Mike Y

Good evening, everyone. Thank you for your encouragement and recognition. At the beginning of this year, I deliberately slowed down my work, working no more than eight hours a day in the studio to ensure long-term health and to avoid a significant impact on my eyesight. I hope to do more in the future.
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 

To complete the construction of the bottom of the hull. Get ready to move to the next level, because some of the parts need the upper beams to be positioned, so parts of the structure need to be pushed back.Thank you for your attention
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

The biggest lesson that this forum has taught me is that each of us, regardless of level, is working hard at every detail. Even if we don’t see it in the end, taking things seriously is something we have to stick with. So I slowed down the shooting and tried to make the details as perfect as possible. Thank you for your support and attention to my friends!
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

Tool rants and sailing discussions aside, I said I was about to do the rudder.
Did I?
Erhm, no.
After painting the hull a couple of times it didn't appeal to me to do the rudder (too simple). Instead I've opted for somethinge inherently much harder and more complicated - the coamings for all the deck openings! Truth be told, I have never done a fish tail corner in full size and now I attempt them in 1:30.. sane? No, not really. Buth then, amongst the kids I'm not known for being sane all the time 😄 
So far, so good I must say. Only about 19 or 23 more corners to do 🙂 


And here is my setup with tools to accomplish to work.

Now a brake to watch some cross country skiing.
Cheers!

@Mark Pearse, yes, Sweden and the Baltic region is totally shattered with islands and skerries like no other part on the entire globe actually. It makes for quite stunning trips in the archipelago. The Admiral has a sailing friend in Florida, where they only have shallow sand beaches everywhere. To his complete horror we send him films when we sail only meters away from solid rock islands on both sides 😄 
My avatar picture is of a ship that sails in the Baltic sea, owned and maintained by a Christian organization. It has been a couple of years now since I last enlisted as first mate on it, but further back I was a regular for about 7 years. Fatigue through work and cancer did its best to take the fun of it for a while. As a first mate on it I was part in everything from sailing to finding the nearest power outlet and so on.
Primarily though it is my own sailboat I commandeer. Picture below. It is called OE36 after its constructor, Olle Enderlein. He studied at Sparksman&Stephens in NY and the OE36 is very similar to the more known Swan 36. The Swan is a bit more slender around the waist compared to the OE36. 36 is the length in feet. The first OE36 is from 1969 and mine is from 1980. The Swan predates that with a handful of years if my memory is somewhat accurate.

Which just brings us further down the rabbit hole... there is a healthy restriction to fabrication with a limited set of tools, power or not. Of course there is a monetary side to it also. It's a matter of prioritization... I will not reveal how much I've spent on my sailing vessel, but it could have with easy bought me the entire Proxxon Micromot line of tools. And I mean the Entire product catalog. 
But then I wouldn't be able to go sailing, which I love...

Because I’ve been so busy with my friends’custom tools lately, it’s obviously been a lot slower. Thank you all for your attention and affection. Before I made these parts, I modified the sampler to change the standard width from 15 cm to 10 cm so that it would be able to detect the interior of the hull for accurate sampling.
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 

It took me a day to get the whole thing polished and corrected. The construction of the inner parts can begin later. Thank you for your support and attention.
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

Continue to lay the ribs. This part of the progress is slow.
 

 
 

 
 
 

I'm tired of sawing and sanding wood. I'll do some outfitting for a change. Start with the metal boiler. As long as the size of the parts and drawings accurately match, will not be affected by the hull deviation. The drawings are 1:36 and must be converted to 1:60(60% of the drawing size) before being made. In order to beautiful and firm, the main body using block copper milling processing, the basic use of riveting parts. The utility model avoids the unsightedness of the welding and the unsteadiness of the adhesive. The precision of machining is required higher.
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

Hi All -
 
Important update: Last night I hit send on the files to the printer! I'll post a notice on MSW when I have a more specific delivery date (Friday-ish), but we are looking end of April.
 
Thanks for everyone's patience!
 
Mike

Hi Wefalck,
 
You are right, it was a serious challenge but I'm glad I could make it to a usable tool.
In a 3D cad program it all seems very simple (no tolerance and no misalignment) but in the real world it requires some skills to get it done.
Your solution is indeed simpler and very robust. For me it comes a little too late.
I hope my tilting table will serve me well for upcoming ship projects.
 
best regards,
   Kris

Nice tour de force across some machining and alignment problems !
 
I have had the same vice for decades and due to its lack of accuracy relegated it really coarse work only a long time ago. I am now using so-called toolmaker insert vices instead. They are available down to 20 mm jaw width and cost around 40 EURO/USD/GBP only.
 
The more parts the greater the chance of accumulating manufacturing and alignment issues. Such sine-type tables are nice, but as you experienced need to be manufactured to close tolerances on all parts in order to ensure overall accuracy.
 
For my little toolmakers vice, I went a different route and made a tilting device from a solid piece of aluminium that has no moving parts per se and only two critical dimensions: the verticality of the sides of the slot into which the vice fits and the parallel alignment of the holes for the fixing bolt vs. the bottom surface. Both dimensions I could control reasonably well with my equipment:
 

Another quick little job.
 

I didn't set this up as tight as I could have.  I wasn't concerned with small deviations, but maybe should have been.
These pieces are the tentative quoins for my tentative Rattlesnake cannon.  I needed a hole to insert the quoin handle.
With hind sight, a little jig to do them securely one at a time, would give me more precision..   Next time.
 

Still in prototyping phase.  Experimenting with mahogany for some contrast on the gun deck, as I have chose not to paint.
I will probably go back and do a better job of centering the quoin handles, because it's one of those things I would lose sleep over.
 
Anyway, just another sea trial for the drill press.  It is really up to the task, but I need to prep better.

Hi All,
 
After the metal epoxy glue had set (24 hours), 2 bolts are added just to be sure it will withstand vibration and forces during milling operations.
 

 
Curious about the outcome of the glueing I measured the misalignment. As you can see in de following picture there is a small gap (0.1 mm) between the highest point of the cylinder and the tilting plate.
 

 
Next was again a check of the flat surface on the xy-table over a 50x50 mm area.
 

 
I was disappointed but the inclinometer showed it as ‘flat’, so I will accept the result and start making the last parts: the 2 plates that lock the tilted plate in position.
 

 
The tilt-locker plates have an arc at its top and a slit also in the form of an arc. All arcs have the same centre point. First I start with marking and drilling 3 holes as a reference.
 

 
To mill the arcs I will use a jig that I already made earlier and consists of a base plate with 5 positions, spaced 20 mm apart, that can hold a pin that will act as the rotation centre. The next picture shows it on the xy-table. For wooden parts I use a plate with some sandpaper glued on it and lots of holes that have an M4 nut at the back of the plate. A workpiece can then be fixed with some small clamps. For the metal tilt-locker parts I need firmer clamping, so I will construct a different plate from a scrap piece of MDF (shown bottom left in next picture).
 

 
It starts with marking 3 positions: 2 holes of the tilt-locker and the centre of the arcs.
 

 
For the arc slit, a number of holes along the arc are marked and drilled.
 

 
Next I use my mini saw to cut off some excess material of the plates.
 

 
Then both plates are fixed on the piece of scrap MDF.
 

 
Milling starts with positioning the base MDF plate: the centre pin is mounted in the proxxon mill and lowered to make a fit in the middle hole of the base plate. Then the base plate is fixed in place to the xy-table with the 2 sunken bolds at its sides.
 

 
The proxxon mill is brought up again and the centre pin replaced with a 2 mm end mill. The center pin is now placed in the lowest hole. That makes the distance from rotation centre to end mill centre exactly 40 mm. From there the y position can be set at the required position to start milling, see next picture.
 

 
The result of milling:
 

 
For the final shaping of the tilt-locker plates I convert my mini saw into a mini disc sander.
 

 
The finished parts are shown next (you can see that at least 1 hole was drilled a bit to much off centre).
 

 
And here is the tilting table, set at a 20° inclination. It can hold the MS4 machine vice as well as a small rotating table (if I ever need that extra degree of freedom for a workpiece).
 

 

 

 
As a last tip to set an inclination with good precision, you can use a long M4 bolt to make fine adjustments before tightening all 4 M3 bolts.
 

 
That ends the making of a small tilting table. Hope you enjoyed it and maybe you start making your own.
Best regards,
Kris

I finally finished the first set of sidewall decorations:
 





 

Thank you very much!!!
 
I am just doing busy work...planking those aft platforms.  But I thought this small detail was worth mentioning.   Maybe some of you will think this is a good tip to use on any model.   
 

The lower aft platform is planked first following the plans and templates provided.   But as seen on many ship models there are scuttles which have rings for handles.   Similarly you see these type of rings used for the gun tackles on decks etc.  Most folks will make a split ring and then insert this into the eye of an eyebolt.  You have seen this a million times.
 
The photo below shows just that.   Look at the bottom row.  On the left is what you typically see.  The split ring on an eyebolt.   Nothing wrong with this as everyone does it this way.  But even when the eyebolts have smaller eyes you will end up with so many unsightly rings on deck or on your scuttle lids that look out of scale and sticking up.   Yes, you are supposed to sink the eyes part-way into the deck which is a real pain.  But even then, it looks very odd to me now after examining so many contemporary models.
 
So to the right is a solution for this which I keep meaning to post... but always forget to.   
 
The split rings in this case are made from 24 gauge black wire.   They are made as usual...wrapping many times around a #47 drill bit and sawed off to produce a 15 or 20 rings.   
 
Rather than make and use tiny eyebolts I just take a small length of thinner 28 gauge black wire and make a small bent "V".   This makes it easy to handle and slip the split ring onto.   Then I crimp the 28 gauge wire tight around the split ring with a small pliers.  Its very simple indeed.   Squeeze the two ends together and snip off the bottom on an angle so you have a point.   It looks almost like a cotter pin of sorts.   This is slipped into a hole drilled on deck or in this case the scuttle lids.  
 
I saw this done in my favorite book.   "Legacy of a Ship Model"  by Rob Napier.   During his restoration of the Princess Royal model he took the model apart...I mean all of it.   In the book there are so many photos of these items which show the way the contemporary model builders made their parts.   This is how the contemporary builder made these on that model (250 years ago) and after carefully examining so many other contemporary models I believe most of them were made just like this.   There is an excellent photo of the contemporary version of one of these in that book....along with countless other gems showing how those guys did stuff back then.  Rob had to make more of these for his restoration and used the exact same method of course.

 
This makes the handles and rings look so much more to scale.  No more pesky eyes sticking up that are too large all over the deck for the crew to trip over.   Its a small detail but I thought worth mentioning now that I remembered to do so.   At least I hope you think so.   Its the small details that make a difference when you add them all up...
 

 
Lastly I also made the mizzen mast coat as you can see.  Its made in the same way as on the Winnie.  Three layers.   The middle layer is rounded off and the char removed.   Then the top and bottom layers were added after removing the char from those.  The mast coat is not glue down permanently.   Its just lightly tacked with some rubber cement.   You may have to move it when trying to position the mizzen mast later.  So dont glue it down permanently yet.  The hole on deck is slightly larger than that of the mast coat...so you can move it any way to accommodate the mast later.   NOTE:   The mast coat was later changed here to be Octagonal. The lower masts are not round and I discovered this later.  But I was able to replace the round mast coat with one that was octagonal later on.  So my model will be accurate.  Your kits have had the laser cut mast coats updated as well.  The laser cut parts are now octagonal. Its an interesting detail I have not seen on a contemporary model so I want to make sure I accurately depict the same.  The lower masts are octagonal from the keel up to the sheer line or caprail before turning to round in section.   I have only since acquired some really fantastic photos showing this feature.
 

Chuck