schooner

Kit Contents Upon opening the box the first thing that jumps out is the hull. It looks to be about 90-95% pre-carved which is great because hull-shaping is my least fun part of a build. The hull is carved down to the gun deck which leaves the option of leaving some planking off on the main deck to give a view of the gunlock - not sure yet if I will take that option. The hull can be planked or just painted - I'll try to plank it although it has been at least 10 years since I've planked a model - at least this one is small. There is a ton of strip wood, dowel and scribed decking. When I inventoried the kit I took the time to bundle together the various sizes of strip wood and label them - worth your while since some of them are very close is size and are very difficult to tell apart by eye. There is a nice PE fret which, thank God, includes a stern piece with all of the cabin window included - trying to build square windows that line up properly is beyond my talents. There is a lot of britannia metal fittings to include guns, deck furniture, blocks, deadeyes, cleats and lots of other stuff. A package of cordage and netting is included. The 57 page instruction book is full of photos and diagrams, and it includes tips on HOW to do things, including a good discussion on how to shape the hull. This is something not always found in advanced kits. Bluejacket rates this kit as "Advanced", 9 of 9 on their skill level rating, requiring "prior experience with more complex kits." This kit would not be a good first model for anyone, but if you have several kits under your belt, particularly involving planking and complex rigging then you could probably handle this one even if you have not tried a solid hull kit before but it would be best to call Bluejacket and talk to them about it. There are 2 sheets of plans including a rigging plan. Last but not least there is a set of flags and the quarterdeck cloths.

I'm going to be building a model of the Continental Navy Frigate ALFRED using Bluejacket's solid hull kit. The ALFRED was one of the first ships commissioned into the Continental Navy in 1775. Converted from a new merchant ship she was John Paul Jones' first ship. I picked this kit because I've never done a 3-masted ship model before, and as much as I would love to build a clipper ship I simply don't have room for it, or to be more precise, as far as my wife is concerned there is not enough room in our house for both me and a large cased sailing ship model. Bluejacket's ALFRED meets my needs perfectly because the completed model is only about 18 inches long and 13 inches high but is fully detailed and it will fit on one of my bookcase shelves. I need to point out that this kit is NOT a good choice for a first build. BlueJacket uses a 1-9 scale to rate the complexity of their kits and this one gets a solid "9". Before choosing this kit you should have experience working with a solid hull kit and also with sailing ship rigging - this one has as much as a clipper ship kit but on a hull that is only about 1/3 as long so the rigging it will be an adventure. If you think you might like this one I encourage to call BlueJacket and talk to them - they are very helpful and can assist you in your decision. My next post will show the kit's contents.

Great job!!! It has been a real pleasure (and a trip down memory lane) to watch this come together. The model is awesome, as is the base and case.

Jim, I drilled holes in the keel before glueing it in place, put the rod thru the keel so about 1/4 inch was projecting thru the top of the keel, put some pencil lead on the end of the rod pieces and pressed the keel into position, drilled into the hull at the pencil marks (more than 1/4") and then glued the keel in place -pressing the rod pieces into their holes. I could have drilled the holes thru the keel, glued it in place, drilled into the hull and then pressed the rods thru the keel and hull but I wanted to put as little pressure on the keel as possible. Holes/rod were about 1/16".

Simply amazing .....

Mike, An interesting fact about the ship SS Robert E. Peary is that of the more than 2700 Liberty Ships built she held the record for the shortest building time - 4 days, 15 hours from keel laying to launching! Of course it was a publicity stunt with a lot of prefabrication work and unlimited manpower but still that is an amazing accomplishment. I suspect that record has never been broken for any large ship built since. Below is a link to a 1-hour wartime movie about the shipyard where the Peary was built. If you advance it to the 9 minute 20 sec mark it will show the construction and launching of the Peary. Pretty impressive. Here's the link: (Link doesn't work - see next posting below - that one does)

Thanks Nic! My next one from y'all (as we say down here in NC) will probably be the ALFRED.

Lobster Pots and Done! The kit provides a mini-kit for 3 lobster pots, with strip wood, nylon mesh and line included. I stained the strip wood before assembly the glue wouldn’t prevent the stain from penetrating. I had some black florist’s mesh on hand so I used that in lieu of the kit’s white mesh and I substituted some larger line I had on hand. The pots went together without a problem - the floats are scratched from plastic. The name letters are stick-on vinyl lettering for my granddaughter’s name. The home port lettering are dry transfers from the kit So with the addition of the pots this build is done. The “Pros” for this kit as I see them are: As advertised, this is a good kit for a first time solid hull build, there is enough shaping to learn how to do it but it is not too complicated Size - This kit will easily fit on a bookshelf Details - just enough and the ones provided are not too delicate to stand up to dusting so this model really does not need to be cased. This build is 99.9% out of the box, the only scratch details I added were the lobster pot floats and the protective stripping on the hull under the pot davit (a lot of boats have them and I thought it would make it look a little more “lobster-boaty”) No “Cons” as far as I am concerned. Altogether an easy and enjoyable build.

Thanks Chuck! A compliment from Dear Leader is greatly appreciated.

Detailing Now that the painting is done things are moving along pretty quickly. Some of the interior details include the engine cover, instrument panel, engine controls etc. The instructions call for mounting the compass and engine controls on the dash after the windows are installed but it is pretty cramped up there under the roof so I put them in earlier so I could reach thru the window openings to position them. The gages are just a photo from the internet downsized and covered with acetate. When I inventoried the kit upon receiving it I noted that there was sheet plastic for the window - I just assumed it was acetate but it is actually 1/16 inch plexiglass which looks a lot more realistic. It is cut to shape using the window cutouts saved for that purpose. The plexiglass can be cut with a saw to rough shape and then sanding to its final dimensions. They do not have to fit perfectly because the joints will be covered with mahogany strips.

Taner, you have an interesting build going on here. I have never seen bulkheads like the ones in this kit - should make a very nice model. Keep up the good work.

Nice work Keith, it's a pleasure to see this come along. WRT one of your earlier posts regarding the cannon, I'm pretty sure that was a boat howitzer, small enough that it could be hoisted into a boat and carried ashore with a landing party and then moved around on land by hand. If you have every watched a Navy football game on television, they have one that they fire after every touchdown. They are solid brass and look good - as does your model. Keep up the good work.

Painting It’s been a while since my last post but it is not because I have not been doing much - it is just that painting this thing is a slooooow process. The kit provides most of the needed colors (the primer supplied is white, not gray, so the cockpit deck was painted with my own primer). The brand provided for all of the colors is True North Precision Enamels, a brand I was not familiar with. For anyone who builds this kit my best advice for painting is if you are good with a airbrush (I’m not) use it. If you brush on the paint as I did make sure to thin it and be patient. It takes about 5 coats to cover white primer and the first 3 look really bad with lots of bleed thru and brush marks. Coats 4 and 5 look a lot better. The paint is also relatively slow to dry so doing 5 coats of each color explains why this took me so long. The white boot topping is kit-supplied pin striping tape. I followed the painting sequence in the instructions and they seemed the most logical way to go about the painting. I did deviate from the kit instructions in the following areas: There are 2 colors of green supplied, both are supposed to be mixed with white or each other to match the colors on the real-world RED BARON. Since I am not building the RED BARON but a generic lobster boat I did not bother mixing the paints - if you do your greens will look different from mine. I used gloss Krylon red enamel spray paint on the hull because I wanted some gloss as some relief from all the rest of the flat paint. That may not be “realistic” but I like the look and since the model will not be cased it will be easier to dust. The instructions recommended using the pin stripe tape to mark the waterline for painting. I did not use it for that, preferring some Tamiya masking tape I had on hand. Next up will be the lettering and then the addition of the details which should go pretty quickly.

Should be a great build, looking forward to following along.

Looks to be a great looking build

Nice looking Pigs and Otters!

Finishing up the hull The window frames went in OK after a little sanding and adjusting. The inner roof is also on with 3 curved pieces on top that will impart some camber to the top of the roof. Lots of filling and sanding done and more to go. At this point all of the structural work is finished. The 1-piece ply deck is in place, the sheer guards around the top edge of the hull and the toe rails around the outer edge of the deck are also done. There are 3 pieces of coaming around the edge of the well and the pilothouse roof is in place. After a little more sanding and priming it will be time to paint everything.

Assembling the cabin The 2 cabin sides and the aft cabin bulkhead hook together with tabs. It took a fair amount of sanding and carving to get the bulkhead flush against the cabin formers. An important step is to do plenty of dry fitting of all 3 pieces to ensure the forward ends reach to the proper point on the deck - any adjustment or trimming of one piece will require adjustments on the other 2. Bottom line: I spent a lot more time than I had planned on what I thought would be a simple step. The cabin top went on easily. The piece of ply laying on it between the raised portion of the sides it the former for setting the angle and slope of the window frames. The instructions recommend leaving the cut-outs in the window frames for support until all the work in the area is done.

Smooth sanding the hull I’ve got a new BFWF!! (Best Forever Wood Filler) I went to Auto Zone to pick up some more Bondo for a wood filler. They did not have any but they did have this stuff so I thought I would try it. It’s Great! Unlike Bonds there is no need to mix in any hardener - just squeeze a little where you need it and spread it around with your finger tip. It adheres to the wood as well as Bondo, dries pretty quickly and sands as easy as the bass wood. Nice stuff. After using sandpaper, primer and the wood filler to get the hull as smooth as possible I attached the keel. A little sanding on it’s mating surface was needed to get it to lay on the hull, in contact all along its length without having to apply pressure. After gluing it in place I thought I had better pin it because I could see myself breaking it off while working on the deck. I drilled 4 holes thru the keel and about 1/4” into the hull and filled them with tight-fitting brass rod. The joint feels very strong now. With the keel in place I was able to sand it and the bow fair and then go thru the smoothing process again. My last addition was the 3 pieces of ply that will shape the forward cabin and serve as its interior bracing. The deck has not been smoothed because it will be covered by a piece of laser cut ply.

Nice build! Great painting. Mind if I ask how did you paint the bridge windows? Did you hand brush them with dark paint and then go back and touch up the frames with haze gray?

Sanding to shape Although it has been a while since my last post I have NOT been spending all this time sanding! I have been doing a little most days, in 5 or 10 minute increments since it bores me but all told I have probably spent about 2 hours bringing the hull into the proper shape. The kit provides 3 laser cut templates to shape the bow area, mostly to impart a flare to the bow. The template stations are only about an inch apart so don’t try to do just one at a time - you need to sand the whole area and keep checking your progress using all 3 templates. The kit recommends using a sanding block and/or a hobby knife. I’m a very poor hand at carving (I’m more of a gouger than a carver) so I stuck with sandpaper wrapped around a paint bottle for the big curves and wrapped around the handle of a hobby knife for the smaller radius areas. The stem has not been brought to a fine edge yet because the keel must be added first and then it and the hull are sanded fair together so it blends in. There is also a template to shape the transom (don’t toss it when you are finished with it - you will need it later to mark the waterline location). As can be seen here some wood needs to be removed from the upper and lower outboard areas. Now that the hull is in shape I have to do more sanding (and priming) to get a smooth finish that will replicate the look of fiberglass which is what the real boat is made of.

Thanks for the kind words - I was a little surprised to see this build log stagger out of deep storage like a zombie.

Hey Brian, boy am I glad I found this build! I usually spend all my time over on the kit page. You are doing a heck of a job. This really brings back a lot of memories for me - I served on ADROIT (MSO-509) up in Little Creek 88-90. Most fun I ever had. If you have time you might spend it googling around on MSO crew reunion websites, they can have a lot of good, close-up onboard photos that can help with detailing. NAVSOURCE.ORG and the Naval History and Heritage Command website both have a ton of photos with the NHHC site more likely to have onboard shots. Keep up the good work.

Shaping the stem and marking the centerline The first steps on this build are to prime and sand some of the delicate laser cut pieces for the cabin interior while they are still on the fret, the instructions point out that they would be hard to reach after assembly so now is the time to do them. The next step is fairly simple, shaping the stem. The kit provides a laser cut template for the stem. Since BlueJacket advertises this kit as appropriate for beginners as their first solid hull kit I thought I would explain in more detail than usual my thought process for the steps involving shaping the hull. There are different ways to do it, this is just my way. The first thing I did was to check the template against the plans and see how and if it fits. The fit was fine; the top of the template, the waterline mark, and the curve all matched the plans just fine - if they did not then I would have had to decide which one to go with. It is not as simple to check the hull against the plans but when the template is laid on the hull there was plenty of wood. The only cautionary note is that when you lay the template on the plans you can see how important it is to keep the template plumb when checking your sanding progress, if it is cocked just a little then that will affect the line of the stem and the height of the bow. It’s worth a little time to study how the plans relate to the un-sanded hull and to visualize what it should look like when finished. I used the template to mark it’s outline on the hull - it will not necessarily be the final sanding line but it serves as a warning line not to sand beyond it without malice aforethought (i.e. make sure you really need to go that far, chances are you will not.) As the instructions say, go slow with the sanding and check your progress with the template frequently. It doesn’t take much time or effort since this basswood sands easily with a sanding block. When done my template fit snug to the stem (I tacked glued it in place here just to simplify trying to take a photo without have to hold 2 pieces of wood at the same time.) The next step is to mark the centerline on the main deck, stem, keel area and transom. While it sounds simple you really need to take your time on this one - screw it up and you will have a world of problems getting the hull to look right. As I found out if your results don’t look right chances are they are not right. I measured from side to side a multiple points along the deck and drew a line connecting them. At the bow the line was almost 1/8” to one side of where the center of the stem was by eye. After several more tries the results were the same which meant I would have to sand quite a bit more wood off of one side than the other and based on my experience with solid hulls from BlueJacket, that didn’t sound right. BJ’s hull shaping equipment has always provided me with symmetrical hulls. That’s not to say that all areas of the hull need the same amount of sanding or that all kits are the same but all of them in my experience require the same amount of wood removal port and starboard of the centerline at any given point on the hull. At that point I decided to check the laser cut deck piece against the hull. By measuring from side to side and marking the centerline of the deck piece I confirmed that it was symmetrical and that the centerline intersected the sharp bow point dead center so I new that the deck piece (in effect a template at this point) could tell me if the hull was symmetrical. When played on the hull the deck fit perfectly, it matched the side of the hull along its whole length and its centerline was about 1/8” of an inch off of my marked one, and more importantly it lay on top of the centerline of the stem. Obviously my centerline of the hull was off. I tried measuring a new centerline by holding the hull between angle blocks and figured out that the source of my problem was that the deck edges on the hull were not as distinct as on the deck template. Making new measurements using the blocks resulted in a centerline that matched that of the deck template and all is right in the world again. Here is the hull with the old, wrong centerline to the left and the deck “template laying on the new, correct centerline to the right (OK, almost laying on it, it moved while I took the photo, it does lay right on it, trust me). Here is how I remeasured the correct centerline using the blocks. Well that’s enough typing, time to get back to sanding.

Wonderful build, hard to believe it is only your second one!