Richard Dunn

C Nepean Longridge used some of the Cutty Sarks actual teak on he deck of his 1/48 model in the Greenwich museum but he overcame the large pores with beeswax being trowelled into it and polished, having seen the model it worked but the grain itself is sill far to big and the colour too dark, it looks like a permanently wet deck. I still stand by Anigre for raw teak but for polished teak I will be using American cherry stained and varnished, mainly because it has very fine grain lines which almost scale the wood, also I purchased a pack of BBQ smoking cherry chunks which have come from a much smaller tree and the grain in those is even better. By the way I pulled Indian teak of the deck of SS Te Anau in the 80,s for use on a boat I was building and it was still good....smelly but good, 10mm of all sides and good as new. you can see some of it here where we cut it from the bow. This vessel was sunk on this breakwater in 1922 so that is a testament to the wood.

Some updates to the plating and fitting of the windows and portholes. the tinn canning should be apparent as well as some weld seams visible. Note the gaps along the bottom of the Superstructure are all covered by a 6" or 4mm ' wide deck bar that is on all Superstructure parts but because its painted Buff I will pre paint those and glue later, but that will tidy up the joints to be gap free.. Below flanged bulwark stays being fitted. note the notches around weld seams are included. this areas has the weld beads done, the gap to the right is the removable windlass section, the grey part is a rubber compound over he steel which ends there. the bulwark will be cut to a nice curve and into the upstand one the plates are glued on note the holes drilled for the bars over the porthole, this was the ships prison.

I wanted to share the process for the tin-canning of the plates now that I think I have found a good result I am very happy with. After many trails and failures the result was insanely easy in the end. I want to start by saying I have done a lot of tests with Styrene, not evergreen styrene BTW but another commercial kind and glued it to ply and exposed it to some extreme temp jumps, ranging from 20 degree to 6 degree over a few months now and have had no effect, this might have something to do with small plate sizes and the seam being glued into the gaps, thereby creating an expansion joint of sorts but none the less I have had no issue and that's without paint. I did not exceed direct sun exposure time of 2 hours and not on super hot days which I would not do anyway. The biggest plate is 290mm x 65mm , most are about 200mm x 50mm just for reference. Right to the plates. Each plate is cut from my 3d model on the CNC including windows and doors, some might be hand fitted if something changed, but after it's fitted to the model I transfer framing lines to the back side of the plate, not just frames but stringers ,girders and longitudinals in general, if it shows on the ships skin, mark it on the plate. I then cover the good side with a blue protective film to keep the surface in good order until priming time. If you don't use CNC just draw the plates out on surface and trace them through to the styrene and cut them out ..5mm is still transparent enough to see through...just. I then very very lightly scrape the front edge of the plate where a weld seam will be at a 45ish degree, just enough to see a thin white line around the blue, this forms a very small groove when 2 plates are glued side by side that the ,5mm styrene rod is glued into to form the weld seam. Once this is done I lay the plate face down on a hard rubber mat and the magic happens, I roll over the lines with a Pizza cutter!!, vary the number of times from frame to frame and press hard!, sometimes I go twice, sometimes 5 times,. use a wood block to run against to keep the cutter straight and once done the plate is ready to be glued to the model with medium thick Starbond Cyano. I first expected the Pizza cutter to just create raised lines but buy having the rubber underneath it creates the exact dished profile!, The surface is near impossible to keep free of glue smear from Cyano when a little squeezes out the side but due to it being thicker we have about 1 min to quickly wipe the edge and run around the plate with a scraper to clean any small bead of squeeze out. The results speak for themselves. I shot his with garage door open so the strong backlight makes it show up but it's subtle. I should also add I tried using Techni glue to glue the Styrene which is a top notch commercial epoxy but even with keying the styrene it pulls away with a bit of effort, the Starbond Cyano however is a different story, even with no keying and gluing the glossy side it tears off in tiny chunks and will NOT come off.

My parents both worked at the Union Steam Ship company on the corner of Customhouse quay and Johnson st, mum recalls a woman rolling up the street like tumble weed,unable to stand up and dad coming down the Nauranga gorge with the torrents of water in the gutters going uphill!

No because Wahine was exempt from needing towing, she had lateral thrusters and a bow rudder to manoeuvre and did not require a tug unless the wind was extreme. The ferries even now don't need them either.

Not sure if I have posted this but this is from the Navy survey of the hull bottom.

We recently found the wind speed measurements from 8 points around the city as used in the enquiry, at the time of her being exposed to that and being pooped and subsequently broaching in 30m waves the gusts were 275kms! they were among the archives data we sorted last month

I have no idea but its in a few shots after she was in service a while not in early days though. I have a shot by Warwick Pryce I have cropped ,it's from Murrays old site but here it is in more detail

That makes perfect sense so in theory I should be able to see that on the foredeck in aerial photos.

Hopefully someone can answer this question. What is the function of this line?, it's on both sides of the ship when she is in service. It seems to be steel cable in better images. It clearly goes into the anchor recesses and I assume up the hawse.

Today I prepared the files for making all the deadlights and portholes. the window itself is cut out and must eventually fit into a precisely cut opening in the plate with no gap and no pressure needed, the window is then put into an aluminium jig and the outer frame and rigol bent into the jig and once the ends are in place it holds itself up against the outer edge of the jig, once a light application of styrene glue is applied it can be taken out of the jig, the transom of the window glued on and it can be painted ,glazed and glued into the actual plate before being glued to the model. Here are the first tests I did, 14" and 16" portholes, the deadlights frame needs to be dipped in hot water and pre bent around a former before being put into the jig as you can see here at bottom it started to fragment while being pushed into the corners. And the rough semi broken frame but the process will work, only 270 to make....... I could cast them in resin but want the advantage of a solid weld betweeen the frame and plate so by using styrene I get that. Also I have found a very very believable way to do the frame distortions and it is super easy and it looks amazing!, I will cover it soon once I get some plates on the model.

Deck installed and cleaned up ready for laying of deck around superstructure. Also the counter is finished ready for sanding and plating.

Yes but why struggle with drilling metal when is painted anyway?.. Plastic would be far easier on pin drills.

Yes they do but as I pointed out in the first post earlier, nobody does 4 ball or 3 ball with wood top rails Stanchions. and the 2 I have found are not in the right size. I have looked all day and am hoping to see if someone has a niche market making them or something like that that is not mainstream.

Thanks for the replies guys. I had searched for articles before posting but Stanchions does not find that much so thought I would ask. I think the article on Okesa might be the closest to my needs as I can find . I like the photoetch idea as well but think it's potentially too much clean-up. I am going to try the technique in the Okesa build, shame the images are not big enough to see but anyway, going to solder the rail and stanchions in a jig after making half depth slots in the stanchions and then making a jig to grind half a 1.5mm plastic ball off and another jig to cut a cross on its flat face and glue 2 of those over each joint to form the ball using these. making the half balls is really the only hard part https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002261984898.html

Does anyone know where I can buy stanchions of this type?, I have searched and searched online but not found anything suitable for this scale I need 130 of these in the dimensions of 23mm deck to rail with 3 balls bored for .5 mm wire. Main stanchions .8 mm optimally, with 1.4 mm dia balls. It seems this scenario has been completely left out of most catalogues. I am considering making these out of half round brass wire and doubling them over and pressing them between a steel press to form the balls. Anyone tried this? The height can't be altered as they carry on from Bulwarks.

Well I had to sit everything in place once I cut all but 2 frame extensions off to get a sense of the size. and weight,, BTW I can lift it with one finger.

Correct, it's quite a light weight 25gsm woven cloth so as to not add too much thickness to the hull, its planked with 2mm pine but by the time its sanded what you lose the glass puts back. This is normal for glassing practice for small boat and canoe construction, after an hour of curing for the first coat, once its soft but setup you apply another coat and screed it on with a plastic or rubber blade to "Fill_the weave" This is now done and ready for a light sand and priming with high build primer. I did not need to fair this hull and fill and sand low spots at all because the 3d model was spot on and as such so were my frames. This Easter is the horrible job of cleaning the glue out inside that squeezes out between the planks and glassing in between each frame. If anyone has any interesting tricks or gadgets for this I am all ears. I hope to have the Main Deck installed by Monday night.

And first coat of resin on, just the weave fill to go.

Ready to wet out in the morning. What are peoples thoughts on plating materials? On one hand copper or the other Styrene sheet, I am thinking styrene glued onto the hull with Cyano since its lapped buts on both inner and outer strakes. Much like the plating in RMS Titanic: A ModelMaker's Manual by Peter Davies-Garner

Bulwarks glued into hull and frame extensions starting to be cut away. Now the horrid job of cleaning up the glue from inside before glassing. which is being done to both sides of hull, hull will be plated with cooper shim

The hull is now closed in and sanded ready for glassing, that might be an Easter project I think. I thought I would put up some images of the Superstructure in its simplicity, yes this all there is to it minus skylights and hatches etc, but a far as structure goes its sooooo simple. The below shoes the deck after forming the promenade but its not fitted forwa4rd as currently the wheelhouse unit is temporarily screwed down to keep the camber. The forward section is in the foreground.

No luck with Arawa or Tainui

Yeah I expect at some point the lines plan will turn up, but a lot of this is still being sorted, I recently went in to help with some sorting a few weeks ago.

Thought I would share this image as its one of those amazing detail shots we model makers love, this is not full res but the Bulwark in the above shot can be clearly seen.