egkb

Hi Gang ..  Belaying Diagram Complete ...  I attach a copy for your amusement (NMM at Greenwich are welcome to archive it ..🤣🤣)
 
It was constructed from referencing 'Topsail Schooner Sail Plans & Rigging' by Dr Pr (see post #871 at top of page) and Petersons 'Rigging Period Fore & Aft Craft' and with care I adapted both to suit Ballahoo (I allow that Ballahoo was (probably/most likely) a Topsail Schooner, but I depict her with 'struck' top-mast, but the belaying points would still be there)
 
Next Up .. Copious Rope Coils and Follow my Belaying Pattern.
 
As usual, if any of you see a glaring error or have any questions please do fire away!
 
All The Very Best
 
Eamonn
 
 

Hi Gang ..  Belaying Diagram Complete ...  I attach a copy for your amusement (NMM at Greenwich are welcome to archive it ..🤣🤣)
 
It was constructed from referencing 'Topsail Schooner Sail Plans & Rigging' by Dr Pr (see post #871 at top of page) and Petersons 'Rigging Period Fore & Aft Craft' and with care I adapted both to suit Ballahoo (I allow that Ballahoo was (probably/most likely) a Topsail Schooner, but I depict her with 'struck' top-mast, but the belaying points would still be there)
 
Next Up .. Copious Rope Coils and Follow my Belaying Pattern.
 
As usual, if any of you see a glaring error or have any questions please do fire away!
 
All The Very Best
 
Eamonn
 
 

Hi Gang ..  Belaying Diagram Complete ...  I attach a copy for your amusement (NMM at Greenwich are welcome to archive it ..🤣🤣)
 
It was constructed from referencing 'Topsail Schooner Sail Plans & Rigging' by Dr Pr (see post #871 at top of page) and Petersons 'Rigging Period Fore & Aft Craft' and with care I adapted both to suit Ballahoo (I allow that Ballahoo was (probably/most likely) a Topsail Schooner, but I depict her with 'struck' top-mast, but the belaying points would still be there)
 
Next Up .. Copious Rope Coils and Follow my Belaying Pattern.
 
As usual, if any of you see a glaring error or have any questions please do fire away!
 
All The Very Best
 
Eamonn
 
 

Hi Gang ..  Belaying Diagram Complete ...  I attach a copy for your amusement (NMM at Greenwich are welcome to archive it ..🤣🤣)
 
It was constructed from referencing 'Topsail Schooner Sail Plans & Rigging' by Dr Pr (see post #871 at top of page) and Petersons 'Rigging Period Fore & Aft Craft' and with care I adapted both to suit Ballahoo (I allow that Ballahoo was (probably/most likely) a Topsail Schooner, but I depict her with 'struck' top-mast, but the belaying points would still be there)
 
Next Up .. Copious Rope Coils and Follow my Belaying Pattern.
 
As usual, if any of you see a glaring error or have any questions please do fire away!
 
All The Very Best
 
Eamonn
 
 

Hi Gang ..  Belaying Diagram Complete ...  I attach a copy for your amusement (NMM at Greenwich are welcome to archive it ..🤣🤣)
 
It was constructed from referencing 'Topsail Schooner Sail Plans & Rigging' by Dr Pr (see post #871 at top of page) and Petersons 'Rigging Period Fore & Aft Craft' and with care I adapted both to suit Ballahoo (I allow that Ballahoo was (probably/most likely) a Topsail Schooner, but I depict her with 'struck' top-mast, but the belaying points would still be there)
 
Next Up .. Copious Rope Coils and Follow my Belaying Pattern.
 
As usual, if any of you see a glaring error or have any questions please do fire away!
 
All The Very Best
 
Eamonn
 
 

My order was less than £135 so it didn't qualify for customs tax... at least that's my understanding and I didn't get asked to pay any extra,  where I have in the past on larger orders. Don't take my word for it tho. You can check out the regs here... 
 
https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty
 
I guess if you got all those.blocks you may end up paying tax to import them. I did on the gun carriages I bought from Syren. As long as you factor it in then it isn't a nasty surprise

It's a pleasure to see you work again.

Nice work on the yards and again the footrope droop is excellent. 
 
Stay Well and Stay Safe
Will 

I finally finished up attaching all the blocks and items to the yards. I thought it would never end! Here is a quick photo before I start pinning them to the ship: 

I havent done much more work on the deck fittings but I did manage to complete the base for the case...you probably saw that in the other topic.
 

But in addition to that and catching up with making blocks I managed to complete the templates for the quarter deck.  I am thinking and planning way far ahead.  I thought I would share them with you.
 
You guys know that I will be planking the quarter deck like the Amazon contemporary model.   
 

 
These templates will make the job much easier.  They contain all of the reference marks and locations for the Qdeck fittings, and even the deck planking.  You wont have to line off the qdeck or f'castle.  The deck planks are all worked out with the appropriate taper.   The deck beams are shown  so all you have to do is fold the template along any deck beam and you have an instant tick strip to transfer to each deck beam.
 
In addition, the carlings are all added in red so they can be added etc.  Its really a cheat sheet for positioning everything when we work on the Qdeck.
 

But thats not why I posted the pictures.  These will hopefully give you a really good idea well ahead of time of how much of the lower deck can be seen by going with this set-up.   There are only the bare minimum of qdeck planks added to accommodate the guns and deck fittings down the center.  This leaves very wide "runways" which are open and give you a really good look at the lower deck.   Its also much more balanced than planking half the qdeck in its entirety.   Note how we can leave the open area the entire length of the qdeck unlike other "lesser" kits that havent properly details the great cabin windows, etc.   The same will be true at the bow and f'castle as most commercial POB kits dont ever model the gun deck all the way up to the stem.   They usually have an ugly bulkhead that blocks most of the forward part of the gundeck and manger area.  This makes our Winnie project look a lot more correct and similar to an actual POF or contemporary admiralty model.
 


And one last fun photo under the qdeck......with so much open on the qdeck planking there is enough light getting down to the gundeck so you can see everything clearly.  I am also testing the height of that capstan which fits perfectly.....😄
 

Hi George .. Thanks for posting the photo.. It is the exact look I was going for..  Was very tempted to show the 'layers' but it became all too obvious, bit like 'tree nailing' subtle is better and at 1:64 they would almost disappear or blend together at normal viewing distances anyhoo.. Love what you are doing with your own Ballier (or should I say Whitier)  too BTW ! She is going to be a Star.
 
I spent this afternoon drawing (poorly I might add) a Deck Plan (and Mast Plan) showing my available Belaying Points .. Proper Research begins tomorrow.
 
Thanks Again For Stopping By.. Goes For All Commenters and Likes Too 😃
 
Eamonn

Finished filling and sanding the hull, there are still wavy and depression spots, but they are not as prominent.  Hopefully, they won’t be very noticeable when painted with flat paint.
Trying to decide what color of stain to use on the deck and toe rails.  Will paint the hull off white and hull red.

The starboard side I sanded a little more then put the first coat of putty on to fill in the gaps and depressions.  You can see that the depression at the aft end next to the stern post will need much more fill and smoothing.

I think I should have sanded more to even the planks more, so that is what I did on the port side, I think it looks better and will result in a better job.

Finishing the Planking
Finally, was able to get back to planking this past week and I have finally finished it.  Planking this boat has been a challenge and my key recommendation to everyone is to take your time to bend the planks to help reduce gaps.
 
The Sheer Plank, I had to wet the sheer planks a few times to get the right vertical bend as well as to form it at the aft end.  When I was forming them one of the challenges was the top of the plank kept wanting to bend over the edge of the deck which made it difficult to get the plank to butt up tight to the other plank and not gap at the deck interface.  My recommendation is to take your time and use some left over wood to keep the elastic band from bending the sheer plank over the deck, see pic’s below.  Also, you can see the gap at the aft end that I finally had to hold around the aft end while the glue dried.  Also make sure you have enough glue coverage on the deck edge to bond the sheer take to the deck.

I then used my knife to trim the sheer plank down to the deck.  As I was trimming the plank wanted to split along the grain, you can see some areas where the sheer plank dips below the deck a little which was caused by this split.  Even being aware of the grain, I still had a few areas that dipped below the deck.

Started to sand the hull as you can see the results of my initial rough sanding below.  I would like to sand the hull smoother before resorting to using putty, but concerned of making the planks to thin.  I will have to use putty to fill in at the bow and stern, see below.  I’m going to rough sand some more and will upload pic’s before I start to putty the gaps and depressions.

Planking
Life requirements got in the way of enjoyment of building models this past month, but I’m back to work on the planks.  Planking this model continues the learning challenge, but I am gaining more knowledge that I can apply to future builds.
 
Planking at the Bow end; the challenge with garboard plank at the bow was getting the bend in it and fitting it in the rabbet.  To get the bend, I soaked the plank in hot water then clamped it down on the frames and let it dry.  After the plank was dry, I dry fitted it in the fwd end and then started gluing the garboard from the bow to the aft, 2 or 3 frames at a time, holding the plank in place with clamps like I did when setting the bend.  I ended up with a small gap between the plank and the stem / keel doublers, it appears to be caused by not having enough bevel on the spine for the rabbet.  Thus, the rabbet was more like a grove which was difficult to get a smooth transition in.  
So, take extra time to get the spine bevel smooth for a good transition.
 
The other area that was a challenge was the smooth transition from the stem to frame 2 to frame 3.  As mentioned before frame 3 was not faired enough or frame 2 was faired too much, more than likely both.  ‘druxey’ recommended removing the plank and sanding frame 3 down with sanding sticks, unfortunately by the time I read his post I had already glued a few more planks on.  However, I noticed that the depression lessened as I progressed and was essentially gone by plank 4.  If needed I’ll fill it in with wood putty since as you can see the gap between the planks and stem will need to be filled.
 
The other key problem was the aft plank transition of planks 3 to 7 between frame 8 and 9.  You can see by the below pictures a number of issues from gaps and depressions. I believe the problem resulted from trying to bend/form the planks at that curve and fitting flush on the stern post doublers and reinforcing piece ‘D’ on each side of the aft spine.  The dent was probably due to putting to much pressure on that spot as I was forming and then gluing the planks.  I tried rewetting the planks to get them to relax but that only helped a little.  I really did not notice the degree of depression until I was gluing plank 8, thus I did not want to remove all the planks and start over, so I’m going to wait until I am done planking and sanding to see if I need to fill in the depression.



The lesson learned is to take more time forming the planks until they fit better without a lot of forcing prior to gluing them in place.
 

Gluing the deck halves was a real challenge trying not to have a big gap between halves but still have the outside deck edge out to the edge of the frames.  I decided to glue the middle area first then work to the bow and stern, this way I could try and get some bend in the deck halves where it was a little narrower.  I did have to wet the deck to glue the middle section, but did when I moved to the bow and stern.



 
The deck did not overlap the transom as much as the instruction’s pictures indicate, so I think I’m going to sand the transom vertically to the deck.  I did think about filling the edge with wood putty but I think sanding vertically will work and look better.

 
Lessons Learned; I thought I had glued the frames perpendicular to the spine and without tilt, port and starboard, but I would even take more time in the future.  Also, take a little more time to fair the top of the frames.  I think both of these would have helped reduce the amount of the frames I’m now having to sand/cut down.

Bulkhead Frames
The only problem with gluing the reinforcing pieces was the ‘B’ piece on the starboard side interfered with the hook of the brass rod at the center board which prevented the full operation of raising and lowering the center board.  So I had to cut out a 1/16 inch notch in the ‘B’ reinforcing piece.
It took some time and looking at all the pictures in the instructions to identify the bulkhead frames.  The etched numbers were missing on some of the bulkheads.

If the instructions included a scale diagram of the model frame like many other models, it would solve a lot of wasted time figuring out how parts go together.  I had the same issue with the Norwegian Sailing Pram.
 
Bulkhead Frame #4 problem; as you can see in the below picture, the notch pre-cut into Frame #4 was not deep enough to go over the ‘B’ reinforcing piece.  I had to deepen the notch by 3/16 inch, I used a jeweler saw and knife for this.  As I was dry fitting frame #4, the top of the frame prevented the center board from coming completely up, not sure this is a problem once the keel pieces are glue on the model.

The next problem I noted when dry fitting bulkhead frames #3 and 5, is the bottom cutout is wider than the spines.  The 3 parts of the spine are 1/8 inch thick when glued together, however the cutout in the frames is 3/16 inch wide so the frames don’t touch the spine in this area.  I looked at all the pictures in the instructions and it looks like the frames are supposed to touch the spine in this area.  Since there is no clear picture of these frames, I don’t know if there really is a problem.  I’m concerned that the bottom of the frames will float until the planks are installed.

Again, a to scale schematic of the model would answer this question.  I sent Model Expo a question on the fit, will wait to see what they say. 
 

I tried to bend the brass bar without annealing it first, did not work at all well, so I went and bought a micro-torch.  Heated the brass bar up on an old ceramic tile which worked very well to insulate and prevent damage to anything else.
The bar now bends well.  I am finding out that my small needle nose pliers do not have small enough tips for this small kind of work.  My initial effort to make the eye resulted in to small of an eyelet to insert a tooth pick as a handle, so I had to pry it open and make it bigger.  Finding out that you should only heat up the amount of rod that you will need to work with.  As I was making the eyelet, I kept bending the rest of the bar.

As I test fitted the brass arm with the center board and then the spine, I noticed that there was a major interference with the slot that the brass arm was to travel in.  I chose to cut it open more with a knife to hopefully prevent breaking the thin spine.  No luck, broke two parts off on the Port side spine and one part on the Starboard spine, glued them back on and waited.  I tried the fit again and found out that I needed to remove more wood, ended opening up the slot by about a good 1/8 inch.

Now that I did that, I noticed that the end of the brass rod that fits in the little hole of the center board needed a little more hook than being a straight elbow.  Was afraid to try and bend it while it was in the center board due to the thinness of the center board wood.  So, I removed it from the board and bent just a little more hook in the rod end, and very very carefully inserted it back into the board.

Note that I painted the center board prior to gluing the spines together, I couldn’t see how I could get a good paint job on the board while it was assembled.  I think this was a good idea.
Glued the Port spine on the other spines and trapping the center board.  Seems like my wood glue was a little two watery since the port spine started to curl.  It was a challenge to get the spine correctly placed before the glue was too tacky.  Broke off another two pieces during this process.

CAUTION: the port and starboard spines a very thin and easily break.
 

As I was finishing up the MS 18th Century Longboat, I noticed that the “third in a series of progressive model tutorials” by David Antscherl became available.  My first build was the MS ‘Lowell Grand Banks Dory’ and it was a great learning experience. Then I built the MS ‘Norwegian Sailing Pram’ which was the second model in the series, it to was a great learning tool.  So now I’m going to try the Muscongus Bay Lobster Smack based on a positive experience with the first two of the tutorial series.

I inventoried the contents of the box and all of the parts appear to be there, except that the two ‘Cabin Bulkhead side guides’ were missing from the sheet.  It looks like they might have fell during processing the kit and bagging the laser cut sheets.  I think I will be able to make the parts from the left over stock since they are simple.  Also, sheet 8 was labeled sheet 7.

Spine & Centerboard
Instructions Step 1 says to start with the Starboard Spine piece and the three center spine pieces.  It calls out sheet 1, 2, 3 but sheet 2 has the Port Spine piece which confused me for a few minutes since I wasn’t sure if I should use the Port or Starboard spine piece.  Looking at both the Port and Starboard (sheet 5 not 2) spine pieces and the picture on page 4, I confirmed that I should use the Starboard spine piece on sheet 5, this way the laser markings for the future bulkhead pieces was on the outside of the spine.

The red sheet call out for Step 1 of the instructions should reference Sheets 1, 3, 5.
The starboard spine and center spine pieces glued up nicely, I did use clamps to hold them together while the glue set instead of a weight as the instructions suggests.

Hello, I temporarily removed the hull from the yard to start leveling the coasts.

Very nice. Tricky thing, but buoys will be buoys.
 
Tony

Today I finished all the counter-frames and glued them in place. The jig had to be modified for the frames to match the plan,
 

 
Now all frames are separated by equal space (about 8 mm) like shown on the plan. Just some final sanding before the inner planking will be started.
 

 
Next weekend I will start to glue all frames onto the keel starting with the stern frames .. 
 
Stay tuned and save.
 
Andreas
 
 

As the jig was temporarily deconstructed I was able to take a sneak peek on the side ...


 

 

 

 

Thank you for all the likes. Frame no. 40 required a little surgery. The plan shows the frame on top of the lower transom ..
 

 
but the middle transom has no cutouts for the frame.
 

 
So I again had to deconstruct the jig and sanded just a little off the middle transom.
 

 
At last the frame needed some tapering. Test-fit passed 🤗.


 
Now I have to repeat that on the port side. 😰 
 

The keelson is build up from 4 segments. The slots have to be cleaned and checked first before installation, so that the frames will fit into them later.
 

 
Test-fit on the plan..
 

 
... and on the frames. Still nothing is glued yet.
 

 
I will make some final adjustments next weekend. Stay tuned and save.
 
Andreas