Pete38

Very good topic to have in one place. Thanks for starting
 
I buy the plactic cups (found at my grocery store) that are use for condiments. Works great to put glue in for easy acess and seal with a lid to prevent drying out.  A package of 100 cost aroun $1.50 US.
 

You guys are starting to embarrass me.  But if you want to give credit where credit is really due you should be talking about my wife Donna who is actually the owner of the company. 
 
 For those of you that don't know we started Model Machines about 10 years ago on a part time basis.  Just the two of us,  no other employees to worry about. At that time we were both working another full time job at a design and manufacturing firm in Orlando that I was part owner of.  I was head of the machine shop with 3 other partners and Donna was hired as the controller.  The company was in bad shape finantially when we hired Donna and in a year or so she brought the company back from the edge and made it a profitable business again.  Donna has a 4 year business degree from the University of Indiana and there isn't a lot she doesn't know about the business world.  What she doesn't know she makes it her business to find out.  When we started Model Machines she did all the research to get the company up and running and also thought up the name of the company.  She does all the taxes,  pays all the bills,  does all the paper work and keeps everything running smoothly.   I design all the machines and make all the parts,  do the assembly and ship them out. 
 
When you call us with a problem or an order more than likely you talked to her and 99% of the time she can take care of your needs whether it's replacement parts,  lost screws, diagnosing an electrical problem, delivery times or just how things work.  She is on the ball and has you covered.  She is the one who emails you when your stuff ships,  calls you when your address has changed and generally makes sure you get what you need when you need it.  If it was my job to do all that no doubt we would be out of business a long time ago.    She is the boss.  
 
And to this day it remains,  just the two of us.
 
regards
Jim Byrnes
Model Machines

So, you are new to wooden ship building and are wondering where to start to learn the terminology, methodology and all that sort of stuff.  Don’t feel bad – it is intimidating at times and can seem like a foreign language!
 
Figuring out where to start to try and understand the ins and outs is a challenge.  There are, to be sure, many exceptional books that describe the process of building a model.  Some, more than others, relate the process back to the days of old when a shipwright worked as much from intuition and experience as from formal plans and blueprints.  To understand how the shipwrights of old built a wooden ship is an interesting (and sometimes confusing) journey.  The brief list of references provided below are not intended to cover the total breadth of shipbuilding, but rather to allow you to sample the flavors and textures over a period of about 120 years.  There are, to be sure, older references, and there are newer ones, but these will place you in the heart of the most heavily modeled time periods.
 
The following list of downloadable resources is far from complete – in fact, it is only a beginning.  There are so many more!  It is also, and for this I apologize up front, nearly exclusively in the English language.  You see, I don’t read nor speak anything other than English and some teenagerisms (and a smattering of baby talk), so I really couldn’t say whether a French or Dutch document was describing building a boat or baking a cake, so to avoid leading you too far astray I have steered away from those resources.  I do have a few which, if you speak the language, I will gladly share.
 
So – in no particular order, and for your reading pleasure, here is what I would consider to be the Introduction to Shipbuilding 101 list of readings (all are no longer protected by copyright).
 
David Steel - The shipwright's vade-mecum (1805)
http://archive.org/details/shipwrightsvade00steegoog
 
John Fincham - An introductory outline of the practice of ship-building (1825)
http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009723747
 
John W. Griffiths - Treatise on marine and naval architecture; or, Theory and practice blended in ship building (1854)
http://archive.org/details/treatiseonmarin00grifgoog
 
----- The ship-builder's manual: and nautical referee (1856)
http://books.google.com/books?id=el9JAAAAYAAJ
 
------ The Progressive Ship Builder, Volume 1 (1875)
http://books.google.com/books?id=IoJIAAAAYAAJ
 
------ The progressive ship builder, Volume 2 (1876)
http://books.google.com/books?id=CIJIAAAAYAAJ
 
Richard Montgomery Van Gaasbeek - A practical course in wooden boat and ship building (1919)
http://books.google.com/books?id=MvsOAAAAYAAJ
 
Charles G. Davis - The building of a wooden ship (1918)
http://books.google.com/books?id=Zu4OAAAAYAAJ
 

I have just received the Delta 20" scrollsaw with stand and light and am very pleased with it.
Easy to change the blade (no tools needed) and very little vibration when using it.  If you have the room I would recommend this scrollsaw.
 

 

 

 
 

Very interesting. Love the way you are doing step by step with pictures (help to understand)
 
Will follow with great interest.

I've been busy in the garage making sawdust with my home-built mini thickness sander. I had a setback when the sanding drum broke on me and I had to make another one. You always build a better one the second time around. As I mentioned before the wood is from an old recliner rocker that I ripped to size and then put through my thickness sander.
 
Thickness Sander
 

 
 
Once I got the wood to the right thickness, I put masking tape on each piece.
 
 
 
I then cut out all of the frames template pieces and then ran some paper glue on top of the masking tape and laid out all of the frame template pieces on each board. 
 
This is the glue that I used. I used masking tape on top of the wood so that after I cut the frame parts out with the jigsaw and sand them to the proper shape, I will be able to just peel the masking paper off and leave clean bare wood. No scraping glue off of the wood I hope.
 

 
Here is a picture of all the frames template pieces laid out and glued onto each board ready to be cut.
 

 
Closeup of same.
 

 
Well that's all for now. Next step will be to cut all of the pieces out and do some sanding and then make the frames. I will post as I go along.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Not alot to report, haven't had much time to work on my build.
 
Still glueing up frames (this takes a while)

 
2 frames glued and ready to finish
 

 
While the glue is drying, decide to pull some treenails for the frames.  Being at 1:32 scale decide to go with 1" treenail.  (.0312)  This will be big enough to see, but not to big as to look out of place. 
 
I don't have a good grip in my hands so I can't pull them with my hands. I use a small needle nose plier and a small vise.  Pictures explain better than I can.
 

 

 

 
 
And here are the Finised Treenails. This will give me a start on them.
 

 

 
 
 

This was a topic started by UweK in the original MSW Triton. This may be some help to some.
 
Assembling Frames.pdf

Very good topic to have in one place. Thanks for starting
 
I buy the plactic cups (found at my grocery store) that are use for condiments. Works great to put glue in for easy acess and seal with a lid to prevent drying out.  A package of 100 cost aroun $1.50 US.
 

Part 1: Importing, Scaling, Levelling and Positioning Plans
 
Since there seems to be some interest in 3D modelling, I'm going to try and include as much detail, including pictures, as I can.
 
The first step in any build, be it wood, digital, scale, or full-size, is preparing the plans.  Scans of the sheer plan and outboard profile were combined in PicsBuilder Studio, a basic (and free) image editing program.  This creates a single plan with most of the details not seen on the sheer plan but that will be needed to construct the hull (wales, gunports, channels, etc).  Because Sketchup will reduce large images to 3000x3000 pixels, I divided the combined plans image into two halves (approx 2800x2800 pixels each) and imported them separately into Sketchup.
 
Anatomy of the Ship: Pandora includes the body and lines plans on the same pages as the sheer plan. If this was not the case, they would have to be imported separately using the same method.
 
Once in Sketchup, I scaled the plans to full size using the longest available dimension for greatest accuracy.  Before and after pictures for this are shown below (the marked length should be 120')


 
Next, the plans were rotated so that the sheer plan was horizontal. This rotation also made the body plan vertical, but the lines plan was now off by a few degrees.  This will be corrected soon.
 
By "Exploding" the imported images, I drew in lines to separate the individual plans (in Sketchup, lines define the edges of surfaces.  By placing one or more lines on a surface and connecting two edges, the surface is split into separate parts).  At this point, I rotated the lines plan to make the centreline parallel to the sheer plan.  It doesn't matter that the station lines on this plan are not at 90 degrees to the centreline, because I won't be using them.
 
Finally, I used the centreline and fore perpendicular as guides to move the body plan and sheer plan into position as shown below and drew in the load waterline and perpendiculars.

I'm quickly learning there are many “tricks of the trade” on the use of glue in model ship building. I thought it would be useful to have one area in the forum that details some of the more common methods and tools associated with gluing parts together, as well as proper selection, application, surface preparation, cleanup and debonding. Lessons learned is also a good topic to share, I could could write a book... 
 
This subject is discussed in numerous areas of the forum, but if you would like to contribute in an effort to consolidate the knowledge, please join in. Newbies such as myself would appreciate learning from you.
 
I was not sure where the best place was to post this subject (it's addressed under numerous subjects), so please move it if there is a better location.

Not alot to report, haven't had much time to work on my build.
 
Still glueing up frames (this takes a while)

 
2 frames glued and ready to finish
 

 
While the glue is drying, decide to pull some treenails for the frames.  Being at 1:32 scale decide to go with 1" treenail.  (.0312)  This will be big enough to see, but not to big as to look out of place. 
 
I don't have a good grip in my hands so I can't pull them with my hands. I use a small needle nose plier and a small vise.  Pictures explain better than I can.
 

 

 

 
 
And here are the Finised Treenails. This will give me a start on them.
 

 

 
 
 

Very interesting. Love the way you are doing step by step with pictures (help to understand)
 
Will follow with great interest.

This was a topic started by UweK in the original MSW Triton. This may be some help to some.
 
Assembling Frames.pdf

Thanks for moving them Mark, I had tried to PM you with the attached files but could not get the files to load in a pm. Moderators on this site for the online builds are doing a great job. Thanks for all the hard work.

Okay....Okay.....Okay
I'll take some of the blame (I'm used to it)
As far as thinking outside of the box, i'm not....it's just the box that I am in is so big I get lost alot...
"Build it Bigger" Yep.....Eyes are starting to fade quicker than I want....
 
Seriously, at 1:24 this will be a very interesting build to watch
 
 
PS...
Since this will be so big....we expect alot more detail to go into it....Ha!

Okay....Okay.....Okay
I'll take some of the blame (I'm used to it)
As far as thinking outside of the box, i'm not....it's just the box that I am in is so big I get lost alot...
"Build it Bigger" Yep.....Eyes are starting to fade quicker than I want....
 
Seriously, at 1:24 this will be a very interesting build to watch
 
 
PS...
Since this will be so big....we expect alot more detail to go into it....Ha!

While looking through some flash drives that I had at work, I found 1 page saved from an original forum on the old MSW about treenail. This reply is credited to Russ. I hope it is okay to post it here in my log, if not let me know and I'll remove it or the moderators can. THIS IS FOR GENERAL USE ONLY AND NOT A HARD AND FAST RULE.
 
"Okay, here is a rough set of dimensions to use for various parts of the model in the three scales.
 
1/48 scale Frames, no 61 bit (.039", 1mm), hull planking, no 76 bit (.020" .5mm), deck beams, knees, bitts, etc, no 68 bit (.031" .8mm), and for securing the frames and the keelson, a no 52 bit (.0625" 1.5mm) will do fine.
 
1/64 scale Frames, no 69 bit (.029" .75mm), hull planking, no 79 bit (.015" .4mm), deck beams, knees, bitts, etc, no 73 bit (.024" .6mm), and for securing the frames and keelson use the same 1/16" diameter bit as used in 1/48 scale. It will work fine.
 
1/96 scale Frames, no 76 bit (.020" .5mm), hull planking, no 80 bit (.0135" .4mm) deck beams, knees, bitts etc, no 76 bit (.020" .5mm) and for securing the frames and keelson, no 61 bit (.039" 1mm)
 
Please, please, please keep in mind these are very rough and very general dimensions. This is a guide, not a set of hard and fast rules. So long as you are close, there should be no big problems. If you do not want to treenail your planking in 1/96 scale, that's fine, but if you do, you might want to use something a bit larger than no 80. Its the builder's choice."

Here is former Chad86 timberlist for the cross sections
I could only load a pdf if anyone wants the excell format pm me with you email
Timber list cross section.pdf

Here is former Chad86 timberlist for the cross sections
I could only load a pdf if anyone wants the excell format pm me with you email
Timber list cross section.pdf