ChadB

Go with this Dewalt Scroll Saw 788 and Stand - no vibration.  I somehow managed to scratch build Confederacy with a crappy Delta saw that had so much vibration.  The Dewalt is a game changer
 
https://www.grizzly.com/products/DeWalt-DW788-20-Scroll-Saw-with-Stand-and-Light/H7414?gclid=CjwKCAjw-YT1BRAFEiwAd2WRtgYQQy5pOwsZ7zKRoJVJzvSMlFpfwgzXx7z0GxEmpHPZu1i0UMuzRRoCcikQAvD_BwE
 
 

Not a huge update but a couple small projects that took quite a bit of time. Finished the pump well and shot locker and the Brodie Stove. I did quite  bit of research on the well and shot locker and really never nailed down anything better than this. I'm happy with it and my kids thought it was awesome that the little sliding windows actually worked. The Brodie stove is actually my second one- the first I completed and then realized that it was too big. I had gotten lazy and pretty much copied the size directly from TFFM books. Second go around followed scale best I could (the stove on the Eagle was the one pulled out of the Alert- the first capture of the war by the Essex) and added a bit more detail I was able to find on a model from the Royal Museums Greenwich**. The stove will go somewhere safe until it's ready to go in. Next up is deck beams and some metalwork for the outside of the hull.
 




 
 
 
Chad

**  https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/37331.html
 
 
 

Hey Afonso,
 
A quick look at the Occre vs Dusek and the first thing is the scale is different. Occre is 1/90 while the Dusek is 1/72, so the Dusek kit will be bigger and hence a bit more expensive. Also from the videos it looks to me like the Dusek kit has higher quality wood, laser cut parts, and smaller bits like cannons and blocks. I've actually never looked into Dusek kits until now but they look pretty nice.
 
What would an expert say? "Expert" can be a slippery term just like "historically accurate." An expert in galleons would probably say "yup, that's pretty much what a galleon looks like" and an expert in model ship building would say "yup, that's the Occre kit alright." Here's my advice on that subject and one many around here would probably say the same. Build for yourself because most people won't give a rip about your finished model. Here's what will happen when you finish it and have it proudly displayed... your friends and family will come over, see it, look at it for a few minutes, then say "Wow- I'd never have the patience to do that!" and then move on to something else.😀If you happen to know a galleon expert, then I'll let someone else chime in on how that may go.😉 

What I'm trying to get to is use the build to become your own expert! It sounds like you've already read and studied quite a bit about the time and already know a bit about the ships- use that info to change your kit (people call it kitbashing) along the way to make it more accurate! I 100% guarantee that this will make the experience way more enjoyable and fulfilling. Pick up a kit (or continue on your Occre kit), a book or two that have some basic info on ship building (my first books were Wolfram Zu Mondfeld's 'Historic Model Ships' and Milton Roth's 'Ship Modeling from Stem to Stern') and change a couple little things along the way to make it more historically accurate. This is going to make you love your model more AND  poking through books like the ones I mentioned will probably open you up to other ships from different nationalities and times that you may want to explore a bit more. Your friends and family still won't care that your guns are rigged or your deck is planked according to 16th century shipbuilding conventions but you'll know and be all the happier for it! There's a ton of small companies out there that sell more accurate gun barrels, rigging line, and better wood strips for not much money. Model shipbuilding is similar to EU4- sure, it's a fun game vanilla and you could play it that way your entire life, but adding mods and learning a bit along the way will make it that much more enjoyable! 
 
 
Chad

Chad

Ok, I'll wade in since you explicitly asked for the harsh truth! 😉 

In your first post you said these two things...
 
 
The first problem I see is that the Golden Hind essentially IS a beginner's kit. Screwing up on a beginner's kit is what happens when you start out. Like anything else you build skills through your first couple kits and get better and better over time. I cringe looking at my first kit builds and hope to do the same in ten years looking at my current scratch builds. It's the way any hobby works and model shipbuilding is no different. You can read every book there is about planking a hull but you just have to do it to get good at it. The good news is you can totally create a kickass galleon while skipping beginner kits, but there's going to be tons of screwups along the way that will be probably just as bad as the ones you faced in your Golden Hind. Are you prepared to put in the time and money rebuilding stuff and rebuying wood? You have to have the desire and patience to make it through those rough times.

The next troubling point is this...
16th and 17th century aren't my area of expertise, but I'm pretty sure most shipbuilding at that time was done through a shipbuilder's experience and not necessarily plans. Most kits of ships from this time period are based off simple length and breadth dimensions that were written down somewhere and the rest filled in using information gathered over time on carracks and galleons. I think you would need to specify a bit more what your baseline for "historically accurate" is... that term means WAAAY different things to different people in model ship building. There are VERY few models that don't contain a certain percentage of conjecture, and the farther you go back timewise the higher that percentage becomes. If you find that the selection of kits available do not meet that baseline, then you are venturing into scratchbuilding and you would want to start with Jaager's post (and learn what those words mean) and start digging into those sources.


So that's MY harsh truth for you. I won't tell you you can't do it because I'd love more than anything for you to prove to me and everyone here you can, but I will truthfully say that you have set many self-imposed obstacles for yourself that are going to make your chances of successfully building your model very small. It's a wonderful hobby but it takes an incredible amount of patience and time to get to the bar you are setting for yourself, but the good news is this is the place to help you reach that bar! My advice would be to keep your money in your pocket right now and explore some build logs here- find ones for kits you are interested in, read through them to see what the pitfalls are, and what people did differently to make them better. That is going to help you make a much better decision than any advice you will get in this post (including mine!😉).
 
Good luck and I truly hope to see a build log in your future!
 
Chad

Looks good Mark! I can't wait to see it when the filler blocks are sanded down and we see that sweet tumblehome!
 
 
Chad

Because if you are scratch building framed models sheets are the best way to cut frame pieces. On a fully framed ship you will have hundreds of curved futtocks and floors, and spooning the patterns together on a sheet will create much less waste than using, say, a one inch wide sheet. 

I've toyed around with the idea of doing this for quite some time and would love to do it when my kids are older and moving on with their lives (right now I want to give them all the time I can). I've slowly started tooling up for it and have been milling my own wood now, but want to get better because if I ever did it I'd want it to be the quality of the days of HobbyMill. I also have the added of benefit of having Gilmer Woods 20 mins from my house which would let me handpick the product. The major downside is that so far my back-of-the-napkin figures show that it probably leans more towards a labor of love more so than a profitable business. I wouldn't be looking to quit my day job but the time put in is time not modeling.
 
Chad

I've toyed around with the idea of doing this for quite some time and would love to do it when my kids are older and moving on with their lives (right now I want to give them all the time I can). I've slowly started tooling up for it and have been milling my own wood now, but want to get better because if I ever did it I'd want it to be the quality of the days of HobbyMill. I also have the added of benefit of having Gilmer Woods 20 mins from my house which would let me handpick the product. The major downside is that so far my back-of-the-napkin figures show that it probably leans more towards a labor of love more so than a profitable business. I wouldn't be looking to quit my day job but the time put in is time not modeling.
 
Chad

I've toyed around with the idea of doing this for quite some time and would love to do it when my kids are older and moving on with their lives (right now I want to give them all the time I can). I've slowly started tooling up for it and have been milling my own wood now, but want to get better because if I ever did it I'd want it to be the quality of the days of HobbyMill. I also have the added of benefit of having Gilmer Woods 20 mins from my house which would let me handpick the product. The major downside is that so far my back-of-the-napkin figures show that it probably leans more towards a labor of love more so than a profitable business. I wouldn't be looking to quit my day job but the time put in is time not modeling.
 
Chad

I note that the package says, 'When precision matters' and also, 'Random sizes'.  How precise are random sizes? 
 
John

Thanks guys. I have a good friend who does ships and plastic models who turned me on to evergreen plastics when I was lamenting how much of a pain making the stove was going to be. It was a great material for some of the smaller details. I ended up using just about everything under the sun- plastic, aluminum, brass, copper, piano wire, HO train axles, and scale chain. Here is a photo before airbrushing that shows the hodgepodge (the black is plastic parts cannibalized from the first stove)!

 
Chad

Thanks guys. I have a good friend who does ships and plastic models who turned me on to evergreen plastics when I was lamenting how much of a pain making the stove was going to be. It was a great material for some of the smaller details. I ended up using just about everything under the sun- plastic, aluminum, brass, copper, piano wire, HO train axles, and scale chain. Here is a photo before airbrushing that shows the hodgepodge (the black is plastic parts cannibalized from the first stove)!

 
Chad

Not a huge update but a couple small projects that took quite a bit of time. Finished the pump well and shot locker and the Brodie Stove. I did quite  bit of research on the well and shot locker and really never nailed down anything better than this. I'm happy with it and my kids thought it was awesome that the little sliding windows actually worked. The Brodie stove is actually my second one- the first I completed and then realized that it was too big. I had gotten lazy and pretty much copied the size directly from TFFM books. Second go around followed scale best I could (the stove on the Eagle was the one pulled out of the Alert- the first capture of the war by the Essex) and added a bit more detail I was able to find on a model from the Royal Museums Greenwich**. The stove will go somewhere safe until it's ready to go in. Next up is deck beams and some metalwork for the outside of the hull.
 




 
 
 
Chad

**  https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/37331.html
 
 
 

Work has been progressing a little faster (compared to MY normal building speed!) now that the kids are back in school. I ended up adding a bunch more berth deck beams and completed the planking. I had a tough time finding the balance between how much to plank and how much to leave open for viewing of the keelson/frames/beams. I'm not 100% happy with the decision I came up with but the draft of the Eagle is so small that once the main deck beams, carlings, and planking is in the viewing is going to be pretty limited anyway.  The middle open spot is for viewing the keelson and the opening near the aft mast step is where the well will be. The small hole aft is where the capstan will seat.

I spent more time than I like to admit researching the mast steps. The steps were missing from the wreck and the bolt patterns were the only clues that were left as to what it looked like. The pattern didn't match up with that of a standard English mast step, so a bit of digging brought me to the wreck of the brig Linnet, another ship built on Lake Champlain. The Linnet's step was still partially in place and the patterns were identical, so it was what I went with. I am by no means an expert when it comes to ship construction so for me to say this would be a standard setup of the time is a stretch, but it at least lets me sleep at night! We do know that the step would be very simple based on build time so this fit the bill.
 Since most gluing is done below decks I've finished with danish oil and a coat of minwax floor paste to give it a bit of a glow.
 




 
 
Chad

Over the last few weeks I've worked on finishing the interior of the hull. It's been oiled with Danish oil and the clamp and keel riveted as per the Eagle book. Tonight I finished installing the berthing deck beams, which will still need some kind of fastener on the end. The entire berthing deck was missing from the wreck so it is entirely conjectural. I decided to make the beams closer in the area of where the stove will go, thinking there may be additional support in that area.
 



 
Chad

 

I started this build waaaay back in 2013 after I finished my Triton cross section, but really didn't want to start a build log until I had some substantial progress done (I'm a really slow builder). I was also lofting my own frames and lived in perpetual fear up until recently that I made some mistake that would only become apparent when I started fairing the hull and would end in the ruin of my build. I figured having a multipage build log when that happened would make it that much harder to recover my confidence. Well, I got past that point and it turns out my drawings worked, so a slow day at work seemed like a good time as any to start a log.
 
So- the Eagle... built on Lake Champlain in 1814 in 19 days (the irony of spending nearly six years making a model of a ship built in 19 days is not lost on me) to help Thomas Macdonough's fleet stop the British from taking control of the lake and essentially cut New England off from the rest of the country. He succeeded at the battle of Plattsburgh, helping keep the British from having any claims for territory in the Treaty of Ghent. After her long, illustrious career of a few months she was laid up in ordinary where she lasted about as long as you would expect a ship of such quality as that of one built in 19 days would last. The wreck sat on the bottom of the Poultney River until 1981 when it was rediscovered and the archaeological study started by the great people of the Texas A&M Nautical Archaeology program (a career choice I found out about 20 years too late in life).
 
I started the model using the book done on the study (and one worth every penny if the subject interests you), The Eagle: An American Brig on Lake Champlain during the War of 1812, and Gen Bodnar's practicum for the Eagle found on modelshipbuilder.com. The practicum was invaluable for lofting frames and giving some direction on order of building but I have pretty much moved away from it at this point. I've probably used roughly a billion other references at this point but here's a couple that have been in heavy rotation..
 
Robnbill's build log of the Eagle- Bill did a great job of documenting things. When I don't feel like reinventing the wheel I like to check in with his log
Coffins of the Brave: lake Shipwrecks of the War of 1812- some updated info on the eagle and have gleaned some building practices of the time from it. Excellent read.
The Texas A&M ship model laboratory model of the Jefferson- not the same builder but helped me wrap my head around drawing up a stern. Also, just a really nice model.
 
 
So anyway, that's some backstory. I don't want to make a "how-to" log like I did with my cross section and plan to just keep it picture heavy. If there's any questions feel free to ask and I'll happily answer. A few photos to cover the first five and a half years...
 
Starting with the plans. Frames, deadwood, etc... I tried to work off my primary source, The Eagle: An American Brig on Lake Champlain (from here on out "The Eagle book") as much as possible and make this model as accurate as possible. Drawing everything was a job and learning experience in itself. 




Keel laid. Model to be made from pear, ebony, and maple
 


Frames started going up. The pear will be finished in Danish oil, so I had done the keel, deadwood and the sides of the frames as i went along to save having to go in between every frame later on.
 


..and this is the point where life outside of modeling took over for a few years. I have two little ones that I spend tons of time doing stuff with, and also moved to a house that required some attention to drag it out of the 70's. Framing moved along slowly and I wanted to put a nice stern together, which took some research (the stem and stern of the wreck were pretty much gone). Fast forward to a few months ago and inside and out are faired. The Eagle's frames were all over the place and I used those locations for the model, which is why a keen observer may think I was drunk while lofting frames.
 


Work has progressed a bit farther, but it's about high time to break out the real camera and retire the iphone for this build log. 
 
 
Chad

Thanks guys. I have a good friend who does ships and plastic models who turned me on to evergreen plastics when I was lamenting how much of a pain making the stove was going to be. It was a great material for some of the smaller details. I ended up using just about everything under the sun- plastic, aluminum, brass, copper, piano wire, HO train axles, and scale chain. Here is a photo before airbrushing that shows the hodgepodge (the black is plastic parts cannibalized from the first stove)!

 
Chad

I've toyed around with the idea of doing this for quite some time and would love to do it when my kids are older and moving on with their lives (right now I want to give them all the time I can). I've slowly started tooling up for it and have been milling my own wood now, but want to get better because if I ever did it I'd want it to be the quality of the days of HobbyMill. I also have the added of benefit of having Gilmer Woods 20 mins from my house which would let me handpick the product. The major downside is that so far my back-of-the-napkin figures show that it probably leans more towards a labor of love more so than a profitable business. I wouldn't be looking to quit my day job but the time put in is time not modeling.
 
Chad

The only accessory I use is a modified fence that can be lift on 1 side to cut long strips.
Micrometer stop... too slow to use. I measure between the fence and the blade with a digital caliper.

14. Fairing (Blech.)
 
So far in my short ship modeling career, I think fairing a hull (well) is right up there with planking a hull as one of the tougher things to do. I now know why it's tough to get good advice on how to do it well, since it's just about impossible (as far as I can see, anyway) to explain how to do it well. I just had to jump in and feel it out along the way.  I started with the frames not being roughly faired so that the fore and aft sides of the frame were even, which in hindsight was a mistake since it would have been easier off the keel, but really just adds extra time to the fairing process...      I turned out to be a real pain to sand those areas down, so I decided to start on the floor, since it was flat and would let start getting a feel for what kind of tools were going to work. The first thing I had to do though was determine where the flat part of the floor ended and started curving up, since - once again- nothing was faired first. I did this by taking a copy of the Cross Section Frames drawing and drawing a "centerline" down the middle perpendicular to the frames. Then I took each of the Frame Assembly drawings and measured the length of the floor, copied it onto the "centerline" of my other drawing, and connected the sides with a french curve. Finally I just pasted it to a scrap piece of matte board and cut it out, giving me this...      The floor was pretty easy since it was flat- I found a standard card cabinet scraper worked best. I guess before I go any further I'll mention the tools I found worked best. First and foremost- a $10 pack of 3 cabinet scrapers was a fantastic investment. Of course, with cabinet scrapers they will have to be sharpened- so I also had to pick up a $10 burnishing tool and a waterstone (about $25). Sharpening them is almost an art in itself, as I've gotten sharpening the card scrapers down but the curved ones have taken a little more practice. I looked at about every link on sharpening cabinet scrapers that google brought up, but everyone has their own way of doing it so I just went at it until I found something that worked for me. Other than the scrapers I used a flat ruler sized piece of scrap wood and 4 sanding blocks with 100 grit sandpaper on them. I found the sanding blocks are used the most. All are pretty much just small rectangles with one side curved over that I cut out real quick on the scroll saw. One of them is just a little over the width of a frame, and the others are about a frame and a half thickness. The thicker ones I find usefull for sanding across multiple frames without getting "caught up" between frames, while the thinner one is good for just working on a single frame.      So after the floor, I started on the inside since I thought this would be the harder part (it is) and on the side that would eventually be fully planked. I figured it was best to get a feel for things on the side that would be a little more forgiving since it will all be covered anyway. This is where I can't really explain what went on since it just has to be "experienced". I imagine it like trying to describe to someone how to sculpt- kind of tough to do I would think. I just started rough and kept refining it little by little. This was when I noticed a problem on the horizon- one of the frames seemed out of place at "the turn of the bilge" (thanks Lee). I  thought about it and finally decided one night to break the frame loose and reset it to try to align it. Once it was broken free with an exacto knife I had no clue what to do- that's how I ended up with this gem  ...     ..first I aligned the turn of the bilge area by laying a scrap piece of wood along the frames and wrapping thread around the frame and the scrap, and behind the free frame, which kind of cinched everything into place. Then I used a couple more pieces of scrap to align the tops. Once everything was glued into place, the frames aligned much nicer. After that was done and I had the inside roughly faired, I started from the floors and just started cleaning it all up by working my way up with a scrap pushed down along the inside to see what needed to be cleaned up.      So now I have about 3/4 of the cross section faired with only one of the outsides to go (once I got a hande on the inside, the outside is pretty easy). Although I don't think I'll be able to leave a whole side open as  planned since I still have a few spots that aren't totally faired because I STILL left the frames thin  , a decent section near the bilge will be, which is OK with me. The only disturbing thing I've noticed is separation on some of my futtocks..      I was pretty careful not to have anything like this when I built my frames, so I think it could be from either the little bit of bending that went into setting a few frames on the keel or the cold snap we had a few weeks back when the cross section sat in the garage (since moved inside). There's only a couple spots like this, so I may try filling it with some wood glue/sawdust mix and see what the results are. -Chad    

Back before the "Great Crash" of MSW I had built the Triton cross section. I had a pretty robust build log to go along with it where I detailed just about every little step of my build. As it turns out, a friend of mine had actually saved about 95% of it and it has been sitting on my hard drive for quite some time. I haven't been on here much at all the last couple years but I saw my wood list made it's way on here and has hopefully helped a few people. It got me thinking that I would be good to get the build log out there to help others, also. I am going to try to start parsing it out in posts over time starting from the beginning going step by step, but I also have no problem giving out the .xps file to anyone currently building who doesn't want to wait (just be warned it is 180 pages long and includes a lot of fluff you would have to wade through!).

-Chad 
 

 

 

 

 

Congrats! Your full build isn't too far behind!
 
 
Chad

Looks great so far! From the looks of it you seem to have the plank bending down!
 
Chad

Hi, decided to do a bit more work on the full build, so I've started to plank below the wales. It's working out at 18 planks so will divide it into 3 belts. I'm using this as practice for Winchelsea so there may be planks on that may be redone if I'm not satisfied with them, please bear with me.
Tried Chucks method of edge bending with the two bow planks, I think by the end of Triton I will be getting it right more often.

Looks great! In my opinion, the quality of your work has grown quite a bit throughout your cross section and full build!
 
Chad