BETAQDAVE

Today I did some touch-up work on the mailbox to finally get the project completed! Here are a few pictures of the completed mailbox below. It had taken quite some time to get both my assistant and I to coordinate our the time to do it. Between the crappy weather and our schedules, nothing ever seemed to work out. Then on Saturday we were both available right around noon and although it was cold out we thought we could work with the temperature. Well, as we were taking the base materials and the needed tools out to the mailbox, it started to sprinkle. A few minutes later the wind gusts really picked up. A few more minutes later the rain changed to huge snow flakes and ice pellets. (My wife was watching from the living room at that time and took a photo of it as she thought it looked like we were having a regular blizzard! I posted her photo on page 104 of the topic: Weather Report-post your significant weather-past or present.) Normally a little snow wouldn't be as bad as rain because at least you would be drier, but it was snowing and blowing so hard that we could hardly see what we were doing and we were so covered with a heavy layer of snow we were actually getting soaked! Regardless of these conditions, we stubbornly continued the work until we finished the installation at last.

Here is a photo of a full size mast head truck. Here is a photo of a flag truck from one of Doris's card models.

I would have to agree on that. All of my accessories like the drill press and router attachments use the corded versions as the chord isn't such a hassle, but for everything else, the 8050 is the way to go for me. (Chords and wheelchairs don't go well together!) Also, I remember all of those Timex commercials on our Black and White TV! Makes you feel old doesn't it?

Aside from the superb precision of your wood joinery and components (more like a fine piece of furniture), I find the fact that your rigging here is so well done that it is worth a separate mention of note. Your lines are more like what one would expect to see in full sized rope as they have an incredibly realistic drape to them, as if they have real heft to them rather than looking like the fine thread found in most models that have essentially no real weight to them! If one didn't know that this was just a model, you could almost swear that this is a photo of a full size replica!

I scraped down the decks, put a light coat of Minwax light oak finish on it, let it dry briefly, and ran a rag over to remove the excess stain. After letting it dry, I put 2 coats of polyurethane over it while lightly sanding between coats with 400 wet/dry sandpaper. As you can see, the treenail and caulk impressions left showing provided a nice bit of detail even though it’s probably a bit over scale. Here is a photo of the deck with its finish applied. Almost forgot to duplicate the fore deck. Using rubber cement, the plastic deck was glued down to a section of wood decking, carefully lining up the deck seams with the plastic pattern. I shaped the deck section with my belt sander using the same method that I used to make the main deck. The center notch for the bowsprit was carefully cut out by hand with a thin fine toothed backsaw and finished off with a fine file and sandpaper while still glued to the plastic pattern. Very carefully, the pattern was peeled away (at this point it was very fragile) and the bottom side of the decks surface was filed to match the bevel of the bowsprit. Treenail impressions were made and the deck was finished as shown here to match the main deck. Now that the hatch and mast partner beams were done and clamped in place, I used plastic cement straight out of the tube, applied it to the keel seem, and set it aside to dry overnight. Taking the deck pattern in hand, the remaining beams were located, numbered and drawn in place perpendicular to the center line. Using my rubber cement again, the remaining beam blanks were glued in place on the deck pattern, numbered and set aside to dry. Once dry, the pattern was flipped over. Now the projections were marked on the beams which gave me the proper curve going into the hull sides. By drawing a line inside and parallel to this marked line (to allow for the ledger thickness), the length of the beams at the top edge of the ledger could be followed. However, with the varying slope of the deck sides to be accounted for, both ends of each beam had to be filed to match. (The cuts were basically a curved compound angle.) A very tedious business this! (This was especially true at the three beams at the bow.) Every beam was different and you had to go at it carefully or you could take off too much. After a lot of time trimming to fit, the beam ends were then located with the dividers and marked on the ledgers. Now some real fun began. As clamping the beams in place was not feasible, each beam had to be held in place with a locking tweezers while applying some thin CA. (At times I thought that I could really have used another pair of hands!) While waiting for the glue to take hold was in reality just a few seconds, it seemed to take forever trying to hold the beam steady. Most of the ships main deck frames have now been installed, but I am unsure at this point about having the main hatch left open or not. I am also unsure about leaving the transom as is or removing it and replacing it with wood as you can see here that the plastic seam is a poorly matched fit. That is why the final three deck beams haven't been installed yet, as I need to leave a little access space to get the lower deck slipped into place and replacing the transom.

My shop is located below our sun room that has a sunken hot tub. (Here are two shots of the area from my blueprints.) Originally that area was designed as a slab on grade with frost footings and compacted fill. Due to grade changes, the frost walls became full height walls. After the foundation was done and waterproofed, I found that it would be a cheaper option to put a wood framed floor above and a basement floor slab below than to haul in and compact that much fill, plus it would just make that much more usable space in the basement. So I decided to have the builder cut an opening through the separating foundation wall for access to that area. Eventually, after having used the hot tub regularly for many years, it developed a lot of problems leaking from inaccessible (short of pulling out the tub) areas so we decided to just drain it. (As it turned out I wouldn’t be able to get in and out of it any more anyway.) So I thought that the area would be a perfect area to set up my model shop as it had its own power sub-panel, basement floor drain, and with the addition of a solid core wood door and a vent fan to the outside, it could be separated from the rest of the basement. (Just trying to keep saw dust and flammable vapors away from the furnace.) It was also a better alternative than continuing to use my unheated garage shop area, considering our WI winters. But then, right in the middle of all my remodeling, I found myself confined to a wheelchair, which kind of made finishing the rest of the room just a bit more challenging. If not for my stand-up frame shown here and a helpful neighbor it couldn’t have been done! I also ended up having to modify all of my stationary power tools so that I could still use them. Perhaps reading this posting may give other people with disabilities some ideas on how to make the best of it. I installed additional outlets and ceiling lights. I also had a white finish acoustic ceiling installed by a friend to help brighten up the room. Almost all of my equipment was made to be mobile on casters to make it easier to move around. (I no longer have the strength I used to have) Running my power tools in the room still proved to be a bit too loud, so I tacked up some cork bulletin board panels over the black tar waterproofed concrete walls with a few tap-con fasteners and fit them around the electrical conduit, which had the added benefit of lighting up the room some more. (Adding several years’ worth of nautical calendar photos to the cork panels didn’t hurt either.) Here is the entrance to the band saw and drill press area (approx. 7 ft. x 11ft.) of the shop below the sunken hot tub above. My Dads old Craftsman band saw needed a much lower base, so I removed the metal stand and made a custom roll-around cabinet with some ¾” birch plywood, ¼” hardboard, 2x4’s, 2 1/2” locking casters, an old piece of countertop, and some recycled plastic drawers. I designed it similar to my other bases but mounted the motor on a hinged shelf. (The motor projects into a gap in the stud wall) Beyond the band saw is a Ryobi drill press mounted to a similar base but I used some cardboard box bottoms from quite a few orders of premium pears for the drawers instead. Here is the reused old band saw stand on its roll-around base with a heavy generic disc/belt sander mounted on it. (I can use it in the garage for the real heavy sanding jobs where I can be wheel it outside if necessary.) This is the entrance to the main part of the shop, (approx. 11 ft. x 15 ft.) where I seem to be hard at work. (Or play?) Here is a small generic belt/disc sander and a MicroLux table saw mounted on another one of my custom wheeled benches. I have a small (but quiet) shop vac next to a converted roll around kitchen cart that I used a recycled heavy piece of solid laminate for the top. It has a Craftsman scroll saw bolted down on one end (It’s at a perfect viewing height for me in the chair.) and a couple of movable cutting/sanding jigs that mount on some threaded inserts. This is the rest of the kitchen cart with all of my Dremel tools including a drill press with a Proxxon XY table. Next to that is a roll around drawer cabinet re-purposed for misc. supplies and hand tools (Formerly a waxing station reclaimed from my wife’s closed hair salon minus A LOT of scraped off wax!) with a small reused plastic drawer cabinet and a weather radio on top. (Also from her shop) Next is a modified roll-around retail sales case for basswood storage. (I picked it up at hobby shop closing and trimmed 18” off the bottom for easier access from my wheelchair.) This is the soldering station end of a custom designed heavy duty roll around workbench I built to allow my wheelchair to roll under. By using the top row of wood screws on the face of the bench, that allows me to temporarily mount some interchangeable plywood base-plate mounted tools including a small metal vice (that is shown mounted here), an anvil, and several bending jigs. A shelf for my I-pod and Bosepowered speaker is mounted above. This shows the rest of the heavy duty bench with a portable Sjobergs wood vice (several threaded insert mountings allow various different placements) and a portable desk lamp. (With several pre-drilled mounting holes also.) Next to that, I have some general storage made from metal shelf supports set on the basement floor and bolted to the foundation wall with shelving made from some salvaged 1 3/8” hollow core bi-fold door slabs. (All of my basement shelving is made with these slabs. They are light weight but are still very sturdy and resist sagging quite well. The rest of my general storage including an old steel hinged auto parts wall cabinet salvaged from a closed gas station and several plastic drawer cabinets. (From my wife’s shop of course.) This is my primary modeling table. (It’s a very sturdy recycled roll-around computer station with a shelf and a desk lamp that I added to the top.) I added a homemade plan holder, a power strip, and two drawers made from some extra roll out trays from our pantry cabinet added below. Beyond the modeling table I have a roll-around steel tool stand with a fan for hot days and an electric heater for the cold ones. Also next to that on the floor I have a dehumidifier and my old stereo cabinet with a glass door for reference materials below. It has a brush cleaning station and radio/disc player mounted above on a sink cut-out from an old kitchen countertop. (All of that stuff on that dividing stud wall behind everything is all of the equipment for the hot tub above.) Just outside of the shop is a computer dedicated to modeling only. It’s not connected to the internet at all, so no crashes for my info. (It’s also safe from all of my modeling dust.) Besides the basement shop, I still had the full size equipment in the garage that now also needed customized bases. Everything was too high for someone in a wheelchair to adjust, operate safely or maintain. My Grandfather left my Dad his old Craftsman cast iron top table saw and Dad built a two wheeled semi-mobile dust catching base for it. When that saw was passed on to me I originally just remounted it on a fully adjustable four wheeled roll-around base, but now being in a wheelchair, the table top was right at my eye level. Not the safest situation to say the least! So now I unassembled the base and cut the height down about 18” while still retaining the dust drawer below. Now it’s not ideal, but definitely more usable and safer. Now I can still cut my own planks. Also handed down from my Grandfather is this very heavy duty Walker Turner ½” bench top drill press. For this tool I took two old reclaimed kitchen cabinets, cut 18” off the tops, remounted the drawers for drill accessories, cut the doors down to fit, added a couple sections of solid countertops, and placed them about 12” from each other. I mounted another section of that solid countertop between them to lower the drill enough to bring the drill controls within my reach. The biggest shortcoming of the drill press was that the table had no lift mechanism and as the table was very heavy it was too tough for me to lift it from my current position. Other than that, its large capacity still comes in quite handy at times! The last tool, and probably the most used, is my Dads old Power-Kraft radial arm saw that he mail ordered from Montgomery Wardsback in about 1960. (Except for the motor, it came totally unassembled in a couple of wood crates.) This included a heavy gauge steel base that I had previously put a wheeled base on, but once again this saw was too high for me. After a lot of work with just a hacksaw, I managed to shorten the legs, enclose the space below, add a shelf, and reassemble on the mobile base. The power switch was bad and stuck in the on position. The replacement switch was no longer available, so I mounted a power strip to plug it into and use that to turn it on and off. I had to carefully measure the height from the floor to the bottom of the radial saw table top to allow the table saw to nest under it and save some room in the garage. (For the cars, since that’s what a garage is really for, right?) As you may have guessed by now, I am one of those people who really believe in recycling. (We really have become a “throw-away society” haven’t we?) If I can modify or fix something to suit my use, why spend money to buy it new. (Especially since a lot of the “new and improved” versions of that equipment are probably of poorer quality anyway.) Being in a wheelchair now, finding new tools that would work for me now would probably be both hard to find, and a lot more expensive anyway. Personally, I have found out the hard way that it seems that if someone is to be handicapped they should first be rich! It seems that every piece of handicap aid equipment that you need starts out at about three grand. My current manual wheelchair that I’ve had for about ten years now, for example, ran about $3,400. Eventually I’ll be looking at some kind of power chair that comes in at two or three times that, not to mention some kind of conversion vehicle to accommodate it! But, all things considered, I still feel more fortunate than most of the other people like me with muscular dystrophy. I just remind myself of the old saying “things may look bad now but then things could always be worse”, so just enjoy what you do have! The posting above was originally shown in: So where do you do yours then (model making that is) There are many replies there which would probably also fit in with this posting.

Try using rubber cement. I have that micro-mark sander and use the cement with it alot as it has good adhesion and yet is easily removed for changing grits. I find that it also works great for gluing paper patterns to wood, plastic or metal for shaping as any residue left over is easily rubbed off with your fingers.

Is that just 40 years of dust, or was something living in it? That's one real slick clean-up job!

Yes, this would be a much easier method of eliminating the plastic deck seams and giving a much more realistic wooden deck complete with the difficult nibbing into the waterways. Believe me, I have done it twice for this model and it was not an easy job to substitute a wooden deck for the plastic one! An excellent reference booklet for making this model is How To Build Plastic Ship Models by Les Wilkins as seen below. He has one chapter that I referred to often, showing how a student of his converted the Constitution into the President from your kit. There are quite a few photos and diagrams showing a lot of details and techniques. As a mater of fact, several of his completed models are on display at the Manitowoc Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, Wisconsin that I have seen myself. I found the booklet a valuable guide.

Sounds like quite a large project at 42 inches long. I assume you have a very large shelf available to display it when you finish it. By the way, does the kit come with the 64 lifeboats that the ship was designed to carry, or just the 14 lifeboats, 2 cutters, and 4 collapsible rafts that were on board for the disaster?

The following post covers three days of work. Wednesday, I went out to the temporary mailbox and removed the wood facing from the metal door so I could install it on the new one. Unfortunately, this left my temporary box without a handle. I thought that the mailman might be somewhat upset with that as I still had more work to do before putting the new mailbox out. I dug up an old cabinet door pull from my garage, and using a small block of plywood for backing, screwed the pull onto the temporary box. It’s quite a homely sight I know, but good enough for now. The metal latch handle was removed from the new metal box door and I drilled four holes for mounting the wood facing. Here are photos of the front and back of the removed wood facing for the metal mailbox door. The facing was clamped to the door and the four new mounting holes were marked on the back side of the facing. I also marked two additional holes for mounting the door latch. Just to be sure that I didn’t drill right thru the facing; I took the door to my drill press where I could use its depth stop, and drilled the six holes for the 3/4" pan head sheet metal screws. The facing was given two coats of stain, inside and out, and screwed together. Here is the mailbox shown below at this point. On Saturday I re-bored the hole thru the post for a new 3/8” lag screw, slipped the cross beam into place and tapped the end of the lag screw to mark the location of the hole in the cross beam. The joint was then unassembled and a long 5/16” drill was used to bore the hole for the 8” long lag screw into the end of the cross beam. Reassembling the joint once again, the lag screw was installed with a washer and drawn up tight as shown here. Flipping the post up, here is the post and cross beam assembly. A ¾” wood plug was cut and driven into the post (Not glued, just in case.) to cover the lag screw. The post/cross beam joint was planed down flush and a pilot hole was drilled at an angle into both sides of the cross beam into the support knee for some 3” square drive screws. I counter bored holes for some dowel plugs, drove the screws home, installed the plugs, and cut off flush as shown here. To make the trim base to cover the half lap joint, I ripped down some 1 ¾” thick rough red cedar into four 5 ¾” wide slabs about 12” long. I beveled one end of each piece at 30 degrees for the top ends. I also beveled the left corner of the tops of each one to allow the bevel to turn the corner when assembled. All of these pieces were given two coats of stain over the entire piece as shown below. I clamped the four pieces around a scrap piece of post to check the fit and drill two 1/8” pilot holes on the left edge of each one and slightly into the mating edge. Taking the each piece to my drill press, I finished drilling the pilot holes into the mating edges for 3” square drive screws. I enlarged the pilot holes in the faces slightly to make clearance holes for the screws. I used a ½” spade bit to make the holes large enough to install some dowel plugs into the faces to cover the screws later. Two pairs of base trim were then screwed together and had the plugs driven in and trimmed as shown here. Now with screws set into the remaining holes and left slightly protruding to act as locating pins, the assembly can be set around the bottom of the post, slid into place, screwed together, have the plugs installed, and the stain touched up. I plan to set another screw thru the base into the post to tie it together. The base will appear as shown below when completed. After much fun by me and a neighbors’ son on Sunday removing the temporary post and enlarging the hole for the new one, we managed to get most of it installed. My helper had to leave for his to return to classes at UW Whitewater, but he had done most of the heavy work putting it in, so I thought I could handle the rest myself. I set the base for the box plate with the heavy screws onto the cross beam. Then I set the box onto the base and had to screw the box down onto it. Unfortunately, my power driver couldn’t fit inside the box, so I had to try screwing it down by hand with this tool. The ones on the left side went in fairly easily, even though I was forced to reach in from the curb which was as close as I could get to it in my wheelchair. However, doing the ones on the right side required me to do it left handed. It took quite a while with much frustration (not to mention some colorful language) to get the front screw down! The screw in the back corner is beyond me, so I have to wait for my helper to return, as he is a lefty and can reach a lot farther. The base will also have to wait as I won’t be able to even come close to reaching down far enough to drive the screws! So, for now this photo shown below is as far as I can go right now until my assistant comes home for the weekend in two weeks.

I finally got back to the project as working with all the large and heavy timbers was starting to take a bit of a physical toll on me. I find that when doing heavier work, I am unaware of the strain at the time, but pay for it a day or two after. Having to use my upper body so much, makes transferring in and out of my chair just that much more of a strain. Oh well, so much for excuses, back to the project. The half lap joint to the treated 4x6 was reinforced with four 4” long 5/16” carriage bolts. The fact that the width of the two pieces to be joined didn’t match forced me to lay them both flat on one side on my radial arm saw table and clamp them together. I just left the difference go on the top as the joint would be hidden later anyway. I bored the holes in the pattern shown below to make the correct alignment easier to remember when put back together later. I bored 13/32” bolt clearance holes thru one piece and a bit into the other. (I didn’t have bits long enough to go thru both at once.) Once unclamped, I finished the boring the holes thru the other piece. Both pieces were then counter bored with a ½” spade bit. The 4x6 was bored just deep enough for the bolt head to fit flush and the post was bored deep enough to allow the washer and nut to also fit flush. Having finished machining the 4x6, it was given two coats of stain, as although not visible when done, it had been cut and thus needed a sealant below grade. The bored holes were also sealed with stain. That’s enough for one evenings work, be back soon.

A simplified version to be sure, but something that young children would really be proud of when they are are done. A very good subject mater to pique their interest.

I just came across your posting #378. That's a very precise technique Amalio, for doing essentially perfectly fitting joints! As they say: "A picture is worth a thousand words." Your pictorial method of showing your method is just a perfect example of that saying. "It should be in a how-to book for modelers.

First things first, I found out that I forgot about filling four holes on the front side of the post as I was finishing up last night. (I guess one shouldn’t write up your post before you finish what you’re doing!) Unfortunately, I had already used up all of my filler so I had to use a different method of filling these additional holes. I reached into the dust bin in my table saw and got a good handful of sawdust. I mixed this with some wood glue in a small jar and forced this mix into the holes until they were overfull and spread some more of it around the holes. I checked again to make sure I hadn’t missed any other holes to fill and finally set everything aside to dry overnight. Not a lot of time available today, but made some progress anyway. This morning I scraped away most of the excess filler on the back side of the post and then took my stiff back saw to retexture the surface as I did for the cross beam timber. (It seems odd to be adding texture, rather than making it smooth.) For the holes on the front side I just went right to texturing with the saw and there was no noticeable difference in the methods, so I was satisfied. Here are views of both. I put a second coat of stain on the cross beam timber and the first coat on the base for the box, the post and the pin for the flag. (That’s that little item on the base.) I have just enough time to log this into my post. (I checked just to be sure that I didn’t miss something else before I posted!)

I thought I had this posting thing down pat, but try as I may I can't seem to delete the last two extra photos! I can't seem to figure out why they added themselves to the end of the post in the first place.

I made a little more progress yesterday. I cut a piece of 1 ¾” rough cedar to size for a mounting base for the mailbox to attach to the cross beam timber. Looking into the metal box you can see here that it has several prepunched holes for doing just that. By setting the mailbox on the base, I simply took a marking pen to transfer those hole locations to the base. I drilled four of those marked holes in the base for some #8 1-1/2” wood screws to mount the box. I found some heavy three inch wood screws in my extensive recycled hardware bins and drilled and countersunk holes for them all the way thru the base. I aligned the base with the front edge of the cross beam timber and tapped the screws to locate them into the timber. Removing the base, I finished drilling for the long screws. The post was then mounted in my end vise and I flattened the back side flush with a plane for an even surface. All of the split and screw holes were then filled in with some all-purpose water putty (Shown below.) and set aside to cure overnight. That covers yesterday’s labor. I'll see how far I get today, as once again it's pouring rain outside and not much to do out there otherwise. We have been averaging around two inches a day since our Aug. 20 deluge of 14". If this mailbox ever gets finished, I hope it stops raining long enough to get this thing back in the ground.

While waiting for our elevator to be replaced, I decided to take on a small project that I have been planning for quite some time now. It has the advantage of only needing the equipment in the garage shop to do most of the work. (The less we use the elevator right now, the better.) Here is a photo of the mailbox before I pulled it out of the ground to start what I thought would be simple project to make some minor repairs and staining it to match the house. Pulling the post out, I discovered that the full 4” white cedar timber had been reduced below grade to a mere 1 ¾” thickness by about 30 years of rot. As you will soon see this turned into a much more extensive operation than I thought! Here are two photos of the old cross beam. You can really see by the following close-up that the rot wasn’t just confined to the timber underground. Finding full 4” dimension timber also proved to be a very difficult to find item and way more expensive than my budget could accommodate. Therefore I took some reclaimed 5/4 x 6 red cedar decking and ripped it down to 4” wide and screwed and glued up four layers for a blank for a new cross beam timber. Taking this blank to my band saw I cut the curved front end. Then when taking measurements for fitting the angled notch at the opposite end, I noticed that the upper part of the notch in the post was also slightly rotten. Using the radial arm saw, the rot was trimmed off, which of course made some modification of the angled notch joint necessary. I adjusted the notch and a test fit proved successful. This photo shows a closer view of the new angled notch joint. With that saw I removed the bottom 27” of the post that was rotten, and then cut many 2” deep kerfs that were cleaned out with a chisel to make a 12” long 2” deep half lap joint. Here is a photo of things as they stood at this point below. I had to go down to my basement model shop band saw to cut a 39” long piece of 4 x 6 foundation treated post with a matching half lap joint to be bolted to the bottom of the timber post. (There was much fun involved in cutting that heavy and awkward 39” long piece of treated post on my band saw which has only a 14” table to balance it on, especially while sitting in my wheelchair!) An angled cut was made on the opposite side of the 4 x 6 to give me an overall thickness of 4” where the post will be above grade. This joint will eventually be hidden by some 1 ¾” cedar. Here is a photo of a test fit of the half lap joint. Here are the timber post, cross beam timber, and treated lower post at this point. Here is the cedar box cover. (Notice the rabbet at the bottom.) As you can see, the interior of the box cover was unfinished, so I decided to apply a heavy coat of stain to improve its resistant to rot. The metal mail box was then inserted into the wood cover by putting the raised rear seam and the 3/8” rough sawn plywood back into that existing rabbet inside the cover. One angled segment was rotted out, so I removed the rotten portion and fit a replacement in its place. The white cedar cover was secured with eight ¾” flat head brass wood screws through the bottom lip of the metal box into the inside face of the cover. The cover was then clamped to the box with a ratcheting cargo strap so the decorative plastic straps that are screwed to the outside could be removed to make staining easier. I also took my pneumatic brad driver and nailed each of the individual segments together with aluminum brads. Once the plastic straps were removed the covered box was stained with left over stain from our houses recent staining. (This was the whole reason for starting this simple[?] little project in the first place) The routed letters were repainted with some flat black enamel paint. Once dry, the misc. straps and flag fittings were screwed back on. Today I worked on making some more repairs to the post as it had a long split on the backside, (Visible in the before photo.) I used a few heavy pipe clamps to help close it up a little and prevent it from spreading by reinforcing the split with glue and screws. I drilled several pilot holes for some 2 ¾” cabinet mounting screws (which have very coarse aggressive threads and a large head) and countersunk the heads so that the threads gripped about 2” of the opposite side. I also forced some wood glue into the split and inserted some wood shims for a tight fit. It looks rather sloppy at this point, but just like our ship models, wood filler and primer can cover up a host of sins as it will get a heavy coat of solid color exterior stain anyway. Shifting back to the cross beam timber, my new beam needed to be roughed up a bit as all of the wood parts have a pronounced rough sawn texture. By tilting my stiff back saw at a shallow angle, (As shown in the first picture below.) I raked it diagonally back and forth across the surfaces until it looked right. Here is how it looks after the saw texturing. I put a coat of stain over this and after it dried, took some 60 grit sandpaper on a block to even out its texture. Well, I have caught up to my progress so far, so I will continue this posting after I make some more progress. (Hopefully I will finish soon.)

I also am having to deal with MD, so I know something of its effects. (my version is Beckers) I found it a little easier to deal with once I discovered the limitations that I would have to live with, and how I could try to circumvent some of them. I know that there are also several other members here that also deal with various disabilities. Once I became confined to a wheelchair, I found that with some modifications to my tools and workshop, I could still do some ship modeling. See my posting in Shore Leave under the Where do you do your modeling for some of the things I have had to change. I do feel somewhat fortunate that I live in the US, as many things that used to be impossible to do with a disability, are now possible due to the Americans With Disabilities Act. I don't know how things are over where you are, but hopefully there are some allowances made for you. Welcome to MSW

That's a very nice job of illustrating your jig and its function. Overall, I found this to be a very instructive posting that shows your method of handling a rather busy piece of rigging without getting tangled up in all of those closely spaced lines and knots. Personally I have always believed that necessity can indeed be the mother of invention or innovation. Thinking up sometimes unique solutions to these problems before hand, almost always saves time and frustration in the end. (And besides, I think that is a good share of the fun involved in modeling.) Keep it up Jesse

I would check the fit of the rest of the keel before doing any sanding as it may affect the fit of the whole keel. By the way I hear that grsjax is now looking down the barrel of a major hurricane tonight. I hope his hatches are all battened down, well stocked for the long haul, and he isn't washed out to sea! We've made several trips to Oahu, Hawaii, and Maui with friends over the years and are very aware of the fact that there are numerous steep gullies and valleys to funnel all that rain down to the sea in a hurry. Wouldn't want to get in the way! Also with a very limited number of roads around the islands coasts, if they get washed out like things did here the other day, traffic and power may come to a halt for quite a while. Lahina and that whole area around it are within easy reach of any storm surge. Good luck to you and yours grsjax!

Jesse Sounds like you are probably overjoyed about now that you are only building a brig and not a ship with three or more masts. With your limitations from your affliction do you stand to do the upper rigging or stay in your chair? In either case do you brace your elbows on some kind of support to steady your hands for doing fine work in those tight spots? If not, I would suggest checking the current posting titled working comfortably on upper rigging in the shop notes section. I know that some of the solutions are a bit pricey, but using some of your ingenuity, I would think you could come up with a solution that would work best for you. By the way, despite your difficulties, your ship is still coming along nicely! You should be proud of what you are building. I would be. Dave

I totally agree with that! It must be a real gold mine for identity thieves!

Personally, between these two, I would go with the Revell 1/96 scale Cutty Sark. For two reasons. The first and probably most important is its larger scale. Even at this scale there will be a lot of very small pieces to contend with, especially for the rigging. You will find yourself trying to reach into some very cramped areas with the rigging and the larger scale will allow you more room. The second reason would be that you will have much more of the type of detailed instructions that you are probably already familiar with. You will learn familiarity with many new terms not found in your previous kits, especially in the rigging. Once you understand the nuances of a tall ship you will be much more prepared to brave a wood version of them. With the plastic version of these ships, you are basically just making an assembly of pre-made parts. But with the wooden kits you will have to make most of these parts from raw materials before assembly and most wooden kits with their scanty instructions, will have you on your own trying to make components that you are not even familiar with yet. So, (my two cents worth) the plastic kit will make you better prepared to tackle a wooden kit, as at least you will have a working knowledge of the components that you will have to fabricate yourself and what all is entailed in making a tall ship. One other consideration would be to at least go with a much less complex and larger scale wooden ship kit as shown in Peter Ys' post above. Dave

Dan Just reviewed your build log now and discovered that you had a bout with the BIG C as John Wayne referred to it. My wife is also a cancer survivor and has been doing well for the past 15 years or so. Hope you also have a lengthy bout of good health to follow now. I was just wondering about the fact that major portions of the coach's cab appear to be some kind of plywood product. Was that just what they supplied with the kits model material, or was it in fact what the actual coach was made with? It seems that it would have been something very hard to form in such complex cured shapes, not to mention the fact that I didn't think that plywood was all that common back then. As far as your job of building the kit goes, I was impressed with how you were able to deal with the shortcomings of the kit and your improvements to it. To me, that is one of the aspects of model building that I like the most. Excellent job! Dave