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Glen McGuire

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Everything posted by Glen McGuire

  1. Glen McGuire
    If anyone did this, they missed a fascinating design and build effort! Such a cool project.
  2. 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.
  3. Glen McGuire
    Could not agree more!
  4. 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!
  5. 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. 😃
  6. Glen McGuire
    Hope you are doing ok, Mark. Looking forward to seeing the next steps on this beauty!
  7. 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!
  8. 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?
  9. 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.
  10. Glen McGuire
    Seriously? OMG. Now you know who not to ask for any help on this project.
  11. Glen McGuire
    Mini slaves are probably out of my league, but what about a figurehead for the final boat?
  12. 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?
  13. 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!
  14. 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.
  15. Glen McGuire
    Love the lighting at the top of the grand staircase and the stacked firewood! Splendid detail, John!
  16. Glen McGuire
    A masterpiece! I have truly enjoyed the journey, Rob, watching this come to life.
  17. Glen McGuire
    Yes. he is now officially a steer and doing very well. At 7 months he's as big as his momma and still growing fast! Gonna be a large one.
  18. Glen McGuire
    Speaking of cows, Keith. FYI, if you look at that picture of the old shed with the rusty awning and gutters above, the shallow bed of hay on the right is where I found Shiloh about an hour after he was born. It was a really cold day (cold for Austin anyway) and mama Dimples picked a good sheltered spot to have her baby.
  19. Glen McGuire
    Ditto what Grant said above!
  20. Glen McGuire
    Glad to have you aboard, Grant! The real celebrities never arrive at the start of the party, always fashionably late so they can make a grand entrance, right? 😃 I'll do some experimenting with your chalk and alcohol method and see what it looks like.
  21. Glen McGuire
    I cut the rusty gutter into strips and pieces using a dremel cutoff wheel. The first pic shows all the cut pieces; the 2nd is a closeup of a few; and the third is a dry-fit sneak peak at the lid. I think mother nature aged the metal to perfection for what I was looking for. I just painted the cut edges with a matching rust color and then sprayed everything with 2 layers of clear coat. I will probably use rusty nail heads to simulate the rivets since I've got an endless supply of them.
  22. Glen McGuire
    Next will be adding the metal straps and edge reinforcements that are typical for a pirate treasure chest. For those, I'm going to try cutting up a rusted gutter from that same old shed I mentioned above (2nd pic).
  23. Glen McGuire
    Thank you, Pat and Mike! I never know if these ideas are going to work or not, but thanks to the help from y'all and all the others here on MSW they have come out ok so far. I got all the pieces of the chest glued together and stained.
  24. Glen McGuire
    I used the same oak scraps for the lid and gave them the same angle grinder weathering treatment. The second pic is the makeshift gluing jig.
  25. Glen McGuire
    First up is the treasure chest. I’ll finish with the ship. A month ago I was getting rid of a cheap particle board/veneer desk when I noticed the sides of its drawers were actually made of oak. I cut them up into small planks knowing I’d eventually find a use for them. And now they will become the treasure chest for this project! Using the mockup pieces of yardstick as a template for the treasure chest sides, I cut four of the oak planks into their odd shapes to simulate the chest protruding from the sand at an off angle. Since the chest is supposedly 300+ years old, I wanted to weather the surface of the wood. For the inside of the chest, I wanted only mild surface aging since it would have been sealed shut and mostly protected from the elements. Borrowing some ideas from @gjdale and his amazing Shipyard at Foss’ Landing diorama, I used a stiff wire brush to give the wood a mildly roughened surface. For the outside surface, however, I wanted significant weathering with deep grooves. I’ve got an old shed on my ranch with wood planks that have the look I want. So I used my angle grinder with a wire brush attachment. Here’s the setup along with the before and after results.

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