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Dan Poirier

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Everything posted by Dan Poirier

  1. Dan Poirier
    I'm about done with the planking, except for a tiny bit more work with plastic wood and sanding things smooth. I won't post plank-by-plank photos, but here are a few highlights. The hull mostly faired: Stem, keel, and sternpost: Installing the garboard, using some of the plank clamps I bought at Model Expo. These did not work very well for me. Then I made some clamps from binder clips like I've seen on some other build logs here, and was much happier with those. So, after a lot more of that, and also switching to using an electric plank bender, I started filling cracks and sanding and have gotten it looking like this:
  2. Dan Poirier
    I'd like to make some kind of little signs to identify models that I'm displaying, without breaking the bank. They'd just say something like "Norwegian Sailing Pram" or "Lowell Grand Banks Dory". I'm thinking about what I might do with a computer and printer, or label maker, my model-making tools, and lots of little scraps of thin wood 🙂 Do others have favorite ways to do this?
  3. Dan Poirier
    I had the same issue with the slot being longer than it needed to be for the daggerboard. I also had to sand the daggerboard thinner before it would slip easily up and down in the box. I think I even did a little sanding inside the box (with a long thin sanding stick) to make a little more room.
  4. Dan Poirier
    Welcome to the community!
  5. Dan Poirier
    Welcome! It's a great community.
  6. Dan Poirier
    Chuck's videos are great! I found them here on Youtube. His videos are not so much about bending planks around curves in the hull, my current problem, than they are about adapting rectangular planks to fit well on a hull that is not the same distance around on the top and bottom of where the plank is installed. In the beginner models I'm doing, the individual planks are custom-shaped by laser-cutting, so that's taken into account already. I'm sure I'll need Chuck's techniques when/if I start doing models that just come with a stack of identical, rectangular planks that need to be fitted. I've been browsing other plank bending videos, and I'm starting to think I want an electric plank bender. But before I do that, I'm going to read some more forums.
  7. Dan Poirier
    I'm in the middle of planking. In my last model, I used steam to soften the planks for bending, but though it softened them fast, they seemed to cool just as fast and I found myself without enough time to shape the planks. This time I'm using hot water again. I did the first few in a thermos of boiled water, but the planks got too long for that. Now I'm just boiling them on the stove in a big frying pan 🙂 Being soaked through with boiling water, the planks stay hot and flexible longer. Of course, then it takes forever for the planks to dry again 😞. I'm guessing this is one of those problems without a perfect solution, but I'd love suggestions if there are better ways.
  8. Dan Poirier
    A quick side note. In step 10, one of the instruction photos seems to show a piece along the keel being installed upside-down. I think what might have happened is that the kit has changed and the photos have not been updated. The photos from the instructions show the end of the keel piece (to the right) rests over the end of the stem piece. In the model, this joint appears to have been turned over. Should I report this somewhere? Does Model Shipways follow these forums?
  9. Dan Poirier
    I've installed the frames now. To make sure they were exactly at right angles to the spine, I used rubber cement to position some temporary supports made from old scraps until the glue was dry. The transom and frame 10 had to be built together. The start of some interesting curves in this model. Plus, some fingers-crossed clamping as it was attached. The cockpit seats came next. These needed to be painted now since they'd be hard to reach later, so I got to bring out the red paint. And then, the deck. It came as two long, complicated, very thin sheets of wood that had to be wetted and carefully shaped into place, with more creative clamping and rubber banding. It took a couple of passes to get all the points that needed to be glued actually attached. It's really starting to look like a boat, and it doesn't yet have any hull at all. Very rewarding.
  10. Dan Poirier
    I was struggling with this the other day. I edited my profile over and over and my signature never changed. It turned out that editing the profile only changes your profile page, which people have to deliberately go look at. To change my signature, I had to click my name at the top, select "Account Settings", and on the next page, at the bottom of the menu at the left, "Signature".
  11. Dan Poirier
    My previous two builds used frames or molds initially attached to a temporary board. For this one, we start by building the boat's central spine, to which the frames will be permanently glued. The spine is made up of several surprisingly thin pieces of wood, glued together. There's provision for a movable centerboard, but I decided to simplify the build a bit and just glued the centerboard in place. Gluing the main boards of the spine together took every clamp I have! After that was dry, several odd pieces were added to reinforce the spine at different points.
  12. Dan Poirier
    I'm starting my third ship model, the Model Shipways Muscongus Bay lobster smack (1:24). I'm especially looking forward to this one because I just got back from my first trip to Maine, and got to see how they fish for lobsters now. The kit was packaged like the previous Model Shipways models I've built, with the addition this time of an extra-large sheet with full-size diagrams of the spars and sails. I checked out the parts list, and everything seemed to be there.
  13. Dan Poirier
    I got my own paint for this one, and chose Carolina blue for the outside and a light gray inside.
  14. Dan Poirier
    Looks nice, but $115.99 does seem a tad expensive. It looks like there are some other configurations at various price points.
  15. Dan Poirier
    I added the oarlocks And finally it was time to hoist the sail! A forestay and two backstays hold up the mast. The sail is laced onto the gaff. And the traveler and main sheet control the swing of the boom. And that's the Norwegian Sailing Pram! Next: the Muscongus Bay lobster smack.
  16. Dan Poirier
    The rudder gave me headaches. First, the brass pintle straps provided seemed too short, definitely shorter than those in the photos in the instructions. Unfortunately the instructions didn't identify which parts in the photo-etched brass were which, but I could not find any other way to assign roles to the parts. Here's the photo from the instructions, next to my pintles: I ended up using some scrap brass from the photo etched sheet to make my own pintles. My other frustration was that the instructions called for CA glue to fasten metal parts to the painted wood. Using original superglue, it ran everywhere and glued together parts that were supposed to move. I ended up having to remake some of the hinge parts, and then went back to white glue to fasten those parts together.
  17. Dan Poirier
    I wish I had paid as much detailed attention during the planking on this model as you are doing! Mainly to keep the two sides symmetrical. Would more heating and prebending maybe help the planks fit better?
  18. Dan Poirier
    I just used a small brush to paint. Investing in an airbrush doesn't seem worthwhile for what little use I'd make of it. Although I bet it'd be a lot easier to get all those nooks and crannies on the inside painted. The lobster smack is on the shelf, just waiting for me to finish the pram.
  19. Dan Poirier
    In the last few days, I've painted the hull and put in floorboards and seats. I chose a Carolina blue for the outside, and a light gray for the inside. I used thin pieces of scrap wood to evenly space the floorboards. And finally put in the seats. Still to come: some fittings, mast, sail, etc.
  20. Dan Poirier
    Exactly right on the importance of precision early in the project! It'll pay huge dividends later compared to hurrying early. (Ask me how I know...)
  21. Dan Poirier
    I picked up a bunch of cheap plastic clamps at Harbor Freight. Unlike the metal clamps with rubber-coated tips that came with my first kit, these shouldn't mar the wood. They have little adjustable soft plastic jaws. Here are the clamps at work, as I glue the frames in. Then I added the floor cleats. To attach the metal straps that hold the back stays, I was supposed to drill tiny holes, then use a tiny saw to make slots on each side. Lacking a tiny saw, I just made a row of tiny holes and removed the material with a hobby knife. I think it'll be fine. And here are the rub rails freshly glued on. If you were really looking close, you might have noticed one more set of frames in the boat in this picture than the earlier one, as I missed one in the first go-round. No harm done though.
  22. Dan Poirier
    Welcome! Have fun building the dory; that's how I started last month.
  23. Dan Poirier
    I'll bet that once that plank is painted, the repair will be undetectable.
  24. Dan Poirier
    In the last week, I finished planking. The build board seemed unnecessary to hold the boat's shape by this point, so I didn't use it for the last few planks. I used a travel clothes steamer to shape the planks, which worked great. Skipping ahead while waiting for glue to dry, I made the rowlock pads. I also installed the skeg, first shaping it to match the hull's curve by rubber gluing sandpaper temporarily to the bottom. No pictures (I forgot, sorry), but I've installed the frames. My hull was a bit wider than it was supposed to be, maybe due to skipping the build molds for the last few planks, so they didn't fit very well at first. I misted the inside of the hull and used a couple of clamps to pull in the sides a bit, which seemed to help. The frames still weren't quite wide enough and I'm currently relying on glue to pull in the hull enough to stick to them. Fingers crossed. Now I've started on the inwales. I clamped them to the outside of the hull to dry and cool after shaping them, as suggested by another build log. Then I used a piece of scrap wood to mark the stern transom angle on the stern ends of the inwales, cut them to fit, and glued the stern ends in.
  25. Dan Poirier
    Well, I've ruined my sail and will probably need to start it over. It's completely my own fault. I traced over the paper pattern with a black gel pen so I could more easily trace it onto the fabric. Then I forgot to remove the paper before starting to glue things to the fabric, and the ink bled onto the sail. D'oh! I think I have some thin woven white fabric somewhere that I can try out as a sail. Maybe I'll experiment with dying it first. That should be fun. I'm just glad I'm not trying to make a living building boats!

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