
  21. Glen McGuire
    Mini slaves are probably out of my league, but what about a figurehead for the final boat?
  22. Glen McGuire
    That is beyond cool, Ian! Looking forward to seeing you mold a ship around it. Will you build the ship next or add the banks of oars on the other side first?
  23. Glen McGuire
    Thanks, Ian. Those are 1 inch increments on the cutting sheet so the chest is 12" x 7". Probably 7" tall depending on how high I open the lid when it's done. The bottle I will be using is 9" by 3.5" so it will fill up a good portion of the chest's inside area. Thanks, Grant. Today I've been testing a variation of your chalk process to age (rust) my rivets and hinges. My preliminary results look pretty good so I think it's going to work out. Final results on the next post!
  24. Glen McGuire
    Fastening all of the straps and pieces onto the wood was more time consuming that I thought it would be. I should realize by now that nothing is gonna fit the way I think it should and half of the things I build in advance will require rework. One of these days maybe I'll spend more time in the design phase and reduce my rework time. But probably not since impatience always gets the best of me. The side handles are cut away since they will look partially submerged in the sand once the base is finalized. I am happy with the aged look of the chest so far. Now I'm working on the rivets and the 2 hinges that will go on the back of the chest.
  25. Glen McGuire
    Love the lighting at the top of the grand staircase and the stacked firewood! Splendid detail, John!

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