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Rob, This page served as a bookmark in an old book I was thumbing through this morning. Immediately thought of you. Article is not complete but Is from a ca1932 Popular Mechanics. And Stag*Hound is spelled... Staghound. Haha. Love how your mast is looking, Ron

After the bilge pump I needed to do something relatively easy. I'm happy to say the hen coops turned out well and are ready to be installed. The coops were widened at some point before arriving at Falmouth. The current CS restoration/reproduction has them close to their original as-built size. You can see in this early Falmouth image that there is an extra foot. This extra foot marks the original outside corner and was no doubt still in place in order to support a weak rail splice. I made up bar panels and glued to rectangular wood tops and bottoms. Hard to believe the coops consumed over two feet of 0.45mm brass rod. I had to tack-glue the coops to a stick in order to spray paint them. The original coop bars were made out wood and were square(ish). One of my sons was recently in London on business and took time out to visit the CS. He reports it was a great experience to see it in person, something I have yet to do. The "water" dome that the ship sits in always leaves me unsettled. The effect looking up at the ship from within is quite grand. On the exterior, it looks like she is sitting on a water balloon that is about to burst. It is absolutely not complimentary to the lines of the ship and find that very unfortunate.

Haha, yes, I'll enjoy making them, but it will also likely be a little painful. The iron end castings are where the real work will be. Thanks for the compliment. Just finished looking over your 3d printed CS offerings. Really nice prints and the resolution looks really good. Must be a pretty nice printer. If you offered your parts in my scale I might have been tempted. Kevin, your CS model looks great but I'm sure your Victory is soaking up all you time and effort. Ron

Can't believe this little bilge pump took me three weeks to build, but it did. Turned out to be pretty challenging. Most of the parts took me at least two attempts to make and I had to walk away several times to gather myself. In the end, I have something I can live with. I think my next task will be the chicken coops before tackling the deck winches. As with the fife rails, the pump is not glued down yet. I'm waiting until the masts can be set in place to help with positioning. Most of the pump is made out of brass. The wheels were perhaps the greatest challenge. What you see below is how I managed it. I first formed a ring out of brass wire and then drilled holes to receive the spokes. I then made the hubs by drilling receivers for the brass spokes in solid brass rod. I kept both hubs together, as you see in the middle pictures, until I could lace the spokes and solder. After the first wheel was finished I parted it from the rod and moved to the second. In my first attempt at this I cut the hubs out first which was disaster as it was pretty much impossible for me to manipulate the hub while lacing the spokes. Leaving the hubs attached to a rod make it much easier as I had something to hang onto during the assembly. The pump cans came next. I filed a face on a brass tube (see first picture) and then cut sections that then got soldered together in pairs. That worked out great. The iron support posts were pretty tricky but was able to make mostly out of brass (middle picture). The problem came when trying to solder the opposing ribs. The part would heat up too fast causing the entire assembly to fall apart. The solution was to glue in wood and then shape (third frame).

Congratulations! Glad you have it under glass and really like how you did the sails. You can be proud. Ron

Most of this update is work done about a month ago, at which point I had to stop ship building and tend to a couple domestic projects before the weather shuts me down. I had to chainsaw up and split two very large trees that blew down this last spring. I then restructured an external wall in my house so I could install two new windows. Everything seems to happen in threes, so it was no surprise when my geothermal heat pump broke down needing some significant attention. All of that is behind me now and today I am just resting my bones and thinking about ships. Bollards. Made all of them out of brass, which is very suited to the task. As usual, I didn't appreciate how much work they were going to be. There is a dozen of them in total, some very small that mount to the main deck rail and the biggest ones that mount on the main deck. The largest ones on the main deck, in reality, also can serve as vents. I added a picture of some men restoring the brass screw vents. I had intended to add unpainted brass caps to my bollards but decided not to when I realized they were painted over with black paint at early Falmouth. A lot of brass was painted over at that point in time to save on maintenance. Fife Rails. It is often said that it is important to research the period in time that you intend to model. Over a ships history so much can change and that is especially true of CS. The fife rails are a good example of this. The as-built arrangement of main deck fife rails is different than what you would see in today's restoration and again different than what you would have seen at early Falmouth. At Falmouth the foremast was flanked by two rails, one square-posted (fore), the other round-posted (aft). The main mast had one (fore) square posted rail, where the as-built arrangement would have had an additional aft mounted square-posted rail, which apparently ended up going to the foremast when the Portuguese owned the ship. In today's restoration the round-posted fife from the foremast is now aft of the main mast and bilge pump. The early Falmouth arrangement was no doubt executed by the Portuguese, and probably when it was re-rigged as a barkentine. Wish I had more pictures to share of my work. I seem only to have pictures of how I made the square-posted sheave escutcheons. The square-posted version has three sheaves on each post where the round ones have a single sheave, which I have yet to complete. I have not glued down the rails yet as I'm still not sure of the spacing from the masts. I included a ca1922 picture provide by Longridge of the foremast arrangement at Falmouth. It looks to me that the aft rail sits closer to the mast, but not sure. Originally, the round-posted rail was located where the square-posted fife sits. It was brought to my attention that the binnacle would have been kept polished and I had to agree, even though I'm sure its maintenance would not have been up to seaworthy standards. I tried my best to polish it without breaking it off and then lacquered it. At some point I'm going to shave down the wheel grips a bit as they are simply too big for my liking. Here are a couple overviews of the ship. Getting there... slowly.

Hello Julie, Am enjoying your work as you come at this sort of project with a unique background and diverse skill sets. I find it very interesting and refreshing. Had never considered using hide glue on my model. Personally, I use a variety of adhesives but mostly 5-minute epoxy and some CA. I have used hide glue for decades on various restoration projects, primarily veneering. For sure it has many advantages, but convenience is not one of them. I'm curious how the hide glue works for you in ship modeling. Keep up the fine work! Ron

Some nice symmetrical wire bending on the step railings. That isn't so easy to do as I recently found out. Looking great.

Haha. Yes, I asked the young cadets where it was stowed, and they had trouble finding it. I'll take pictures for a later post, but I did my best to brighten it up without breaking it. I then coated with lacquer to slow or arrest tarnish. It does look more "right." For such a small part, a little dark contrast helps give it dimension and that is still the case as I could not get into all the crevices. My feeling is that when the cadets were on board they would have been charged with such tasks as polishing the brass, if only occasionally. I have one picture of the binnacle in early Falmouth that shows it with large blotches of corrosion. B&W pictures can be hard to interpret, however. I'm happy with how it now looks and so is my wife (which has good taste is such things). Bob, your Staghound is moving along at warp speed. Meanwhile, I must have spent the last two days just making bollards. The accumulation of detail is really starting to bring her to life. Alway feel inspired by your attention to detail.

You are right, of course. Don't know what I was thinking. Thanks for sobering me up! I'll be sure to feature the polishing results in my next update and am sure it will really improve the look. Ron

Seemed like a good point to share some work. July was a super busy month for things other than CS. August has so far been relatively quite so have spent time working on smallish details that are important but are hugely time consuming. Makes progress feel very slow. The original binnacle is quite tall in real life at approx. 2 feet. The original stayed on the CS deck while at Falmouth and during this time was occasionally repositioned. I profiled the binnacle body on my 1/2" electric drill, from a brass fastener I found in my junk pail. The head turned out a little too big so proportions are a little off. No big deal. I soldered on the exterior parts and then blackened. I scoured off most of the black to get something that looks tarnished. My wife says it needs to be brighter so will probably comply. I floated some clear epoxy in the view port cavity to look like glass. Making the floor grate that the helmsman would stand on was quite difficult. The only way I could make this was by printing out on paper a scaled grid and then tack parts to it with CA. This helped a great deal with keeping the spacing close to correct. When it came time to cross-cut the grating I glued two strips of scaled grid to the front and then used a jewelers saw to make the cuts free-hand. Should have used a small razor saw as there was too much flex to the jewelers blade allowing for some drift. Still, it worked out. Once all the wood pieces were in place I peeled off the paper backing and sanded out. I intentionally made the whole assembly thicker to allow for sanding. Up to recently I never considered that these grates were very important in keeping the deck from getting worn down, in addition to improving footing. I made a ladder for each of the two main deck houses. They are super small so used the same technique as with the grating. I'm showing the paper peels that came off almost intact. I stained and then sealed all the wood with shellack before assembly which no doubt helped with paper release. You can see in this image one of the four mooring pipes I put in days ago. Made three sets of steps, one for the forecastle and two that lift you to the poop deck. Tried pretty hard to get the stair profiles to look right. Before I could fit the forecastle steps I had to install my Walker windlass and make the forward hatch (formerly a companionway). I also had to paint the brass studded chain which would have been a nightmare without my airbrush. Hand painting that small chain would have looked terrible. As the model progresses I will judicially add some weathering powders to the chain. I added two chain pipes to my windlass, wrapped the chain onto the wildcats (pocket drives) and then glued in place. The windlass serves only to hold the chain ends as you can not see it without a borescope. I could have completely left it off the boat but as I have said before, it is important to me to have it there. I also installed the poop smoke stack. At this point in her life the stack was not in use and is cut back and capped.

Fourth time the charm? This will be short. After placing my new helm on the CS, something simply did not look right. Turns out the poop skylight I had just finished redoing was way too large. It made everything around it look wrong. Proportionally it was not too bad unto itself, but the overall size was way too big. I did not check the dimensions against Campbell's plans, which was a huge mistake. Of course, smaller is harder. The big problem was reproducing the metal protective bars. The fine electric motor wire I used in my last attempt was now far too big. I ended up sacrificing an old USB cable to harvest the fine wire within. Of course, the fine wire was a nightmare to work with. The bars add a great deal to the look so really wanted to have that modeled. This is what I had to do: These closeup pictures make the wire look not so bad. Reality is, it was like working with baby's hair. I tried all sort of ways to stretch this wire into a pattern so I could then glue it to the panels. I tried double-sided tape, etc., to hold the wire into position but it always allowed too much creep. I printed out two paper patterns with spacing that I felt would work and then glued to a piece of plywood. I then drilled holes at either end to insert the wire and then soak with CA. On one end the holes go all the way through the wood so I could gently pull the wire taut and then fix with CA. This method worked fairly well but several of the wires broke during the process so had to redo them. At the end, some wires ended up slacker than others. I re-tensioned the wires by using a couple small brass rods. I then slid a piece of wax paper under the wires and then pressed down the skylight panels while introducing CA under the wood stiles. A very tedious process but got away with it. Once the glue had set up, I cut the panels away with a razor blade. The wire spacing could be improved a little after-the-fact by pushing the wire around with a needle. The results are not bad but still need to clean up the bars a little and try to straighten/space them a bit. The new skylight tuned out to be ~20 percent smaller, which magically made everything look and feel much more balanced.

Thanks, Peter. The wheel was a real challenge. I will absolutely not try to improve on it, as I sometimes will do. Tough to be a perfectionist. I'm starting to get antsy to move on to masts and rigging. Love how your CS is coming along and looks really close to being finished. Are you going to case it? I hope so. Ron

Lots going on around the house this last couple of weeks. Lightning took out a lot of my electronics and black bears have added my home to their rounds. Electronics have all been repaired or replaced but I have not figured out how to keep the bears out of my cultivated raspberry patch. The cold war has begun. Despite all the recent drama, I have managed to model the CS helm. Maybe it's me but the ship's wheel is one of those features that I invariably look at first when viewing a model. It needs to feel realistic enough that I can smell the salt. For that reason, I poured a lot of sweat into this. Lacking modern conveniences such as a small lathe and mill, I knew this was going to be painful. I used the Campbell drawings to guide me in addition to LOTS of pictures, both old and new. The feet on the steering mechanism enclosure are turned in my model, as they were at early Falmouth. My guess is the legs were original to the ship. At some point in later Falmouth the legs were replaced with square ones as seen today. There was also an emergency tiller arm under the enclosure that I decided not to include as you simply would not see it. The emergency tiller had two eyelets that could be hooked up to tackle to steer. The brass facing on the CS wheel is a highly recognizable element and I definitely wanted to somehow create that. My best bet was to hammer out some brass rod and then form a ring. In order to hammer the brass flat, I had to repeatedly anneal the brass by heating to red and quenching in water. It would otherwise become so springy from hammering that it would become unworkable. I used a plug cutter as a mandrel to form the brass ring and also keep it stable while I glued a 0.5mm thin cherry strip over the outside surface. Once that was done I did the same thing on the interior face. Once the outside lamination had set up the ring became very dimensionally stable. I made the ring assembly quite wide and needed to be file dressed down to final dimension. Once that was done I laminated an additional layer inside and out with slightly narrower cherry strips. Altogether, this mimics the original wheel construction. Making the grips and spokes was a massive headache. I made up 1mm square "sticks" for this purpose and tried to turn the profiles using my hand held Dremel tool. I don't know what the slowest RPM is on this tool, but it proved to be way too fast causing the frail sticks to self-destruct. The solution was to hand carve each one. Not too bad as there are only 8 grips. I used a razor blade and tiny files and did all the work free hand. Naturally, there is a lot of variability between each part but not enough for my eye to easily catch it. After the grips were made I cut notches on the wheel using nothing more than a razor blade. The hub is made up of two brass tubes and a solid bar which I happened to have on hand. Forming the central cap was done on my Dremel. I had to skin over the hub with more 0.5mm cherry and that turned out to be one of the more difficult tasks. I used a soldering iron to heat-bend the strips for the outer wheel, but heat alone would not work over a 2mm radius. So, I soaked a strip in ammonium hydroxide overnight and then made a couple wraps over a scrap piece of brass tubing of the same diameter. Once dried the wood held its shape and could then easily be glued into place. As an aside, I have recently read a few posts critical of the use of ammonia for bending wood. Personally, I have used ammonium hydroxide in general wood working for decades with absolutely no issues. Ammonia gas dissolved in water gives you ammonium hydroxide. Wood in general is slightly acidic, so soaking in ammonium hydroxide will neutralize the acidity (think paper document deacidification). The ammonia goes off as a gas leaving water that then evaporates. I would rather risk the wood being slightly alkaline over acidic. I ended up making the spokes free handed as well. Given their size, adding much detail by hand was almost impossible for me. Interestingly, the Campbell drawing of the wheel illustrates a different spoke turning profile than the original. I attached the spokes to the wheel the same way as the grips. It became painfully obvious that trying to install the spokes with the hub in place was going to be far too difficult. Instead, I glued in the spokes and then carefully radius the ends with a file until the hub fit. Sounds difficult but ended up being quite easy. Just had to be very careful and use a backing so the spokes don't break out.

Rob, thanks for the complement. Means a lot coming from you as I respect your work immensely. Taking a few days off then will decide what to work on next.