bhermann

Thanks all for looking in, comments, and hitting the like.  
 
Continuing with the rudder work, here are the rudder chains, and tiller parts--
 

 
 
The chains are test for the length and drape--
 

 
 
And after blackening, attached--
 

 
 
I cringe at the poor planking of the transom (some shrinkage gaps), and my less-than-precise painting!
 
After gluing the tiller to the rudder head, I realized I need to drill some holes for eyebolts for the tiller rope.  Of course, this should have been done before gluing the tiller on--
 

 
 
Here are the eyebolts and tiller ropes attached--
 

 
 
Then threaded through the blocks on the bulwarks, and back through the blocks on the tiller--
 

 
 
Ah, but what to do with the loose ends?   In the Charles G. Davis illustration that I followed for this, the ropes go to a ship's wheel.  But there is no wheel in this case.  I reasoned that there should be cleats on the bulwarks to fasten the ropes to.  These had to be added--
 

 
 
I'm not sure why Lieutenant Woolsey decided to take a nap during this work.  Maybe he overindulged last night.
 
After tying the rope off to the cleat, a rough coil was made by wrapping the rope (wet with diluted PVA) around a drill bit--
 

 
 
This was draped over the cleat, with much massaging and rewetting, to try and get it to hang sort of realistically--
 

 

 
 
After finishing this (of course), I remembered that one of Bernard Frolich's brig models with a tiller may have shown me what to do here.   I checked, and yes, there are cleats on the bulwarks.  However, the arrangement of the blocks and rope is a little different, and it looks functionally superior to what I did.    
 
Here is yours truly working--
 

 
 
Ron

Brief masting update. As you will recall, I made a first pass at the main mast using a 1/4 by 1/4 inch core, and 1/4 by 3/16 inch "wings" using 3/16 by 3/16 inch inserts to mimic the wedges where the mast hoops went, and that the mast was unusable because it was poorly centered. I made another pass at this as below:
 
The center piece on the right side has the top of the spar marked, where I will need to trim some to fit the mast cap, and continues into the chuck on the left side (which will be the end that is inserted into the deck. This yielded the following mast:
 

 
It wasn't perfect, but it seemed usable until I stupidly cut off the mast top rather than the base so that it would fit properly into the ship. In any case, even though it felt usable, I wasn't happy with it. It looked a lot like the picture of the model, but not like the plans. Looking at them more carefully, I noticed that although mast should be 1/4" square at the cap end, the core of the mast was 3/16" at scale, not 1/4". So, I took the same strategy as before, except that the core piece was 3/16" square, the "wings" were 3/16" square, and the wedges made of 3/16" square material. After lathing, I got something that I was much happier with, as shown here sitting in its location on the ship:

 
It's even and more obviously a built mast. I'm happy with this one, and will make the second one the same way. The mast isn't complete, I will need to sheath the core with 1/32" wood on all of flat surfaces in order to obtain the 1/4" diameter up to the mast cap. but on the whole I'm satisfied.
 
Incidentally, I went to the store the other day to get some more 3/16 square basswood stock and they had none. The guy at the store seemed to indicate that they aren't getting much. Big chunks of this mast were made from 3/16" square stock that I built from spare 1/16 by 3/16" stock. It turned just fine, so I will probably get rid of a bunch of such stock making the foremast.
 
As always, thanks for looking in.
 
George K
 

A brief update.
 
Over the last several days, I completed the taffrail, although it required making each piece something like three times. For ease of construction, I split the taffrail into 5 sections, a (roughly) semicircular stern, two straight segments that I was able to dry bend to follow the curve of the hull without problem, and two quadrant shaped sections that were the forward terminus. The stanchions are Britannia castings that had small centering knobs on both ends. I carved the after segment out of a piece of 1/16 thick basswood, and then drilled holes approximately 9 mm apart that were used to center the glued stanchions. I then filled in any gaps with putty and sanded the top of the rail as below:
 

 
You will note that the centering pin on the bottom of the stanchions have been removed. Based on my experience making the taffrail, I wanted nothing to do with drilling the topgallant rail, and anyway, trying to locate the holes struck me as virtually impossible, so I cut off the centering pins and ground the bottoms of the stanchions flat. They were then painted white and made ready to install.
 
In the meantime I had to make the part of the taffrail that would have the belaying pins. My original thought was to drill holes 9 mm apart for the stanchions. After those holes had been drilled, in the sections with the belaying pins, I would move 1.5 mm forward of the stanchion hole and drill a belaying pin hole, shift 3 mm drill a belaying pin whole, and then shift 3 mm and drill another belaying pin whole, at that point 1.5 mm from the next stanchion. Locate the stanchion, rinse, repeat. That would yield a uniform row of 3 mm spaced (center to center) belaying pin holes that straddled the stanchions. Unfortunately, 1.5 mm was too close for holes that were about 1 mm, and inevitably I would get split wood. So, I made a slight change, spacing the stanchions 10 mm, and then putting the belaying pin holes 2, 5, and 8 mm from the preceding stanchion. What that means is that the belaying pins are in groups of 3, spaced 3 mm, followed by a 4 mm gap, followed by 3 pins spaced 3 mm, followed by a 4 mm gap, etc. I used the same technique (more or less that I did with the pinrails, except drilling 4 holes each time (3 pin holes and the next stanchion hole), and aligning on the new stanchion hole:
 

 
As can be seen in the upper part of the image, I installed the stanchions as on the stern, and clipped/ground off the bottom locating pin. The two quadrant shaped ends were carved out of 1/8 x 1/4 inch boxwood. Everything was painted and then installed. You can see the result below:
 


 
The groups of three are definitely present, but there are plenty of holes in the mizzen mast area. Looking at the photo, it also appears that I bent the patent vent - will need to fix that.
 
As always, thanks for looking in and for the likes.
 
Regards,
George K
 
 

Thank you, Roger.
 
Some activity in the shipyard!!
 
Euryalus has left my living room and has come upstairs to join Oneida in the workshop.  This displaces Oneida to a smaller area, but I think that will be okay--
 

 
 
The carronades have been glued in place--
 

 

 

 
 
Next, they will all be "stowage rigged" as the one third from the right on the starboard side in the photo.  I just have to remember how I did that one--about 10 years ago.
 
The rudder has been glued on--
 

 

 
 
 
That's all for now,
Ron

Okay. Once the first coat of paint dries, I will fill the gap slightly, but I think that this is going to be the final form of the stem.

 
Thanks for the suggestions @ClipperFan

Well, in the last week or so, rather than turning masts, I've been working on a few of the items that still need to be added to the hull, although, in a sense a did turn the first spar, in this case, the bowsprit. I used brass for the iron hoops, and painted the whole thing white (as per the instructions, but it looked really odd, and the Butterworth painting shows it black, so, I repainted it black as per the two photos below:
 


 
Next onto the naval hoods, cutwater and the figurehead. I used the diagrams that @ClipperFan made (both for the hoods and the figurehead) and then also examined @rwiederrich and @ClipperFan's photos of the Glory of the Seas to try to make something consistent with a McKay clipper. The results are below:
 

 
Perhaps not perfect, but I think that the cutwater looks like the one in the picture of Glory and the figurehead, even with my carving skills is much better than the one that is supplied with the kit. 
 
In any case, the ship now looks like this overall:
 

 
I've started on the channels (they are cut to shape and sanded, but I need to locate where the chain plates are going to on both the upper and lower channels, cover the ends and paint them before installation. At that point, the only remaining hull piece that I am aware of is the taffrail. After that, there is no excuse to not get those lower masts built and start making the ship grow vertically.
 
As always, thanks for looking in, and for the likes. For those of us in the way of the winter storm, please stay safe and warm.
 
Regards,
George K
 

First build update of 2022 (and it is really weird to be typing this. First Blade Runner taking place in 2019, and now we are in the year of Soylent Green - yikes). Anyways, a bunch of mostly small additions that nonetheless consumed way more time than I expected.
 
First up, as planned I mounted the starboard pinrail. I then spent the next several days making the carriage house skylight, which consumed a vast amount of time. The skylight is hollow (I built up 4 sides, then put two hollow rectangular frames and a central beam that make up the top of the skylight. I cut sections of clear glass that fit into the frame, and then added pre-painted muntin bars to create the four individual lights. Finally, I set three 24 gauge brass wires to represent the protective bars over the window panes, edged the base in stained decking, and mounted it on the carriage house.
 

 
I also made and installed the eight bitts and the four mooring chocks on the main deck. On the forecastle, I added the nails that support the catheads, the spray rail, and the four pads that protect the deck from the anchor flukes when the anchors are stowed. Less visible are the three pinrails on the forecastle, one at the bow, and the other two flush with the deck between the forecastle and the WCs.
 

 
I decided to mount the anchors as if they are being recovered which I think shows them off a little more interestingly than if they were simply lashed to the deck. I connected the anchor chains to the archor using a brass loop, stropped a double block with a hook and rigged the blocks on the catheads.
 

 
Seen from the bow, the anchors look thus:
 

 
The ship as a whole now looks thus:
 

 
Pretty soon it will be time to fabricate the taffrail and start on the chains and deadeyes, marking the transition from hull to rigging. 
 
I mentioned before that I was doing some experiments with the ship's boats. Here is the painted boat. The  left side has the detail made with Tamiya tape, the right with copper tape. My personal view is that I like the less "in your face" version with the Tamiya tape, and that the Tamiya XF-1 "flat" white is not nearly flat enough. The final version needs to be a lot less glossy. But, I think that with Tamiya taped details, better white paint, and a gunwale painted some contrasting color (likely some brown) the castings will be just fine when turned upside down. The two boats that are right side up will probably also need to have a canvas cover to hide their deficiencies, but I think that will be fine.
 

 
As always, thanks for the likes and for looking in.
 
Soylent Green is People! I mean Happy New Year 2022.
 
Stay safe out there.
George
 
 

In order to assemble the chainplates, deadeyes and deadeye strops I needed a way to hold everything in alignment. So time to build a jig.
Using one of the deadeyes as a template, I marked the 3 holes and drilled through the wood base. Since these holes needed to be as straight as possible, I did them on the mill rather than free hand (a drill press would work nicely as well). Then ran 3 straight pins through the wood base from the bottom with a touch of CA and clipped off the excess length of the straight pins. This allowed me to drop each deadeye over the pins and hold it in place.

 
To help keep the deadeye, strop and chainplate in alignment, I added a piece of scrap wood and sanded it down to ½ the thickness of the deadeye.

 
After placing a deadeye on the pins, I added the strop and laid in one of the chainplates

 
Used a straight pin to further align the pieces

 
Then used a pushpin through one of the predrilled holes in the chainplate to help hold that steady.

 
Then it was just a matter of removing the straight pin and replacing it with a .8mm bolt

 
Threaded on the nut and trimmed off the end of the bolt

 
One down and 19 to go!

Things slowed over the past 3 weeks. Was down with a sinus infection for a 10 days, then came holiday decorating and finally the family Christmas celebrations. But eventually I got back to the build.
 
After measuring the proper length of the strop needed to get around the deadeye, I grooved a scrap piece of wood on the Byrnes saw to hold the individual strops. To keep things as accurate as possible I cross grooved the scrap piece wood and glued in a piece of wire to butt the individual strops against. I rough cut the strops laid them in the jig and glued them in place with CA. Then added a thin piece of wood on top so the strops were sandwiched between the two pieces if wood. Then trimmed the exposed end of the strops.
 

 
After soaking the jig with acetone, I removed the strops and cleaned them up in an acetone bath and a soft sponge sanding block. Using a pin driver, I flattened the ends of each strop and drilled holes to accommodate the bolts I will be using.
 

 
 

 
Threw together a jig using a dowel rod of the same diameter as the deadeyes. The horizontal piece of wood butted up against the dowel was used to simulate the width of the chainplates. Using a very thinly pointed pair of tweezers inserted in the end holes, I was able to shape the strops around the dowel.
 

 
Then got them cleaned and blackened.
 

 
Still must blacken the bolts and nuts and then begin the assembly process.

More deck furniture. First, the patent steering gear. Not particularly visible,  but I did put the emergency tiller and the connection to rudder post in.
 

 
Next, a couple of additional items on the carriage house. I mounted the doors to the storage areas, and then promptly covered up the doors with ladders. Didn't love the castings and while the ladders are not exactly perfect, they are better and in place.
 

 

 
Finally, the main mast fife rails, pump and vent around the main mast. The fife rail castings were a mess (and needed to be drilled for the pins) so I cut the stanchions off the casting, made a wooden fife rail and painted the whole thing. The pump casting was surprisingly okay, painted it black with some gold on the outer edges of the pump wheel for some contrast, and mounted the whole thing on the main mast pad, with a bit of blacked brass strip to simulate the mounting points for the pump axles.
 



 
Working on replacing the anchor stocks and planning out how I'm going to carve a 3/4 inch flying fish!
 
As always thanks for the likes and for looking in!
 
Regards,
George K.
 
 

I've been doing a lot of different things but not ones that have massive impacts on how the ship looks writ large. With that said a couple of updates.
 
First, I put the ship on its build board. A standard Dremel cutting wheel did in fact cut the brass posts nicely, although as you would expect the brass got very hot in the process. So here is the ship (with some of the other things completed) mounted. Because there is going to be a lot of paint around the ship for the foreseeable future, I wrapped the board in Saran before pushing the screws through. Once I'm done, I'll just pull it off.
 
As I said, I've done a variety of detail work. As you can see, I discarded the water tank, and scratch built a new one. Here are a set of photos that show its construction and placement:
 



 
In the next photos you will see that I've built the ladder on the cabin, put the boat supports in place, added the pads around the fore and main masts, installed the capstans, several of the vents, the boomkins, and a number of the deck mounted eyebolts. The eyebolts that are supplied are way to big, and I've replaced them with 0.75 mm eyebolts (that's about a 3 inch eyebolt at scale), but they were leftover jackstay eyebolts from the Niagara and I need to buy more.

 
I also blackened some chain for the boomkins and some brass to make hinges. You can see the ones I put on the store hatch, and in one of the photos you can see the start of making hinges for the two hatches that mount next to the carriage house below the poop deck.
 
I'm going to keep working on these details while planning out the cutwater and naval hoods and then carving the figurehead.
 
As always, thanks for the likes and looking in!
 
Regards,
George K.

Happy Thanksgiving all!
 
Just a quick update. I've been working on some smaller details. The first is the stores hatch on the stern. I put some spare stained glass material one of my kids left behind to fill the openings, and then put in the bars and the split ceiling:
 

 

 
Next, the binnacle cabinet. When you see the last two photos which include the Britannia casting for comparison, you will see why I chose to scratch build a replacement. The first pic shows the back, sides and the framing for the place where the compass sits, the second shows the completed but unpainted version next to the casting, and the final photo shows it painted with the bell. The plans say to make it bright, but the combination of the small parts and the wood I had available argued for paint rather than leaving it bright, so I went with the color of the coamings.
 



 
Finally, a couple of views of the ship, the first with only the stores hatch in place, the second showing the stores hatch, the binnacle, and the two pads I put in place, one on the carriage house that has the round hole for the mizzen mast, and the other on the main deck for one of the capstans.
 

 
Thanks again for looking in, for the likes, and the encouragement!
 
George K
 
 

In order to make the chainplates I needed to form a tight loop on the top end, drill two 1/32 holes in each one and cut them to the proper length.
Since I had to make 16 of the larger chainplates and 4 of the smaller ones, I decided to make a simple jig that would make the job of forming a small, tight loop easier.
I decided to bend each chainplate around a piece of 1/32 inch, round brass stock. So I cut a 1/32 slot into a 1/8th piece of basswood and then cut that piece in half and set those 2 pieces apart, the same distance as the width of the chainplate material which came with the kit. These 2 pieces were glued to a scrap piece of cherrywood.
 

 
I then glued a thin piece of wood over the top of the 1/32 round stock. This allowed me to slide a piece of the flat brass stock under the 1/32 round stock and bend it up and over the round stock. Keeping the bend to a bit less than 180 degrees, I could then slide the brass piece out the top.
 

 
Using a scrap piece of 1/32 round brass stock and smooth jaw duck bill pliers, I completed the bend.
 

 

 
In order to get uniformity in the location of the mounting holes in the chainplates and the proper length of them all, I took a page from Suburban Ship Modeler and built another jig. After some careful measuring of where the holes should be and the proper length, I drew vertical lines to make sure the chainplates would be mounted straight. Then drew 4 horizontal lines, 1 for the top of the loop, 2 for the hole locations and one for the length. Then glued a thin piece of basswood along the top line. I added 2 strips of double stick tape to hold the chainplates in place.
 

 
Then mounted the chainplates to the jig
 

 
 
After squaring the jig in the mill, I used the X-Y table to make adjustments as I drilled all the 1/32nd inch holes.
 

 

 
I then used a cutoff wheel in a rotary tool to trim each chainplate to the proper length.
 

 
After a cleanup, I blackened the chainplates
 

 
While the double stick tape worked in this process, it didn’t really hold the chainplates rock solid, still allowing very slight movement. This wasn’t going to work for the 4 thinner / shorter chainplates which required smaller, 1/64th holes. So, after sanding off the guide lines used for the larger chainplates and drawing new ones for the smaller chainplates, I tacked them in place with gel CA before drilling them. Then used acetone to loosen and clean them before blackening. The CA held them rock solid.
 
Now its on to building the deadeyes.

I've spent some time printing new dories for the Bluenose along with some crates and barrels to add to the deck.
 
The dories I had printed at my local library were a little on the large side and had a lot of supports added.  I found that, because of the relatively small size, they didn't need any supports therefore didn't need any cleaning up.  Of course they will still need to be painted and have some details added but it's a good start.
 

 
 

Bradley,
If you're one of the folks following our exhaustive research into the accurate structure of Donald McKay's final Medium Clipper "GLORY of the SEAS" you'll know we've been given access to some incredibly sharp pics of the ship herself. These amazing photos, shared by eminent author Michael Mjelde have given us some keen insight into these beautiful Clippers. I hope you don't mind my sharing some of these insights with you, in order to assist you in creating a more accurate "Flying Fish" model.
The first image is an actual tracing of McKay's own "Flying Fish" lines, believe it or not, residing in a museum in Norway!
 

Bradley, probably one of the more significant discoveries about the arrangement of the large rear 'Carriage' house is that, as the Stern of the ship narrows, so too does the shape of the house to configure with it. I've drawn a scale sketch of this area to highlight how the catwalks on both sides remain constant while the house gets narrower. This contradicts the MSW plans.

George who's also building the "Flying Fish" expressed disappointment with the kit supplied figurehead. Here's an alternate, far more realistic Flying Fish figurehead. It has always been a pet peeve of mine that every model I've seen of this vessel only features the bare Stem while omitting substantial Naval Hoods and Cutwater which she would have been equipped with too. Here's how these nautical devices would have mounted to the Stem. This sketch is just to illustrate how these devices would have interacted but isn't truly to scale. I'm printing out Bow close ups and will create a more accurate to scale version. Meanwhile, the highly detailed Bow of Glory, courtesy of Michael Mjelde shows how her prow actually appeared.

Bradley, another area of dispute I have with the kit plan is a quite plain front fascia of her Rear Carriage House with a sole horizontal port window. Compare it to the far more ornate front fascia with dual arched windows on either side of what appear to be dual doors of the same Carriage House of "Flying Fish" as depicted in the famous painting of her by James E Buttersworth. His stunning oil was commissioned by her owners Sampson & Tappan of Boston in a truly unique celebration. It was done to forever commemorate "Flying Fish" achieving a stunning First Place Finish in the 1853 "Great Deep Sea Derby" wherein she out raced 14 other 'crack' Extreme Clippers including two other McKay vessels! 
I've included a couple of Michael Mjelde images of the real front fascia of "GLORY of the SEAS" which confirms that these larger arched 2' × 1& 1/2' windows were indeed used on board. Michael Mjelde's own sketch of Glory's front fascia is included to give you an idea of how truly ornate these vessels actually were.
 

Okay, continuing with the deck furniture before tackling the cutwaters, naval hoods, and (yeek) trying to carve a figurehead. I've finished the water closet/storage/belowdeck entry structures forward (I'm sure there is a proper name and hopefully someone will be able to provide it). As with most of structures, I built them in place, using 1/8 square stock to make two of the corners defined by the coaming. I also mounted two small bits of scrap against the bulwarks to anchor the outer edges of the bulkheads. The bulkheads were built up, painted, and then trimmed to fit in the locations as required, and I built some corner fascia using 3/32 square stock that sanded to shape with my dremel.
 

 
The hatches were all premade, excising bits with an Exacto knife to make the panels. Each hatch used 1/32 square stock to make the jambs and the lintels, and then the whole hatch unit was installed. The capstan bars were made from 1/32 square stock, embedded into their racks, and the racks mounted on the forward side (although they are next to impossible to see). The ceilings were made from 1/16 square stock (the same stock I stained for the deck months ago), joined, shaped and then glued into place (I'm holding the starboard side one down to let the glue cure in the upper photo).
 
So, a couple of views of the completed units:


 
While I realize that this is probably inauthentic, I couldn't help myself make the following for the hatches to the water closets:
 

 
Childish, I know, but you need to have some fun in life.
 
So this is what the ship looks like overall now from the stern. I've also mounted the rear hatches to the carriage house (for some reason I hadn't done so yet).
 

 
So, I have one more hatch to make, and then I pretty much need to get this thing on its display board because it won't be much longer before I no longer want to set this upside down. I used wipe only poly for the cherry base board, which now looks fabulous, so that is done, however, a couple of questions to folks out there. I have three nice brass pedestals from BlueJacket, but they have very deep slots, so without some kind of change, there will be a gap between the keel and the bottom of the slot. Question, do people generally prefer to put some kind of spacer in the pedestal (i.e. a pice of wood the fills the gap, presumably painted brass) or do they try to cut the tops of the pedestals down so that the keel hits the bottom of the slot? If the latter, do you try to match the curve of the hull, or just cut off the top? If either of those, what is actually necessary to cut brass? I am not swimming in precision power tools (most of what I have is from the days when I was building play structures for my children (i.e. great for treated, dimensional lumber, not so great for precision miniature work); all four of the wooden ships I've built or are building were made with a single power tool - a dremel. Does Dremel make anything that can realistically cut brass?
 
Thanks for the help, for looking in, and for the likes!
 
Regards,
George K.
 

Well, the main cabin is in place. As I mentioned earlier, I built it in situ rather than building it separate and installing on the deck. You saw in the earlier post how I built up the cabin bulkheads. Before installing the bulkheads, I put the port frames with the sliding covers in place, then mounted the bulkheads on the frames, and then added the decorative elements using pre-painted or pre-cut wood. For the sliding doors, I cut wood of the correct size, incised the panel marks and then painted them. The knob is a nail cut off near the head, and the door frames are mad from pre-painted 1/32 square stock painted white. I generally built up an entire door and frame first (so door, left jamb, lintel and right jamb) and mounted them as a unit. A 1/16 x 3/32 piece of boxwood, prepainted white was used to make the upper level of the decorative trim (with the 1/16 facing out), and then a 1/16 by 1/8 frame was placed on top to mark where the ceiling would be installed. The ceiling is the same 1/16 square stock I stained for the deck months ago. The progression is shown below:
 

 

 

 
So, two images of the ship showing the situation as it currently stands in a slightly broader view. You will notice that I have also completed the forward cargo hatch, and mounted the water closet coaming and will start building those soon.
 


 
Because I am getting near to this point, I have a couple of issues that I want to bring up. As has been said a number of times, the castings for this kit are really awful. Fortunately the pump is not bad, but I have a suspicion that I'm going to replace a bunch of the castings, including the capstans, fife rails, and the figurehead. Just for reference, here are the capstans, water tank and the figure head. The capstans don't look too bad, but the tops are a mess. The water tank is genuinely horrible and the figure head is, I don't know ho to even say it. 
 

 
I was able to get some replacement capstans from Bluejacket (see below), but I'm afraid I'm going to have to try to carve a fish, and replace the water tank.

 
With regards to the water tank, does anyone know if the tank was iron or wood? I could see reasons for either, but just don't know - if it's wood I'll probably paint it buff or brown, if iron black, and mount it in the blue of the coamings either way, I just don't know. Also, there is a ladder on the after side of the deck house, does anyone know if they would have been wood or iron in 1854? I have some nice scale lumber from Midwest that would make a good wooden ladder but I guess I'll try to make it out of brass strip if it was iron. 
 
As always, thanks for looking in and for all of the likes!
 
Regards,
George K
 

A brief update to describe progress in the last several days. If you looked at some of the earlier pictures, I had started putting the covers on the main cargo hatch, and had recently realized that I hadn't built up the entry way enough from the coaming. So, I added the additional vertical supports, made the hatch covers and attached the lifting rings. The latter were made from some leftover split rings and small eyebolts from my Niagara. 
 

 
That complete, I started on additional deck furniture moving forward. As with the carriage house, I've decided to build it in situ rather than making a separate piece and mounting it on the deck (as I did with the booby hatch). For some reason, I like the latter better. As before, step 1 is to set up a set of internal frames that are going to support the bulkheads (some of them visible in the photo above, and then to build and prepaint the bulkheads themselves. 
 

 
As with the carriage house, the area under the ports is painted located, masked, and painted blue. The sliding port covers (a mix of wood and a Britannia casting) have received one coat of paint, they can be mounted over the painted regions seen below once they have a second. Here are the masked bulkheads, and with the port areas painted on:
 


 
In the latter, the sections are (clockwise from top) port, forward, starboard, aft (both the fore and aft have down facing right, whereas the P/S pair have "down" facing in. As with the carriage house, once the bulkheads are in place, I'll add pre-painted decorative trim, and then the overhead.
 
While that is going on, I've also started on the water closets, which will also be built in situ. In this long shot, you can see the cargo hold, the framed up cabin, and the coamings for the WC. Neither are yet glued into place, hence the port side one is a bit out of kilter.
 
 
 
Finally, I received a beautiful cherry baseboard from BlueJacket today. Once it is properly finished and the cabin and WC's are in place, it will be time to transfer from my building frame to the base board. I have three brass pedestals (also from BlueJacket) that should allow it to have a nice solid, stance on the board as it becomes time to put on the final rails and start the various spars.
 

 
The photo doesn't really do the base board justice, it's a really nice piece of cherry with lovely grain. When I do mount the ship I think I'm going to wrap it in saran so that it's protected from drips and the like.
 
As always, thanks for looking in and the likes.
 
Regards,
George K
 

Deck furniture continues. The booby hatch is built and mounted. A couple of quick views off the ship, with capstan bars in place:
 
and in situ on the ship.
 

 
I've ordered a baseboard, it's getting to the point where I want to get it on the board before I do too much else as I don't want to have to turn it over to drill the holes for the pedestals once anything truly fragile is on the deck.
 
As always, thanks for looking in and the likes.
 
Regards,
George K

Hi everyone,
 
I've gotten the deck planking finished. I am happy with the results being it was my first try. I have a little sanding to do, but not much. I will have to decide if I am going to stain or paint the deck. I was reading Howard Chapelle's book " The American Fishing Schooners" and in the section about fishing schooners of this time frame, they could be painted or stained.
 
Bill
 

 

Well, I completed the forward bulkhead of the carriage house. As you can see, I ultimately chose to go with the simpler version shown in the plans rather than the version seen in the Butterfield painting. More on that anon. The doors are 1/16" thick basswood that I incised to create a set of three raised panels to provide some surface interest, and I used 1/32" square plank to make the jambs and lintel. The vertical panels on the outer edges are joined to similar panels at right angles to cover the joints. The window (to the first mate's cabin according to the plans) is a brittania casting with three wooden slats to make a sliding shutter with the underlying area painted blue.
 

 
Another view, looking at the whole ship:
 

 
Again, more to do, on the ceiling (e.g. the railings, the pad around the mizzen mast, the skylight, etc.), the access hatch on the aft side, hinges and mounts for the two stores compartments, etc., etc., etc.
 
One could reasonably ask why I chose this option, rather than follow the Butterworth painting. Not that I feel like I need to justify the decision, but I thought I would at least explain the reasoning. I view the plans and the Butterworth painting as two bits of evidence in the broader question of "what exactly did the ship look like." Flying Fish had a short career, being lost after only 7 years, so probably didn't change (unlike, say Glory of the Seas) but there are no photos. The plans represent Ben Lankford's best assessment of what the ship looked like and (I suppose) that could be built by a moderately skilled modeler. He is an expert in this space and used the best information that he had available to him. With that said, the plans were updated at least once so he is certainly not infallible. Similarly, the Butterworth painting takes some license, for example, the shrouds and backstays do not have deadeyes in the painting, and if there is one thing that gets people worked up regarding paintings of ships, it's the location and number of windows (c.f. scads of arguments about the stern of the USS Constitution at various times).
 
At the end of the day, I decided to go with Ben Lankford's assessment, and my own nagging thought that large, seemingly unprotected glass windows on a sailing vessel of the 1850's didn't make a ton of sense. Glass was expensive, and fragile, ships go through storms, things get blown around, small windows need to be protected by bars, it just seemed like a recipe for disaster. From personal experience I've seen modern, round portholes get blown in by waves in relative minor storms (on the SS Rotterdam during a storm with 70 knot winds and 40 foot seas during my honeymoon). Tougher borosilicate glass wasn't even invented until the 1884. So - one smaller rather than two more elaborate windows. Others could well come to a different conclusion.
 
Regardless, I am grateful for everyone that has provided the input to make this choice, and I look forward to getting additional input as other decisions about the ship continue. So once again, thank you for your support, likes, and for looking in.

Also, I forgot to mention in my last posting - have you found this website: suburbanshipmodeler.com? You mentioned that you want to add sails and that Bob Hunt's practicum doesn't address the sails. The guy on this website built a Bluenose with sails and gives quite good instructions. You might find it helpful.
David