cdrusn89
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Everything posted by cdrusn89
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More odds and ends. I decided to add a molding around the base of the cockpit and the skylights. I find it hard to believe that these were not included as it would be really hard to keep a vertical seam between the deck and structure anything close to watertight without something to force the caulking into the seam. Maybe they were eliminated to save weight and let the crew man the pumps to keep up with the entering water and be miserable below decks. I assume they had to sail this across the Atlantic to try for the cup (no heavy lift ships in the 1930s) but maybe it was towed or carried over as deck cargo. Anyway it gave an excuse to try out one of the draw plates I got from Artesania via Hobby Tools. I used the 2mm X 2mm quarter round slot (upper left) which would be not quite 3" - pretty big but it is the smallest I have.. I used a 3/32 x 3/32 boxwood piece thickness sanded to 2mm x 2mm. It worked pretty smoothly and reasonably fast - although I would not like to have to make 20' of it this was. I mounted the wind instruments prior to painting. I might have gotten carried away on these. The vane would be about 3' long at scale but it is way up there although I am sure they had a readout on deck (there are some gauges on the aft skylight structure just in front of the helm). I have decided to mount a pair of smaller winches (from Bluejackets) on each side of the mast near the deck. There does not appear to be a method for tensioning (or securing) the main halyard (the instruction show an eye in one of the sail tracks with what is apparently a weight on the end as the termination of the main halyard). On a modern sailboat there is a winch located about 3-4 feet above the deck and this is used to tension the main halyard and it secures to a cleat below the winch on the mast of through a fairlead block at the base of the mast to a cleat on deck. I am going to replicate these on both sides of the mast, for the main and either of the jib halyards.
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Gerty - Thanks. Working odds and ends now. Here is a picture of my replacement winch grinder. Not very elegant but it should get the job done. Also put the ship's wheel together - all the parts were there and unbroken too. Also this is the beginning of my anemometer that will go at the top of the mast. It will be painted white and I am hoping no one notices that the cups on the end are not hollow. I used some jewelry beads that I filed down to a hemisphere (more or less) but the only way I could get them to stay on the arm was to glue them on both ends so the arm extends through the "cup" and pretty well fills it up. Maybe I can put a spot of black paint in the center of each one. It will be at the top of the mast in any event and not exactly in the normal line of sight unless you are 7'6" tall. Sorry picture of the more finished anemometer will not load. I will get another picture when it is painted.
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Thanks Yves.
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Three coats of Wipe-on-Poly satin. 24 hrs to fully dry and it is on to deck furniture and rigging installation.
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You would think that having built five previous model kits I would have checked out all the materials and pieces provided to make sure I had everything and nothing was broken. If you thought that you would be wrong in this particular case. I failed to thoroughly check the "special" pieces provided in this case the winch pedestal. I found it, still inside the packaging envelope in two pieces. Since it is "Britannia metal" (or something similar) and the break is at the thinnest point (where else?) I see no easy way to repair this piece. So I used my new drill press as a poor man's lathe and turned a piece of dowel into approximately the shape and length of the kit supplied part. I am trying to decide now whether to flatten the sides on the top or "quit while I am ahead" and just drill a hole for the handles, stain Mahogany, varnish and call it a day.
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I got all the holes drilled for the eyebolts, blocks and main sheet traveler (winches and skylights were done earlier. I painted the inside of the skylight holes black to match the blackened file folder in the bottom of the skylight structures. I did another sanding with 320 grit and wiped down with paint thinner soaked rag and now I should be ready for a first coat of Wipe-on-Poly in the morning. I guess I am going to have to get serious about making the sails as I should have the hull and rigging finished in the near future.
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HQ approves and not one to allow time for additional consideration I managed to locate a suitable drill press locally, procured, set up and drilled the required 15 holes in a little more than five hours, including an hour each way to get the drill press. Worked like a charm and now I only have to find a place for it in the workshop. It is too heavy (almost 100 lbs according to the box) to move around much. It may just have to stay where it is until I need that space for something else, then maybe in the corner somewhere. Here is a picture of the hull on the drill press table and the deck with the winches and skylights sitting in place.
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Jonathan - that is Alaskan Yellow Cedar from Syren Ship Model Company. It is sold in 14" X 2" "slabs" in your choice of thicknesses. I had to rip and then thickness sand the pieces into 1mm X 2mm planks. Not too much of a problem if you have the right tools. And the glue was Titebond Original.
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Final sanding (320 grit) and rub down with paint thinner completed. Now the question is apply finish and then drill mounting holes for eyebolts, skylights, winches, blocks, sheet traveler or do that now and then apply finish. Speaking of skylights (the six round ones in the deck) as I was planking over the holes in the subdeck I wondered if the recessed skylights should have been glued down and then planked around. If not then why have the holes in the subdeck. But careful examination of the supplies skylights shows a 15/64" (6mm) diameter "shoulder" on the skylight with a sloped surface above which would have been very difficult to plank around since there is nothing "solid" to which to plank. At that time I decided to plank over the holes and relocate the skylight locations after planking - not that there exact locations are in any way critical. So now how to drill the appropriate holes to mount both the skylights and the winches. Luckily both have mounting shoulders the same 6mm in diameter. Short of buying a 6mm drill bit the next largest size English bit would be 1/4". Luckily Forstner and quill point drill bits are readily available in this size. My set only goes down to 5/16" but Amazon delivers tomorrow with a 1/4" Frostner which I think would be the tool of choice to drill into the deck since the hole will cross at least three strips of planking. Hopefully I glued them down really well and the drilling will not tear them up. Now to decide if my cordless drill is to weapon of choice or do I need a larger bench drill press that would allow the entire hull to be mounted under it. Both my "model" drill presses are too small to get the hull under. I have to consult with HQ about this subject. You have to have the right tools! So, given the possibility that there could be deck damage from drilling the installation holes (at least for the deck skylights and winches) I will wait until they are done before applying the finish to the deck.
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While I had the deck furniture on the deck I noticed that it was pretty noticeable that what was under the skylights was just the deck. Clearly that is not the effect I am after so I cut some pieces of a file folder and blackened them with a magic marker and fit them under the skylights. Here is a before and after of the lrge midships mskylight.
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Deck planking completed and first sanding (120 grit) completed. Second half went pretty much like the first except it was n ot quite as symmetrical. I had to create a piece tapered on both ends where it came together at the centerline amidships. On the stbd side it was only tapered on one end. It appears that I either did not get the centerline piece in the center aft of the cockpit (it never occurred to me to use the laser level to help with this) or something else is badly off as the handrail is clearly closer to the centerline board on the stbd side than of the port. Not much I can do about it now (or while I was planking the deck) so I will have to live with it. If I had it to do over I would follow Keith Aug's example and make the centerline plank a nibbing strake. Because of the shallow angle the deck plank have approaching the centerline it is very hard to get the plank to a sharp enough point (and the correct angle) to completely fill the space. If you look at the photos you can see that it has the nibbling strake look, just on a really small scale. So here are some shots, with and without the deck furniture which I have finished after a rub down with a paint thinner soaked rag which is pretty close to how it will look after the finish sanding and Wipe-on-Poly satin which is what I intend to use.
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Yea, I guess if I had looked at the drawing a little more carefully I would have seen that the flared base and up is the part above the deck. Oh well, no harm except a few wasted minutes.
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While waiting for glue to set up I decided that the winches needed something to help locate them - especially on what will be the varnished deck. So I drilled a hole in the center (hopefully) and glued min a 3/64" brass rod. Some are not as straight as I would like but I plan on drilling the hole in the deck somewhat oversize so hopefully this will not present too much of a problem. I tried #56 and #57 bits for the hole and the #57 was too small and the #56 a bit too big even though 3/64s would be between a #56 and #55 according to my drill size chart. Oh well.
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Starboard side deck planking complete - Yikes there is a lot of deck to plank. If I had it to do over I might use a little wider planks - 2mm seems to take forever - and that was only the half of it. Waiting to sand until both sides are done.
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All the handrail "slots" completed on the starboard side. On the port side I am thinking about just gluing the 1mm X 1mm fillers onto the deck rather than onto the handrails. Not sure which is the easier way to go. Getting the filler pieces on the handrails was not that easy - not hard to get them misaligned. I have some time to think about it - Starboard side isn't half done yet.
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Continuing to plank the deck and add the details at bow. Bow details were not really an issue except I had to build a new front piece. The one is the kit is too small. Not sure if I somehow got the extreme front of the bow too big or this is just another of life's mysteries. Anyway, I had extra Mahogany (which I still had to stain to get is as dark as that supplied in the kit) and fabing it was no big deal. I did have to file the bottom of the cleats flat as the mold mark puts a pretty serious ridge down the center that interferes with it sitting flat. The deck planking does present some challenges. Specifically the handrails which are supplied as laser cut pieces, six on each side. The objective is to leave an opening in the planking for these 1mm wide handrails to be installed after the planking has been completed and sanded. Sanding would be a significant challenge with the hand rails sticking up if the were installed along with the deck planks. The problem is creating the 1mm wide filler planks that will go with the handrails to maintain the 2mm wide deck planking scheme. I did not have any difficulty creating these 1mm X 1mm planks as I have a Byrnes thickness sander which works marvelously well with accuracy of about .03mm. Creating these planks without a thickness sander would be a real challenge as two of them need to be 12" long. So I sanded down some of the deck planks to 1mm X 1mm, and glued them to the side of the handrails, after lightly sanding the bottom edge of the handrail to get a better gluing surface. Once dry I placed the handrail/filler on the deck after planking up to where the handrail is located then put another plank on the other side of the handrail/filler to hold it in place. I used push pins to hold this out plank in place. Once satisfied that the handrail was where it needed to be I ran a bead of wood glue between the out edge of the outer plank and the deck. I used a pin to run this glue along the edge between the plank and the deck and then ran a damp rag over the area to pull up the excess glue. Once the glue has set I remove the handrail and move on to the next one. Order of photos issue again - the last one below shows the initial set up. The next to last one is the same shot from the other side and you can see there is a gap between the planks. In the first one of this series you see I added two more pins to close the gap before adding the glue and trying to get it in the groove.
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Working on the centerline Mahogany "stripe" and the deck edge pieces. I decided to keep the deck edge pieces the same as the deck (instead of Mahogany). I thought there would make the deck edge to "busy" with dark blue, Mahogany and the yellow cedar in close proximity. I dismantled my "paint booth" and moved the model over to that bench with the full size plans underneath so I can easily pick off the dimensions for the deck edge pieces. I inserted the cockpit to see where the centerline piece has to end since I believe the decking comes up to the cockpit rather than the cockpit sitting on top of the decking at the ends. I am still thinking about how to treat the deck planking edges. I assume there is some kind of caulking between the deck planks but wonder that they were still using pitch/tar in the 1930s. The darker (and very poor quality) deck planking supplied in the kit makes figuring out what was done on the model displayed on the box difficult. At the moment I am inclined to do nothing on the edges but I am still considering my options as I am not quite to the point of laying planking just yet.
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Back from Australia where I accomplished my mission to catch (and release) a Black Marlin to complete my catch of the Marlin Family (Black, Blue and White). It was a small one (by Black Marlin standards where the females can range mover 1500 lbs), probably less than 300 lbs. But a catch is a catch as they say. Anyway back to Endeavour - The hull painting is complete (except for a little touch-up here and there) so I took the masking off the deck and could not resist putting the mast up to see what it will look like. I also marked the mast so I will know how much needs to come off so the transition from round to oval will occur that the deck. I am messing around with the piece of Mahogany that goes down the center. I am going to stain it to match the cabin and have it finished gloss as well. Toying with the idea of doing the same with the "edge boards" (1 X 3mm mounted vertically at most places just inboard of the deck edge pieces. As I read the instructions (and from the pieces of wood provided) it appears that these should b e the same material as the deck - which in my case is yellow cedar. I may make up a few pieces of 1X3mm Mahogany just to see how it looks. So here is the Black Marlin and the hull with the mast installed.
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Cleaning up some odds and ends while waiting to put the gloss on the hull (and go fishing in Australia). I decided to paint the boom vang (I assume that is what this would be called today) white like the rest of the boom. I tried three times to get the "V" shaped piece to be completely symmetrical but it the end decided that "close" was good enough. I used 1/8" brass rod and 5/64" copper tubing (from the kit) and the kit supplied eye bolts. You really do not notice that one side has a sharper bend at the top than the other unless you look at it straight on without the mast in the way - which will be impossible once everything is assembled. I also tapered the provided dowel for what I assume is a "whisker pole" since there is no mention of it in the instructions (written or graphic - it is shown on the topside placement drawing but not elsewhere). I stained it to match the cleats, hand rails and cabin sides. Gloss acrylic to follow when the stain is dry and eye bolts in both ends.
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Keith, I originally got the laser to get the lines straight when I put tile down in the storage room next to my workshop (the builder did a pretty terrible job getting the walls to meet at 90 degrees). I used it to ensure the masts on my Niagara were correctly aligned athwart ship but had not tried it with the waterline until now. I doubt I will use any other method going forward. For what it is worth I am using a Bosch GL 50 (Made in China, of course) which has the "auto-level" feature to "ensure" the line is truly horizontal (in some sense that mathematicians can argue about endlessly).
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I decided to get the rail painted with gloss now, so I can get the bottom tomorrow. Here is the hull after the top (rail) was painted. Will put the gloss on the rest of the hull tomorrow (48 hours after the white was applied).
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Tom, I too am lathe-less so rather than use the kit dowels (mine had significant warps/bends) I started with square stock. I tapered the square stock to get close to the desired dimension (taking into account that the square cross-section has to be bigger than the desired round diameter - I actually passed high school geometry) then using a jig to hold the square stock with the edge up I used sanding sticks (actually tongue depressors with sand paper glued on) to make it eight sided then further sanding to get it round where required. It was easier than I expected and it was much easier (for me) to taper the square section wood evenly and it gets the eight sided areas in the process. Trying to make something eight sided from round sounds difficult (to me).
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Thanks Yves - I apparently dodged a bullet this time. The paint came off in flakes from the tape but stayed intact on the hull. Here is the hull in the kit provided stand with the waterline stripe complete. Plan is to put the gloss coat on tomorrow morning (paint can says clear should be applied 1 hour or 48 hours after color) before heading to Australian fishing trip. Hopefully a big Black Marlin is in my future. Gloss coat should be completely dried and solid by the time I get back on the 25th. Then the deck planking can begin.
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It is taking all my will power to not strip the tape off the waterline stripe now that the paint has "dried" enough to handle (according to the instructions on the can). I am planning on waiting until a full 24 hours (supposedly the complete "cure" time) has passed before removing the masking tape. In the mean time I completed the standing rigging on the mast and mounted the "gooseneck" from the boom to the mast (clearly some touch up required at the gooseneck/mast interface). I laid the waterline profile drawing on the bench to get an estimate of how long to make the backstay pendants. None of the blocks are permenantly attached at this point. Just trying to get close.
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Continued with masking the hull for the waterline stripe. After getting the port side done sitting on the same side as the laser I shifted to the back side for the stbd side and found that much easier. The trick is to get the tape completely red (laser beam is red) just before it hits the hull. I am using 1/8" masking tape which is pretty close to the width of the laser beam on the hull except at the extreme aft end where it is somewhat wider and you kind of have to use your judgement as to where the tape should go. Probably not a really big issue as this area will be very hard to see being well under the counter. I added the two storage bags of BBs to help steady the hull as I applied the tape. They have come in handy elsewhere as well. When I just need weight I put them into a small plastic container. And finally the hull waterline is masked, seams painted with acrylic flat and the rest of the hull protected from over spray (I hope) and ready for the flat white waterline.
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