bhermann

Thanks Mark, Wally, Joe and Dave for your kind remarks and all for the likes.
 
Dave the clamp was not made by me, but by Eclipse N0 10, made in Sheffield England. got quite a few tools from my Gran who was a jeweller 
 

 

 
Also have this hand clamp as well from her use both of these a lot
 

 
Regards
Richard
 
 
 

Hi Eric, bit late with the reply but thanks for looking in and your kind comment do apricate it.
 
So have done a little more to her but not so much in making but redoing, it started with the lower chain plates, which I had made from the brass strips .016" thick supplied with the kit found this out once I removed them, thought I had used some .010" brass sheet.
 

 

 
So now I remade them out of .005" solder small tube to the ends then made a jig to drill the mounting holes and now have the lower chain plates more to scale.
 

 

 
 

 

 
Then was not to happy with the black paint job so sanded that down and as per Robin letting me know that I had not painted the sides right I masked the hull up to include black up the sides of the main rail and Monkey rail, board and buffalo rail.
 

 

 
Put some semi gloss on
 
 
 
Next up was to remake the eye bolts for the deadeye strops which I had made from wire and did not look to good, tried by making out of thicker wire and then soldering a small tube to the ends, but this did not work to well when I went to bend them to go around deadeye 🤔
So decided to use .016" brass flat bar worked out where I needed the holes, drill them first then filed to shape then bent to shape, came out way better than my first try.
 

 

 

 
Casey blacked all parts and will use a small bolt and nut 
 

 

 
Well not much to show these past few months have to figure what I am going to do with the scroll around the hawse holes then paint the cove, then the name plates.
 
Thanks again for all who have looked in and commenting on my on going build.
 
Regards
Richard 
 

Learning curves, learning curves, learning curves have really slowed me down, that along with what seems like constant snow clearing. Using the grinder in the garage in close to or below zero temps hasn’t been much fun either. LOL
 
First was assembling the new mill, reading all instructions and playing with scrap material and mill attachments until I became somewhat comfortable with it.
 
Second was learning to use a grinder to sharpen and /or make lathe tools. My right hand lath tool needed sharpening and I totally destroyed it attempting to do this. I did have a backup right hand tool but decided to take a ¼ inch high speed steel blank and make my own. Yes, I could just have purchased new tools but my lathe and mill mentor, Retired Guy, said sooner or later I would need to learn the necessary grinder skills if I ever wanted to make my own custom lathe tools. And, as I have been telling myself lately, if not now, when? So I read the tool making instructions that came with the Sherline product and used the backup right hand tool as a template. Success! I was able to make my own right hand tool that worked beautifully. Besides, the cost of blanks is about half of premade tools.
 

 
Third was learning how to make my own gearwheels using the gear cutting tool holder I purchased with the new mill. There were several failures and for a time I thought I was going to run out of brass rod before the job was finished. But persistence, slowing down and being as being precise as possible paid off. 
 
Also a big help was a video I got from the Midwest Model Shipwrights video library. On this video, Doc Williams explained how he built the windlass for his Charles W Morgan, part of which was making gear wheels.
 
This is what I got with the kit for the counter shaft assembly.

 
My first thought was to cut the gearwheels off, clean them up with escapement files, and drill a 1/32 hole for a new shaft. But that didn’t work as well as I liked so I took a deep breath and made my own gearwheels.
 
Starting with a piece of ¼ inch brass stock, I loaded it into the lathe and turned it down to same diameter as the white metal gearwheel. That’s my self-made right hand cutting tool in the pic.
 

 
Then I loaded the piece on the mill. On the right side of the picture is a 4 jaw chuck, mounted on a rotary table which is mounted on a right angle attachment. The rotary table allows a circle to be divided into 3600 parts. I just divided the diameter of each gear by the number of needed teeth, 8 for the small gear and 12 for the large gear. Then, using the handle on the rotary table, I rotated the piece the necessary amount for each cut. The cutting tool I used is actually made for cutting threads. The reason there are 2 cutting tools mounted in the gear cutting holding tool is because the tools are 1/8th inch vs the standard ¼ inch the holder is made for. Sherline advised me that when using 1/8th inch tools to mount 2 of them to make up the 1/8th inch difference. I cut the teeth .150 inches deep.
 

 
This is a picture of what the large gear looks like after finishing in the mill.
 

 
Then put the piece back into the lathe and drilled a 1/32 hole for the shaft.
 

 
The rear cutoff tool made easy work of cutting the gear to the proper thickness.
 

 
Here is the finished large gear

 
And the finished small gear
 

 
Bothe gears next to the white metal gears that came with the kit.
 

 
I was, thankfully, able to salvage the stands. My skills are nowhere near ready to make these. I didn’t have any 1/32 brass rod but I did have some 1/32 copper wire (unknown gauge) so used that for the axel shaft. Here is the piece assembled.
 


While this assembly probably should have been entirely black, I have previously left lots of brass pieces unpainted. So I went half way and blackened the frames only. I’m always conflicted about blackening the brass pieces. Kind of like painting over beautiful woodwork. 
 

 
Next up is the windlass. This is the piece that came with the kit, which isn’t very pretty. The cuts in the center for the pawl are hardly visible. So I’m going to attempt to build  my own windlass.
 

 
 Looks like more learning curves in my future. But if not now, when?

John, interesting about your bulkhead situation and the deckplanking.
I didn't encounter that problem.
I am back working on my Bluenose.
Getting close to the rigging process. 

The quarterdeck is installed. On the Bluenose it's really more like a halfdeck, but I digress. This went pretty well using more or less standard technique. Much the same as the hull planks.
 
There was a problem that I'm not sure what the source of is. The Model Shipways hull has come out with the widest bulkhead two positions aft of the great beam where the quarterdeck begins. This makes the deck planks come out differently than the plans which show the widest bulkhead to be at the bulkhead H (Great beam).
Width H: 4.363"
             I: 4.424"
             J: 4.394"
            K: 4.272"
As you can see I and J are both wider than H. I did not realize this until I started laying deck planks. The plans show the same width for H and I with J slightly smaller.  This problem could have been avoided by swapping bulkheads to I-J-H order. Too late now. I had assumed the bulkheads were laid out in the correct order on the cutouts. Silly me.
 
If you take I to be the correct bulkhead for the H position the decking planks are correct as shown on the plans.
The plans show 24 planks from the center line at H along the great beam. 17 tapered planks and 7 nibbed planks(+ nibbing strake). That would exactly fit on bulkhead I. To fit them on H a plank must be dropped from the tapered group which would come out wrong for the aft end of the ship. Below is a trial fit that shows the problem:

 
Given the actual discrepancy is less than a plank width, I decided on spiling for the last plank to compensate.
 
Next some thought was given to plank size and pattern. A great discussion of buttshift patterns is found in the articles database on MSW. The most pleasing patterns use a five shift such as 13524. For a reasonable length plank such as scale 28', deck beams would need to be installed between the bulkheads at appropriate intervals. To use the existing bulkheads for the butts  at 28' a 3 shift pattern is required. I decided to go with 132, but on reflection😄, that's the same as 123 but in the opposite direction. It doesn't look as good as 13524 but with the deck furniture It should be fine and it's a lot less work.
 
I took the nibbing strakes directly from the plan. They were precut and sanded before installation. Planks were laid starting at the centerline and working outward. The taper was started at bulkhead K. The amount of taper was determined by measuring between the nibbing strakes at the stern and dividing by the number of tapered planks. This turned out accurate with little or no fudging. After the tapered planks were installed the nibbed planks were installed up to the last one. Which was spiled to fill the last gap. Here's the last plank going in!

 
Don't forget to mark the mast hole!! I did this with the first two planks while I could still see the actual hole.
 
At this point I could not resist putting in the masts to see how she looked! It's starting to look like a real ship.

 
 
 
 

Per, if I may.  I suspect John is referring to the tops of the bulkheads that become some of the deck stanchions.  My recollection is that the kit-provided bulkheads were thicker than the stanchion dimension, and that is the reason for thinning the top of the bulkhead above where the decking is laid, to make those tops the same thickness as the stanchions.
 
For my build (many years back) I simply cut off all the bulkhead extensions and installed new stanchions above the deck from end to end.
 
If I'm wrong, John will post a reference to the post he is talking about, and we'll move on from there
 
Bob

Engine  room hatch, ready for final clean-up  

Finished the 1st set of twin 50s with mount

That is a very nice looking hull - time with the airbrush is sure paying off!
 
Bob

Once the airbrush and paint were dialed in the hull painting has been proceeding smoothly. So far, despite initial fiddling needed, the Model Expo colors have been spot on.
 
After the white paint layer I had lots of runs. Paint was thinned too much. The mix was adjusted and the copper red bottom paint went on nicely with only a couple runs and one too thin area. This was due to my beginner skills which improve with each application. The second coat of bottom paint looks good. Time to move on to the top paint.

 
While you don't see it in this picture the masking tape for the level water line white is there. Next was to mask off the bottom and apply the top paint. This looked grayish blue in the bottle but dries a nice satin black with just a hint of blue.

 
This coat went on with no runs! No misses!. I'm getting the hang of the airbrush. Does a great job.
Next I masked the yellow trim line just below the waist and above the scuppers. I followed the line scored into the hull earlier. This line was now very faint from the paint fill-in. There was just enough left to act as a guide. My masking skills now need to catch up with my newly acquired airbrush skills. When I removed the masking there were several leaks to patch up. The masking for the yellow line was not sealed well and I had quite a bit to touch up for that too. The white line came out very well. There were only a couple tiny touch ups near the stem.
All the painting had partially filled the scuppers. I made a handy-dandy rectangular scupper clean-out tool from a piece of flat brass stock in the right size. Just sharpened one end slightly.

 
Then it was time to mask the hull and paint the stanchions and water-ways. Here's the finished result. I'm pleased with the colors but still need to do a little touchup. I also added the rudder and set it on the temporary mounting board. It's time to do topside work!

 
While I had the airbrush out and white paint ready, The pieces for the bowsprit mounting assembly were painted. The technique from the jumbo jib boom was used. Sand-seal with shellac-sand again and finish paint. Much better results than my first attempt. No Fuzzies!

 

Almost ready to paint hull. The hawse pipes and rudder were installed today.
 
I had pre-drilled the hawse holes and partly shaped them when the knightheads and hawse timbers were installed. Epoxy was used to ensure a good metal to wood bond for the hawse pipe rings. After the epoxy had set enough to hold firmly the excess epoxy was removed.  Finished shaping and blending the holes to the ring was done with needle files. The black hull paint was used for the interior of the holes as the prototype appears to have the hawse pipes painted the same as the hull.


 
I had shaped and primed the rudder while waiting for paint to dry on the hull. The pintles and gudgeons were also made earlier. The brass strap that came with the kit was the correct size and was cut and shaped appropriately. Rather than try to make an actual gudgeon and pintle at that small size. I simply soldered a tiny piece of the strap to the pintle strap. This worked out nicely and cannot be seen when assembled.
Getting the straps mounted and aligned properly was the tricky part. This was solved by taping the rubber part to the rudder with masking tape then adjusting the hull part. Once a satisfactory alignment was achieved the rudder was removed and the position of the straps was marked with a pencil. These were then epoxied in place. The same was done for the rudder straps. After the epoxy had partly set I installed the rudder and made final tweaks to the position.

The excess epoxy was the carefully scraped away. The brass was lightly sanded and primed.

 

always  another shelf to add....more tools...sorted the wood

The hull was painted with a grey primer in the usual primer-sand-fill-primer iteration until the hull was uniformly coated and smooth as a baby's skin. I kept the paint thin enough the planks show very slightly. By the time the finish coat is applied there will be only a suggestion of planks.
 
A wide white band was painted around the hull at the level water line. I used the laser level that worked for the windlass but in horizontal mode. This required the hull to be mounted on it's stands. This is an appropriate time to do  the mounts anyway. A temporary mounting board was used for holding the model. The trick was to get the correct height as the keel on Bluenose has a slant to it. Fortunately, Model Shipways supplies mounts that are appropriate heights and pictures of the mounted model. It was fairly easy to determine the correct positioning.

 
After the paint was dry and sanded, Tamiya 1mm tape was applied under the laser line. This was a little tricky as the tape is so small and I'm working under the hull.

 
Came out pretty good. I burnished the tape. Hopefully there won't be seepage under it. The idea is that it's easier to mask a small area and paint over it than to create parallel lines of masking over the larger area to paint a thin line. Of course it's harder to paint dark over light. I may hit it with a light coat of primer to cover the white. We'll see how it goes.
 
In any case it's fun again now that I'm not being frustrated with airbrush problems.

More on the airbrush. I've spent two weeks off and on fooling with this. I admit to being a novice, but the learning curve was steep. I'm finally getting nice results. There's some art to getting the paint thinned properly. The Model Expo paints I purchased are very thick and even with Tamiya thinner it's tricky to get the right consistency. It's a little more than 1:1 on the thinner. I'm still working on that.
 
The biggest problem was the Passche airbrush. This is a quality unit but I could not get consistent results. Sometimes it would spray well other times I couldn't get the paint to flow. After much troubleshooting and reading up on the web I traced the problem to the air valve. There was very little air flow. The paint would not atomize properly.
 
The air valve looked OK. This was a rebuildable part. I disassembled it and could find not blockage. It turned out the supplied hose adapter was the problem. This is a simple Thread reducer with a hole in it. How could that be a problem!

 
Upon thinking about it, I realized there was an O-Ring in the end going to the airbrush. I was in the habit of tightening this all the way. What must be happening, unlikely as it seems, is the O-Ring squishes and reduces the diameter of the hole to a very small size.

 
he cure was to not tighten the adapter all the way. I immediately got lots of air flow and the paint flowed and atomized well. The O-Ring seals well just snugged up at these low pressures.
 
At last I can move forward with the painting!

So I drew the rabbet and beard lines by caliper and ruler....took a while but ended up true to the plans. Just didn't feel right to cut and trace,but that's just me.
When it came time to cut I used a tip from CPDDET and put some green painters tape on tip of knife blade leaving just 1/16" exposed, so wouldn't accidentally cut the rabbet too deep....worked a charm.

Then I put a 1/4" chisel blade in knife and instead of going N/S or E/W I gently shaved on a 45° and avoided the blade digging in and gouging the surface of the keel. Took the thinnest of savings and everything stayed true...took a while though.
 
Lastly, took a sanding stick and cut a little wedge out of one just to smooth out the bevel with the merest hint of sanding.
 
Oh, by the way, I have used Xacto my whole life, but read many kudos about Xcel, so bought a set...beauty I must say....I won't be going Xacto again.
 
Here's 2 pics, 1st when I started to shave and then finished product ( only did the aft section so far)

The mill and attachments arrived today. Going to have to shut down the boatyard for a couple days to assemble and experiment.
 

 

The windlass is finished. Such as it is. The deck in this area busy enough it should pass. I do wish the part was better formed.

 
I'm having problems with the airbrushing. The new Paasche airbrush has developed an air valve problem. I'll have to get it replaced before doing more painting. I was able to get one primer coat on before it went belly up. It looks good. Wet sanding 400 grit produced a nice smooth finish. There is a suggestion of the underlying planking showing through. I feel that makes it look more realistic. In pictures of the prototype the planking shows faintly. It's ready for finish paint. Just need to get that airbrush working.

BEADS - another use for beads is as parrel beads for all those gaff rigged schooners out there - or other applications where there are single parrels in use.
 
Steve - great thread - may I suggest you change the title to something that might help people realize what you are trying to do with it?  It will help get more responses, I suspect.
 
Thanks,
Bob
 

Next up on the build list was the Jumbo Jib Boom Crutch. The top piece and knees are laser cut pieces but the uprights have to be cut from stock. The instructions call for 1/8 square stock but I found the thickness of the laser cut pieces closer to 3/32nds so that’s what I used for the uprights.
 
I cut a scrap piece of wood to place between the uprights in order to keep them at a 90 degree angle while clamping. Using PVA glue I set up clamping on my MicroMark magnetic jig. I have found this 10 ¼ inch square metal tray very useful for clamping various items, especially when it comes to building deck furniture. The ends of the metal plate are bent up at a 90 degree angle which is a big help. In order to keep the glue from bonding to the plate I taped a piece of plastic wrap on it. Plastic wrap (Saran Wrap) seems to work well for PVA and wax paper for CA.

After the glue dried I did some sanding and glued on the knees, again with PVA.

Then mounted the assembly on a scrap piece of wood with double stick tape. Staying with my color scheme, I put on 3 coats of Varathane Poly Stain instead of painting it white as the plans call for.

According to the plans and the instructions that came with the model, the hoisting mechanism attached to the crutch as well as the engine box on the port side of the crutch were removed for racing, so I will be skipping those and install the boom crutch without these parts.
 
As best as I can tell the counter shaft assembly and stand remained on the ship for racing, along with the windlass. So next up will be the countershaft assembly and stand. Some of these parts look usable while others look very rough and will probably have to be remade.

And so it continues……
 

I did a dry fit of the keel and bulwarks tonight.....sooty little devils. Wiped everything down with old rag and lightly touched with sanding stick.
 
Bulwark A took a lot of sanding to get it to sit. B to D moderate, but the rest went smoothly.
 
Noticed a small out of alignment with the bottom  1 of the keel pieces...about 1/32 longer than its mate, so I'll check against the  plans and fix.
 
Couple of bulwarks actually sit down a little below top of keel so will need to adjust those.
 
Overall , no big surprises. 
 
Looking at that narrow area where the stern post will go, has anyone tried drilling parallel to the plywood surface with a Dremel then inserting a metal rod (paperclip piece maybe).
 
So next need to have copies made of plans, cut them up, and draw out beard/rabbet . Also, make paper tracings of each bulwark, do the folding  exercise and see if any are not symmetrical.
 
My Packers are done, but my Habs are rockin'

The windlass doesn't have good definition of the ratchet ring. The divots are not even uniform and it just doesn't look right anyway. Even painting a ring didn't help. Working with these poorly cast parts is frustrating. While thinking about how to make this part better it occurred to me that zip ties have a ratchet strip and are available in a wide variety of sizes. Rummaging through my project supplies I found one that's a near perfect fit. It also adds the detail of the side rings. It's just a little to thick, but that will make the detail stand out.

 
Zip ties are a fairly hard, springy plastic. To get conformance at the diameter needed the zip tie was wrapped around a small screwdriver shank and heated with a heat gun until it was soft enough to relax the plastic. This produced a small diameter spiral after cooling. The zip tie was then expanded to the diameter of the windlass drum and trimmed to size.

 
To ensure a bond I used high strength epoxy. The ratchet strip is unidirectional so it's important to get it the right direction to match the pawl on the samson post.

 
This worked pretty well. Though I'm still dissatisfied with the piece. These metal parts are highly variable. The large gear from the boom crutch was well enough made to clean up and look decent. The large gear on this part is shabby. I'm also dissatisfied with the paint. I think I'll do that over before I install the wood whelps.
 

It’s been a while since I posted but I managed to build 3 deck pieces during that time.
The first piece is called a skylight on the build plans but is completely different that the skylight over the main cabin.
I started by cutting the corner pieces on the Byrnes saw.

Then I made the side panels in the same way I have been doing: scoring a shallow line with a very fine tooth saw and widening these with a small, round stylus to simulate the separate boards. I also made a simple baseboard and got everything painted and stained.

It was pretty straight forward from there, cutting everything to size and gluing them together. I drilled holes for the port light and installed the brass fittings


After fashioning the top piece I glued that on to finish the piece.

Not too much progress lately. I managed to drop my airbrush on it's needle. 🤕 The good side of that is it was a really cheap one and I got to order a nice Paaische TG series. While I wait for that I'm going to work on the windlass. I love Retired Guy's work on this part. He machines all the gears and little pieces to end up with a working windlass. Be sure to check out his blog. Unfortunately, I don't have all those nice machine tools and will have to make do with the Britannia metal parts supplied in the kit. The windlass that came with my kit was a particularly bad casting. You can see some parts of the piece are missing and distorted.

 
Model Expo has a really great policy of supplying replacements parts free. Including shipping! Their warranty states they will replace a part for any reason; even a screwup on the customers part. I can't recommend their service highly enough. This alone is enough reason to purchase through them. F.Y.I the email address is: modelexpo.parts@gmail.com
And the URL for the warranty info is: https://modelexpo-online.com/About-Us_ep_7.html
After a couple weeks(Hey! It's free) the replacement part arrived. I was a little disgruntled. The new one was not very good. However it was, at least, complete. I was able to clean it up enough to pass cursory inspection after painting and assembly. Still doesn't look very pretty.

 
The next problem was to mark the octants off for the steel and wood whelps. I'm not very good at eyeballing these things. Using an old rotary table I had($35 on Ebay) A jig was made to hold the windlass upright and centered on the table.

 
I then used my home projects leveling laser in vertical mode to create a line on the part. A laser level has an amazing usefulness for many types of home projects. These are available pretty cheap at Harbor Freight and home stores. The one I have is Harbor Freight and one step up from the cheapest. It comes with a tripod and is compact. I just sat it on the workbench and leveled it.

 
A fine point marker in a contrasting color was used to mark the octants.

 
Looks pretty rough at this stage. It'll be OK once painted and all the whelps are installed. Still, it would be nice to have all those machine tools and do it right.
 
 

BEADS - another use for beads is as parrel beads for all those gaff rigged schooners out there - or other applications where there are single parrels in use.
 
Steve - great thread - may I suggest you change the title to something that might help people realize what you are trying to do with it?  It will help get more responses, I suspect.
 
Thanks,
Bob
 

I spent some time finishing up the transom and installing the cap rail.
 
The bow cap rail didn't fit as expected however I think this will sort itself out when I drill the hole for the bowsprit
 

 
I completed the cap rail and added some filler in the odd location.  It's just a matter of a bit of final sanding then it's off to the paint booth.