Greg Davis

Organizers arrived, were assembled, and filled - time to try out the new setup!

I cleaned up the casting a bit - flattened the bottoms, milled off the lettering and mounting brackets: The two pieces are epoxied together. Suitable mounting brackets will be added back in - I think I can make them out of square tubing. I'm considering notching the material into these casting before adding the semi-cylindrical bottom castings. Then the top part of the square tubing can be removed, leaving mounting brackets with a triangular profile.

I know its been a long break, but I have started up again. This time I am working on the V-16 engine. During the break, I spent quite a bit of time trying to learn more about the Antoinette V-16 that powered the No. 18 hydroplane. Unfortunately, like plans to the hydroplane, it seems that plans / exact dimensions for the engines built by Levasseur no longer exist. There are a number of photographs of their engines and some specimens still exist. It also is the case that the engine designs were in a nearly permanent state of flux, with modifications being done often. Of course, there is a lot of commonality at the same time. So what I end up with will be more of a 'representation' of the power plant as opposed to an accurate scale model of it. I do hope that I capture the prominent elements so there is no question as to what it is a representation of! When I first considered building this model, I planned on taking two of the Model Airways 14-bis Antoinette v8 engine kits and building a V-16 from them. This seemed sensible since the V-16's were basically concatenations of two v-8's. After a while, I thought that I could craft an engine from scratch - milling the block from aluminum, etc. I've now come back to my senses and have committed to working from the two kits I have. Today, I actually made the first step: sections from each need to be removed in-order to get the correct cylinder spacing. In a zig-zag pattern, I needed to mill 0.1" from the front of one piece and the same amount from the back of the other. The two pieces need a little fine tuning, but match up pretty well already: The lettering will get removed and something should be done about the mounting brackets! Hopefully (more) regular progress will be made now.

Paul Thanks for the info - his process makes sense (and a lot of other interesting videos as well)! Greg

Packed up a whole lot of stuff so that I could get tables and new lighting in place. Unpacking after the new organizer cabinets arrive at the end of the week.

Thanks for the details - I wonder if the flow improver / thinner / retarder mixture is a big part of why your airbrush is keeping pretty clean on its own.

Not much modeling today, instead I'm working on revamping my workspace. As it is in transition it is a mess right now. For quite awhile, I have been making use of a couple of work benches from Harbor Freight and a drafting table that was my Dad's. While I've had the HF benches for years, they have always had a couple of disadvantages for me. First the drawers don't fully pull out so they are difficult to fully utilize; second, and most importantly it is very difficult for me to sit near the bench and work. The drafting table is great when I am drafting - which is infrequent - but is deeper than I like on most days so it isn't the best use of space for me either. As I get older, I find that I would rather sit than stand when working, hence the revamp. So today I got a start on the remodel by building a pair of benches that I can sit by. They are each 5 feet long and 2 feet deep at a height convenient for sitting on a typical office chair. They will get moved out of the basement and up a couple flights of stairs soon. I plan on putting a shelf above the benches for storage and have a couple of shop lights attached to provide better work light as well. I have additional storage drawers on the way to hold what was in the HF benches (and more). More modeling soon!

I'm also using Vallejo Air, but I have not thinned and/or used any additives. I've taken the company on face value when they say that the paint can be sprayed straight from the bottle. I do have some of the flow improver - I should give it a try!

I started to figure that out today - in the afternoon I brushed some red, this evening I did some black. After the red, I had run cleaner through the brush and disassembled / cleaned everything but the needle. After the black I took it all apart - including the needle and yes, there was red paint stuck pretty well to the needle! All is clean and good now, but the cleanup is time consuming. On the upside, there is no way I could have gotten this nice of a finish with a brush. So I think I will probably become an fan of the airbrush.

The waterway / margin planks have been shaped, notched for timberheads, and glued in place on the foredeck. More material was milled and made into a combing for the forward hatch. Nearly time to start planking the deck! I'm 90% sure that I will be going with the standard nibbed planking pattern. As an aside, the BR-86 is getting some paint / I'm teaching myself airbrushing!

Got a chance to work some more on this project this evening. I marked out margin planks to match those on the aft deck, the forward hatch location, and mast location on the subdeck. Took a few photocopies of the piece and then glued, clamped, and weighted it to the model. Spent some time making up some more 1mm pear for the waterways. I had some more pear that I have been using on the model. Unfortunately, it was 4mm thick and I really didn't want to mill off 3/4 of the wood to make the waterways. Decided to see if it was possible to split the wood in half - turns out that I could. First using successive cuts from both sides of the piece with a slitting blade on my table saw I was able to cut all but about 1/4" of the material out. The remaining material was cut with a razor saw. I ended up with two strips 1.5mm thick. They cleaned up and thinned to 1mm quickly in the thickness sander. Templates for the waterways are now rubber cemented to the pear and await the scroll saw!

Subdeck completed - I decided to make this one out of 1/32" basswood instead of the plywood like on the aft deck. Next step will to mark out the waterways / margin planks - after that I'm going to need to commit to a planking scheme!

the same is happening to me!

Making preparations for the foredeck. I added strips of wood between the bulkheads and near the bulwarks so the subdeck can be secured well in this area. Once they were in place, I faired the 'deck beams' and support pieces. Then I made a copy of the foredeck plan and was glad to see that it matches the foredeck quite a bit better than the aft deck plan matched the aft deck. Next step will be to actually fashion the subdeck. Still haven't made a decision on the planking pattern for this deck - nibbed as in plan or herring bone pattern as illustrated in Chapelle. Votes?

The oxidation idea sounds plausible. It is still a curiosity to me - there was no sunlight hitting the hull at anytime and the 'discolored' planks are discolored from front to back. Here is a picture of the inside of the hull: There is little, if any, change in color of the pieces that had been taken from a laser cut sheet; i.e., bulkheads, stem, stern, keel. It seems to be isolated to the strips that were provided to plank the model. I've a number of MS kits and in many the planking material has a good deal of color variation (and at times quality and milling variation). I wonder if they don't always do a good job sourcing strip wood for their kits.

This is beautiful work - I've often been tempted to try this model! Out of curiosity, how well does the glue - both Titebond and CA - hold on your oiled and waxed pieces of wood? Greg

I started a MS Bluenose kit a long time ago. After planking the hull I lost interest in the project and it has been sitting on a shelf out of the sun in a dry room where the temperature remains pretty constant all year long. When the hull was planked there was variation in the color of the basswood strips that had been supplied with the kit. About 25% were darker in color. Being new to the hobby, I used what was supplied and 'randomized' the use of strips. I have a picture of the hull taken in September of 2012 were the differing shades can be seen: I've been moving things around and happened upon the hull recently. Most all the strips have gotten a bit darker over time, but the darker strips (from early on) seem to have darkened dramatically more. Not being overly educated in wood, I am curious as to what is going on here. It is of particular interest as currently I am using holly for the first time on a model and the first holly I purchased had a good deal of bluish color mixed in. I now understand that the holly discoloration is likely a mold. Does basswood / limewood suffer similarly or is this completely unrelated. In advance, thank you to anyone that can shed light on this phenomena. Greg

Bulwarks have been reinstalled. Beforehand, I did take the opportunity to smooth out the interior side of the bulwarks where the two strakes butt together - easier than if that work had been done with them installed. The hull will still need a little bit of fixing / care due to it being dropped a while back. I'll take care of that work when it is time to paint and copper the exterior. Next up is completing the fairing of the deck beams followed by making a false deck.

Aft deck is done for now! Now I will need to reinstall the bulwarks. I wish I could do that after installing the main deck; however, I need to make use of the bulkhead extensions to help reposition the bulwarks. I'm glad that I did not sand down the bulkheads up front after breaking off the extensions. Also glad I was able to find all the extensions in the garbage can!

I just made it to one of the margin / waterway planks! Time for an expresso! While it isn't easy to see in this picture, the outermost plank is nibbed into the second plank near the stern so that it was not thinned / shaped to a pointy end. Also, I didn't quite follow the lines on the plywood for the last planks I installed. To keep them as even as possible out to the waterway, I made use of a proportional divider to set the width of each plank as it was added. First taking a sixth of the remaining distance, then a fifth, etc. This was to hopefully guard against having an overly wide (or narrow) plank up against the waterway. It seems to have worked out OK and I will employ the same technique on the other side.

I am going to use planks the length of the aft deck to finish the work. This is also how Volk, Davies had presented the ship. I thought I had read elsewhere, that such a planking scheme was not uncommon for this type of a ship; however, I am not currently able to find the reference(s).

The remaining planks behind the cockpit went in easily. The planks that flank the cockpit and run the full length of the deck were not. But they are now installed and I like the look that is developing! A dozen planks to go now.

A bit more progress - completed half of the planking aft of the cockpit and installed the final two planks that end ahead of the cockpit. Once the rest of the shorter planks have been added behind the cockpit, there are seve planks (each side) that go the full length of this deck. More fun to come!

The deck planking is symmetric again!

I believe that to be the case also; i.e., decking similar to fishing schooners. The Phantom plans by Campbell show the curved planks aft and straight planks nibbed into the waterway forward. According to Chapelle (The American Fishing Schooners 1825-1935) there were other planking options up front: The herringbone pattern is sort of interesting - can't say I've ever see a model built this way, but I am actually considering it! I started planking Phantom in the middle because I was concerned about working around the coamings and felt this would be easier for me. Last time I planked a deck in a curved manner was on a Mamoli Britannia model; here I did start on the outside and worked in. The decking was all done in 1/16" thick basswood, the curved pieces being 1/16" square which easily conformed to the needed shape. There were no coamings to worry about because all the deck furniture was attached after the planking was done and I had also included wider king planks. When I was working on this model, the website for the K1 Britannia project had a number of plans / illustrations of Britannia that I used as inspiration as to the final look. Since then, their project has been reimagined and the website has been simplified. Now it is not clear if they will meet thier goal of constructing a replica ship - it would be amazing if they did!