Glen McGuire
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Everything posted by Glen McGuire
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And here's where I discovered a screw-up. When I insert the mast thru the lashing loops, there needs to be some wiggle room because the sails have to be able to rotate, scrunch up, and slide up and down the mast a bit during the final assembly inside the bottle. In the first pic, you can see that the upper battens are loose where the mast tapers. Unfortunately, the lower loops were too tight and were getting hung up on the hinge. The lashing is tied with a knot behind the batten and is glued to the sail. So there's no way to rethread it. Also, I did not want to narrow the mast further and potentially weaken it. And I certainly did not want to start over. UGH!!! So after pacing around the house muttering about my lack of forethought, intelligence, and a few other things, I decided to see if I could add the needed wiggle room by carving out some of the batten. I grabbed my dremel and a small reamer bit and ever so carefully routed out a groove in the lower battens. I had to do the for all 6 of the masts that are hinged. Somehow I managed to do it without snagging the thread and ripping the whole thing to pieces! Hugh sigh of relief.
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It was a sweatfest in the central Texas shipyard this week as my house AC went out last Sunday and I was not able to get it replaced till Saturday. Regardless, I was still able to get the battens made and complete the final assembly of the 9 sails. Here's the assembly line process: 1. For the battens I'm using these long, thin bamboo rods I scrounged from an old 70s-ish sliding door curtain. I cut them into 2" long pieces and drill 2 #80 holes in the middle for the lashing that will secure the sail to the mast. I need 60 of them. 2. Each rod is 3/32" in diameter. I put them on the drill lathe and sand down to 1/32" 3. Next is painting and then going back thru the tiny lashing holes with the #80 drill bit to open the holes back up. 4. Next is threading 4" pieces of fly tying thread (136D 6/0W) thru the lashing holes and then tying off a small loop with a knot. 5. Then I clip the fat ends off and glue the battens to the sails. After all the battens are glued in place, I go back and clip the ends to their proper length so they extend just past the edge of the sail.
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Excellent work so far! You have chosen a very interesting subject! I will follow your build as I work on my own junk ship project (see link below)! And thank goodness for Google translate. 😃
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Hopefully Grant has way more sense than me!! And hopefully he won't keep us in suspense for too much longer!
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Sail making assembly line. As with the other ships, the sail material is red shirt cloth from Joana Fabrics with Gutermann silk thread glued to the edges for the bolt ropes.
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Not sure about that, Roger. I have not come across any mention of scurvy prevention in my research for this. But I have read where the ancient Chinese were the first to construct ships with double hulls divided into separate watertight compartments which saved the ships from some battle damage and also allowed storage of fresh water for passengers and animals and tanks for keeping fish catches fresh. They also were the first to install a sternpost rudder attached to the outside of the ship that could be raised or lowered depending on how close to shore they wanted to get.
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I think interesting and strangely weird is a good description of this whole project! As I said before, I told my son he is no longer allowed to suggest SIB subjects. He replied that all he did was suggest I do a junk ship - I'm the one that turned his idea into something ridiculous. Fair point!
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Hey Mark - I would not put it past those rascally cows to do something like that, but the corn field is indeed on the forecastle where it belongs. The bow on the ship is so wide and so squared off that it looks more like a stern than a bow. It has confused me more often than I care to admit!
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Epic!!! Keep your expectations low, Ian. Very, very low! I got a feeling they will be crude at best.
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Not so fast on the sails. After finishing the ladders, I thought the window screen material might work well for the fencing around the cattle pens. So I decided to work on those. The Model Shipyard version has several pens for a variety of animals, but I'm going with just two for my herd of longhorns. The Model Shipyard version also shows a parcel of row crops being tended to on the forecastle. For that, I decided a piece of green microfiber cloth that I'd been using to clean computer/phone screens might work. I liked the color and texture of the microfiber, so it sacrificed a small piece of its corner for my treasure ship's row crops. The crops are probably a bit tall, but let's just say it's corn ready for harvest! So here's the hull with masts, ladders, cattle pens, and corn field dry-fitted. Now, it's on to the sails!
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Majestic is the first word that popped into my mind seeing all 3 masts in place. Impressive work, Rob.
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Well, the wire mesh idea for ladders was a fail. The weave of the mesh I ordered was too large - too much space between each square. I still tried cutting it into individual strips, to see how workable it was, but it promptly unraveled. I might try brushing some epoxy on it and then cutting again to see if it will work for a future build, but it's not going to work for this project. In the meantime, a neighbor was tossing out an old window screen and I thought, "hey, wait just a dang minute..." I grabbed it and cut a big swath out of the middle. The weave was still too large, but I came up with another idea. The screen was thin and flat, so I tried folding it over, staggering the squares, and gluing it to itself (which basically cut the size of the weave in half). I think it came out ok! Now, on to the sails...
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I also need to give huge credit to @John Fox III and the detailed pictures from his Endurance ex-Polaris (in a light bulb) build log on how to construct a hidden hinge on the mast. If you had told me when I started these SIBs that I would be able to do something like that, I would have said you were off your rocker. But thanks to his step-by-step pics, I was actually able to make some reasonable facsimiles of his exacting work. They look sooooo much better than what I was doing before. I gotta say, that's one of the best things about this forum - the ability to learn so many different things from so many true craftsmen.
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I got the hull painted, completed construction of the 9 masts, and dry-fitted them into the hull. The 2 pieces of the hull are held together by a small rubber band.
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Great subject and I will follow along with interest! Also, I am horribly jealous of how well organized your workspace is! Quite impressive. Somehow mine gets hit by a tornado every time I leave and come back to it. Not sure how that happens.
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Thanks Grant and Keith regarding the ladder idea. Keith, you say a step ahead but I'm shaking my head saying, "why didn't I think of that sooner?" Like two builds ago on the Aurora when I struggled with the railings and never came up with a great answer. Ugh! Gotta get my brain in gear! I appreciate your optimism, Pat. I'll be on pins and needles and tweezers all the way up until every ship is fully assembled and afloat inside the bottle. But at least for the next week or two I can relax since I'll be doing things I know how to do - painting the hull and making the sails/masts.
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Thanks, Keith. BTW, I was thinking about all the teeny ladders I need to build for the quarterdeck and forecastle and a thought popped into my head. I remembered that fine stainless steel mesh you found on eBay that I used for hammock netting on the Independence. It occurred to me if I had a larger weave of that same stuff, I might be able to cut ladders out of it. That would be much easier than piecing together music wire and copper wire like I did for the 2nd boat here. So I found a batch on eBay that looks like it might work and ordered it. For future builds, it also might work for rails at this scale.
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I did some tests and I am fairly confident my glue plan for the main treasure ship will work. So I moved forward with the hull build. This was an interesting exercise and quite different from my previous builds. Part of it was because of the split hull, but mainly it was because the quarterdeck and forecastle are not solid pieces. They are separate decks with open ends as you can see in the first pic. So that was what I attempted to replicate. The series of pics illustrates the build process. The last pic shows the 2 halves of the hull inside the middle bulb where I pressed them together. Each piece has to be pushed thru the bottle neck with a bit of force so I am confident they are as large as they could possibly be (which was my goal).
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That is a beautiful "scrap" of wood!! And a very elegant presentation. Congratulations on a superb build, Grant!!!
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