Mike Y

Thanks for all the likes on my last post.  For this week I finished the bow cannons, made the 12 quoin handles, and drilled and added the extra bolts on the gun carriages.  Since these will all be painted I went ahead and used .020" styrene rod.  It's easier to work with and cut than wire.  The bolts stand proud of the surface by .010", which looks good to my eye.  I made a quick jig out of .010" thick styrene, and then cut the bolt heads flush with my superb PBL flush cutters (one of the highest quality, best tools I own, and sadly long discontinued - the cutting surface edges are very precise and produce an absolutely perfect flush cut).  The last step before the carriages will be painted is to drill the eye bolt holes (with the eye bolts to be added at a later time) and do a bit of clean up and filling where needed.
 
This will probably be my last update for some time.  I have family coming into town next week, and then I head off to Hokkaido, Japan to explore for a while.
 
Erik

Sorry for the long delays in posting. Lots going on in the summer outside the shop, and progress is very slow when I am in the shop!
 
Thanks so much, druxey, Albert, Marc and Michael for your kind thoughts. These keep my spirits up as I plod through the slow business of building the quarter galleries.
 
I have found it most effective to treat each level of the quarter galleries--at levels of both decks and railings--as a little platform with the structural rails temporarily glued to the outside edges. This allows me to keep the correct curve and location where the rail hits the side of the hull.
 
 

I used the mouldings at the stern as guides for the angle at which the platforms are temporarily glued in their locations, and carefully measure from the channel wale to find the correct sheer fore and aft. I check with a height gauge to ensure the platforms are symmetrical port and starboard.
 
I recalled reading many years ago that the fore and aft curves of the quarter galleries must be parallel to each other, although offset fore and aft by the amount of the slope of the aft windows. This is to ensure that the vertical mullions are parallel to each other and not in different planes which would create a twist in the plane of the windows themselves. Not good for flat sheets of glass! So I was very careful in maintaining the angle at the aft, outboard, intersection of the two structural rails. This ensures that the platforms above and below the window will remain parallel to each other even as the sides of the hull at different heights vary in their angles due to the tumblehome.
 
This should become clearer in later posts, when I start to lay out the mullions themselves.
 
Here are more images of the platforms slowly coming together. The first one below also shows how the structural beam at level C had to be notched for the window frame to slide up behind the stern moulding. It is actually a blind window, but I needed to do this so my windows would remain constant in their heights across the full width, for ease of construction.
 
Best wishes,
 
Mark
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Mike thank you the perfect rundown on a milling machine.  very helpful for those of us  trying to figure out what to buy - there are too many choices!

Now it's time to build magazines and all sorts of decks and beams. For that phase an accurate depth gauge is essential, so I've let my brain overthink yet another tool 
 
The requirements are:
1) Soft plastic or wood to avoid scratching the model
2) Nice looking and pleasure to use, that tool would be in active service for at least a decade.
3) Ideally it should have a thumbwheel or a knob for fine adjustment. 
 
I have a cheap plastic vernier calliper that satisfies the first requirement, but it does not have an knob / thumbwheel.

Could not find any plastic callipers with a knob, unfortunately. The plastic ones are already rare enough, let alone with a wheel adjuster.
 
Then I spotted a Lego set with a container loader ("reach stacker", to be more precise) that has a worm gear and tried to make an abomination out of it. It is surprisingly challenging to build a compact functional tool out of random lego parts, a whole puzzle of its own. Respect to people who do it on a regular basis!

It kind of works, but the play and precision is not good enough for my needs. 
So I gave up on the wheel adjuster requirement and went back to the simple "calliper on a gantry" setup.
It was a nice warmup to recover some skills that I've lost over years of inactivity.
 

This time I even got help from my little helper! She enjoyed cranking the mill  

 
The resulting design has two parts - sliding gantry (no t-tracks, it is stable enough on its own) and a "calliper holder" that slides sideways on the gantry to allow the gantry keep contact with both sides of the baseboard.
The bottom edge of the caliper is trimmed to a flatter profile to avoid hitting the keelson. Both ends of the calliper can be used for a markup to allow for a comfortable pencil positioning.
The setup relies on three clamps to fix everything in position. These plastic clamps are a bit of an eyesore, maybe I will sidetrack again to build a nicer ones  


 
 

If you are short on space - then yes, absolutely: https://www.proxxon.com/en/micromot/27110.php
 
It is the smallest mill available in a reasonable price range (excluding aliexpress drill-mill junk combos), which is both good and bad. The working area is quite small, but enough for shipmodeling needs. It is hard to upgrade and attempts to machine anything harder than brass on that mill are rather questionable. But it is a great way to start and is fairly cheap in comparison. Make sure to get the "precision vice PM40", the cutters and basic workholding clamps should be already included. 
 
If you have a workshop - then your choice is much wider, there are a lot of medium sized "mini mills", but all of them are too big and heavy to be casually pulled up on your work table, they require a more permanent position in your shop. Proxxon, on the other hand, takes less space than some smoothie blenders in the kitchen  

Thanks Rik, so glad that you find it useful!  
 
For the mill - the basics are very intuitive, no book or youtube guide required if you work with wood on our level. Feeds and speeds pretty much do not matter for the small wood pieces that we work with, common sense is enough (keep the fingers away from the cutter, do not try to cut 2cm deep in one go, listen for the sound that the cutter makes and slow down if it sounds rough). The cost of a mistake is also relatively low, worst case scenario you break a cutter, so do not start with a thin and delicate right away. 3mm cutter is an optimal all-round cutter in my opinion.
 
Imagine you have a drill that not only cuts down, but can also work sideways. The key feature is that you are not doing it freehand, but by fixing your part to the mill table and precisely moving it in all three directions using wheels, with everything being perpendicular or parallel. As long as you are cutting straight lines - mill would give you the best quality and precision comparing to files and chisels (unless you are a true master of these tools). And a fantastic feeling of being able to carefully maneuver it  with a 0.01mm precision without being a surgeon.
 
It even removes a need for measurements in simple setups - the wheels are marked to indicate a travel distance.  Say I want to cut a scarph joint 1mm deep and 4mm in each direction. Mount the part on a proper angle, move the cutter to the starting point, set axis to zero - and now you can just plunge the cutter 1mm down and move to the side by 4mm minus the cutter width. If the operation is simple enough to visualise the operations in your head - the markup and measurements are not even necessary, the mill can do it for you.
 
Further milling skills are mostly about metals, eliminating backlash, feeds and speeds, different kinds of cutters, precision, finishing passes, reference surfaces - all of that is an overkill for the basic wood milling in our hobby.
What is useful is a lot of clever ways to mount the part, especially the part that is asymmetrical and hard to clamp or put in a vice.
 

A bit of offtopic, but not big enough to create a separate thread for it.
Friends from St.Petersburg sent these photos. A new playground in a bit of a hipster spot located next to the Naval Museum.
This area is an old navy storage facilities built 300 years ago, they were surrounded by channels to be accessible from boats. 
Semi-abandoned for years, with a lot of city myths surrounding the place. 
 

  Today a part of it is given to hipsters, and the place is filled with people again.
One of the things built recently is a playground that consists of a pretty nice replica of a period ship! The thing is big, and kids can go inside and play. Fascinating! 
Of course, the framing is a bit simplified, but it is still impressive:
 

 

 

 

Working on the keelson.
Decided not to rely on the plans due to possible error here and there, and fit it to the hull instead.
 
Fixing the keelson parts to the hull with masking tape:

 
Marking frame boundaries:

 
Keelson markup completed:

 
First fit after milling, some notches are not wide enough. Three iterations on a mill were required, because these pencil marks are not precise enough (hard to get the pencil right, the angle was awkward):

 
After the fitting. Will need to make some notches deeper to avoid gaps:

 
Now rinse and repeat!

Some "build snapshot" photos. Tung oil finish is especially beautiful under direct sunlight. It is such a pity that it is a not a good idea to display the model in the sunny place Damn physics!
 

 

 

Carl, yes, even this "drill" is better than manual drilling. It is just a pity that there is nothing in the market for a proper quality micro drills. All drills I found while googling were similar hand-made "cheap motor + chuck + few wires" construction. I love working with good tools, this one is not pleasure to work with, but it gets the job done.
 
Many thanks to Gaetan, now my livingroom corner looks even more like a shipyard, with the Arsenal de Toulon drawing on a wall
 

Installed the false keel. It is the first time I work with ebony, and probably the last. Working with ebony is all about cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and again cleaning. Bleh!
 

 
Shaped it with the Veritas mini block plane, its blade is really hard, cuts ebony without any issues:

 
Result:

 

Finished fairing the exterior of the hull:
 

 

 
No finish applied yet.
 
First time I show the hidden side of it

 

It is the port side, it would be fully planked and fully hidden - hence no iron bolts, very rough fairing and less attention to the frame alignment - ended up adding strips of wood to patch the low spots. 
 
Now need to make a frame to support the hull in an inverted position (keel down), to be able to comfortably work with the internals of the hull. Internal fairing would be fun!
 

The mill (Proxxon MF70) is truly great. Very precise, and with a proxxon cutters it cuts pear as butter. On the lowest possible speed (5k rpm), even with 1mm cutter!
 
Here are some first cuts and a first thingy produced on the lathe:

 
Now I can cut joints like this in no time! Hooray! Previously such joint will take me 30min minimum, and it would not be that precise anyway:

Finished the transom wings. It is an interesting area of the hull, a lot of fine tuning and shaping
Left the wings slightly oversized and with rough corners (too square), will properly shape them while fairing the hull. 
As usual, ignore the right side of the photo - it will be fully planked, so it is less accurate
 

 

 
Now starting the gunports.

Midship frames were easy, now I am in the area of extreme bevels:

 
Thanks to Mr. Hollom, who built his Oliver Cromwell from Hahn's plans and confirmed that these bevels are correct and could be trusted. If you missed his build log and fantastic model - it is here: http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/1883-oliver-cromwellbeavers-prize-by-peter-mr-hollom-148/
 

After pre-beveling frames already look neat!
 
Current status: 20 frames installed, 20 frames produced and drying from the wipe-on-poly right now.

 
Oh, Oliver Cromell have just 40 frames, so I do not need to produce any more, whoo-hoo!
 
 

Frame mass-production in progress... Boring, once the process is stable - it becomes just a matter of time


that spring clamps I am using for lamination are actually big and strong. The benefit comparing to regular clamps - you get an even and continuous pressure at all points, no way to over-tighten one clamp and under-tighten another.
 
In a meanwhile, used my "training model" to cut the gunports. Turned out to be harder than I expected, swiss files are not strong enough - so most of the wood is removed with knife and chisel, which is kind of scary. Ordered Xacto micro blade, #15, to help with gunport cutting: http://xacto.com/products/cutting-solutions/blades/classic-blades/Keyhole-Saw-Blade-15.aspx
 
Built the height transferring device. Height gauges are too expensive, and it is a pleasure to build a small cute tools out of wood. Using clamp instead of a brass knob - looks weird, but will not damage the wood. And clamp is a bit easier to use
 

Learned a lesson about Hahn method - should be really careful with the width of the frame tips, the ones that are glued to the framing jig:

 
I was cutting them very roughly (they are not a part of the model, would be cut off anyway). As a result, got some frames that are not in line with other frames:

 
To fix it, reduced thickness of some frame tips and inserting spacers into the others:

 
The good thing is that I will have one side fully planked - I do not care that much about consistency of that side.
The other side, that would be opened - is now in line.
 
All 20 midship frames are permanently glued in
 

 
and fixed with Castello treenails:
 

Made a very ugly jig made from plexiglass sheets, to get a straight 90 degrees for all dimensions when gluing the frames.
 

 
Looks working, now I am trying not to rush things and go slowly, one-two frames a day - glue should set, so frame will not get skewed.

The set of instructions for that kit finally arrived!
 

Stem: 

 

 
Sistered frame construction:

 
Frames are lofted and assembled right on a floor, and later fitted to the hull:

 

 

 
Joinery:

 
 

Looks like I am becoming a hand tools fetishist.. There is something nice about working with a high quality chisels and knifes - no noise, no sawdust, and you feel like making a pinocchio
 
 
 
Especially surprised with the knife - it is the sharpest knife I ever held, it make a clean cut without any pressure, and it is heavy and sharp enough to ignore the grain direction!
But it reminds that as with any hand tool - you need to practice and learn a lot to use it nicely...

 
 
The shape of a rabbet was asymmetrical to meet the planks on a proper angle:

 
Result is not perfect, there are a few ooopsies, luckily most of them are on the inner side, which would be invisible.

 

 
I will not cut a rabbet on a side that would be fully opened. Not able to cut it smooth enough to make it fully exposed.

However, I decided to make rabbet much later, when all main frames would be cut.
Before it, would be hard to determine the proper angle of the rabbet, how planks will go. I am not going to glue the frames before they are all cut anyway
 
Assembled all parts on a framing jig:

 
It nicely decorates the modeling area

 
Now I know how to make a nice frames, keel is ready, so let's make some sawdust and produce all remaining frames!
Luckily that model will have just 40 frames, due to a bigger (non-correct) spacing between them, so hope to make it in 3-4 months. Winter is coming!

Thanks everybody for the advices, it is really much easier than I thought
After a lot of experimenting with scrap wood, it turned out that scrapers will not give a straight enough line. There should be something that ignores the grains and goes straight.
So I ended up with a following process, not saying it is the only correct one.
 
Use flat chisel to set the straight line for the rabbet, making two cutoff lines.

 
Cut away the wood between those lines with a blade:

 
Use triangular file to shape the rabbet. Do straight passes:

 
That triangular file was the key part, it keeps the straight line, not going sideways due to a wood grain.
Also if you need to add an angle to the rabbet - just change the angle of the file:

 

 
 
 

Construction progress is not so fast, for a good reason - we got a second daughter a month ago (yay!). Everything goes well so far, we are a lucky parents and Daria (the youngest) helps us a lot. But, as expected, there is little time for anything... Though I still sneak a plank every now and then, so it is moving with a pace faster than zero, one streak per week on average! Each plank takes from 1hr (for a simple straight planks midship) to 2-3hrs (curved ones with difficult shapes). Sometimes a plank goes to waste, so overall it is not a fast process.
It is a nice to get a bit of your own time and work on a model, even late at night. Makes for a good photos  

 
Back to the build progress. Got quite comfortable with heat bending, pretty low error rate. But I still feel that the plank made this way is more brittle than the one shaped with steam. Luckily it is not a big issue.

Since I did a bad job in fairing, there are some low spots that are fixed by adding a filler underneath the plank:

Or chiseling away the high spots:

 



 
Slow but steady, I passed the equator - 7 streaks done (plus limber streak), 6 remaining!
Nothing is sanded yet, and considering bad fairing I expect to spend a lot of time scraping and sanding to make the planks look smooth and fair. There are a lot of glue traces, they would be cleaned up after treenailing.
I'm glad I started with internal planking - it is a good training exercise, that would be barely visible on a finished model, hidden under all decks and cabins. Hope to get enough skill to do a better job on external planking  Consider this a practice piece.

End result:
 

 

 

 
Now the fun part - cutting the rabbet. I do not have any power tools to do it, so will make some hand jig and will slooooowly cut it with chisel and knife. Now when the keel is assembled, it would be a pity to ruin it by making a bad rabbet.