Bedford

Thank you all for your likes and replies and taking the time to visit.
 
@Jim Lad Jim it really makes a big difference, having the extra real estate around the saw but figuring out how to make the bench was a pain!
@Bedford I could and should have used 0.8 ply but I had already finished the CAD design, it would need more frames and most importantly true 0.8 mm seems to have disappeared - most of it apparently comes from Russia. Good to know though that Scissors can cut it cleanly - never thought of it. Def one to remember.
 
Now, lets talk Planking!
 
I cut both garboards and steamed them in place. I ve never steamed pear wood but it responded superbly. I used my steam box to heat the planks - worked really well.

 
 
 
I then scarfed the ends and secured in place with screws, The ends however had to be glued as the hull is not thick enough. Due to uneven surfaces I used epoxy - very messy solution but I do not think there is another. I think they came out alright!


I really like planking. For this boat, I did not really spend much time planning, I just eyeballed it a bit. I have only marked half of the hull but I feel pretty
confident. So let me share my method of spilling planks.
 
First I use 1mm (or 1.5 I am not sure) cardboard to make a pattern. I am only interested in the side of the plank that meets the plank already installed.
 
The foreword part of the plank has a lot of twist along its axis.

To get the correct shape of the edge, cut a strip of cardboard roughly the correct shape and run dividers along the edge of the plank already installed. 

Then cut along the line with a knife


Fitting the pattern, it is a bit off - mark the high spots

Lightly sand the high spots, fit again, sand again etc. Now it fits fine

Connect with the previous plank using cardboard and glue and move on to next segment.

For the aft segment, the process is repeated - it just happened my rough cut pattern was spot on here!




The plank is now completed - the upper edge that is



Usually, I would just cut the plank as a single very long one but I would like to reduce wastage of wood.
So now lets cut the individual segments. First we transfer the shape of the upper edge to wood, making sure we mark the positions of the frames.
 


Then we measure the distances from edge of previous plank to line on frame and transfer over to wood


Using a baten, we connect the marks making sure the line is fair

Our plank segment is ready

Next cut the plank, test fit, mark and sand any high spots, fit again etc. Later on we will need to also take into account bevels and also curvature of frames - either sand concave the inner surface of planks or sand flat the frames.


Same process for middle and aft segments


All segments are ready, just the scarfs are needed.

The plank on the other side needs to be again cut individually as it is a close but not exact fit.
 
On a different boat I would have spent more time arranging the run of the planks but for Hercules, I think this will work well - the plank shape so far does not seem horrible. 
 
I hope this was interesting!
 
Till next time
 
Vaddoc

This might be useless info in this case since you don't want to buy new stock but something to keep in mind. When I made the 1:8 scale Tammie Norrie I used 0.8mm birch ply for the strakes. You can cut it with a decent pair of scissors and get perfect edges.
That model suffered a warped backbone too but it's the fix that matters.

Phil, I thought to myself a few times, "Don't worry about it - no-one will ever know." But then I kept telling myself that I'd Know!!
 
John

Another beautiful Ranger there Mark, she's coming together very nicely, but then I've seen your other one so no surprises there!

Another beautiful Ranger there Mark, she's coming together very nicely, but then I've seen your other one so no surprises there!

I haven't posted for a while, but I'm back working on the model. The sailing trip in Tassie is posted in another part of this forum, linked below if you're interested.
 
Back to the model, I've been working on the cockpit area, starting with the toe rails, just visible on the upper deck forwards of the cockpit. The toe rails were delicate, about 1.5 x 2.5mm & maybe 300mm long. Then the timber strips that visually complete the hull step-down alongside the cockpit. The timber is Blackbutt, from the same floorboard offcut I used for the gunwales & sponsons.

 
Then the small cupped strip aft of the previous photo, to fit in this curve:

 
I had a piece of round acrylic tube about the right diameter:

Then some more sanding:

 
I picked up an error in that strip of side decks, on one side I'd clearly been daydreaming while sanding....so I added on a filler piece of timber, then undercoat, paint etc.:

 
I painted the two-tone deck (or scuppers area) around the cockpit seating. On the yacht it's painted in a more modern style, where there's an edge strip with the deck paint set in, & in different colours. Tamiya have masking tape in 2mm width, which helped get a constant gap, plus some 6mm masking tape to help stop overpainting onto the adjoining finished paint.

Then glueing the timber strips on - as per the previous timber, I really prefer shellac for scale varnish, the thin viscosity helps the finish to look right at scale. Not to say you can't get other finishes to look right at scale, but this works for me & it dries quickly...& I like the way you can matt it with steel wool & gradually buff it back to satin with some cotton rag.
 
Then carefully fitting the little curved pieces...

And one side done.

Then both. Some details fixes will be required to the paint, but I'll do that all in one go later.

The deck will get painted soon, so I started shellacking the cockpit stormboards, made earlier.


 
I'll paint the deck next I think, then start on the weathered teak cockpit seats & other details.
 
Thanks everyone
 

Ah yes, the mindless tedium of ratlines!
She's coming up very nicely John

Thanks, mate. Ratlines on the 'Duchess' are made more interesting by the fact that she has 6 staves across the shrouds before the rope ratlines begin. Lashing them to the shrouds is such fun!
 
John

Ah yes, the mindless tedium of ratlines!
She's coming up very nicely John

Things are progressing. I now have the mizzen staysails rigged and the fore topgallant and royal braces rigged up through their lead blocks ready to attach to their yards. This was necessary as I needed to get the brace whips rigged before I start on the square sails on the mainmast.  I've also started on the fore ratlines. This will be an intermittent job in between the rigging of the mainmast, but at least I've made a start on them.
 
John
 

 

Phil, when soldering is done with silver solder, there is no need to worry about the structure being destroyed. This soldering can withstand the heaviest loads.  

The entire propeller-rudder system is pre-installed on the cruisers hull.
The blades will be twisted and the propellers will be fully polished later, before final installation.

Thanks for the 'likes' !
 
***********************

Fitting the rails
 
The rails are 0.75 mm x 1.50 mm styrene strips on top of the bulwark and a 0.75 mm x 2.00 mm strip over the stern. The edges of the strips are rounded.
 
To this end I cut a scraper from a piece of razor-blade which is held in a short pin-vice. The strip is held in a simple jig made from cardboard. Strips of cardboard were cut with clean and vertical edges and glued to a cardboard-base so that styrene strips of 0.25 mm, 0.50, and 0.75 mm thickness can be wedged into the resulting notch, holding it straight and vertical.
 
In this way a clean and uniform profile of the styrene strip can be achieved quickly.
 
The styrene strips then were pre-bend, holding them lightly in round-nosed pliers and by ‘massaging’ them around my thumb to make them conform to the sheer-line as closely as possible. They then were glued onto the stanchions and the top bulwark strake using styrene-cement.
 
As can be seen from the cross-section shown in the previous post, the profile of the rail may be even more sophisticated with some cornice planed in. I simulated this my lacquering a 0.1 mm copper wire into the outboard corner under the rail.
 
The next step will be puttying up any small gaps that have developed during the planking process.
 
As one can see on the pictures, I also started to work on the deck by making a paper template for it.
 
To be continued …  

A big day (for me, at least) at the museum on Friday. That was the day that I finally finished fitting all the rope coils at the foremast and could get the well deck boats fitted along with the well deck gangway.  It was a bit of a struggle to get it all in around the running rigging, but it finally fitted beautifully!
 
John
 

I don't consider it hijacked, Pat!
 
It's really sad that Victoria, with its rich maritime heritage, has to rely on privately run museums to conserve and display that heritage.
 
By the way, we have a 'Couta boat on display in the floating collection at the ANMM - couldn't get much more Victorian than that!
 
John

Very nice work John, she is coming along very well, and I should add congratulations on getting her to the standard the Museum has accepted it. 
 
As to ownership/part of collection, I have come across this conundrum down here in Melbourne also.  Large donations of models from other organisations/authorities are passed along, but not actually part of the new owners actual collection.  Usually they only act as their custodian - we have an area (tunnels really) where there a load of models collecting dust that have not even been listed/identified yet alone curated. Victoria still remains the only State in Australia without an official 'Maritime Museum' - sorry I'll get off my soap box now - sorry to hijack your thread John.
 
cheers
 
Pat

Thanks to all for your continued encouragement ! Slow progress due to business travel-related absence from the workshop ...
 
*************

Planking the bulwarks
 
The planking of the bulwarks follows the same procedure as that for the hull, but had to be handled much more careful, as the inside will be visible and there will by no adjustments possible by sanding or scraping. The main reason for the latter is, that the planks are of scale thickness (0.25 mm) and profiled.

Section through a bulwark drawn by Friis-Pedersen (1980).
 
As can be seen from the two images above and below, it was not uncommon to give the edges of the planks a decorative profile by using an appropriate profile plane.

Bulwark of a Swedish jagt, photographed in November 2023 in Stockholm
 
I had been exploring various ideas for creating these profiles on tiny 1 mm x 0.25 mm styrene ‘planks’ uniformly and consistently close to the edges. In the end I decided on a simple and rather makeshift solution: a steel ruler was taped to a small cutting-mat to serve as guide for the very flexible strips. The chosen tool is an old-style ruling pen, of which I have several knocking about in my drawer of draughting utensils. This was set so that it creates a groove close to the opposite edge, when run along the edge of the strip. This works only for strips of uniform width.
  
It was important to prevent the styrene strips from softening too much during gluing, therefore only tiny drops of liquid styrene cement were applied to each stanchion. 
 
Somehow the alignment of the bulkheads was not as perfect as I was hoping for, resulting in some bulges. I hope I will be able to correct/hide this somehow.
 
Another problem is that the styrene strips of scale thickness are rather floppy, so that edge-alignment is rather difficult. I hope that I can also sort this out.
 
Once the planks were on, I installed the hawse-timbers between the stem and the cant-frames in the bow.

Next on will be the rails.
 
To be continued …  

A big day for the 'Duchess' yesterday. As you can see from the images, she now has all six yards crossed on the foremast. still some rigging to complete on the royal, but at least its there!
 
The other big news is that our Senior Curator confirmed to me yesterday that the model has now been accepted into the museum's collection in spite of still being far from completion. This is really big news, as normally only completed models are ever accepted.
 
John
 

General view of the cruisers hull with side keels.

Screw steering device, but without screws.

Brazing of propeller shaft brackets.

Another update at last. After being away for a couple of weeks and a couple of extremely busy visitor days at the museum, I've finally been able to get a little ore done. Now we have five yards crossed on the foremast - one more to go once I rig the upper topgallant. I've included an image looking along the well deck which shows a little of the scramble of unsecured rigging at this stage.
 
John
 

 

I think a lot of us have been brought undone by the water content of PVA, I know I have, had to pull the bottom off my mahogany runabout model and redo from scratch!
These things keep our minds active, figuring out solutions is an important skill.

I think a lot of us have been brought undone by the water content of PVA, I know I have, had to pull the bottom off my mahogany runabout model and redo from scratch!
These things keep our minds active, figuring out solutions is an important skill.

I think a lot of us have been brought undone by the water content of PVA, I know I have, had to pull the bottom off my mahogany runabout model and redo from scratch!
These things keep our minds active, figuring out solutions is an important skill.