uscharin

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.

Finished the outer railings and am happy that is behind me. The job required a little trial and error but worked out in the end. Started out making all the stanchions using the same methodology as in post #48. This wasn't so bad. Trying to accurately place the second course rail turned out to be the trick. Like with the top rail I wanted to evenly, and symmetrically, crimp the brass rod before drilling. This would make it easier to drill the second hole and also give the solder a place to build up to yield something of a spherical look. My attempts at flattening the junction with a punch sort of worked but was far from repeatable and definitely not symmetrical. I ended up partially sacrificing a small pair of end nippers to do the crimping. I gradually ground out a gap in the jaws until I could crimp the rod to what looked like a good depth. Trial and error. The tool worked exceptionally well. Next came drilling the hole, which for the second rail is 0.45mm. Top rail is 0.5mm. As was suggested to me, I made up a prick punch out of a 1/16" HSS drill bit. I ground the end to a sharp point. Trouble was, the target is so small I could not accurately guide the punch to the correct spot due to shadows, my eyesight, fingers in the way, etc. More importantly, even lightly striking the punch would tend to fold the rod at the flat and seriously weaken the intersection. In the end I had little choice but to free hand the drilling. Took a while and only ruined about 3 stanchions in the process. I made a little jig to hold the stanchions for locating second railing hole. Kind of crude but made a really nice crimp. The crimp. The process elongated the stanchion by 1mm. I also added a reference mark that would be top of wood rail and one for total length. Pretty small. Looks like a string of firecrackers. Before trimming to length. I pressed each stanchion into a drilled hole (no glue) and then strung the wire rails. On a tight radius I had to feed the stanchions on one at a time. Once everything was in place I went around and soldered each intersection. Once everything is soldered, I could carefully remove the whole assembly to file imperfections and paint. It was surprisingly durable. Once painted I simply reinstalled.

Correct. Specifically, early Falmouth just following Dowman's re-rig/restoration. Been thoroughly enjoying your Staghound project. I have learned a great deal. Also, very glad you are feeling better. Kidney stones are no joke.

Another cold, wet day so decided to reno some recent work. Some of you may have noticed I tend to re-do a lot of my work. For sure, that is true. The poop skylight just looked too crude after a successful railing job, so attempted an upgrade, in situ. Same process as in last attempt except more experienced this time and also found some fine wire in my e-waste bucket, a small electric motor. I harvested the wire (0.16mm OD) which is far thinner than used in my last attempt and scales much, much better. Again, the "rods" were placed free handed. Tracking between rods look much better this time. Very hard on my neck muscles. Now that I'm happy with the skylight I will go back to working on the railings.

Thanks for the tip. I think your approach will be needed for the outer two-course railing. My biggest challenge is not to let the hole distance between top and mid rail to fluctuate. The railing would end up looking terrible. I'll need to make or order something I can use as a mini punch and fabricate a fixture to hold the little stanchions from rolling around. I see this as a two-stage process where I'll use a small flat tipped punch to slightly flatten the intersection and then mark drill locations. I'm starting to feel better about this.

So, accepted delivery of the brass rods I ordered and promptly spent an entire day working on the poop railings. The success of my plan was absolutely not guaranteed. Decided to post the results as I'm pretty happy that I have a method that worked, if not a bit tedious to execute. But that is all part of the challenge and satisfaction of modeling. I decided on 0.8mm rod for the stanchions and 0.5mm rod for the railing. That gets it pretty close to scale, but scale would be smaller sized. My eyes and hands would have trouble if much smaller. The process was to squeeze flat (~2mm) the end of a 0.8mm rod with smooth-faced pliers, then drill a 0.5mm hole through the flat. After that I filed excess brass from around the hole to make a tight ring. Once the hole is made, I then cut the stanchion to length measuring from the hole. The problem with my method is that the hole is never exactly where I want it as this is done free-hand and the drill tends to skate around. I learned something new about the CS after trying to verify the number of stanchions to make. The Underhill plans which I often reference (which are supposed to be based on Longridges Falmouth observations) show 7 stanchions on each side, while the Campbell (as built) plans show 5. After studying my Falmouth images, I counted 6! Most of my Falmouth images of the poop are taken from the port side. I haven't looked into it, but the CS was fixed in place, and I believe the port side was generally the side that received the best sunlight. I did however find a couple pictures where I could count the starboard side... and there were 5! This was a surprise and no idea why the difference. In the end I decided to go with 5 on each side despite the historical inaccuracy. I located and drilled holes along each side of the poop and pressed the stanchions into place. I then ran the railings. I did this as the stanchions are held in place while I soldered the intersections. After soldering I pulled the assemblies out to paint. I use a solder that is 96% Sn and 4% Ag. I have my soldering iron set for 740C as the Ag requires more heat to flow well. I dabbed on some flux, applied a small amount of solder to the iron tip, and then applied to the joint. This makes it less likely to over-apply solder. It is totally a matter of feel as to how much solder to use. The goal is to fill the joint to make a somewhat spherical look. I had to paint the railings twice as in my zeal to finish I forgot to wash the flux off with EtOH. Paint doesn't stick to flux. My next step is to try and do the outer railings, which feature two rail runs. the lower rail is smaller than the top rail, so will use 0.45mm rod. These stanchions will likely be much harder to make but doable. A soldering test. Needed a little more solder. A late Falmouth image of the poop. Note the uneven stanchion counts!

Have been inching along on the poop deck cabin. Far from finished and not glued into place yet but far enough along to show some measurable progress. In an earlier post I showed where I stopped work on the re-do some 40 years ago. I was in the process of reshaping it. I removed the old skylight, finished shaping the sides and then put down a new deck over the old one. As with the other houses, I used 0.5mm thick cherry veneer to layer up the vertical faces of the cabin itself and entry ways. The caps and entry tops were done with 1mm stock. Didn't turn out too bad but man was it a lot of tedious work. The most difficult part of the skylight was cutting the rods out of soft Fe wire. The real skylight features more guard rods but at this scale I had to reduce the number. As it was, I ended up gluing each rod into place freehand. Your eye can pick up the uneven spacing but not too much to spoil the effect. Next, I'll figure out a way to make the railings. Have been giving that a lot of thought. I don't have the brass rod sizes to do this so needed to order a selection. Looking forward to the railings and will at the same time probably work on all the other railings for efficiency's sake. Doesn't appear the poop railings are included on the current CS restoration, or maybe my pictures are too old. I will also be making a binnacle, stern lamp, and a couple other deck features found during the early Falmouth days.

Hahaha, me too! Thanks for the enlightenment. At some point I'll need to execute the ornamentation on my CS so your work caught my eye. Keep up the good work!

I've learned so much following this project, even if sometimes the hood debate gets a little emotional. It's all sausage making and, in the end, the results are very desirable. Rob, how did you fabricate the brass designs applied to hood and cutwater??? Etched?

Now that spring weather has arrived, I've been 'fortunate' enough to have had a long spell of cold weather to keep me indoors. Found the time to work on the main deck houses and hatchways. The layout of the deck houses does change over CS's timeline. How exactly they were at early Falmouth proved a little frustrating. Just couldn't find enough written or photo evidence to make it all clear. In the end I defaulted to Harold Underhill's plans knowing they are not entirely correct. Back in post #38 I showed the deck houses as I had left them 40 years ago. Felt I could do a little better so made the painful decision to scraped them clean and started over. In this latest attempt I used a finer grained cherry veneer and dressed it down to 0.5mm thickness. The layering process yielded pretty good results. Everything is hand cut and filed so lots of variation. At least the variations are not too obvious to a casual viewer. At the point I'm modeling the CS, the main deck house roofs were covered over with a tarred roofing felt, as per Longridge. To help hold the felt down there were batten strips that ran the length of the houses. The forward house was fitted with a large freshwater tank on the roof. This tank was later removed. I still need to fabricate the cable compressor that mounts on the main house roof, along with various chimneys, vents, etc. The hatchways turned out pretty good. Again, all made with cherry. Pretty much everything I'm modeling uses either 0.5mm or 1.0mm thick veneer. The aft hatch is fitted with a booby companion way. Couldn't determine if the booby was fitted in early Falmouth, but it makes sense it was in order to help trainees have easy access to the tween deck. Made the hatch bars out of steel from a used alcohol can. The cleats are copper wire that I flattened with smooth-faced pliers.

Hello Michael You seem so close to the finish line. It's hard to re-start a project like this and believe me I know. It takes some bravery to display ones work for all to see but it is worth it to everyone involved. Looking forward to following your progress. Ron

Decided to make the poop railing before I lost the extra turned posts I made. Pretty much the same drill as with the forecastle railing, except I turned the finials out of brass rod this time. The thick-bodied white paint I used made a mess. Looks fine enough so decided against a re-do. The fire bucket apron was a small disaster as I broke it in half twice trying to file the scroll work. Scroll work didn't turn out as I hoped but does suggest the original and adds interest.