bhermann

Have some of the rigging done. Learning as I go and have made some mistakes with the knots not staying tight but overall I can live with it since it is my first time doing this.
 
Trying different glues to see what works best for keeping the knots tight. I have settled on a 50/50 water/Modge Podge mix as it gets into the knots good and dries a satin.
 
 

Well all iam now calling my Bluenose by model ship ways  Finished there are some minor details to be done but other than that it's full complete and finished its been a long haul but it is complete and proud of my work and my frist Complete wood ship model here some pic 

Looks like you are making some good progress.  The sheaves on the main boom look exceptional!
 
Bob

Back to metal work now. It's time to finish those rings with lugs for the bowsprit. The rings were made earlier. I needed a lug the same width as the rings. Very tiny. Too small to make them individually. Also there was no brass stock the correct width.
 
My solution was to take a larger piece of stock the correct thickness and mill it to the correct width. So; back to the drill press and x/y table. The first step is to clamp the stock onto the x/y table in rough alignment with the axis of the table. Precision is not needed at this point as I will make a first cut to create a reference long enough to accommodate all the holes and at the right spacing to preserve the web thickness. Plus a few spares.
 
I decided on a .079 width and a .022 inch hole leaving a .022 inch web. Hole diameter + 2x web = hole spacing of .098 inch.
 
After the first cut the mill is raised and moved the width of the strip plus the width of the mill and the other side of the strip cut. NOTE: the strip is still attached at the ends. This keeps it aligned and stable. The mill is then replaced with the .022 drill and the table is moved back half the width of the strip to center the holes. The holes are drilled by moving the table the hole spacing and drilling again. The holes were then enlarged to .035 inch. The strip was cut off by running the mill across the the stock to cut the strip.

 

 
The corners of the end are rounded using a file and cut off with a jewelers saw. Repeat until needed lugs are made. Then clean up the bottoms with the file.

 
Here we are. Rings and lugs ready for soldering:

Now the Monkey rail. The laser cut middle stern piece was very fragile and had neither the correct width nor curve. It got tossed. Instead I used a plank of the correct size and steam bent it around a soldering iron to get the curve. This was done in two pieces to simplify the fitting. Pins were inserted in the main rail to hold the monkey rail in the correct location during gluing.

 
A particular problem was keeping the chainplate slots free of glue. Some shims were cut and inserted in the slots. This also helped with alignment of the monkey rail which must be flush with the chainplates. Unfortunately I missed with a couple pins. More touchup🤕

 

The next step is gluing the rails on. To keep the rail precisely in position while the glue sets. I used pins. The initial alignment was made and pins inserted. The rail was then removed with the pins in place. PVA was applied to the stanchion tops and and the top of the waist. The rail was carefully placed back on with the pins in the same holes. After the glue set and the pins were removed the pin holes were filled with PVA.
 
Each splice joint was individually sanded to fit and backfilled with PVA. Then sanded smooth after the glue set. Here's a photo with the pins and eyes in place. You can see the splice joints.

The finished rail was shown in the previous post. There is a step worth mentioning specifically. Getting the chainplate slots right is a problem. The chainplates are spec'd at .008 inch. Drilling holes that small isn't particularly hard - but slots are a problem. For a good fit with a couple mills clearance is needed. It's difficult using files or a punch. The slots are only .010 inch wide and 2/32 inch long.
 
I used a drill press with an x/y table attached and a .010 drill. After carefully marking the slots the rail was clamp to the x/y table and a series of overlapping holes were drilled along the length of the slot. With a little care aligning the rail on the table the axis of the width of the slot will not deviate significantly as it's a second order effect. Thus after drilling the overlapping holes it was simply necessary to run the length axis of the table in the reverse direction while keeping the drill engaged cleaning out the slot.

 
The slots turned out pretty nice. Here's a shot with chainplate material inserted.

 

Canvas spray shield attached to the aft gun tub. Tub not attached yet so it’s placed at an angle  for photo purpose
  The “Canvas” process --Took a piece of old cotton tee shirt, stretched it out very tight tacked it down, several coats of spray primer was applied to both sides, followed by several coats of tan/ OD green  regular can  spray paint   The drying, spraying process made the cotton stiff. Glued a plastic rod to the top to hold its shape, then made holes 5 mm apart in the top, sewed to the rail with rigging line treated with wax and white glue solution.  Ship rigging experience came in handy here.
Added the hull drain & bilge ports ready for clean-up & weathering

Fabricated the throttle control bars, the mufflers are molded from resin.
I think its time to paint the hull and deck next.
 
Thanks guys  for your kind comments,  not so sure about one of the most detailed PTs , that’s more in the realm of a master builder , not a simple boat builder, trying to be accurate is important to me on this build , the real test comes from the experts at ptboatforum .com  again thank you.

It turned out the width was only slightly off and I could use filler to close the gap rather than splicing in extra wood;

 
You can see the slight gap on each side. The "Fancy" pieces were sanded to the curve seen in the pictures of Bluenose. Below is a picture with the belaying pins and eyes inserted. When painted I think it will look pretty good. Needs some touch up too.

 
I discovered, quite by accident, that if I burnished the black enough the pins became a nice dark brown as real belaying pins might look. I think I will do this will all of them.
 
 

Started the main rail. I've been putting this off as it's a lot of fussing with small pieces with cutting and shaping.
 
As many have found the laser cut piece is too small to fit the stern properly. I decided on the "cut and paste" method where the stern main rail is cut into three pieces and filler strips are put in to cover the gaps. There was still a lot of fussing to get the pieces aligned correctly. In the end I drilled a couple extra holes and inserted pins to hold the side pieces in place for the alignment. These need to be filled later, but some filling is needed for the split gaps anyway.
 
I made a template by tracing the stern rail on the plans and then pre-drilled the holes for the belay pins and eyes.
 
I ran into a problem gluing the tailpiece because my stern was shaped using wood filler. The PVA would not stick to the filler. That meant using epoxy. The first batch I got too much hardener and it set up before I had the piece properly aligned. This was a do-over. I carefully sliced the piece off with an Xacto blade. There was a bit of epoxy on the piece which had to be removed before the next trial. Years ago I had discovered that epoxy breaks down and loses it's adhesion when heated to soldering temperatures. I applied heat to the epoxy and was able to carefully scrape it off. The next round I used too little hardener and it didn't set at all. Third time was the charm! Got a 15 minute set up time.
 
A problem was clamping the tail piece to the stern counter. There is a slight curve to the counter and the piece had to be held down while the epoxy set. All the undersides of the stern are rounded and sloped into a taper. This means that clamps just slide off. Pins don't work because there is only wood filler underneath. I ended up creating a kludge to clamp the wood down;

Seems like there is always something that causes work delays. There are many weeks when I only manage a few hours in the shipyard

I now have the booms and gaff done took me a bit got them done getting  Closer to worst part of the build lol here pic

A comparison shot between SSM (Syren Ship Model) and ModelExpo and their block "according to same size"
SSM to the left and a ME to right.

My next step was to make the 3 gears. The 2 smaller ones also needed banding.
 
I made the 2 small gears and the bands for them. Drilled the proper size hole in some stock brass on the lathe, cut them to the proper thickness and cut the bands as well. Then cut the gear teeth on the mill.
 

 

 
In order to keep everything aligned during assembly I made a simple jig and glued the gears to their bands.
 

 

 
I then made the pawl wheel out of wood and made the brass bands for that as well. Also made the 2 wood spacers that would fit on either side of the pawl wheel.
 

 
Next I made the large gear wheel, no bands required for this one.
 

 
The drum for the chain side required some shaping on the lathe as well as an end piece.
 

 
For the “iron” whelps on the chain drum I used 1/32 square brass bar stock. Cut 8 pieces a bit longer than needed, bent the dog leg in them to accommodate the shape of the drum, blackened them and glued them in place on the drum. Then trimmed off the excess and blackened the cut ends.
 

 

 

 
After staining the cherry wood to make it look a bit aged (Jacobean stain) and blackening all the brass pieces I was ready to assemble the windlass.
 

 
I used the jig to keep everything in line as I glued. Then transferred the entire piece to the black painted axel, adding the supports as I did. To add some detail I placed 2 small blackened brass bolts on each supports.
 

Thanks Dave the solder I use is this one
 
 
 
Regards
Richard

Thanks Gary it was a small update but time consuming but I do like how they came out just way better than my first attempt, see right of picture
 
 
 
Yea the clamps work great for handling small stuff got many of her small tools which again use a lot
 

 
 
Thanks Per as you see from the pic above the re-do was needed, you should try it, was a lot of fun but it was also a lot of filing 
 
 
Hi Keith thanks for your kind comment, I have been told this before on other sites, and I am not quite sure why! did follow the instruction in the manual, used the supplied brass flat bar and then miss interpreted how the chain plate should look, and then I look at a lot of pictures, so it needed to get reworked will look like the picture now
 

 
Thanks again for all the comments and also for all the likes
 
Regards
Richard
  

Jim - I found Russ's tutorial in the Ship Modeling Materials and Tools section of the Articles database.  It gave me a very good start on silver soldering.  Take a look if you get the chance.
 
Bob

Welcome aboard, Jim (or should I say McDaddy?).  I'm glad I could help out with your mystery.
 
I learned my soldering from a tutorial Russ had posted on the MSW 1.0 site.  I use a silver solder paste, which I can't read the label on any more, as it has faded a lot over the past 10 years or so.  Since I only have the one tube, I can safely say all my soldering has been done at one temperature.  I have been able to solder as many as four lugs on a single band on the bowsprit, so there has been no need for multiple temperatures.  I use a Bernzomatic butane micro torch which I think I picked up at Home Depot.  I tried several pencil grip torches before settling on the micro torch.  I had a terrible time refilling them, this one has worked well for me.  Here is a link to the torch (or a newer version of my torch) on Amazon.
 
https://www.amazon.com/Bernz-Matic-ST2200T-Micro-Butane/dp/B000PS9TQI?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_2
 
I will poke around and see if the Russ tutorial made it to MSW 2.0.  One of the main things to remember is that the solder flows toward the heat, not away from it.  Once I figured that out I got much better at getting good connections on the first try.
 
Bob

Late breaking news - I am now in the process of setting up for retirement (yay!) and expect to be back in the shipyard soon.  It has been way too long since I have put any time in on Bluenose.  I did blow some of the heavier dust off the other day.  It'll be good to be back at it!
 
Bob

An update - not new build stuff, rather this is about when I may resume.  I am close to setting a retirement date at the end of 2021/beginning of 2022.  Since I originally took up model ship building as something I would be able to do after the working days were done, it seems fitting that resumption be tied to that event. 
 
Bluenose is still sitting quietly on the workbench (in her Lands End cradle), patiently awaiting my attention.  The time is coming!
 
Bob

Still out here, but no work on the Bluenose.  I have taken on a different ship-related project for now.  Following in Caroline's (VulcanBomber) footsteps, I am working on a counted cross stitch image of a ship sailing past some rocks.  I have been at it since January, and am less than 1/2 way through.
 
Bluenose continues to wait patiently, sitting next to me on  the desk, being admired and thought about fairly regularly...
 
Bob

Hi Per - I have Chucks rope ready to go.  As of now only the bowsprit is rigged.  I made up my own turnbuckles for this from the kit supplied brass strip and wire.  I used speaker wire for the footropes as I couldn't see how to get thread to drape properly.,  I did use thread for the stirrups.  Other than that, it's all standard stuff.
 
I'll be getting back to Bluenose at some point - ATM I am working out some bothersome details on my astrophotography setup and am not spending any time in the shipyard.
 
Bob

I'm not dead yet!  I'm not making any progress on Bluenose at the moment, but she is still sitting next to me waiting for some attention.  In part I am doing my over-analyzing thing about how to do the sails, and freezing in place while that goes on.  I am also rekindling my life-long dream of doing astrophotography (if you think wooden ship modelling is a money sucker, try AP sometime) and am at a point there that requires a lot of energy to get better.
 
I still stop in to MSW on an almost daily basis and am keeping an eye on you all.  EdT's Young America continues to amaze, and I am enjoying watching Chuck build up Syren Ship Modelling, and many of the other activities here. When I get off the dime and decide to move forward with old Blue, I will start posting in the log again.
 
Bob