captainbob

First off I need to say thank you to all those who look in and click on the like button.  It’s so nice to log on to MSW and see that red signal that says someone likes what you said or did. Again thank you.
 
Now to get on with the boat.  The planking is almost done.  A little more clean-up in the stern and mount the transom and keel.  Also the planksheer so I can mount the stanchions and the bulwarks and then paint.  Wow, I shouldn’t list things like that it makes it sound like a lot of work.  Anyway here’s the pictures.
 
Bob
 

 

 

 

First off I need to say thank you to all those who look in and click on the like button.  It’s so nice to log on to MSW and see that red signal that says someone likes what you said or did. Again thank you.
 
Now to get on with the boat.  The planking is almost done.  A little more clean-up in the stern and mount the transom and keel.  Also the planksheer so I can mount the stanchions and the bulwarks and then paint.  Wow, I shouldn’t list things like that it makes it sound like a lot of work.  Anyway here’s the pictures.
 
Bob
 

 

 

 

Thanks Ben and Druxey.
 
Well the swivel guns are drying and the chain plates are all completed so I've started
building the optional mortar housing. This is the assembly that would cover the mortar
to protect it. I have to make the assembly removable as I want to be able to display it
with the mortar raised or stowed.
 
Here are the transverse bulkheads and the mortar carriage set in place for perspective.
 

 

 

 
Here you see the strong back connected to the transverse bulkhead as well as the fore
and aft bulkheads. A notch has been cut into these pieces for the canopy and side
covers to set into.
 

 

 
 
 

Hello Shipmates.
A long due update on progress.
Have completed the pumps.

 
Photos from many different angles.

 

 

 
Have spent some time looking at the cannons and how too produce 16 of them.
The cannon barrels..  I decided to cast my own using black resin.
A silicon mould was made first using the master.
 
First part (not yet finished.)

 
First part (not yet finished.)

 
Second cast.

 
note the vents . had air bubbles in so carved vents in to release air bubble.

 
Cast with the master/Plug.

 
Carriages are made. I used 2 types of timber for this as they will look pretty.
 

The large piece in the middle is the jig that will hold all the parts together while drying.
Should hold then at the correct angles.
 
This will be my next job assembling the carriages.
 
Thanks for looking in.
Regards Antony.

Created a jig for the shrouds.  This keeps every thing in place while I glue on the ratlines.  In order for this ship to fit in the bottle I have to add the masts after the hull is in.  The shrouds will have to be glued to the side of the hull after they are in.  That means the ratlines will be what provides the proper spread of the shrouds.  
 

 
My rigging box has turned out to be pretty versatile.  

As it turns out, Dassault Systèmes went to Auto Desk and bought the rights to an older version of AutoCad to release as DraftSight for free in the hope people would update to 3D Solid Works.  So in reality you are comparing an old version of AutoCad with a new Version of AutoCad.  DraftSight will never win that battle.
 
Bob

Using the jig I made, I rigged all the Shrouds on the Post Side to the Deadeyes.  It wasn’t as difficult as I originally thought; especially with everything held in place with the jig.
 

 
Once I had the Port Side Deadeyes seized to the Shrouds I removed the jig and lashed the Deadeyes.
 

 

 
I’ve moved the jigs to the Starboard Side.  The way I made the jigs, all I had to do was flip the pieces over and they fit.  I’ll begin seizing the Starboard Side Shrouds today.
 
One thing I noticed was that as I’m getting very close to finishing the Bluenose now, I have to really slow myself down to make sure I don’t rush these last few building steps and destroy some of the underlying work.
 

Small update, I made one of the grates for the helm, as I said before, the quality is much better than expected for the price. All the cuts are clean and acurate and the timber has a fine grain so not much splintering although there are a few "hairs". I made a right angle fence to make the grate against. All the pieces just slipped straight into position.
 

 

 

 
 

For those of us who do not have the plans in front of us or a mode to refer to, she looks great.  I see no mistakes.
 
Bob

For those of us who do not have the plans in front of us or a mode to refer to, she looks great.  I see no mistakes.
 
Bob

For those of us who do not have the plans in front of us or a mode to refer to, she looks great.  I see no mistakes.
 
Bob

For those of us who do not have the plans in front of us or a mode to refer to, she looks great.  I see no mistakes.
 
Bob

For those of us who do not have the plans in front of us or a mode to refer to, she looks great.  I see no mistakes.
 
Bob

Hello all,
 
Finally an update, it was long overdue.
 
The railings and the grating at the bow section are in place. They just need a little touching up and staining.
Now I can really see where I made the mistakes. Before placing the railings I wish I had thought of using a template to get the right angles/roundings like J. (JCT) did on his Half Moon.
But that is water under the bridge and something to keep in mind for future reference.
The rudder is also in place.
 
Tomorrow it is time to start shaping the masts and spars.
 
Thanks for watching.
 
Anja
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I had started on the channels and deadeyes last month, but was distracted by the continuing discussions about mills. I was sure that there must be some way of modifying my drill stand to act as a mill, and sure enough, after a lot of web searching, I found a railway hobbyist who had done exactly that with his Proxxon drill stand. He was kind enough to share the details and provide a sketch.
 
So with the sketch in hand, I adapted my drill stand  as you can see if you look at my positng on the forum about this (see ‘How to modify Proxxon MB 140 drill stand to act as mill’ at http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/4539-how-to-modify-proxxon-mb-140-drill-stand-to-act-as-mill/?p=130660).
 
This in turn led me to buy an x-y table for the drill stand as well.
 
With all this thinking about better precision, a glance at the deck and looking at all the wonderful work on this forum showed me I could do a lot better with the guns, the shot racks, and the hatches. So why leave learning the skills to do better until later? Answer: do them again, but better if possible.
 
Replacing the shot racks
 
So the first thing to do was to remove all the shot racks. Unfortunately I had used epoxy adhesive to stick them to the walls. Despite much soaking in Isopropanol, they refused to give way, so I had to attack them with chisel blades. They came off, but it was clear I’d have to replace them as small patches of wood were also torn off the walls at the same time.
 
That done, I cut some new strips of wood from some pear pen blanks using my Proxxon FET saw (with which I am at last really comfortable and pleased with the precision it can offer) and loaded them on to a jig that would hold them on the x-y table.
 
That allowed me to mill a nice series of three hollows at a time spaced by 0.5mm, leaving gaps between each three hollows to file out as individual shot racks.
 

 

 
I finished them off with a face plate, and painted them. I again used the x-y table to drill holes for the gun bolts that would go into them, and then with some of the salvaged bolts and rings from the previous racks, installed the bolts. The racks were then set aside until I had finished more of the other deck furnishings.
 
Replacing the hatches – (1) the Gratings
 
I had for some time been thinking about learning how to do gratings for myself – I had read a lot about the standard technique of using a circular saw, but had been somewhat mystified as to how to get a groove exactly at the right spacing from the saw blade.
 
Of course, the answer was obvious the moment I decided to put blade to plywood panel. The way to achieve a perfect spacing was simply to start by cutting the slot in the panel by clamping the panel to the table top and having one edge of the panel firmly against the fence. Then, once the slot was cut, the panel was turned over and a spacer of the correct width was inserted between the panel and the fence.
 

 
I had decided that I’d go for 0.8mm strips for the gratings with a corresponding hole size of 0.8mm in order to achieve a scale size of 2” for the gratings (it’s a 1:64 model). The kit gratings are about 1mm and they just looked a bit too big to my eye.
 
Luckily I have a 0.8mm saw blade with no kerf, and after several attempts using a 0.8mm gauge from an old set of feeler gauges I had, I managed to cut 0.8mm strips that I could use in the slot.
 

 
One little hint that others might find useful is to set the depth of the cut using feeler gauges until you can just feel the edge of the saw over the edge of the gauge as you raise it through the slot.
 

 
I had especially enjoyed Dafi’s account of his trials making gratings (at http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/1449-making-gratings/?p=29923), and I went through similar set-backs. My main problem was making sure the grooves for the gratings were parallel. Given the grooves were 0.8mm, and that I was pushing the block of wood by hand over the blade, minute variations in the pressure I was using resulted in (1) increasing deviation from parallel as I went further into the block, and (2) a very small variation in the spacing between cuts. I found that a deviation of 0.01mm would translate into blocks that would have slightly different spacing, and that this would result in gratings that would only interlock for about 7 or 8 bars.
 
To overcome the problem of variance from parallel cuts, I used a block of wood that covered both sides of the spacing bar as well as the blade. This was then pushed through by the cross-slide/ angle stop. I never quite managed to make grooves that were perfectly spaced for more than a couple of centimetres, but I found that that did not matter – the only grating that was large was the main grating and I found all I had to do was make up the central section as a cross hatch and then simply add ordinary strips of the right depth to the remaining outer grating grooves.
 

 

 

 

 
Another recent purchase was a Proxxon sander. This I really find valuable. It allowed me to finish off the coamings around the gratings with ease.
 
Curving the gratings
 
I have seen that others bend their gratings using heat. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d do that and then put coamings round them. So I used an old biscuit tin first to shape the underside of the gratings, and then to shape a mirror mould so that I could curve the top of the gratings.
 

 

 

 
 
Replacing the hatches – (2) Main companionway
 
It has been said that the Alert’s deck plan would not work for the Sherbourne because the Sherbourne is smaller and using the hatches from the Alert would make the deck far too cluttered. That’s probably true, but I liked the look of my old companionway, so I just re-did it using pear wood from the pen blanks I had bought off eBay. It’s a bit better now, but not enormously so.
 

 
Replacing the hatches – (3) The Captain’s companionway
 
Much more interesting was the aftmost companionway. Others have preferred a tall structure, but I thought I’d stick with the Alert’s glass-covered one – mostly because I wanted to try my hand at using Perspex and embedding mullions in it. I didn’t like the rather tatty look of the one I first made, especially as I had CA glue marks on the plastic sheet I had used for the window panes.
 
At first I tried using my modified drill stand to mill the grooves for the mullions in the Perspex. However, it soon became clear that with my drill at its very high speed the melting Perspex on the mill bit made the process unworkable. Even worse, I snapped my 0.8mm mill bit when trying to remove it from a solidified ball of Perspex.
 
However, it struck me that I could use the skills I had learnt for the gratings. After a bit of experimentation, using a 0.6mm blade and making the necessary 0.6mm strip for the jig, it was relatively easy to slice grooves to a depth of 1mm in a 2mm Perspex block.
 
With another bit of luck, I remembered that some 0.5mm strips of cherry wood that I had previously ordered were in fact 0.6mm thickness – so they made perfect mullions for the grooves in the Perspex.
 
I first cut longitudinal grooves in the Perspex, then fitted the strips of cherry wood into those grooves (using small amounts of CA glue along the bases). These were sanded down to 1mm from the surface of the Perspex.
 
The block was then rotated and the horizontal cuts were made with the saw using the same jig – though this time the depth of the cut was adjusted to allow for the extra depth made by the inserted longitudinal strips of cherry.
 
With this done, the horizontal strips of cherry could then be inserted into the horizontal grooves, and the whole was then sanded down with the sander.
 

 

 

 

 
The final touch was to mill a couple of slots for the hinges and to insert two 2.5mm lengths of 0.5mm brass wire into the slots.
 

 
Watch out with the vacuum cleaner!
 
I had rigged up a vacuum cleaner nozzle over the sanding machine as I found that was more successful at removing wood dust than the outlet provided for the sander.
 
Unfortunately, the double sided tape I had been using to fix the companionway cover to a block of wood (to make the sanding more accurate and less dangerous) became worn and, as I was nearing the last bit of sanding on this rather precious piece, the vacuum cleaner simply sucked up the piece!
 

 

 
So I spent a dusty 15 minutes taking the bag out of the vacuum cleaner and sifting through the dust until I found my precious tiny piece again.
 
Still to come:
Cannon Channels and deadeyes  
Tony

I’ve been working on the chain plates. I used a brass sheet and old 90 TPI blade on the Byrnes
table saw and cut strips for the chain plates. I roughly bent them to shape and will fit them to
each individual location as each one will be unique. I chose to paint the assemblies too.
 

 

 

 
 
For the deadeyes I cut some correct sized dowel to and then using files and sandpaper shaped them.
 
 

I think Popeye is boring himself with 8 builds going on at the same time....
So he take a finished model and go on with that one !
AMAZING !!!!!!
 

Popeye, I'm sure you're the only one to, "put one aside, knowing that there was something left to do."   The rest of us would never do that.     
 
Bob

She's starting to take shape.  Nice boat.
 
Bob

update?????.......................................boy??.........................OK!  well,  I took this plank and put it here.............and I took that plank and put it there...........it's all very ad - nausium :D :D    I did take a few pictures last week........I should have posted them,  but i wanted to wait till I had something  a bit more..........positive.     here they are as of last week.
 

 
this is the hull dubbed Larry........I've started to do some tapering to the planks.   I need to defeat the planks wanting to rise off of rib #6,  creating a gap.
 

 
this is the hull dubbed Curly........as you can see,  it seems to want to do the same thing.   I may have fared the rib a bit too much as well.
 

 
the hull dubbed Moe........just sits in the back and laughs.   I haven't gotten to that point with him yet,  so when I do,  I will begin to taper the planks earlier.
 
moving along to the present day planking job........Curly is moving towards becoming completely planked.   I'll need to make an adjustment on Larry.......so I halted progress for the moment.  it's not too bad though.......after sanding and some putty to fill in the plank lines,  I should come up with a decent hull shape.
 

 

 
......still,  in a line-up.......they all look the same
 

 

 
I still have the United States on the other table.......debating whether to plank the decks or not,  at this time.  all I know,  is that it is not going back out in the hallway.   I have other things on my mind 

Ok we are back on steady seas. The oops has been corrected and onward we go!
 

Blade you don't need a lot of tools, they just make it easier, My first was done with a hobby knife, a set of small files, razor saw which is a small saw like a tennon saw with a very thin blade, a small mitre box for cutting 45deg angles and the most useful tool of all I reckon, a razor plane.
 

 
Oh, a handful of different grades of sandpaper too

Got some about a year ago, but haven't realy used them (yet).
 
What you are calling the 'depth of field' presumably is the 'working distance', i.e. the distance between the lense and the object you are looking at. The dentist ones seem to be designed for working standing up and hovering over the patient. I found the distance of 400 mm uncomfortable, it means that I have to sit rather upright and with arms nearly stretched out at my work table to keep the objects in focus.
 
I also found that the actual depth of field, i.e. the range over which objects appear in focus, is rather small at the large magnification.
 
In addition, I had problems adjusting the two microscopes for stereo-vision. Somehow the optical axes never seem to aligne with those of my eyes.
 
Not sure, whether all these problems are related to the fact that it is 'cheapish' (still 120 Euro) one. You can get branded ones for 400+ Euro ...
 
wefalck

Yep, I did consider it but decided against it. Please see previous posts for the reasons.
 
Yes, Crackers, there is guesswork but it is also detective work with many clues and many suspects
 
here are some preliminary lines, which will be cleaned up.
 
Dick
 

Why not paint first? Then you don't have to mask the deck.