BETAQDAVE

Taking a break from my Wanderer build, I shifted my focus to fabricate and install the lower portion of the deadeyes for the Phantom.  Rather than using Chucks method of tying the deadeyes on with thread, I decided to try my hand at soldering again. Here is a photo of all the tools needed to complete these tiny fittings.

     This close up shows the process in order from left to right.

     The first step was to make the deadeye strops by wrapping some .27mm blackened brass wire around a 3/32” dia. drill bit, leaving the tail ends slightly extended from the bit.  These ends were trimmed off even and flattened with a hammer.  A deadeye was inserted into the opening and pinched closed as shown leaving a thin flattened tail that was smoothed with a file to solder to the chain plate.
    The next step was to make the chain plates.  I took a sheet of .026 mm brass to the bench and clamped it down with a metal ruler and proceeded to repeatedly score a 2.0 mm wide strip with an old #11 Exacto blade with the tip broken off until I could snap the strip off.  The strip was cut into eight 13.5 mm lengths and the corners were trimmed off one end with a metal snips. (That’s 6 to use, and 2 extra just in case.)
    When that was completed a sharp metal awl was used to mark (one at a time) the locations of three .69mm holes on the trimmed end.  I flattened the plate and drilled each hole before going to the next one.  Once all three holes were done the plate was flattened once again and sanded smooth.
    Now that the three main components were done, they were pinned in place on this jig and soldered together.  My procedure for soldering is still a work in progress, but after several failed attempts I managed to work it out by first putting a dab of solder paste between the face of the chain plate and the back of the strop.  Then another dab of paste was placed on the face of the strop that allowed me to stick a tiny bit of solder on top of the assembly.
    When the tip of the hot iron was held against the chain plate, the solder behaved as hoped by melting and flowing were it belonged to make a nice shinny joint.  The excess solder was filed down flat so they could fit into those tiny slots that were now drilled and filed into the cap rail for the chain plates as shown below.

     The masts were temporarily set in the deck with a length of chord clipped to the masts where the backstays will be anchored. That chord allowed me to align the chain plates with the backstays as shown below.

     Once the angle of the chain plate was established and marked on the hull, the plate was held in place to mark the location of the bottom hole in the plate.  I used a .69mm drill to make the hole and tapped a full sized pin through the hole into the hull. The plate was secured with the full size pin in the bottom hole, the other two holes were drilled directly through the plate and half sized pins with a tiny dab of CA on the end were tapped in place.
     Now that all of the chain plates were installed, they were given two coats of Model Shipways MS4828 iron/cannon black paint.  Some touch up painting is still needed, but the next phase of the project will be to mount it on a finish base to reduce the chance of damaging what I have already accomplished. 
      Here is the ship as it stands now.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

Quickie while in Shetland Fifie passing the drinking horse - Dore Holm, Eshaness, Shetland .

Thanks all for looking in, comments, and hitting the like.  
 
Continuing with the rudder work, here are the rudder chains, and tiller parts--
 

 
 
The chains are test for the length and drape--
 

 
 
And after blackening, attached--
 

 
 
I cringe at the poor planking of the transom (some shrinkage gaps), and my less-than-precise painting!
 
After gluing the tiller to the rudder head, I realized I need to drill some holes for eyebolts for the tiller rope.  Of course, this should have been done before gluing the tiller on--
 

 
 
Here are the eyebolts and tiller ropes attached--
 

 
 
Then threaded through the blocks on the bulwarks, and back through the blocks on the tiller--
 

 
 
Ah, but what to do with the loose ends?   In the Charles G. Davis illustration that I followed for this, the ropes go to a ship's wheel.  But there is no wheel in this case.  I reasoned that there should be cleats on the bulwarks to fasten the ropes to.  These had to be added--
 

 
 
I'm not sure why Lieutenant Woolsey decided to take a nap during this work.  Maybe he overindulged last night.
 
After tying the rope off to the cleat, a rough coil was made by wrapping the rope (wet with diluted PVA) around a drill bit--
 

 
 
This was draped over the cleat, with much massaging and rewetting, to try and get it to hang sort of realistically--
 

 

 
 
After finishing this (of course), I remembered that one of Bernard Frolich's brig models with a tiller may have shown me what to do here.   I checked, and yes, there are cleats on the bulwarks.  However, the arrangement of the blocks and rope is a little different, and it looks functionally superior to what I did.    
 
Here is yours truly working--
 

 
 
Ron

Hello colleagues,
Thank you for the recovery wishes.
According to the results of yesterday's examination, surgery is now not necessary. I got a new splint. I have to go to the examination again next Tuesday. If everything remains stable, then no surgery will be performed. In about 5 weeks the hand should be fully functional again. 

C class Flying Boat of Imperial Airways about to alight at Victoria Harbour Hong Kong 1930s
watercolour 16" X 11"

I’ve built and sold several tall ships in both plastic and wood before.  But having reviewed the kit directions and Chuck’s practicum, I decided to look for more info on this ship before going any further. I also read How To Build First-Rate Ship Models From Kits by Ben Lankford and decided that I wanted to incorporate some improvements to the kit as there seemed to be some uncertainties about many of the details of the Phantom anyway.
    For one thing, since having searched quite a  bit for info on these pilot boats in that era, it seemed that since almost all of them had one or two small boats onboard to transfer the pilot to the ship in need, I decided to add one to this ship.  I found some pilot boats had what they referred to as pilot yawls, which had partial clinker built planking.  Then I looked for and found info on it and decided to put one of these on the deck.  So far I haven’t worked on this yet.
    After recently reviewing the impressive scratch build of the Eagle by Pete Jaquith on MSW, I found that a lot of the modifications that I had already added to my build were not really as original as I once thought.  I took the solid carved hull, removed the bulwarks, and shaved the hull down to the inside of planking as far down as the line of the copper sheathing. Then I installed the shear strakes, notching for the timberheads thru the strakes and into the hull. When I finished installing my hull planks, I applied some strips of my stock basswood for bulwarks and put in the scuppers by omitting the bottom plank at the openings. 
    On reflection later, I think that I should have put a bit of a bevel on the edges of the planks so they would stand out better. Once it was painted black, it was hard to discern that they actually were individual planks and not a solid hull.  It seemed like a bit of wasted effort there, but as I had never planked a hull before it was fun anyway.
    Since this kit was a solid wood hull model, I started by making templates for the hull and keels.  I selected the templates at stations four and seven and constructed this simple cradle shown below that was made with some 1/8” foam core poster board to support the ship during construction.

    Early on I decided to build up the bulwarks by adding the stanchions with planking applied to them, rather than carving them out, so these were removed right away.  Once they were removed, I proceeded to slowly carve and sand the hull into shape using the templates to guide me.  When I was finally satisfied, I cut, shaped and fit the keel, stem and sternpost until they fit properly and attached them with wood glue and nails.
     As far as the deck of the ship goes, Model Shipways changed what I considered to be a prominent feature of the ship by not recessing the sunken cockpit and just substituting some metal coamings and leaving the deck flush.  One could easily see that the ships wheel would not have any clearance with the deck, especially since the deck grating provided with the kit was so thick.  So I decided to throw out the metal cockpit coamings and rout the floor down another foot to scale as was mentioned by Chuck in his practicum.
     To do this I traced the outline on the plans of the inside face of the cockpit walls and added 1/32” outside of that outline.  This new outline was located on the deck and transferred to the surface.  Using my Dremel drill with the routing accessory set at 1/8” depth, the recess was cleaned out to that line.
    Now that that was done the next thing I did was to discard the scribed decking sheets!  For one thing, the decking layouts shown on the plans could never be done with a sheet. The stern decking was supposed to follow the curve of the hull and the decking on the foredeck needed to be nibbed into the shear strake.  For another thing, even on a deck with all the planks running parallel to each other, the grain of the wood would make it all too obvious that it was not made up of individual planks.  After all, we are for the most part trying to make it look realistic!  So I cut enough 1/32” x 3/32” strips of my stock of basswood in 20 foot to scale lengths to use for all of the decking.
    I started on the fore deck.  The first step was to mark the location of the deck beams below and a centerline on the hull.  The outline of the coaming for the companionway was also marked.  The shear strakes were then steam bent to follow the edge of the hull.  These were tacked into place temporarily.  I marked the location of all the stanchions on the strake and cut a notch for every third one. Those notches were extended into the hull below about 3/8”.   
    Then the individual planks were set in place, starting with the two on each side of the centerline after first rubbing a #2 lead pencil along the ends and edges to represent the caulked joints.  All of the planks were glued down with carpenters glue in a three butt shift pattern.    
    I continued installing the decking, alternating from one side to the other, cutting notches in the strake and tapering the ends of the decking where nibbing was needed. Rather than having the end grain exposed on the face of the step in the decks, I shaved the face back 1/32” and installed the decking up to the new face.  The decking was omitted over the marked location of the companionway.
    A 1/32” thick strip of basswood was steam bent and installed to cover that end grain that was shaved back earlier. It was installed overlapping the decking on the fore deck and trimmed off at the top of the step.
Moving on to the aft deck, the centerline and locations of the beams below were drawn on the hull along with the outlines of the coaming for the skylight, companionway and wheelhouse.  I steam bent the shear planks on the sides and cut a piece to fit across the stern.  Once again these strakes were marked, notched for the stanchions, and temporarily tacked in place.   Next, I glued down a 1/32” x 1/16” strip of basswood with a slight overlap of the step facing for the edge plank.  Once the glue was allowed to set, the planking here was laid similarly to the fore deck. 
    However, the deck pattern here required the planks to be steam bent and laid down parallel to the shear strakes.  Alternating from one side to the other, the decking was laid toward the center until they met in the middle in a herringbone pattern at the stern.  At this time decking was also laid on the floor of the cockpit.
    Before finishing the decking, all of the tacked down shear strakes were temporarily removed.  Using the ends of the beam lines previously marked and now revealed, a flexible straight edge was lined up and using a sharp HB pencil lead, I lightly poked a slight depression in the decking and twisted the point around a bit to make a representation of the treenails.  The decks were then scraped smooth and given a coat of Minwax light oak finish that I let set briefly and then the excess was wiped off with a soft cloth.  The decks were sanded with #400 wet/dry sandpaper and given two coats of matt finish polyurethane that was lightly sanded smooth.  The caulking and treenail impressions left showing, provided a nice bit of detail even though it’s a little out of scale.  It looked good to me, so I was happy with it anyway.
    To leave me more room to work, I decided to skip doing the bulwarks until the deck houses and some of the fittings were finished.
    Trying my hand at making the deck furniture from solid blocks as called for in the kit, I was not at all happy with the results.  Thinking that I could certainly do a better job than that, these were quickly trashed.  Seeing that the cockpit had already been carved out, I decided that I could also leave the companionway hatches open and make the interior of the skylight visible.  Of course this meant that now I would also have to carve out the spaces below them. If I was going to do this, now was the time to do it.  So…… once again I broke out the router and chisels and went to work. 
    Once these areas were carved out, I also thought that putting decking on the floors would be a good touch.  Although it wouldn’t be all that visible once the deck houses were put in place, I installed it anyway.  I also lined the interior walls with some grooved 1/64” plywood.  Same reason I guess.
    Moving on now to the coamings, I selected some 1/8” square basswood strips from my stock.  I cut the pieces to size, cutting half lap joints for the corners.  I assembled them with wood glue and set them aside to dry.  After the glue set up, I filed a slight bevel on the outside edges.  The coaming for the rear companionway was quite troubling at first until I realized that it terminated on the main deck where it ran into the cockpit walls.  There were no coamings around the cockpit walls at the main deck or the walls inside the cockpit.           
    At this time it was time to decide what kind of color scheme I would use.  Since this was to be my version of the ship, I planned to deviate somewhat from what the kit suggested.  I would introduce a bit more contrast, by making the coamings and the shear strakes a light green color, rather than the light buff deck house that would be used on the remaining deck house walls and the inside of the bulwarks.  The roof, hatches, cockpit walls, and the cap rails would all be stained with Minwax light oak and then two coats of matt finish polyurethane. 
    So now all of the shear strakes were given a couple coats of the light green (from my last remaining bottle from Floquil) on the areas that would be visible and they were finally glued in place.  The coamings were also painted with the light green paint where they would be visible and then set aside until needed.
    Returning now to the cockpit, the first step was to cut a strip of wax paper followed with a strip of paper coffee filter and line the cockpit walls with them.  I ripped some very narrow strips of 1/32” basswood to use for the vertical panels. I cut several pieces of them long enough to reach from the decking on the cockpit floor to the bottom of a cap rail 1/8” above the upper deck.  These were then glued to the paper filter lining on the walls for the inside panels and left there to dry thoroughly.
    Once dry, I cut several more pieces for the outside panels long enough to reach from the upper deck to the top of the inside wall panels already in place.  These pieces were then glued to the outer face of the inside wall panels with their joints offset from the joints on the layer below. 
    Confused?  Well, this actually left me with a cockpit wall above the upper deck 1/16” thick and 1/32” thick below the upper deck.  The top of this double thickness wall was sanded even for the application of the wall cap.  With the coffee filter paper glued between the layers to hold it together and the wax paper preventing the assembly from sticking to the wall of the pit, it could be slipped out of the pit in one piece.  This allowed me to trace the outline on a piece of stiff card to make a template for making the cap rail.  I took the resulting outline as the finish outside edge of this cap and drew the inside edge to the required finish width of the cap.  I made the cap in five pieces and even made scarf joints with two quarter knee pieces at the corners so no end grain would be exposed.  (They were only about 1/16” long!)
    I sliced a 1/32” strip of maple from a piece of ¾” maple and sanded it down to 1/64” thickness for making the cap rail. Once it was glued down to the template with rubber cement and with carpenters glue at the joints, I set it aside for a few days to be sure it was held together good. 
    Very carefully it was separated from the template and glued to the top of the cockpit wall while it was set in the recess.        Wow, wasn’t that easy? This whole assembly was then removed to be stained and sealed. Oh wait, the ends of the wall assembly would still need trimming to join into the sidewalls of the rear companionway. I can hardly wait!  Showing it to the Admiral, she thought I was nuts!!!  Here is a photo of the cockpit walls with the cap rail already applied.

 

I too am sorry to hear this, Johann.  Follow the doctor's orders including surgery if needed.  The wood, the ship, and those of us following along are a patient group.  Health and healing are more important than a ship model.

Johann, sorry to hear this has happened to you. Wishing you a speedy recovery. 

So sorry to hear Johann. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. We will patiently stand by while you get yourself better. 
 
-Brian

Best wishes for a fast recovery, Johann! I am always tremendously enjoying updates of your build log, but good health comes first.
 
Thomas

Johann, sorry to hear the news. Take care, your model is beautiful and we can wait.

That is sad to hear Johann. You work inspires many members from this hobby community but the health is what matters the most.
Wish you all the best and quick recovery!

Hello,
I have to let the model building rest the next time. Broke my metacarpal bone. Will probably need surgery, which will be decided tomorrow.
 
 
 

Good morning.

Convoy w/c A6 6” X 4” posrcard size. Anon merchant ship HMCS Portage escort.

Generally, the more bends, splitters and other fitting you add, the less suction you get.

Further steps, first bait box atop of the cabin trunk is being completed. The base is from the balsa wood and then planked with the thin veneer.
 

 
Bait box done. Skeleton for the skylight is prepared and small compass housing too. It will not be seen too much of it anyway behind that small oval window, but at least for the good "it-is-there" feeling
 

 

@Gregory
 
@Keith Black
 
@mtaylor
 
Hello,
 
your kind comments make me slightly embarrassed ...🥵
In this context I would like to mention that it gives me a lot of pleasure to be able to exchange experiences with ship model building with you here in this fantastic forum.  So everyone can learn and profit from each other. This also contributes to the development of my model building skills. Therefore, at this point to all a big thank you. 
 
Continuation: Ratlines for the top mast shrouds - Enflechures
In the meantime, the main mast has received the ralines at the top mast shrouds, at least on the starboard side. The futtock stave just below the crosstrees, I have also already attached.
Here are two pictures:
 
 


 
See you soon ...

Generally, the more bends, splitters and other fitting you add, the less suction you get.

Generally, the more bends, splitters and other fitting you add, the less suction you get.

Good morning.

SS Pembrokeshire
Shire and Glen Line Far East and Australia run
w/c 16" X 11" ish 

A raised bar is to be expected when a masterpiece is being created. I have no hopes of every being able to emulate Johann's work, I'm quite content to sit and watch as his masterpiece unfolds. 
 
 

Continuation: Ratlines for the topmast shrouds - Enflechures
In the meantime I was able to finish the ratlines on the starboard side of the mizzen topmast shrouds. 
The tangle of ropes in the upper right corner of the following picture are the topgallant shrouds and royal shrouds that have not been fixed yet.
 
In the next step the main topmast shrouds will get the ratlines.
 
To be continued ...

In addition to the Phantom and Wanderer listed below I also have a steel model kit of the Game of Thrones Red Keep by Metal Earth.  Of course I still have the U.S.S.  Constitution in dry dock waiting to be repaired. 😢