Gregory

Dave:
Thanks for your note. I am sure you have noticed there are no other ongoing Mamoli Constitution builds and only a few in the past. It would be fun and encouraging to have someone more experienced to bounce around kit ideas and questions. I am currently working on some alterations to my work bench so the ship is in dry dock for a few weeks. I will post again when I have made the changes.
 
Bruce

Starboard side wales in place a glue setting. I put a pin in all the holes that were not scuppers. I painted to bottom edge black before gluing it on so I won't have to tar and get a clean edge at the bottom - not that it being unpainted would be all that noticeable - it does still have the laser char on it.
 
I am not sure what is going to happen at the stern as the wales seem to be a bit short of covering the transom. Maybe a "fashion piece" is included with the kit or I may have to make my own.

There is an old expression about a boat being a hole in the water into which you throw money.  Unfortunately, United States is just a bigger hole to fill.
 
IMHO there are engineering, business, and legal reasons preventing her from sailing again:
 
Business:  The passenger ship business seems to be aimed at two different demographics; at one end those that want to join 4999 others aboard a floating theme park/ 24-7 floating casino and at the other end those wanting a quiet experience aboard a small ship.  United States would seem to appeal to neither of these groups.  The United States, while a big ship carried 1000-2000 passengers. Fares would, therefore, be high, so she would have to tap into the small cruise ship market.  Would ongoing demand be high enough to allow her to book profitable passenger loads?
 
Engineering:  She is a steam ship!  Nobody, operates steamships any more.  She has a 900psi US Navy plant.  The only steam plants operated today in US Navy vessels are in nuclear powered vessels; different animals.  Her boilers, if they can even be brought back to life are equipped to burn bunker c oil, a nasty pollutant that the rest of the world is trying to eliminate from their merchant marine fleets. The state of the art today in marine engineering for passenger carrying vessels seems to be an integrated system where electricity from one source is distributed to both the propulsion system and the system supplying on board hotel services. This also allows use of electric driven trainable pods to improve maneuvering.  Even if it could be brought back to life, United States’ machinery is 70 years out of date.
 
Legal:  She is an American Flagged ship.  The Jones act would require her to be manned with an expensive American crew.  She could be reflagged under a flag of convenience; Liberia, Panama, Bahamas, etc. but would she then be the United States?
 
Better for whoever owns her to admit defeat and as Bob Cleek says turn her into razor blades.
 
Roger
 
 
 
 

Hello,
the wheels. They kept me busy this week, and other things like my garden. But now they are in the raw ready. I think I must not explain the pictures

 
 
 
 and then that  So, go back to start, and try again
 
This time I made the beads before I cut the rim loose. The shipwright is pleased.
In the foreground you see some of the spokes. They are from mammoth ivory. So, if you hear nothing from me the next weeks, I'm busy or I had thrown it all away. I hope not.

 

Atlas Press Tool Company

I believe the most common species for keels were oak and elm as pine was relatively weak for large vessels.  Regardless you may find all of these are much too grainy for your model.   The below shows these species compared to a couple other choices commonly used on model ships, Alaskan cedar and Castello boxwood.   English/European box is great but costly.   Basswood and poplar is less grainy but you might find them too soft for a keel.
Allan

Nice to see this build log starting! I bought this same kit in 1985. I found the receipt in the box, which shows I paid $239.95 from Model Expo. You may prompt me to work on it again. I also purchased enough little copper plates at the time to replace all the wood ones. They have a nice natural non-shiny copper look to them after 40+ years.
Will look forward to following your build!
Dave

And still are available on eBay or from after-market manufacturers... for a price.  
 
Check out "Mr Pete 222" or "Tubal Cain" (same guy) on YouTube. He's a retired shop teacher with great instructional videos on the Atlas/Craftsman 12' lathes. Everything you even wanted to know. 
 
I believe you can look up the age of yours with the serial number on lathes.co.uk under the Craftsman entries. There were a number of refinements over the several decades that this lathe was manufactured. There are many of them floating around and so parts are readily available. They are somewhat of a cult thing now. They aren't state of the art anymore with CNC and DRO features, but they'll do anything you could possibly need to do (including milling with the milling attachment) on a medium to light duty 12" manual lathe. If you have one that hasn't been "destroyed" along the way by misuse, they are certainly worth restoring. They're worth money even if they are trashed because of the continuing market demand for parts. (Threading gear sets are still available if you are missing any. Be careful not to "crash" the gears and damage the gear teeth. The gears are made of Zamac, a relatively weak alloy and it's not difficult to break teeth if you don't know what you are doing operating the lathe. Not to scare you off, but lathes are not a machine you ever want to learn how to use by just "fiddling" with them and they can be very dangerous in the hands of an untrained operator. All the operating manuals for these lathes are available for free online. Google them up.
 
I love mine. I picked it up along with just about every possible attachment (except a taper jig, darn it... but those are still made by an aftermarket manufacturer) from a retired old school machinist's widow for a very reasonable price. 

Atlas Press Tool Company

Atlas Press Tool Company

It's a Brexit bonus  Seen a few Spanish modelling companies won't ship direct to UK, I imagine not worth the hassle now. When there's stock Cornwall Model Boats sell them and are good to deal with.
 

Everything you ever wanted to know about this (and other) lathe(s): http://www.lathes.co.uk/atlas/index.html
 
But beware, it may make you drool, when you see what kind of attachments etc. once were available.

Atlas Press Tool Company

Atlas Press Tool Company

While waiting for paint and pear wood to dry I completed assembly and outfitting of the Fore, Fore Topsail and Fore Topgallant yard arms.

And so you should -- she looks great!

I could use a million of words of admiration, but I'll just keep it at "wow, what a masterpiece !"  (for now).

Thanks for that drawing.   It's really close to what I have in mind. 

Looking at Chuck's latest Speedwell developments, I think I see parallelograms there..  
 
That's good enough for me.

Thanks Craig.  Your lines will help me refine things.  I straightened out heavier curve of the upper side panels.  They seem out of place place to me.
 
I think you are right about the columns.  I should have something showing that on the next rendition.

No actually there wasn't it is fairly soft and I just pushed it down and it held its shape. It is not particularly strong and I had to use some super glue to hold it in place in the eye splice. As I mentioned I am not sure I would recommend the method. If I was going to do it again I would probably use a harder plastic and heat or just go with brass.
 
I should also say that the pictures are not of the actual thimbles I made as they were too small to really get on camera. So I cut an example thicker slice just to document the process.

Today I thought I would talk about my workflow for copying the plans and cutting out parts.

I use an Epson V39 scanner to scan the plans, which does a good enough job for my purposes.  I scan at 600 DPI, which is possibly a bit of overkill,  but gives me some wiggle room for moving between applications and ultimately gives me a finer laser cut, which wouldn't be a problem if were using a vectorized drawing, but that is for a discussion on another day and a different project.

I Use Corel PaintShop to trace the scans, because it has a pen tool I really like .
 

I then use Adobe PhotoShop Elements to create the templates for the laser.  I could probably do all the work in Corel, but I have been using PhotoShop a lot longer, am comfortable with the interface and don't feel like trying to mess with the learning curve at this point.  I only trace 1/2 of the scan, then copy and flip it to get a symmetrical part.  I found the MS drawings to be pretty accurate with some very small but negligible symmetry issues for my purposes.  Plus, only tracing half the template saves some time.
 

The completed template.  The blue outline of the slot is and adjustment to get it to the 5/32 of my stock.  Upsizing from 1:64 to 1:48 made the slot bigger, and had to be adjusted for.
 

I drive my laser with a program called LightBurn.  It is a very powerful laser controller which gives me virtually infinite control over the power output and speed of the laser, which is essential for different materials and thicknesses.  It also traces and vectorizes my images, further reducing any jaggies that may have been part of my drawing.
 

I cut out a cardboard test part to check for fit.
 

Fit at the rabbet is particularly  important. I can make any adjustments before wasting my production material.
That's about it for workflow at this point.  I hope to make some progress on the skeleton this weekend.
 
 
 
 
 

Small update, I’ve added the upper laser cut planking panels to the model, these will be the ones used in on the final model, with a few slight modifications that I’ve overlooked but corrected on my model. To begin I placed a board across the beam to ensure the proper height of the panels and I clamped them as I went along, once I was happy with their location I ran a batten underneath both of them to ensure that the planking that will follow below will have a smooth joint and continuity with the laser cut panels, once the panels were tweaked to fit right I then glued them into place using CA.

you can see below that I made some adjustments to the aft panel so the forward one would line up with the gun ports.
You’ll also notice the grey primer, I find this necessary with MDF as it’s super porous and soaked up three coats of solvent based primer. The primer also will not swell the MDF and allows it to be sanded smooth in preparation for whichever red you choose for  your port framing.

The batten ensured that I could set them right back where they belong without losing the correct position. I kept the front one clamped in its location while I glued the stern one, this ensured that there was no lateral movement of the aft panel.

The same process was repeated for the front panel.
 
I also begin the lower wales, you’ll notice the same process where I used a batten I reference to the marks on the bulkheads “W1”. The batten goes on the lower side of the line, once the batten passes the eyeball test then it’s time to start the wales, now the wales on this model are over 1/8” thick so unfortunately they will have to be done in two pieces, the first layer I’m cutting them at .080” with a significant taper in the front to fit the rabbet and allow for another layer to go over it and fit in the rabbet as well.

I’m not really concerned with the length or butt joints of the first layer of planks as they will be covered up, just get a smooth run with tight joints.
Unfortunately I can not proceed any further until I complete the counters, I have a laser cut lower counter that I will be testing soon and from there I will plank the upper counter using the laser cut lower as a guide.


 
I will be off for a month in the Himalayas, hiking to Everest base camp and beyond, so I won’t have any updates until about June, possibly one more before I go but will see.
 
Thanks for looking in.
JJ

Log #84: The Topgallant Yard
I continue to slowly pick away at the mainmast. Things are getting really delicate now as there is so much to catch an errant hand on.
 
I have pretty much run out of 0.25mm rope and so had to order some more. As I need this for the topsail bowlines I have two wait before I can finish up the topsail yard. In the meantime I continued to work my way up and next up were the pendant for the topgallant sheets.
 
I had originally planned to use one of the kit provided thimbles, but when I put it on the model it looked completely out of scale so I decided to improvise. First I took a plastic tube I had on hand (I believe it came from a water balloon) and cut off a small piece.

Then I used a sculpting tool to press out the sides to make a thimble.

I then held these on a pin and painted them black. I cut a piece out of each to make them smaller and open on one end so they bended like a teardrop. Then I sized around them.

This was quite a fiddly process and in the end I probably should have just looked harder from some metal I could do this with, but in the end I got them to look ok. Here they are on the model.

Next up was the topgallant yard. This was straight forward with an eye splice that I served over to hold the yard. I used 0.25mm rope based on the steel table.

The line runs through a sheave in the topgallant mast  and down to the base of the mainmast. Here there was a bit of a canundrom. The kit calls for it to be attached to a 4mm double block which then is paired with a 3mm single with a hook attached to the deck (note this double plus single arrangement is also what Peterson describes). However this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me as all the other yards only have two single blocks and they are much bigger and heavier than the topgallant. Furthermore the 0.25mm line looks tiny on the 4mm block. If I had a 3mm double I probably would have used it but in the end I decided to just use two 3mm single blocks. This is also consistent with the Steel table as it only seems to list single blocks for the topgallant halliard.
 
You can see below the upper of these two blocks. As I ran out of 0.25mm rope I can’t finish the tying off of this line until I get the extra I ordered in the mail.

And here is the model in her current state. I am getting close to the end now. Just a few more lines to tie off on the mainmast and then I will be on to the bowsprit.

Those thimbles are a great hack! Well invented.