Bedford

More plumbing done, I am getting better at bending the pipes without needing to cut and adjust, the joint in this run is to make the distance, the pipes are only 30cm long.

First a pic of the flared tube fresh off the lathe. These are for the joined ropes from two or three masts to easily pull into the final tube back to the servo. More plumbing done, that's tacking of the courses and raising of the gafs taken care of. I have found that epoxy putty is excellent for fitting the tubes in place, easy and it allows time to adjust the position properly while getting a good hold on it fairly quickly.

There is an old electricians trick for getting a draw string through a long conduit run, it's called a vacuum cleaner. I will look into making some type of adapter to fit my cordless vac to the tubes by way of a clear pvc tube so I can draw the lines through.

27.5 degrees, that's about 1.5 too hot to be comfortable for me, you can keep it ! Back to ship building. The epoxy has set, the control room is re-fitted and I have done more "plumbing" I hope the pics make sense. This shows two tubes running to the winch drum, just held together with wire for now. I was going to solder them together but I am worried about the heat so I think I will use epoxy and epoxy putty to secure it all. In the following pics you can make out the two tubes from the fore and main masts coming together and aiming towards the stern. There is another tube with a flared end facing forward towards the other two. The idea being that a line off each boom will join to a single line that runs back to the winch drum. The gap between the tubes that allows for joining of the lines is located in the area of a large cargo hatch to allow repeat access should it be required. Nothing is permanently aligned yet. I flared the receiving tube to allow the join in the ropes to pass into the tube easily, I did this in the lathe. Anneal the tube then mount it in the chuck, place a centre drill in the tail stock and run the lathe in reverse while easing the centre drill into the tube. The cutting edge of the drill does not bite into the brass because the lathe is going backwards so the angled step on the drill acts as a gentle flaring tool.

Go on, you know you want to......................what is the weather like in Seattle. Please convert to metric or I won't even bother reading it. If you are going to gloat, you do the work

Well wouldn't that rot your socks! When I was using epoxy in summer the stuff was going off as quickly as I could mix it and now in winter it doesn't want to go off at all! I realised that I had better pull out the control room and epoxy it for waterproofing. I did that this morning and because it is a balmy 9-10 degrees C here I left my front and back doors open to freshen up the house. After about 3 hours the epoxy was still quite tacky so I turned the heating on to 16 degrees and went out for a while, came back and still no better. I have had to turn the heat off again because it is just too warm so I will see if it goes off over night. The upshot of all this is that I can do no more control fitting until the epoxy is set and the control room re-fitted.

Michael, in this one instance, yes. I need to remember to pull the sail to centre and then let it out during tacking in order to keep tension on it. It will be aided by the fact that the winch drums sit inside the white cups you can see on top of the servos and the tolerances are quite close, less that the thickness of the line, so I am hoping there won't be any dramas with it. The balance of the controls will be a closed loop system so there should be no problems with them. With the possible exception of the stays'ls because they let out much further than they pull in but it won't be using a winch drum so as long as I keep the area of operation foul free I think it should be ok.

I'll join in on the rigging jig, nice idea. This is going to be a beauty, hope the Commodore is impressed !

I've started the "plumbing" in earnest. I tried getting all the bends right so I could run one unbroken pipe but it's not easy to do. I always knew I would probably need to cut and re-join to adjust angles and lengths and as you can see there are two such alteration points in this run. This is the line that will control tacking on the mizzen mast, the fore and main will share one line onto the same winch.

Progress at last! I have worked out how to mount the servos and have done so in the aft deck house. The "box" will be epoxied to the ribs below and it holds the servos. The aft deck will be over half way up the sides of the box. Once it is all done there will be a box lid in the form of the aft deck house that will fit neatly over the control box to close it.

Don't you hate that, you put all that effort into making a beautiful handle for the trolley then realise you overlooked something crucial. I've done that a few times on my build. The deck does look brilliant, love it !

Might I make a suggestion. The cradle on the trolley will easily allow the cutter to float off but when it comes to recovering her you are going to have a struggle locating the keel back in its slot. I would put longitudial v blocks the length of the cradle to help guide the keel home.

I reckon you'll have enough left over for your next project Michael. I wish my schooner had enough draught to just add ballast internally. You'll have her under sail well before my schooner I think.

Yeah, don't know how I stuffed up that calculation, I still guess about 10 Kg extra, maybe more!

Love the colours Michael, she looks bang on. That shot from the waterline is excellent, all it needed was a mooring line to a bouy and you would never know she was a model. Just guessing from my experience with the schooner, your 66lbs translates into roughly 13.3Kg and looking at the waterline I'm thinking about another 8 to 10Kg or 36 to 45Lbs. Given that I am looking at her from the other side of the world I will, of course, stand correction. I have just shown your build log to my 23 year old son and he is every bit as amazed and impressed as I am at your building skills. Steve

All I can say is that when I openned the first pic, the dark hull, it had a presence and a wow factor, the second pic with the white hull just didn't. Then again I am of the old school, she would have been dark when she was young so that is the way I would have her.

I'm thinking the dark hulls look great.

She looks like she is just waiting for the tide to come in and float her off. Great pics

Two things I take from that are that you have a MUCH easier rig to unship than I do and my schooner could almost be a tender to your cutter! That is a great pic, it really shows the size and her lines very well. She is beautiful !

Michael, the beads are not sperical, they are more cylindrical so that can't happen. Wouldn't be a bad idea though. Bob, I think a lot of people who build these models are terrified of breaking them so they don't tension the rigging enough, especially the standing rigging. When you think about it though all that rigging is designed to strengthen and support the masting and even in a model it does just that so my rigging is tensioned quite well on all my ships, I do tension it gradually and evenly so as not to over tighten one side which could lead to breakage. I did read once that you should soak all the rigging cord and hang it out to dry under tension to take all the stretch out of it but I didn't do it with the first ship, built in 1997, and it is still nice and tight. I did it with the second model but don't think it made any difference so I haven't done it since. I have more to do in the garage, ie make the aft deck house to mount the servos in, but again it is way too cold, snow is looming and they are experiencing what they are referring to as a megablizzard in the snowfields not that far south of here.

The weather was kind this weekend so I got the work done in the garage. I had to make them in two halves so I can fit them around the masts and glue them in place without having to unship the shrouds etc and lift the masts out, I have to do that later. I made the two halves for each station and drilled the holes for the masts at 86degrees and the holes for the sail controls vertically. The biggest drill bit I have is 12mm and I needed 14mm for clearance in the hole so after goning to the hardware store and seeing that they were over $70 I decided to give that a miss and find another way. Eventually the penny dropped, LATHE. I turned some bar down to 14mm and then a smaller shank to go into the drill chuck and because I already had 12mm holes I tapered the cutting end down so the bit would self centre in the hole. Then I just cut two grooves into the stock to form the cutting edges of the flukes and filed the excess away ahead of the flukes to provide a cutting edge. Set the drill bed back to 86degrees and bore out the holes to 14mm. easy. Bracket made In place around the mast with the pipe for the cord to run through back to the servo I was concerned about having a smooth fair leed for the line to run out and in this case it will run through a sweeping arc from side to side each time she tacks so I can't run the cord over a cut brass edge. Luckily I have glass beeds that fit very nicely in the end of the larger tube size I bought to use to make couplings for the control plumbing. I will cut the larger diameter piece into 15mm lengths and glue a glass beed into the end, this will then just slip snuggly over the smaller tube that protudes from the deck. The beauty of this is that I can remove it and attach a vacuum cleaner over the control tube to draw replacement lines through without it getting caught on a restrictive fair leed placed inside the control tube.

While Michael talks about it being warm enough to get stuck in and paint the cutter, Floyd you'll love this, the next thing I have to do is make the upper guides for the masts (immediately below the deck) this involves spending a few hours in the garage and even though winter has just started it is just too flamin' cold to go out there and do it. Hopefully a warmer weekend will grace us in the not too distant future.

Beautiful work John, I must get down to the Museum and see it for myself one of these days

Geez Robbyn, you should write a book on excuses !! Seriously, good to have you back and I hope all works out for you. Steve

OK then Bob, I'll do them. Get your passport in order, I will give you one weeks notice to get here for the launch !!