Mike Y

Great move for international readers, where shipping + custom fees double the cost of a book! 
Just one things to consider (not a critique, but a food for thought). What happens with the purchase when Kotobee goes bankrupt and closes the library? That is a common problem with various connected devices and online resources, in 10 years a big share of them are just gone together with all your content. It's fine for a book that is being read once, might be a bummer if you use it for a reference or just enjoy building up a collection.
Fully understand that there is no good solution here, anything downloadable will end up on torrents the day after... 

Finishing my Swan Class Sloop
Mast Wedges, stubs for the masting, and a figure head.
I purchased the Lion figure (boxwood?) online from PRC. Required some adaptation for fitting.
Not one of the class as listed, but I read somewhere that a generic lion figure was sometimes used even when the ship’s name was something else.
 
Well, 30 months, about 3000 hours, 500+ postings. What a voyage of discovery. There were times, particularly at the beginning, that I wondered if I’d even depart the harbour. Of course, without the practicum TFFM books , Dan Vardas blogs and Kevin’s Videos, I would have been sunk many times. Thank you all.
Thanks to the Bosun (wife) for tolerating my taking a spare bedroom (and sometimes a second one), disappearing for hours, making noise in the early hours of the morning, and turning a blind eye to the expense of the new tools that I acquired. My grandchildren, perhaps hoping to inherit the ship, are even more attentive than usual.
Like a good book that you regret when finishing, so is this project.
I have more on the shelf, but will return to a Swan, perhaps with reduced innards, but fully planked and rigged. I have volume 4 TFFM and enough cherrywood stock.
 
And now for something completely different (Monty Python)----
 
The BISMARK - Amarti kit.

@mtaylor and @Mike Y Great points and something I’ve been concerned about. Here’s how I plan to address those possibilities:
In the event that Kotobee goes out of business, I would absolutely move everyone to the next viable platform. There are a slew of options - right now Kotobee is the best value for us to deliver this capability. In the event that SeaWatch gets sold or closes (likely not to happen for years!) I would make sure that all e-book customers get taken care of - either through contractural commitment from the buyer in a sale or through direct ownership of digital files in a shut down. My philosophy is that there should be zero risk for the customer in doing this.
 
Mike

Hello JJ,
Tiger is well and waiting for me to take action again. I started carefully and repaired some things from the spring. 
 
The last fall went into a sunny and mild fall and I bought me a pedelec to cruise through the near and far neighbourhood. And because my meniscus did't protest, also for shopping to the next town. So my car had mostly holiday 😉 

But to stay with the subject of this forum. If there weren't the supporters for the cathead! But at least I haven't any more excuses not to start, so I will start at the shipyard very soon.
 

Great move for international readers, where shipping + custom fees double the cost of a book! 
Just one things to consider (not a critique, but a food for thought). What happens with the purchase when Kotobee goes bankrupt and closes the library? That is a common problem with various connected devices and online resources, in 10 years a big share of them are just gone together with all your content. It's fine for a book that is being read once, might be a bummer if you use it for a reference or just enjoy building up a collection.
Fully understand that there is no good solution here, anything downloadable will end up on torrents the day after... 

Like everyone else, I, too, have always experienced excellent service from Byrnes Model Machines. As an aside, I will share that I am now at the stage of my career when I'm easing into retirement, and am now operating a limited professional practice as a "solo" practitioner rather than as the managing partner of a firm with associates and support staff. Like the Byrneses, I am sure, I find myself under the continual pressure to meet my clients' unreasonable time expectations. It isn't that they are intentionally unreasonable, but they just don't understand that I don't have "operators standing by to take your call." The current communications technology has created the expectation of instant responses and instant gratification. A small family business, or, as in my case these days, a small solo professional practice, cannot provide instant email or phone responses nor guarantee "overnight shipping." It's just not possible. Sometimes there's just more of it than there is of you. Sometimes you need to take a vacation. Sometimes you catch a cold or just need a damn day off. There seems a continual parade of posts on MSW from forumites asking (or complaining about) why they haven't heard back from one or another "micro-business" supplier (e.g Model Machines, Syren Ship Models, Seawatch Books, Alexy Domanoff, etc.) because they haven't received an immediate reply to their email or phone call. Specialty ship modeling suppliers are often very small niche businesses. Reports are that the customer base for modeling products is less than a million nationwide in the U.S. and quickly decreasing because most hobbyists are over the age of 55. Let's try to remember that we are often dealing with "little guys" who are doing the best they can to keep up selling to a very small customer base with often quite small profit margins. Good things are worth waiting for! Let's give 'em a break! Amazon they ain't.  

There is a lot of distortion but here is a picture of Mike’s Winnie next to the speedwell for a size comparison.   The Speedwell is about 7” shorter at 3/8” scale even though the picture makes it seem like more.  That is after all the framing is done.  Only 8 more square frames to go…since this picture was taken.
 

Its a new type of resin printer…you can get them for home use but as with everything else the ones worthwhile are expensive.  
 
I think Chris posted the i nfo on which one he got sometime ago.  I literally am consciously trying to not learn another new technology…my brain cant absorb any more.  CAD proficiency and new tech which is improving every couple of months.  Its too much for me.  So I will leave that aspect to others and gladly pay them what they deserve.  
 
It prints upside down….how cool is that.  These are my parts being printed.  When I get them I work on them extensively…sharpening and carving more details by hand.  It may be hard to tell but just adding a few details with your own hand makes them look less polished and machine made.  Then I use them as masters for traditional casting.  I really should introduce  even more evident hand carving but these are quite small.  But I may still do more work on them.
 

 
 

Did some work on the final iteration of the figurehead and trailboards today.  

The fit is really quite good.  If you can imagine the hairbrackets in position…all will fit rather smashingly.  Also picture them with a wood finish.

With these done I can send the masters for casting in wood colored resin.  Note the raw 3d printed example in the photos.  Looks very Syfy like before the supports are removed and the figure is cleaned up and tweaked.  Its all very interesting the way its done and printed with a high end resin printer.  
 
The surface quality is excellent.  A big thank you to Chris W.  from Vanguard for his help with these.   


so now its back to frame-making…
 
 

Great move for international readers, where shipping + custom fees double the cost of a book! 
Just one things to consider (not a critique, but a food for thought). What happens with the purchase when Kotobee goes bankrupt and closes the library? That is a common problem with various connected devices and online resources, in 10 years a big share of them are just gone together with all your content. It's fine for a book that is being read once, might be a bummer if you use it for a reference or just enjoy building up a collection.
Fully understand that there is no good solution here, anything downloadable will end up on torrents the day after... 

Work continues on the square frames.  I thought I would post an update.  I worked my way aft and have all of those completed.  I am about two thirds completed with the square frames.  Its all been uneventful.   But here are a few pictures and some notes for folks who will be building her in the future.  It is so nice to be able to remove the model with this "jigged concept".   The cross bars that space the frames properly create a fantastic base so you can flip the hull over and do some progressive fairing.   I designed it so the stem and stern post will be in the clear when its flipped.  Its nice and sturdy to fair the hull.
 

The build board I was using cupped terribly so I had to make a new one.  It is important to have a perfectly flat build board.  This is a pressboard shelf that has white laminate on it.  It was perfectly flat and sturdy.  We shall see.
 
I also decided when I made the new build board to swap the aft support for a taller one.  This is the support that holds the stempost straight up and vertical and centered.  There was nothing wrong with the shorter one but I had a thought to make raising the frames even easier.   I glued a string to the top of the taller stern post support.   Then I ran it down to the center of the stem post and secured it in the center with some tape.   This will be a great reference for finding the center down the length of the hull.   
 
I laser etched an arrow down the center of the top jig cross pieces....it always faces forward.  But because its in the center, you can use the string to help you position each frame properly.   They must be centered port to starboard....this makes it very easy to do when you raise each square frame on the keel.
 

One thing I wanted to point out are the small wedges or "cradle parts"  under the first square frame in the photo above.   Once I had about six frames all done,  these laser cut pieces were placed under the frame on both sides for extra support.  They are laser cut to be a perfect fit under the center frames.    They will be included in the kit as well.
 
In addition,   you might notice that those cross pieces for each shorter frame are no longer needed once you have the sweep port and gun port parts glued on top of them.   The frames are grouped together and glued pretty solid.  You can see them in the earlier photo.
 

So they can be removed once you have those sweep port and gun port pieces glued in.
 
This will give you access to the inboard frames....well somewhat.   But I did do some progressive fairing of these frames inboard and out.   Outboard was easy enough.   Inboard is always a challenge.   But you can see that I have at least got the heavy stuff off inboard.   I use various chisels and my #11 blade to slice off the heavy stuff.   A rough fairing....then switch to some rifler files.   Then I switch to sandpaper.   It is best to get a start on this because it will be a real chore if you dont at least get the heavy stuff off.  I do this after every 5 or 6 square frames are raised.
 
Out board was easier but the same tools were used.
 

You can really start to see her lines start forming and the nice elegant shape into the stern....remember that the hull will be planked on both sides from the wales up to the shear.  Care is taken to line up the sweep ports and gun port sills.   I use a height guage or my square to transfer the heights from the framing plan to the model.
 
Here is a somewhat close up photo of the fairing into the rising wood.  These are last several square frames before the cant frames are started.   You can see how the rising wood was faired nicely into the run of the square frames.   This will make more sense to you if you are building it...LOL.
 

Anyway...that is the progress to date and I will now start on the forward section of square frames in the exact same manner.   It is a real pleasure to build upright and without all of that boxed scaffolding I see on other kits.  

I have splurged....

I'm excited to announce that SeaWatch is dipping our toe into e-books! While we pride ourselves on beautiful, high quality, printed books, we must acknowledge that the digital format for books is here to stay. There are several benefits to e-books:
 
You can zoom into pictures to get more detail You can easily travel with them There is no shipping costs to receive them (this should be of particular interest to our international readers!) They don't go out of print  
Our first e-book is Rob Napier's new book Caring for Ship Models: A Narrative of Thought and Application. (Thank you Rob for being open to this!) It is our intent to expand this based on author interest and I hope to next add some of our currently out-of-print books until we can get those reprinted.
One thing I'm considering is that if you order an out-of-print book as an e-book, when the book is printed we can ship that to you and turn off the digital version (feel free to let us know what you think of this).
 
A word on pricing: we do not plan on discounting e-books relative to their physical counterparts. The reason is that we believe the books - regardless of their media - have inherent value. It's their content not their physical properties. And, while there are no printing costs with digital books, there are costs in creating them, hosting them, and updating them. That said, for those that want to own both, we plan to offer a bundle at a 10% discount.
 
Note that since our books are very visual, we are not making them available for Kindles or similar e-readers. We have have partnered with a firm called Kotobee to create our own online library and digital e-readers (currently available for Windows and Mac with iOS to follow soon). When you order an e-book, you will be sent a link to register for the reading platform. On subsequent purchases, you will see the book appear in your library automatically.
 
As we go down this road, we are of course open to any feedback so please let us know your thoughts. Are you interested in e-books? Are there any titles you'd like to see first? 

@shipman
This steady rest I have built with simple means.
With this I can position small ball bearings for round logs with diameters of 1 - 10 mm for support. The simple tool has already proven itself very well. 

I have spoken with Jim and am hoping someone knows a UK or EU source of belts for the Byrnes saw.  It is a spare so no panic (yet).
 
Thanks in advance,
Bruce
 

What a fine piece of machinery! I especially like the exposed corner of the disk, allowing to shape the inside curves without a spindle sander. Had to make a cutoff in my proxxon for it.
What about the dust collection, is there a way to hook up the vacuum? 

Hi all,
 
This summer I bought the 'Stuart Models Engineering Lathe - unmachined' as a short project to tide me through to winter .... https://www.stuartmodels.com/product/stuart-engineering-lathe-unmachined/

I started on it a few weeks ago so haven't yet completed it and will post updates as I pass the build milestones.  Not surprisingly I'm using a lathe to build the lathe, and a milling machine.
 
Below is the lathe's exploded diagram supplied as part of the instruction set.  At first look it seems a bit simpler than the Stuart Beam Steam Engine build, say, but it isn't without it's own challenges and head-scratching moments.

 
Below - As usual, everything arrives in the rigid Stuart cardboard box.

 
And here is a quick 'lathe assembly' of the larger parts, next to the other materials and the instruction sheet. The big square metal lump sitting in the middle of the lathe bed is Item 16, the lathe Saddle ... I'm guessing it will mostly end up as a slim elegant item and a big pile of swarf!

 
Above. As usual, the larger parts are made of cast iron so will require grinding/filing to remove the casting flash and to introduce the beginnings of 'squareness'. Squareness will be quite important since it has a direct effect on 'work holding' in the mill vice or lathe chuck(s).  And, as also usual with these items, the question of what surface(s) to use as the initial reference plane raises it's head. I'm not sure if there is a definitive answer to that one since it can depend on the machinist's ability and the machinery available.
 
Anyway, my strategy with these builds tends to be to rough out the larger parts first and take it from there.
 
Below, the lathe bed sitting on Headstock Base and Tailstock Foot. The bed had had it's top and bottom surfaces milled flat using a 10mm diameter cutter. This involved a lot of winding the mill bed backwards and forwards - there must be a better way 😉

 
Below, the Tailstock Foot being clamped to the mill bed - this surface would then be used to reference the bottom surface from so that both were square and parallel.

 
Below, and the milling begins. I'd Blue'd the surface to give me a sanity check on how much material I needed to remove.

 
And talking of sanity, I thought (for a tiny fraction of a second) that this 'work holding' might work to allow me to mill the top face. It did allow me to use the bottom face as a reference but there wasn't too much else to be said of that idea.

 
So back to clamping on the mill bed. Setting up the squareness was a bit more difficult but clamping was way more secure and safe.

 
Once both the Tailstock Foot and Headstock Base had had their two main surfaces milled flat and parallel to each other, it was on to drilling holes for attaching to the lathe bed and a clearance hole for the Tailstock Clamp (Item 41).

 

 
After having wound the mill table up and down countless times on these sort of projects I knew it really was time for me to buy a Flycutter. As opposed to an end mill, a flycutter is a single point cutting tool but covers a much wider swathe. The finish was quite rough - I was moving the table too quickly and taking too deep a cut - but I later smoothed the lathe bed top surface to a better finish using a draw file and emery on a surface plate.

 
Now to cut the central slot in the lathe bed that the Headstock and Tailstock will locate in to. This was reasonably straight forward.

 
However, as I cut the slot deeper it dawned on me that I was removing the material that the vice was clamping against. I needed to put in a temporary spacer to stop the vice pressure collapsing the sides of the lathe bed. The stiffening block spacer was held in position with a strip of double-sided sticky tape.

 
Top view of the lathe bed and the stiffening block.

 
Now on to some fun stuff. The lathe bed has a T-slot cut in it to accommodate the Clamp for the Tailstock, and the slot runs the full length of the lathe bed. Sourcing a cost effective (ie cheap) T-slot cutter wasn't straightforward - good quality ones of the exact size seem to start at around £40  and head upwards rapidly. I eventually managed to find two cheaper ones of different sizes, the smaller size to rough out the slot and the larger diameter one to finish the slot off.

 
Finally another cutter was procured to cut the 60 degree angle of the sides of the lathe bed. That worked OK.  A keen eye will notice that the T-slot has a small step on it's top surface ... the mill operator wasn't paying attention! This can be remedied at his leisure 🙂

 
Well, I think that's it for today.
 
The Stuart lathe has been a good buy, with the usual caveats eg the cast iron parts still suffer from glass hard corners and surfaces where rapid cooling occurred, and some cast items are almost at their finished dimension even before machining has started, but all-in-all I'm pretty happy so far.
 
See you soon.
 
Regards,
 
Richard
 
 
 
 
 

Probably the most difficult part to produce so far - Wing Transom.  I used every tool in my shop (mill, all the sanders and chisels).  I left off the dove tails in the rear of the part as it may make aligning the legs of the stern trickier later.  They really aren't necessary for the structure and the risk of screwing up my third attempt at this part isn't worth it ! 

What a fine piece of machinery! I especially like the exposed corner of the disk, allowing to shape the inside curves without a spindle sander. Had to make a cutoff in my proxxon for it.
What about the dust collection, is there a way to hook up the vacuum? 

The stern timbering is largely complete and the upper deck clamps are in place. Consideration now needs to be given to the orlop and false decks. As this vessel is meant to portray the ship at the time of its West Australian visit, augmented armament has been installed as well as an extended false deck to provide additional accommodation below the main deck.
 


 
Cheerio
Dick

More progress on the hull:
The ceiling has been indicated by a number of longitudinal strakes The athwartships futtock and floor riders have been installed. Main deck clamps in place Breasthooks installed Fore and mainmast steps in place

Looking forward

Looking aft

Stern timbers promise to be a challenge!
Cheers
Dick

The double main wales have been affixed with pins and will be treenailed later. The sheer has been cut. The next step will be adding the keelson.
 

 

 

 

Cheerio
Dick

As the immortal Arnie says: "I'm bark". After being derailed by two other builds I have girded the proverbial loins and cut some serious wood to finally finish all the frames for the legendary "Fat Belly". The frames have been cobbled onto the keel and not yet fully trued. Here are some piccies of the Beast:





As you can see, the jarrah frames from years ago which were oiled are considerably darkened and make a contrast with the new frames which have yet to be oiled.
Much happy and dusty woodcutting to come.
Cheers
Dick

work continues on gan barrels:

Good morning and happy new year