Der Alte Rentner

Sjors, I did a little research here at Model Ship World and found a discussion on the use of wood filler. Someone recommended Goodfilla Wood Filler. So, I went to their website and read some FAQs. See below for a question about how to more-or-less fill larger spaces. (lay it on 1/4" at a time). Since you're planning on planking first, you have the luxury of filling the gaps a little at a time over the course of many weeks. This seems like the easiest way to get the job done. From Goodfilla FAQs (FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS – GoodFilla😞 Q: Can you use this to mold new pieces for repair on furniture as you would with Bondo? Would I add wood glue for increased strength? A: We would recommend our powdered "Filla-In-a-Bag" mixed with wood glue and water mixed to a clay-like consistency. If using a solid mold, add wood filler incrementally in 1/4" layers allowing each layer to dry before adding the next. Pouring GoodFilla into a mold is not ideal since the filler dries via evaporation and needs air to dry.

Sjors, I agree, the redo will not be easy. If you can securely clamp the frame (perhaps between the two bulkheads closest to the stern), you might try drilling a bunch of holes to remove the bulk of the filler block material then, using a good, sharp, flat chisel, you can scrape away the rest. This is soft wood and is fairly easily worked. Just be careful not to drill through the bulkhead or false keel. That's what I would do. I don't know how thickly you can apply wood putty, but that could be a plan B. Add a little at a time and let it dry until you work up enough to fill the space. Once the planks are in, I doubt it matters what's underneath. Good luck. Der Alte Rentner (aka Peter)

The photos above are from Chapter 1 of Bob Hunt's Practicum on the Model Shipways USS Constitution. I noticed your stern filler blocks didn't mate well with the bottom of the counter and bulkhead R. The first two photos are very similar to the ones I just posted to my build log, but I didn't get a picture of the more-or-less finished product like Bob's P1.4.2-11. For what it's worth, shaping these fillers after getting close with the bandsaw cuts etc. is waaaaay out of my wheelhouse. I didn't post it to my log, but I had to make no less than three starboard side fillers before I got close to figuring out the best technique. The drum sander is a labor-saving tool vs carving with a curved Xacto blade (Geez! How does anyone do that well? Kudos to you Bob!!), but care is required to avoid sanding away too much material in the wrong places. Mustafa is correct, much of this is scratch build work. I think at this point in the build, it's not good to try for perfection, because when it comes to fairing the bulkheads and planking later, you can fine tune the shapes. I studied the portion of the Practicum dealing with planking the counter and lower counter in Chapter 6 of the Practicum before deciding to leave my filler blocks alone at this point. I'm pretty sure I'll be whittling away at these when I get to that point in the build. And I might be exploring the characteristics of wood putty and Bondo too. Thanks Bob for the up-close details of the build in Chapter 6. By the way, I do recommend you purchase the Practicum - available at Sophomore Course, USF Constitution|US|Lauck Street Shipyard (Don't go crazy and purchase the Photo CD. All of those photos are in the chapters of the Practicum.)

Holey Moley, are there a lot of typos in my build log document! I'll endeavor to avoid them in future. Sorry about that... I plan to post roughly every week, as long as there's progress to report. Catch ya next week. and Chris, thanks for the clarification.

Having more cents than sense, I purchased all the materials from Bob Hunt. So far, so good. Chapter 2 came in handy to guide me through what to do with bulkhead B and the Stem (preparing for Bowsprit tenon and installation). I have been poring over the build logs here, and mine is underway as well. Thanks for sound advice. Best Der Alte

Seems like I'm on my own.. Oh well, The build continues.

Greetings bthoe. I don't know how I missed your build until now, but I searched MSW for "bowsprit tenon" and that led me to your build log. Sorry about the bloodshed... I'm just starting out myself and have added your build to my watchlist. I see you haven't posted since Thanksgiving last year. Hope you're just collecting pictures to post soon.

May 29, 2024 update: Based on a comment by Bill Morrison yesterday, I'm amending this post to try to shed a little light on the issue I tried to explain below. The camber(?) is not symmetrical between port and starboard on a number of bulkheads. I discovered this by simply eyeballing the hull from fore and aft. The worst offenders were bulkheads A, C, D and P. By laying planks along the bulkheads, I was able to determine that bulkheads A and C needed to be trimmed back, and that bulkheads D and P needed material added to properly "fair" the deck. It the photo of the Constitution from above in post 170, you can clearly see the shims on top of bulkheads D and P. A closer look reveals the bulkheads that needed to be shaved or sanded back. Original post of July 7, 2023. (Man-oh-man, has it been almost a year???) Before I continue with my build, I have a question for any of you who have build Conny from this kit. The next step in the process is to glue the bulkheads onto the keel. I noticed that the some (?) bulkhead components have yet another flaw. See below: I don't plan to install a gun deck, so the fact that the flaw is repeated in what would be the gundeck (lower) cutout may not be an issue. However, when it'll get to be time to plank the spar deck, absent a fix now, the portside of the deck will be slightly lower than the starboard side. I see two options. One is also illustrated below, and the approach I am taking with bulkhead C. It occurs to me that I could also slightly taper slots in the offending pieces to allow for a little wiggle room to align the bulkhead so the deck edges line up with the closest neighbors. C would align with B and E, and so forth. Sorry, the photos are out of sequence. But I think third one (Bulkhead A) clearly illustrates the problem. (I now see the advantage to making the bulkheads from scratch, but it's probably less work to fix the poorly laser-cut parts than dust off my scroll saw.) Thoughts? Advice?

Thanks for getting rid of the duplicate build log. I noticed that the image quality in my posted photos, which were generated by Adobe from the pdf file I'm using personally to document my build, is not the greatest. This seems to be a limitation of Adobe's process of converting pdfs to jpgs. Are jpg files the only acceptable format for the build log posts? I prefer to put together several days of notes on my PC and maybe post to the build log once a week or so, but if I am going to post, it would be nice to submit higher resolution photos. Thanks again

2024 07-09: Note from my future self to anyone just starting the Model Shipways Constitution and planning on using the Hunt Practicum without a kit bash. At the end of this post, I've begun attaching bulkheads to the center keel set. I would like to advise you now to look waaaay ahead to chapters 4 and 5 of the Practicum to see what will be involved in planking the spar deck. Also look for XKen's build log (link below) here at the Model Ship World site. Why? Because I learned that some steps taken at the very beginning would have saved me considerable grief a year later. In the Hunt Practicum, you will be asked to taper the planks covering the spar deck. Now, not everyone posting here does that, and there's a case to be made that not doing so will make planking the deck much easier. If you're a stickler for sticking as close to the plans as possible and following the Hunt methodology, here are a couple of options you may wish to consider very early on: 1. Following in XKen's footsteps. In particular, the bit about building a plywood carrier deck to facilitate planking off the hull. There are quite a few advantages to doing the spar deck planking off the hull, not least of which is that you can much more easily achieve the tapered planking the plans really call for. (By the way, Hunt sort of cheats on this tapering at the foredeck.) (A tip for you now! In his build log, XKen failed to mention early on that you'll need to shave off the thickness of this plywood carrier from the top of the bulkheads before you affix them to the keel.) 2. If you don't want to mess around with the plywood carrier, then spend a little time examining the plans and develop a map of where the butt joints for the deck planks will be. If you want to understand what I'm talking about here, jump ahead to the latter part of page 8 and page 9 of this build log. Tapering long planks and scratching in fake butt joints sounds easy, but it's not. Once you know roughly where the butt joints will be, plan early on to put support pieces between the bulkheads. Again, see page 9. If perfect 20/20 hindsight, there are three things I would have done differently right from the start. First, I would have gotten some Baltic birch plywood and cut my own bulkheads, because the laser cut parts that come with the kit are simply the pits. Secondly, I would have built a plywood carrier for the decking ala XKen. And thirdly, I would have purchased better planking materials for the hull. I didn't realize until I finished planking the hull, that I would prefer not to paint the Constitution. The basswood material that comes with the kit is okay, if you're going to paint over it, but if you would like a nice natural wood finish, you may want to consider investing in alternative woods. Look at Hipexec's build log for the Constructo kit to see what I mean. Let me close this addendum with the best advice I can give you here at the start. Learn how to navigate this site, and at each stage of your build, consult as many build logs as you can to help you chart your own course. Here are (hopefully) the links to the build logs I found must beneficial to study: (I may have missed a couple, but this is a pretty good sampling to get you started). Good luck!

Yikes, I goofed. I don't know how I set this build log up in the wrong era. I couldn't see a way to move from one era to another, so I deleted everything I could. I'll try setting up the build log again tomorrow - hopefully in the right place. sorry...

I too congratulate you on a splendidly done model. I've been studying all the build log here before I get too far into the construction of my own Model Shipways Constitution hoping to learn from the best. I haven't found a nicer looking outcome. If you're still monitoring the site for feedback, do you have any advice for someone just starting out?

I too am delighted to find your build log. I just unpacked the MS kit and inventoried items yesterday. I've been poring over build logs like crazy looking for details on rabbets and fairing lines for a couple weeks now knowing that I'd not start the keep/bulkhead assembly until I had a concrete plan of attack. Your build to date addresses many of my questions and I'm taking notes. I am saddened to note that you haven't posted since April of 2020. I hope you're all right.

Are you planning to paint over the hull?

I'm taking notes.. Excellent work.

Feb 5, 2024 update: it's been 5 months since I responded to this post, and I've learned a lot since then. For one thing I now know what kit bashing means. At the time I assumed that bashing meant making unfavorable comments about, which is what I did below. In 2020 hindsight, let me State emphatically that I was mistaken about the instructions that came with the model shipways version of the kit. In retrospect the constructo instructions are vastly superior. Though both are useless for a novice like me. Had it not been for the Bob Hunt practicum, and all the build logs here at model ship world, I would not have gotten anywhere in my build. Now that I have some experience behind me, I'm actually looking forward to building the constructive kit after I finish the model shipways one. I love the natural finish of the Constructor kit and I would probably do something different in terms of planking the hull. But I will resurrect it when the model shipways Constitution is finished. Original post: Rich may not be, but I am. I've been poring over the plans and instructions for the Constructo kit, as well as studying Rich's build log. I've decided that I'd rather eat the cost of the Constructo kit and purchased the Model Shipways version instead. I just received their plans and they are a huge improvement over the set that came with Constructo. I'm still waiting for the kit, and know that it's been criticized for less than perfect instructions, but I've downloaded them and decided these too are vastly superior to the set provided by Constructo, which look pretty, but are virtually useless (IMHO). Congrats on having succeeded with a such a beautiful build Rich and overcoming so many obstacles handed to you by Constructo. And thanks for sharing your experience.

Not yet. I spent the better part of the last week poring over the instructions for the Constructo kit and reviewing Hipexec's build log. I'm really impressed with Hipexecs results but the deeper I dig into the details of the Constructo kit, the less impressed I am with it. As mentioned previously, I ordered the plans for the Model Shipways version. I'll have to study those in depth before deciding whether to continue with the kit I have or switch to Model Shipways. (I'm pretty sure already that I'll be switching boats in midstream). Once that decision is made, I'll launch my own build log. I imagine posting one has quite the motivational effect on the builder.

Wow, you are progressing quickly. I love seeing the details in the photos and marvel at the differences in approach between your plans and mine. Keep up the good work.

What a fantastic shortcut. I was planning on trying to cut a notch the entire length of both sides of the false keel, which would have required my making a couple of patterns and setting up a pattern bit on a routing table. This is SOOOO much easier! Thanks for the tip.