Desertanimal

Hi everyone following along! I’m still here. Things got a little side tracked with a big welding project that made a mess of the garage. Well that meant I need to clean up where I’m trying to work. Well, that turned into “this garage really needs a good clean out”. Then I said “hey I have room for a new welder”, then I needed to run a 240v circuit for the new welder…So I’ve been busy. Now that you are caught up on my goings on, let’s get caught up on the build. Its time to work on the shrouds. We are in brand new territory for me with all this rigging. As I’ve stated previously I’m just going to go slow and try to follow some other builds. I believe I pointed this out earlier, but it begs to be said again. Don’t complete the top of the mast before putting the shrouds on. It will make your life much easier. At least this part of it. As my mast was complete I had to serve the shrouds in place. I leaned my vice way over and had the mast mostly horizontal in order to do this. Here are some photos of the serving of the ends of the shrouds. This is how I spliced the ends of the thread in. I would pull the thread through twice. Then a dab of medium ca and a quick rub with my fingers. Here is some of the manual serving done around the mast. A little explanation about the white pendants. They were my practice pieces for both serving the length on the machine and serving around the mast while in place. They are not the best work, and they historically probably wouldn’t have looked like that. But they were my first tries and I want to always know that. So that is why they are there. It was quite interesting to see the progression of the “quality” of the serving after only this many. I would sometimes try something a little different, like change the angle of the needle or such. Some things helped either in quality or being able to do it faster. Others not so much. LOL Finally, here is a glamour shot of her so far. I am quite happy with how she’s looking. She lives in an Ikea cabinet to keep dust at bay, once the bowsprit is on I don’t think she’s going to fit. Thank you all for checking in!

You and Maggie are in my thoughts. Best of luck with these issues! Chris

I certainly can’t help with your questions. However I have to comment that your joints are very impressive. That truly is cutting close to the line straight from the saw! Nice work! Chris

That size might be tough. You are probably looking at making them yourself. You can do it individually or wrap a rod with wire and then cut lengthwise along the rod with a dremel or such. Chris

That is an excellent idea that I completely missed out on! The funniest part is I have a desk like that in my office! That will definitely be added to the room. That makes a lot of sense as assembly, light woodworking table. Chris

So time to learn to serve! I decided I’d set up the machine and try it. It worked really well, not a surprise. I served up what could be a pendant if it’s usable. After playing around I watched a video and learned I should have done it left to right, while I did it right to left. The mast is together but not secured in the deck. I needed to come up with a plan to serve the shrouds on the ship. I again tried with the same pendant. I looks ok to me. We’ll revisit those later. I next wanted to make a band with the rings on the tip of the bowsprit. I used some brass tubing that happed to be a perfect fit and some photo etch eye bolts. I also made the bracket for the bowsprit from scratch. I can never get over how brutal close up photos are! Now I was faced with a dilemma. I didn’t add any sheeves to the catheads and I am pretty sure I want one of the anchors hanging as in other build logs. So I simply decided to get going on them. Mask the rest of the ship and see what happens. I drilled them and then used a scroll saw blade held in my fingers. I pretty much used that to shape the slots and then used a strip of 220 sandpaper to clean them up. I used some round plastic stock and after drilling I sliced off several discs until I got 4 I could work with. Squared them up but sanding under my fingertip. I inserted them and pinned them in place. Then some Vallejo flat black paint. I am pretty happy how these turned out. I will find out how they work when I get to the anchors. So that’s it for now. A lot more serving in my future! Chris

Those are some great points. Thanks! The room also abuts the garage so I will probably be based on that wall. That will allow me to put dust collection and run air for the airbrush from outside the room. I am really liking the idea you guys have brought up about mobile tables. 👍 Chris

Great job. Congratulations. Chris

Thanks for the ideas! How large are the various tables?

Good point! Basically 10 feet by 12 feet. It’s a bedroom in the house so no heavy machines.

So I’m going to be able to build a personal shipyard from the ground up. So I’d like some opinions on what you would do. Here’s the scenario, East wall has a window two other walls clear. I don’t generally work in the mornings so sun coming in the window isn’t a big concern. However, I’m thinking about backlighting while working on a model being a problem. I’ve got nice windows that are supposed to stop UV and such but who knows. I could also put the worktop on either of the other walls. What do you think? While I have always liked the idea (maybe the look also) of a countertop sort of work top with lower cabinets to either side of me. However lately I’m thinking of a peninsula work area so that I can get around to other sides if needed. Then when sitting at this desktop, that would put tool storage 90 degrees to my right in some sort of cabinets, maybe upper and lower kitchen cabinet style. I don’t know if that is optimal though. I like to have current tools I’m using laid out in front of me. I suppose that doesn’t really prevent that. Just sort of spitballing now, if you couldn’t tell. Lol I’m pretty sure I’d like drawers or doors in the cabinets instead of open shelves. This would be to keep dust off of things. Flooring- Wood, light color, not too much color variation. No seams to swallow tiny parts. Any ideas you’ve got to add? What sort of things do you wish your shipyard had? Thanks for reading if you made it this far! Chris

Congratulations on her completion! She’s a beauty for sure. Chris

OK it’s time to make some more fiddly things. I made a stove chimney, it turned out shorter than I had wanted but I kept it. I later painted it. Then I started on the topgallant staff. First I marked it off then I just started sanding to the lines. That made it square. In the photos it looks like I turned the step at the top after squaring, but I did that before hand in a drill. And then I painstakingly squared the hole in this piece so it was an excellent fit. (Does anyone see what’s coming?) Then I realized that’s not where it goes…. It looks fine after painting and such. I need to keep closer watch on these things. This is my first ship with a real mast and it has got me scratching my head a lot. I completed the trestle trees and cut out the flat areas for the cheeks and even tree nailed them in with some toothpicks. You can’t really see the treenails after painting, I wish they showed up better. Any tips on that? **Note to future builders. Don’t put this all together until after you have done the shrouds. I shaped all the yards with a variable speed drill and some sandpaper. After marking them out from the plans I would make some notes on various dimensions along the length, then I would roughly followed that. I would grab my calipers and sit on the porch and make sawdust. Thank goodness for Arizona weather. I would start with 100 grit and get the rough taper then 180 would shape it quite closely and 220 to fine tune the taper. I have to say it was pretty simple to get a nice taper on them. Easier than expected so that’s always nice. I thought I had a genius idea for mast rings once while perusing the hardware store. These small rocket engines seemed to have about a 10mm id turns out the end is kind of crushed to the clean part of the tube was too large. I did use the paper and CA and make some rings from that. I sliced some rings off then used rubber cement to glue them to the board and then sanded it face down until they were about 2.5mm thick. I then painted them but later remove it and sanded the outside flatter than I originally had it. These photos show most of the progession. Now a couple of glamor shots of how she was sitting at that point. Now has the swivel guns, stanchions (sp?) and the tiller. The tiller was epoxied and pinned. That is such a long moment arm with so little surface area, I was concerned about that joint ever giving up. Thank you for stopping by. Next up I start some prepping for the rigging. We’re pretty close to real time now as the rigging has really slowed me down. Chris

Wow congratulations!!

It looks to me like the rope is too large. Pretty sure i used .2mm rope. Rope adds a lot of bulk fast. 2 mm blocks are probably about as small as you want to try to work with. Chris