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Everything posted by BETAQDAVE
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How about this paperback book that was put out when the Constitution was celebrating her 200th anniversary from her launching in 1797. This book covers her from her design to her present state of preservation, including all the major and minor reconstructions. It includes detail drawings like this throughout. There are also several color prints of her in action including her living room sized main fighting top. At a cost of only $22 I found the 239 page book to be a very informative guide when I built the Revell version that's currently still in drydock after a fall that pretty much dismasted her when impacting the floor of my garage. I've never repaired her, but didn't have the heart to throw it out as I still may fix her up. Maybe someday.......
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Looks like a good poster for Ducks Unlimited. (A local local wildlife preservation organization.)
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What‘s that saying about the best laid plans of mice and men? Oh yeah. I decided that the next step now had to be changed from painting the copper hull to installing the wooden deck. Due to the manhandling of the hull that would be necessary while installing the decks, all of my masking now had to be removed. Oh well, better than risking damage to the paint job. The false deck needed to be installed first, but clamping the false deck down presented quite a problem since it curved front to back and side to side at the same time and the bulwarks were in the way. Because the glue needed to be spread out on all of the deck beams, by the time the glue was spread, there wouldn’t be enough time to set all the clamps before the glue set up. So, rather than trying to glue the deck directly to the beams, I ended up pinning it down. (That’s where the ends of those tooth picks used for the pegs in the last posting got to be used up.) Taking the starboard side of the false deck in hand, I lined it up with the centerline of the ship and clamped it in place. I put tic marks along the centerline to mark where the edges of the beams were located. While the starboard side was still in place, the port side was fit in place and the tic marks were transferred to that side also. I also cut small holes in the decks where the wires for the cabin lights would be located. At this time I needed to figure out how I was going to fit the finish deck in place with the hawse pipe fittings attached to the bottom side of the deck, since once the deck was attached I would no longer have access to the inside of the hull. My solution called for separating the bow ends of the false deck from the remaining deck to make things easier to handle. Once the bow ends were separated, a section of the false deck surrounding the pipes was cut free and the remaining bows false deck was cut just a bit bigger so that when the finish deck was attached it would allow some extra clearance. I fit the pipe through both the hole in the false deck bow section and the bottom of the finish deck, and glued it in place with medium CA leaving the pipe flush with the top surface of the finish deck as shown below. The false decks were removed and the tic marks were extended across the top surfaces using my thin beam metal square that I picked up from Micro-Mark. (Yes, I know their stuff is pricey, but they do carry some products that you can’t readily find anywhere else.) Starting with the port side deck, it was realigned and clamped in place. The outer edge of the deck was fitted with pairs of 1/32” thick wedges set under the plastic waterway to force it down to the perimeter ledger and the tops of the beck beams. (That’s 1/32” for the finish deck and 1/32” for the additional wood waterway with scuppers shown way back on post # 15.) In addition to the wedges, I used some small C-clamps wherever they could be set and used heavy weights to hold down the center of the deck. (These small C-clamps were rather cheaply made and turned very hard. Using this Slipstick dry lubricant on the threads helped quite a bit.) Using a 3/32”” drill bit in my battery powered General screwdriver/drill, holes were drilled through the false deck into the beams below as shown on the layout that I had just drawn on the topside of the false deck. Drilling one hole at a time, working around my clamps and weights in two rows, I used the cut off ends of those toothpicks, dipped the end in carpenters’ wood glue, and pressed them into the holes (with those D batteries again) to pin down the deck. (A-la trennels.) This section of the false deck was then set aside to cure overnight. Removing the clamps and wedges, the ends of the pins were snipped off and sanded flush. So now the starboard side of the false deck was clamped and installed similarly. So here it is with both port and starboard false decks finished. The two bow sections of the false deck were now done similarly. The false deck is now complete.
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Surprisingly enough, the elevator tech showed up on the 9th as promised. After about an hour of testing and adjusting the limit switches, it was ready to go again!!! So now I was finally able to get a few things taken care of. The launching way ramp was glued into place on the display base with the anchoring bolts tightened down to help clamp it in place. Now the braces for the ways were begun by gluing the 3/32” x 1/4” basswood vertical braces up against the timber walls with carpenters glue. (The concept was shown on a June 7, 2019 posting.) Each one needed to be a different length, so it was all “cut to fit”, no mass production here. I just held each brace momentarily in place for the glue to get tacky before setting the following one. To keep the spacing more consistent, I cut this spacing block to go between. Once all 32 vertical braces were installed, I gave them a good coating of Minwax light oak finish with a small brush. Now it was time to make the diagonal braces that were made with short pieces of 3/16” birch dowel. Unfortunately, each one of them was also a different length so more “cut to fit” was involved. These were set at an angle of roughly 45 degrees. The bottom ends were set with carpenters glue into shallow depressions drilled in the base and the top ends were also glued and partially beveled to sit flat against the vertical braces. On the top of each brace, a small depression was made with a very sharp F drafting pencil lead to represent a metal spike to secure them. (Similar to my method of showing trennels made in the decking on my June 28, 2018 log entry.) Once all these diagonal braces were installed they were also stained in place. Here are the ways shown below at this point. The bottom ends of all the diagonal braces were held in place with wooden pegs driven into the ground at an angle of roughly 45 degrees. To make the pegs I clipped the pointed ends off of some round wood tooth picks and used the remaining center portion. (The pointed ends will be used later as trennels to hold down the false deck.) One end was sanded smooth for the exposed end of the peg. Using a steel center punch, I located the hole for the peg right up against the bottom of the diagonal braces and gave it a sharp rap with my hand as shown here. Once all of the impressions for locating the pegs were made I came back with a drill bit matching the diameter of the tooth picks and drilled about a ½ “ deep hole at a 45 degree angle. I laid out the pegs at the holes with the sanded ends set near the holes to speed things up a bit and keep me from putting the wrong end in the hole. Now, production style, I installed the pegs one by one. I bottomed out the sanded end of the peg in the hole, clipped it to length, removed the peg, dipped the clipped end in carpenters glue, and pushed that end of the peg back into the hole using a D sized battery. (Using the flat end of the battery gave me more control and caused less damage to the sanded ends of the pegs than using a hammer.) I repeated this operation for all 32 pegs. Once the pegs were installed they were all stained in place. So, the launching ways as shown below are complete except for the main hull braces which won’t be installed until the hull is in mounted on the stand. There are some more details to add yet, but they can wait until later.
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I think the center of the line would be the way to go. I use a pair of drafting dividers with a center wheel so it won't loose the setting.
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Along this line of thought, I came across my pencil sketch of the Monitor and Merrimac battle in Hampton Rhodes in the civil war. It was taken from a term paper that I wrote back in High School. (Just a few years ago)
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After I left seven messages for the elevator service manager to get some service and finally an impatient call by the admiral to the head office on the 26th, I finally recieved a reply that same day. The manager said they needed to have a company meeting the next day to rearrange their scheduals due to the elevator service tech just returning from quarantine. On the 28th I called again, but they had no decision yet. This morning I was finally informed that they would come on the 9th. Like I said previously, I won't be holding my breath.
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Speaking of emotional war movies, I just saw American Sniper, a Clint Eastwood film staring Bradley Cooper. Clint has starred in or directed quite a few other good war movies like Heartbreak Ridge, Flags Of Our Fathers, and Letters From Iwo Jima in which he explores the combat of course, but also the effects on the participants themselves. But if you need a good laugh there is also Every Which Way But Loose and its followup Any Which Way You Can where he plays second banana to an Olymia beer-guzzling orangatan named Clyde.
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Sometimes it seems that there are times when everything that can go wrong does just that. With Covid-19 we started this year off with a bang, and that just keeps on going way beyond the miracle endings proclaimed by the one least qualified to know. Things just seemed to accelerate from there. They really started to go more awry last month when our clothes dryer was out of commission for a week or so. Then I went in for a little MOHS surgery with a little extra trauma for my toe just thrown in for giggles. I no sooner pretty much recovered from that, when I had to go in for Colonoscopy surgery yesterday. Now today I found out that the elevator to our basement has also just decided to go on the fritz! Luckily the admiral was here when I got in the elevator. Because, the door to the cab wouldn’t open to let me back get out. She had to use the emergency exterior key to the door to let me out. Luckily it was at the top when it happened, so we didn’t have to find some other way for me and the wheelchair to get back upstairs! I just got off the phone with the new service manager (the third one since we had it installed in Dec. 2018) to try and schedule a service call. They can’t have anyone here till later next week and that comes to the tune of $375 🤑 for the call plus labor and any parts needed. Hopefully it can be fixed quickly, easily. (And cheaply?) Someday, I may be able to get back down to the basement model shop. However, at this point I’m not going to hold my breath after the way over extended time for the original installation of the elevator. Only time will tell I guess.
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Despite my best efforts to blend that plug into the base, the wood grain didn’t match very well and as a result it was still somewhat noticeable. So I simply redrilled the holes for the mounting bolts to allow the unplugged side of the base to now become the front. Once the base was redrilled, I pieced together three sheets of 150 grit sandpaper to represent the surface of the ground around the launching ways. The joints in the sheets were placed to align with the extended timbers that will brace the hull. Once the edges of the paper were trimmed off, I held them down on the base and traced the outline on the baseboard. Since the board was already prefinished, that finish was sanded off the surface up to the traced outline of the paper to allow the carpenters wood glue to bond. A 50/50 water to glue mix was spread out with the edge of an old credit card up to the traced outline. One unforeseen complication that developed was the fact that the paper soaked up the glue much faster than anticipated and the edges of the paper quickly curled up. So it was a bit of a scramble to flatten and hold it down to dry. The launching ways, various boards, clamps and weights were assembled and applied as shown here. The base was left to dry overnight and the next day the surface was given a light coating of Minwax honey oak just dabbed on here and there with a paper towel and given a quick brushing to even out the coloration with a wide stiff bristle brush. Then all of the excess was soaked up with paper towels and set aside for a couple days to dry again. Now it was time to work on the trim molding. Using my Makita chop saw shown here, the back side and the two end pieces were cut to length. The saw doesn’t slide, do compound cuts or have a laser guide, but then I bought it way back in the 90’s so I just had to “rough it”. (One trick that my grandfather taught me when cutting miters, was to stain the cut ends before assembly, making the joint less visible even if your cut wasn’t as precise as you wanted it to be.) Once these three trim pieces were cut, they were nailed in place with my pneumatic Makita brad nailer show here that even predates my chop saw. However, it still works much beter for me with my diminishing manual skills at trying to use trim nails and a hammer. Now that the easy parts of the trim were done it was time to work on the more involved job of making the front piece. The trim at the front needed to have a central portion removable to mount the switch and to allow replacing the battery when needed without turning the whole case upside down. In order to make it appear to be more like one continuous piece of molding, it was composed of three separate pieces cut from the same length of trim so the grain pattern would appear to continue somewhat uninterrupted as show here. Unfortunately, my chop saw uses a 1/8” thick blade, so the overall piece needed to be about 3/8” overlong with a miter cut on each end. The location of the removable central piece was determined, allowing the joints to overlap the blocks. Then with two 90 degree cuts it was separated from the end portions. Those two mitered end pieces were now nailed to the base. Next, to make the central portion fill the gap, I crept up on its length with my disc sander until it was a fairly tight fit. Here is a view of the unassembled front trim before the final fitting. Now that all of the trim was cut and fit to my satisfaction it was time to work on the mounting of the light switch and battery fittings. The first step was to make a mounting block for the switch; I sketched up this diagram of how the switch would function. Since the switch function was actually a push button, I needed an extension plunger to go through the face of the molding. Being a notorious scavenger with limited metal working tools or skill, I went through my misc. metal bins and came up with some 16d solid copper nails. I shortened one nail to about two inches long with a hacksaw and chucked the shaft of the nail in my “metal lathe.” (alias drill press) With the drill press on, the nail was machined into shape with a coarse metal file. Being just a common nail, the head was not really centered on the shaft with anything approaching accuracy so it was ground down until it was even and the diameter was just slightly smaller than the step on the face of the switch. The shaft was also filed down until it was looking more like a polished custom fitting. Here you can see both the full size copper nail and the finished copper extension plunger in the background of this photo. Using a small scrap of the molding for the block, I glued and clamped it to the back side of the trim located to fit in the open space between two of the base board spacing blocks. Once the glue set, I selected a spurred wood bit sized to match the step on the switch and drilled into the back of the block until it was just short of the molding. Then, switching to a drill bit matching the shaft of the plunger, I drilled all the way through the block and trim. Here is the trim at this point. Using wood chisels and files, a groove was routed out the width of the main body of the switch. It was only about 1/16” deep, just enough to hold the switch in place. The switch itself operates with a spring mounted plunger, that when in the off position is fully extended. Once the plunger is depressed it clicks and stays depressed just proud of the step on the face of the switch housing and is in the on position. (You can see in this photo of the switch that shows both the plunger and that step on the face of the switch.) After much checking and fine tuning, the depth of the bore for the head of the plunger was adjusted. While holding the switch and plunger in place, the actual operation of the switch was checked while hooked up to the battery and lights. The copper plungers’ projection beyond the face of the molding while the switch was in the on position (fully depressed) was noted and marked on the end of the plunger. Adding about 1/16” to this mark, the plunger was removed and cut off at this length. The cut was filed smooth to a polished finish and sprayed with Tamiya TS-80 clear matt acrylic varnish. Here is the molding in place showing the copper plunger installed. At this point the switch still needed to be fixed in place so that when the plunger is depressed it doesn’t push the switch housing out of place. I ripped down two narrow strips of oak to flush out with the backside of the switch housing and glued them in place on both sides of the switch with wood glue. In the unlikely event that the switch needs to be replaced at some point, I glued and clamped another small block of wood alongside the switch block. A thin piece of plastic was cut and screwed to that extra block with a single screw to allow it to swing over the back of the switch and hold it down and yet still be able to swing away allowing the switch to be removed. So here is the completed switch housing below. As far as the battery housing is concerned, it will just be taped to the backside of the removable trim piece to hold it in place and yet be easily released for changing the battery. I had to splice some additional lengths of wiring to reach the new location of the switch. The splices were done with the help of this recently purchased new tool that could strip the insulation off of the very thin wire that came with the lighting system without damaging the copper. The ends of both wires were bent back and hooked together with the wires tightly twisted to form a very secure mechanical splice. Additionally, the wire splice was soldered and covered with shrink tubing heated with an old blow dryer. All of the remaining loose wire will just be taped to the bottom of the base board with sufficient slack to allow removing the switch trim piece to get at the battery. An additional length of shrink tubing will be applied to the wires as they are run through the base board, launching ways and the keel of the ship for a little bit more protection. I think that a couple pieces of double faced tape will be sufficient to hold the switch trim piece in place on the base. If not, I could always recess pairs of thin magnets to do the job.
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Actually, my intent is to show the ship in dry dock for refitting rather than as a museum ship. The copper bottom would now be exposed for some time to the air after having returned from a long whaling voyage, thus the green and white mix to the color. As far as the vertical streak pattern goes, I am looking at these two photos below of the Cutty Sark that does show them.
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I am now at the point of painting the plastic hull of my Wanderer, and am in a bit of a quandary of how to proceed. I have used a technique promoted by Les Wilkins in his book How To Build Plastic Ship Models in the past with very good results. The technique was to first spray paint the masked hull with Floquil Copper. While this coat of copper paint is still fresh, you take a medium paint brush and apply Floquil Light Green paint with random vertical strokes, always brushing away from the waterline. Then using a clean medium paint brush this process is repeated using Floquil Antique White. Now with a clean brush frequently dipped in turpentine (Not lacquer thinner because it will eat right through the copper paint!) lightly brush with vertical strokes (again away from the waterline) over the green and white paints while they are still wet to make these two colors meld with the copper. Also, don’t brush too hard or you can rub through the copper paint and the turpentine can harm the plastic. The next step is to use a string or wire to suspend the hull in midair to dry for 3 or 4 hours which will allow the turpentine to run down to the keel as it dries. After the turpentine has evaporated and the paints have dried, take a piece of No. 600 sand paper and lightly sand the full length of the hull with back and forth strokes until some of the paint has been rubbed off the edges of the plates to make them somewhat more pronounced. The last step is to take a clean damp rag and wipe off the resulting sanding residue from the hull. The only problem here is that Floquil paint was lacquer based and is no longer available. I am wondering if this technique can be done with the enamel or water based paints that are available now. I have two 3 oz. cans of Testors copper spray enamel to act as the base coat and since Testors paint is still readily available in green and white; could this technique be employed here with their enamel paint or maybe water base paint?
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I would agree with that assesment also. Another consideration that occurs to me is the fact that wood and metal do not expand or contract at the same rate when reacting to changes in heat or moisture which would more than likely raise hovoc with the edges of the mortices inviting the intrusion of even more moisture.
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You need to apply a wood filler like Minwax 21600000 high performance filler first. This particular brand is my favorite as it's ready for sanding in about half an hour. Then sand it down until you get it to your desired smoothness. Once done you can paint it and have the smooth finish you're looking for.
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2021 CALENDARS ARE GOING FAST!!
BETAQDAVE replied to ferretmary1's topic in NAUTICAL RESEARCH GUILD - News & Information
I'm in. -
Finally, after a rather extended time away from this build and its log for a long list of reasons including work on my Phantom build log and waiting to remove the bed frame that blocked my access to my saws, I returned to working on this display base. The 1 x 10 oak base board was trimmed to its final length, the top edges were eased (slightly rounded over) and then lightly sanded. I positioned the launching ways on the base board and using a 7/64” drill bit through the predrilled mounting holes, I gave it a light tap to mark the locations of these holes on the base board. Since I had finally determined that I needed to use 1/8” bolts now for mounting the ship, all of the predrilled holes needed to be enlarged. I started by carefully enlarging the holes in the ships’ hull with a 1/8” drill bit mounted in my battery powered screwdriver/drill once again to avoid overdoing it. Once the holes in the hull were enlarged, I used my drill press to enlarge the holes in the launching way blocks. I drilled all of the 1/8” holes through the base board, and to reduce the length of the mounting screws, I used a Forstner bit to counter bore the holes about 1/2” deep on the bottom side. With the radial arm saw, a recess for the battery and switch was cut through the front edge and into the bottom. Then I used chisels to finish carving out the bottom of the recess. This was the bottom of the base board at this point. Then, just to be sure everything was properly aligned, I test fit the entire assembly to avoid the dreaded “Maybe I should have done things differently” syndrome later. (Its happened before!!) Now I made some hardwood blocks to glue inside the hull to mount some captured nuts for the bolts to screw into when the ship is finally mounted. The block for the stern bolt was the easiest since the inside of the hull was nearly flat there. The block for the bow end however, had to be shaped on the bottom side to match the curve of the inside of the hull at that point. The holes in the blocks were drilled one bit size larger than the bolts since their function is just to act as wooden washers that can be glued inside the hull. The bolts were inserted through the holes in the blocks and the nuts were then threaded down flush to the blocks. To “capture” the nuts, I simply glued some wood scraps with a heavy coat of wood glue up against opposing flats of the hex nuts to keep them from rotating when the screws are tightened. (A square nut would no doubt have been easier, but I didn’t have any on hand.) The scraps were clamped and set aside overnight to dry. Here are photos of the bow block after the clamps were removed. It was a bit tricky working the blocks into place with all of the deck beams in the way! (I could have used more than two hands, but of course there wouldn’t have been any room for them.) You can see below that the block in the bow was also very close to the heel of the foremast so it was made narrower than the stern block with the two wood scraps extended around the mast. I threaded an extra nut on the bolts well down from the end and inserted the bolts through the keel and then threaded the bolt through the captured nut on the block. Once this was done that extra nut below was used to pull the blocks up tight against the inside surface of the hull for gluing. After the bolts were tightened, I applied a heavy dose of plastic cement with a long wood skewer where the blocks met the hull. Once this cement hardened I added some medium CA to help secure them (since I was not sure how well the plastic cement would bond with the wood) and set the ship aside overnight for it to set. Now that this was finished, the hull was carefully masked with painters’ tape and paper towels to prepare for spraying the copper sheathing with my brand new homemade spray booth! Here you can see that the tape was purposely set about 1/16” back from the copper line as the black foil tape “planks” will cover the gap. So, here is the model itself as it stands now. Getting back to the base board once again, I combed through my “modest” scrap wood pile in the garage. I was able to dig out this 3/8” x 1 1/4” eased edge oak door stop for the moldings to go around the base and form a lip for the 1/4” Plexiglas cover to rest on. My first thought was to rip it down to ½” width and set the bottom edge flush with the bottom of the base, but after a trial fit, I really didn’t like the way it looked and I also realized that the Plexiglas really needed a little more overlap. So, I decided to use it as is and add some 5/4” thick scrap cedar furring blocks to the bottom along the edges of the base. That would leave the top of the trim 1/2” below the top surface of the base leaving a wider ledge to support the 3/8” Plexiglas cover. However, this presented another problem. The ½” deep chiseled out notch for the switch would now be exposed on the front edge! (Remember that dreaded “Maybe I should have done things differently” syndrome that I recently mentioned?) Oh well, it’s not as if it’s the first time that I had to go “back to the drawing board”. (It probably won’t be the last either.) At least now I won’t have to carve out any more recesses for the light wiring since the whole area below the base board would now be open. I carved the notch in the edge a little larger and cut an oak plug to fill the resulting gap. The plug was glued and clamped in place along with six 5/4” cedar blocks. Since the edges of this trim are eased, I will also need to miter the corners rather than butt them. As a sort of added bonus, the furring blocks should also make attaching the trim easier, especially at the corners. The next job will be to apply the trim to the base and figure out how I will actually install the battery and switch for the lights.
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How many sorting boxes will you need for that many pieces? The admiral and I did one with just 1999 pieces (one was missing) and we needed 12 shirt size boxes and about a week to put it together. Hope you have long arms and can stand up, as the middle will be a long reach. However, that subject matter should at least hold your interest to completion. It's also good that it's a excellent quality thick puzzle that fits together well. I think that someone posted, some time ago, a nautical puzzle project on our site with around 9000 pieces if I remember correctly.
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I had to agree with that comment, but I was able to follow the solution shown below to switch it back. The rest of the changes are appealing to me.
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Converting a Backyard Shed into a Model Workshop
BETAQDAVE replied to Hank's topic in Modeling tools and Workshop Equipment
I like your version of a wire grommet here. I think that golf is the activity that I miss the most since my MD advanced to the point of loosing the ability to walk. I am however, very glad that I spent as much time as I could doing it while I was still able to do so, especially the rounds of golf in Hawaii! 🏌️♂️ 😎 -
The plan detail that shows all of the main features of the main boom and the gaff ends is shown below. I tackled the main boom first. Taking the 1/8” kit dowel to the drill press, I tapered it at both ends. Once again the plans gave little information other than saying the maximum diameter should be about 1/3 of the way from the mast end of the boom with that also being slightly larger than the open end. The taper was supposed to be a parabolic curve, but of course at this small scale it will be hard to tell, so I just kind of eyeballed it and made it taper evenly. There was no plan view to show dimensions or the shape of the boom jaws, just the detail shown above. I looked at various drawings and photos of other schooners until I settled on kind of a compromise which turned out to be rather wing like, but were fairly easily fabricated from scraps of 1/16” maple. I filed the sides of the boom flat where the jaws would be attached and glued them in place with carpenters glue. After I gave it a couple of days to let the glue set up nice and solid, the jaws were filed and sanded in place. (I thought that would be easier than shaping them first since it also left me with a convenient handle.) Four impressions were made on each side of the jaws to indicate the bolts. When installing the eyebolt for the tack lashing, it was discovered that I had made an error by installing a bearing block which is only for the gaffs, not the boom! (Pay more attention to the drawings dummy!) So when I install the parral beads later I will remove it and install a filler piece. The two cleats for the peak lines were next. The cast metal cleats that came with the kit looked way too large to attach to the boom, so I took a 1/32” x 1/16” stick of maple and carved my own. It was easier than I thought, and with a little more practice, I could have done better, but making any of these 1/8” scale tiny fittings from wood can be very tedious and a bit frail. I think the trick is to basically shape as much as you can while you still have the rest of the stick to hang onto and then cut it loose for the final touches. After these were made and stained, I soaked the parts briefly in thin CA to strengthen it a bit, although these particular parts will not be under much stress on the model. Next up was the boom sheet band. I made the band from a narrow strip of shim brass that was annealed to soften it up a bit. Although the actual fitting was made from two separate pieces with a gap between them, the scale was too small for me to duplicate it that way. My method was to bend the band in half and pinch about 1/32” of the folded end tight in my vice. I opened the fold slightly and held a 1/8” drill bit on the resulting seam. I rolled the open ends of the shim back around the bit and pinched them to meet together opposite the fold held in the vice. I left enough of the shim ends exposed on the open end to set in a clamp and drilled holes in the resulting lugs for the 1/32” brass wire yolk. This wire was bent into a “U” shape to align with the holes in the lugs. I slipped the band into its final position on the boom and pinched the open end closed after giving it a touch of CA to glue it in place. The open end lug was then given a very small sliver of solder to hold it closed. The wire yolk was then set into the holes with just a bit left projecting through the holes. I applied a spot of solder on the exposed ends to serve as tightening nuts. Four short pieces of 1/32” maple were positioned near the end of the boom for the reef pendant cleats. They were set with wood glue and three more even shorter pieces were glued in place for the stopper cleats for footropes and clew earing lashings. Once these were solidly set in place their shapes were formed with files and holes were drilled into the reef pendant cleats. And finally a small band was fitted onto a shoulder filed on the very end of the boom for the topping lift. I made this band with a lug a little differently than the others by just pinching the band tightly around the shoulder. (I thought attaching a split ring here would be too large.) I gave it a touch of solder, filed down the end, drilled a hole in it for the lift and set in place with medium CA. The boom was stained with Minwax light oak and two light coats of satin finish polyethylene. The results of my labors on the main boom are shown in the two photos below, showing the different lug and my error on the jaws still to be repaired. The main and fore gaffs were very much alike except for their length so they were tackled together. The plan detail showed previously just showed the main gaff with a note concerning the two differences of an eye band and a gaff topsail sheet block on the main gaff only. Below are additional details on the jaw ends of the gaffs as shown on the plans. The gaffs were made from the 5/64” birch dowels that came with the kit. Before tapering the gaffs the first thing that I did here was to drill holes into the open ends for the peak line eye bolts. (Drilling a centered hole in the flat end of a 5/64” dowel, while not easy, was still easier than drilling it after tapering it thinner still!) They were shaped similar to the main boom with my drill press. The gaff jaws were assumed to be smaller, but since there were no dimensions given, I had to wing it. (The detail drawings are great for giving you a sense of the overall appearance, but not having been drawn to scale it forces you to make an educated guess for sizes.) So once again I filed down the flats for the jaws on the mast ends and glued some more of my 1/16” maple on them like I did for the boom. (This time I made allowances for the bearing blocks!!) These blocks were shaped from maple and glued in place at the angles indicated on the sail plan. I filed the jaws to shape and made the bolt impressions on their sides. One note here, when attaching the jaws to the boom and gaffs, I cut some custom tapered shims that I glued down to a flat scrap of wood to align and support the face of the jaws while the wood glue set. Both gaffs required an iron “U” bolt close to the bearing blocks to hook the throat halliard blocks to. For these I bent a piece of 1/32” brass wire to shape, drilled holes in the ends of the gaffs and these were glued with some medium CA. Also required, was an eyebolt attached to the bottom side of the main gaff only, for attaching the gaff topsail sheet block. Two eyebands were needed on each gaff for the peak halliard blocks, so I cut those bands and glued them in place with CA. The main gaff also needed an additional eyeband near the open end for a topsail sheet block which was filed with a very slight shoulder for it. I will later solder small brass split rings to all four of these remaining bands before attaching the blocks and attaching the parral beads. I shortened the eyebolts for the ends of the gaffs and glued them with a touch of medium CA. Both gaffs were fitted with a pair of tiny maple stopper cleats for the earing lashings of the main and foresails which were once again filed to shape after being glued into place with wood glue. The gaffs were also stained with Minwax light oak and two light coats of satin finish polyethylene. The following photos show the results of my labors on the gaffs. While there still remain some details to finish (or correct) on both the masts and spars, I will take care of them on a later posting.
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Connecting Pins - Need help on first build
BETAQDAVE replied to Brianh526's topic in Metal Work, Soldering and Metal Fittings
And hopefully the brass wire will melt before your fitting does. The "Amnesia" black monofilament (fishing) line method sounds safer to me since it has a much lower melting point and doesn't need to be blackened. -
Shifting gears once again, I turned to making the masts. I started by tapering the masts. The photo below shows my set-up for tapering the foremast from a 5/32” dowel that came with the kit. The first order of business was to bottom out the dowel in the hole previously bored into the hull. I ran a pencil around the bottom of the mast at the deck, removed it from the hole, measured the height of the mast off of the drawings, marked the top of the dowel and added 1/8” to it. The dowel was then cut off at this mark. I inserted the portion of the mast that would be below the deck into the drill chuck. To steady the dowels other end, the remaining 1/8” of it was set into the 5/32” hole in a drill index with a scrap of wood to back it up. This was then clamped in place to the table. Using a sanding block with #180 grit sandpaper and the drill press set at medium speed, the block was held at the bottom of the dowel until the top end of the mast matched the diameter on the plans. I used my digital calipers to check my progress. Since the kit instructions did not indicate exactly what kind of shape the taper was to take on and the plans only showed a straight even taper, that is how I shaped it. I used a straight edge held against the dowel to keep track of my progress and just continued running the block up and down the whole length of the exposed dowel until I had a smooth even taper. Once I had it shaped to my satisfaction, the dowel was removed, cut to its final length and the very top was filed square until it fit into the metal mast cap fitting. All the masts, gaffs and the main boom were shaped similarly. The mast coat was next. This seemed daunting at first as you need to basically form a doughnut from wood. It actually turned out to be fairly simple. Taking a 3/8” square basswood timber, I sliced a piece off of the end of it the height of the mast coat. This piece was glued onto a piece of paper and left to set. When dry, it was clamped in a vice and I drilled a 5/32” hole through the center of this piece. A short piece of the 5/32” dowel was inserted into this hole to serve as a handle and temporary reinforcement. Since this left the end grain of this block exposed, it was a simple matter to split off small slivers of wood with a sharp razor blade until I was left with a wooden ring the diameter of the mast coat. The remaining ring was given a coat of poly to seal it after I had sanded it into its final shape. The paper was peeled off of the bottom leaving a nice wooden mast coat as shown below to be set aside until the mast could be mounted to the deck. I took a short break from making the masts to make up the two sizes of mast hoops from used paper grocery bags. I took lengths of appropriate sized wood dowels and wrapped them with wax paper. I cut strips of paper from the bags and wrapped them tightly several turns around the mast hoop forms after giving the strips a thin coating of wood glue on one side. These were then clamped and set aside for a couple of days to thoroughly dry. Taking the clamps off, I rolled a razor blade over the forms to separate the individual hoops. (I made sure to make plenty of extras.) The resulting hoops were soaked briefly in Minwax light oak stain. After these were dried again, I soaked them in diluted poly to give them some added stiffness. The photo below is a detail from the plans showing the foremast details described in the following text. There were three mast bands plus the mast cap that needed to be formed for the upper end of the fore mast. The lowest band was done first. I used some thin walled brass telescoping tubing that I had on hand to make the bands. A short length of tubing with an inside diameter equal to the mast diameter at the location shown on the plan was sliced off and slipped into place on the mast and secured with CA. This band needed one lug to attach the forestay on the front face and a pair of lugs on the port and starboard sides to hold the double shrouds. I made small brass split rings that were soldered to the band to serve as lugs. This band also required a short bar extended from the back side of the band to attach the throat halliard block assembly. For this detail I took a short length of 1/16” solid brass bar and flattened one end on an anvil. This flat end was then shaped and drilled for a shackle. Then I soldered the other end of the bar to the band. I found out that the trickiest part here was just trying to solder a fitting on without unsoldering the ones you had already put on. The lower cap or yoke that holds the bottom end of the signal pole was done next. This was one of the simplest as all that was needed was to solder a band sized to insert the end of the 5/64” signal pole to the face of the band on the mast. The third mast band was also pretty straight forward since it only needed a single lug on the backside of the mast. All of these bands were slipped into place and glued with CA. Once the other bands were set in place I returned to the mast cap fitting. The back-side of the square cap needed a single lug, so I soldered a brass split ring to it. A peculiar fitting called out as a span iron on the plan detail was also needed. I sized a length of tempered 1/16” brass wire to match the plans and bent it around a round metal bar with a diameter that matched the outside width of the square portion of the mast cap. Taking the resulting “U” shaped bar to an anvil, I flattened, shaped the ends and drilled a 1/32” hole through both ends of the “U”. The mast cap was glued onto the square tenon of the foremast with CA. I drilled a 1/32” hole all the way through the square part of the mast cap and the mast to align with the holes in the span iron. A short section of 1/32” brass wire was cut with one end blunted to imitate a bolt head. This wire was passed through the assembly leaving a small projection exposed and given a small spot of solder to imitate the other end of the bolt. This allowed the span iron to freely move in place. The signal pole was cut from a slightly overlong piece of 5/64” dowel that was chucked into the drill press and shaped with a taper at both ends. At this point, I applied Minwax light oak stain to the foremast and the signal pole followed by two coats of satin finish polyethylene. The white portions of the masts will be painted later. The six brass split ring/shackles were all hung in place and soldered closed for later attachment of the rigging. At that time I will squeeze them all into more of an oval shape. My finished version of the foremast detail is shown below. The photo below is a detail from the plans showing the mainmast details described in the following text. There were four mast bands plus the mast cap that needed to be formed for the upper end of the mainmast. I started with the lowest band first that needed lugs to attach the shrouds to, so once again I soldered a small brass split ring to each side for that. This band also needed a short bar extended from the back side of the band for attachment of the throat halliard block assembly. This was handled the same as the short bar on the foremast. The next band was totally different from all the other bands since a topmast spreader was needed. The detail of this spreader on the plans, called for an angle iron trestle tree with outriggers to port and starboard. There are no cross sections to show if the outriggers are a continuation of this angle iron shape or just a flat iron bar welded to it (since I didn’t think that such a complex fitting could possibly have been formed from a single piece back then). The kit instructions called for a solid round metal bar bent into something of a narrow triangle shape, bent with integral holes formed on the ends for the backstays. In the end I decided to do things a bit different from either method. I used a short length of the brass tubing again for the band and then cut two narrow strips of shim brass that matched the length of the band. One piece was cut to the overall length of the spreader and the center of the spreader was soldered to the back side of the band. Taking two lengths of very small diameter brass tubing (just large enough for the backstay to pass through) cut to match the width of spreader bar, I soldered one of these to each end of the spreader. Another piece of brass tubing to match the diameter of the end of the topmast was soldered to the front side of the band. Then the other narrow strip of shim brass was given a slight bend in the middle that was soldered to the front side of the topmast band. The free ends of the strip were then cut to length and soldered to the brass tubing at the ends of the backside of the spreader. The next band up was a simple band with one lug on the backside of the mast. Another split ring was soldered on for the lug and a split ring/shackle was attached and soldered shut to finish this one. The final band was to serve as a diagonal brace for the extended stub on the backside of the mast cap above. I think that I may overbuilt this compared to the plan detail, but then I thought their version was rather weak for the heavy weight of the main boom that it needed to support, especially when in port as there was no boom rest. The band was formed and glued in place with CA. The top of the mainmast was squared off to fit the mast cap and this was also glued in place. A small split ring was soldered to the front of the mast cap for the triatic stay. On the backside of the cap, the extender bar itself was formed with a length of 1/16” round brass bar. Another piece of the bar was also used to make the diagonal brace. The brace was cut to length and shaped with files to fit snugly to the face of the band and the extender bar. The ends of the brace were then soldered to both the band and extender bar. The joined end of the extender bar was smoothed with files making a flat area on both sides of the joint. This flat was drilled through for the split ring/shackle which was then soldered shut for attachment of the main boom topping lift single block. (The kit supplied 3/32” block also seemed too small for the weight involved so I may substitute a larger one.) The topmast was tapered at both ends and given a shoulder near the top for holding the two backstays, the main topmast stay, and the gaff topsail halliard. The topmast was then slipped through the mast cap and the heel socket and glued with CA. I haven’t fitted a ball truck yet for the flag halliard, as I’m not sure how I will handle it. Here is a photo of my version of the band area of the mainmast below. The main boom rest was made similar to the mast coats, but with a slight slope to the top surface allowing it to be level with the deck surface by drilling the center hole at a slight angle. The rest was glued in place with wood glue and set aside to dry after taping the mast rings on the mast above. Six small scraps of basswood were equally spaced around the mainmast below the boom rest and glued with carpenters glue. Being such tiny pieces, I decided it was easier to file them into shape after gluing them on. This photo below shows my boom rest. As I did to the foremast and signal pole, I applied Minwax light oak stain to these also, followed by two coats of satin finish polyethylene. The white portions of these and the mast coats will be painted later. The mast coats can’t be glued in place until the fife rails are attached because they are wider than the opening in the rails. As far as the fife rails are concerned I may decide to make them from maple rather than the metal fittings that came with the kit. My next entry will be making the boom and gaffs.
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Hello Doris. I hope you and yours are weathering this pandemic any better than we are over here. One can only pray that by opening things up again so soon over here with few guidelines to keep it under “control”, that we will not experience another wave that can easily get out of hand again. On a lighter note, I have a question on how you handle the “ironwork” on your models, such as the deadeye strops and chain plates as shown back on post #817. I know you work primarily with card, modeling clay and wood, but paper has its limits on items like those which are put under a lot of strain from the rigging. I personally have difficulty both with shaping and soldering metal components. Do you purchase those items from others, or do you make your own? I haven’t come across any of the techniques that you employ to handle such items in your logs and wonder how you handle them.
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