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DanB

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  • Birthday 09/01/1956

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    Lafayette, California

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  1. Thanks Bill. I also like them both. I did not feel I was able to be as accurate using the templates to shape the solid hull on my first try here , but I think I need more practice and would definitely try another solid hull in the future. I have been woking on the binnacle. Chuck’s shop notes have great step by step instructions how to scratch build one that looks like the one on the plans and has more detail than the casting supplied with the ship. This was mostly great fun. Chuck suggests using heads of brass nails for drawer handles. They looked to big so I tried using heads of pins, Slippery things that flew all over the place never to be seen again! I got 2 of them in and gave up on the upper 2 and decided a couple of little black dots would be good enough. Next is to figure out how it gets lashed to the deck.
  2. Yes. Model Shipways stopped producing solid hull models. Maybe they could bring it back as plank on bulkhead at a larger scale.
  3. Traveler rod and bock On the ship now, an I did not knock the transom off or drill a hole clear through it! Getting the hook on the block was difficult. This site was very helpful in understanding the process, but I still had to look at the pictures a bunch of times. It took several tries. The third hand tool, CA glue and a lot of patience were essential. http://modelboatyard.com/stropping.html
  4. Ship instructions have a nice drawing of the block set up for the traveler rod and . Kit has pins that worked well for the extended pin. Made the loop and sister hook with 28 gage steel wire. Will paint pins and traveler rod and figure out how to attach hook to the block and get the rod on the ship next.
  5. Added the coaming for the space that goes below deck (left it off by mistake) and built a ladder to go down there. Ladder took several tries using Chuck’s template. It’s still a bit rough, but most of it really is not visible. Next is to build a traveler rod for the boom and install it on the in on the not very thick and not very sturdy transom. The kit instructions say it’s supposed to have a double sheave bock connected to the rod with sister hooks .I was able to find pictures of what those look like. I am not really sure how I could make them and attach them to the block. The bock is also supposed to have a rod on each side of it. Chuck says he used two small nails for that part. This will be an adventure. I hope the transom survives it!
  6. More Hatches Chuck’s instructions say to make eye bolts and split rings for the boards that cover the next hatch by bending 28 gauge black steel wire. I got an excellent refresher on how to do that from this thread. I took a bunch of tries and looking at the pictures in the thread a few times, but then it was not too difficult to get close : The last 2 hatches continued to need a lot of fiddling, but they are on the ship. Next is to make a ladder to go below decks.
  7. Working on hatch coamings and gratings. I marked out the holes based on the plans and planked around them. The problem was the gratings wound up being a bit larger to make the gratings fit well. so I had to make the spaces on deck bigger. It was difficult to enlarge the spaces in the planks and keep them aligned and square. I think should have made the hatch covers first and used them to mark out the spaces and then planked around those spaces. It’s a slow journey, this ship. I am learning how to do it better the next time though! Two more hatches to go.
  8. I finished the deck planking! I Looked at Chuck's shop notes and drawings in Historic Ship Models a bunch of times to try to understand joggling the planks into the margin plank. It did not come out so well. There was not much margin plank near the edges, and it split as I tried to fit the planks in. It was surprisingly difficult to get rid of the pencil lines I made to mark the cuts in the margin plank. Lessons for next time.! The next task is to install the waterway Chuck says to slice a 1/32 square basswood strip. diagonally so it has a triangular cross section. I am not sure I can do that, certainly not accurately, and I do have a fondness for my fingers!. Sanding the strip did not seem to work well, but it's safer! The wedge shaped piece then is supposed to get a concave shape by using a ball shaped sculpting tool to crush the triangular shape after it is glued down. This bit may be beyond me. I may just put in the strip ,smash it a bit with the ball thing and call it good!
  9. I think when I built the Pram I held the wire with a pair of fine nose pliers and used a small hammer to tap the end of it a bit. At some point the instructions tell you to get one of those flat metal plates that jewelry makers use. I may have used that to press against. You do not need the wire to expand to much, just enough to keep the “rivet” in the hole in the tiller. A lot of folks in different building longs had difficulty with the tiller on the Pram. I think it’s pretty thin and splits easily, you need to be gentle with the pin vise when you drill the hole. Search for the Pram and look at a few build logs. Good luck on your Pram Dan
  10. Continuing to plank the deck. I am following Chuck’s suggestion to do one deck at a time to spread out the drilling, filling and sanding tasks. I am working on the margin plank to joggle the planks on the fore deck.
  11. More deck planking, I used a rotary tool to drill all the holes. Much faster than the pin vise I was using!
  12. More planking. Used the same technique as the hull planking: drilled holes for trenails, filled them with darker wood filler (“golden oak”) and finished with tung oil. The filler darkened some with the tung oil. Having fun with this part! Moving forward.
  13. Rudderattached! Started planking the deck and painted the places where the gratings and ladder will be black.
  14. I've been working on Sultana, making slow progress. Added the cap rails. I tried making the scrolls with Sculpy but they did not look good and after making about 20 very small irregular scrolls, I gave up and left them off Quarter Badges and Rudder are next in Chuck's shop notes I used the kit castings for the quarter badges as I don't think I could do a better job with Sculpey. . Added windows using acetate sheet and pin stripe tape. Manual is not very specific about colors (not sure anyone really knows what they looked like on this ship) The rudder has been really difficult. Actually the whole ship has been difficult!. I am learning a lot, but almost every step has been slow going and ,I am not sure if I am going to be able to finish this thing. I had to tweak the stern post some, and it looks bit funny but the rudder now fits. The pintels and grudgeons are very small. Plans show them only 1/32 inch wide. I tired copper sheet but it was too thick and a pain to work with. Manual suggests 0.005 brass, which the local Ace had in stock.. I was able to cut it by scoring the line with a knife and then using scissors, but not to 1/32 with any consistency.. I made them wider. I annealed the brass which made it easy to shape, but maybe too soft. I have made multiple sets, gluing bits of 22 gauge wire for the pintels.. They have broken, wound up on the floor, or just disappeared. I tried to paint them back, and attach the rudder and it was a disaster as the CA melted the black paint on to the white rudder . Chuck suggests painting them white, so they are now white. I had them on wrong way around on my first attempt and was still not sure about the process attaching them to the rudder and the rudder to the ship. This video, was very helpful to understand the whole process even though my parts are simpler and smaller. This is where I am at after a lot of false starts and lost or broken parts. I had painted everything before putting it together, but it was not so pretty after it was all glued on and they will need more paint . I decided to leave the adventure of attaching the rudder to the ship for tomorrow, when I am less tired and have recovered some of my patience .
  15. Wales, Transom The wales went on easily. The little fashion pieces that connect the wales to the transom took several tries, after puzzling them out between the drawings on the plans and the pictures in Chuck’s instructions. The transom has been really difficult. There is not much glue surface for it. I think I knocked it off at least 5 times while working on it and there may be a few more times on the way! Starting the cap rails.
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