frankr

Good morning. I just received my Charles W Morgan from Model Shipways a few days ago. Beautiful work on your model by the way, really first class. I have a question. The instructions in my kit says to make the tryworks walls from wood sheeting and then paint the bricks on the surface. I don't think this would look very realistic. You constructed your tryworks of individual 'bricks', which looks amazingly realistic. Did your kit include the individual bricks or did you make them from wood strips. Regards

Hello all. I am currently building Syren and am at the point of constructing the capstan. Looking ahead, I am confused about the longboat being carried on deck. I'm thinking that a 25' long wooden boat must have weighed over 1000 lbs. How was this boat lifted over the bulkwarks to be launched and even more difficult, how was it retrieved from the water and repositioned on deck. There doesn't appear to be any equipment on the ship to accomplish this. Regards Frank

Hi, I have been wooden ship modelling on and off for about 40 yrs. Also have been building RC model airplanes for about 15 yrs. The planes are built almost exclusively with medium viscosity CA glue, except for areas that require very high strength, such as engine mounting firewalls and wing main spars where I use 30 min epoxy. I have read some posts that suggest CA glues can crystalize with age, but I still fly model planes that I built 12 or 13 yrs ago with no failures. Keep in mind that model aircraft with internal combustion engines experience significant vibration. For ship modelling I have used a white glue called Weldbond and medium CA glue. I like Weldbond for the following reasons - it dries to a crystal clear finish - it is extremely strong ( perhaps doesn't have the brute strength of epoxy but comes close) - doesn't dry to a hard brittle finish like carpenters glue, but retains some flexibility. Sort of similar to one of those plastic/nylon kitchen cutting boards. - due to this somewhat flexible dried condition it functions very well as a gap filler. Carpenters glue requires the joined pieces to mate almost perfectly or the joint strength is severely compromised. My process for hull planking is to coat the plank edge with Weldbond, place a small drop of medium CA glue on each bulkhead and manually hold the plank against the bulkheads and the installed plank above for about 10 seconds until the CA cures. I don't need to use pins, nails or clamps and the planking process proceeds much faster since after the CA has cured (about 10 seconds) I am ready to install the next plank. I have used this method on my last two ships (previous models used the pin technique) and have had no issues.

Hello, I am also building the Benjamin Latham. I have fi ished the hull and am starting on the spars. I can't figure out the purpose of the main and core boom tackles, which are numbers 16 and 22 on the rigging plan. Also, I can't see where they belay to. Any advice would be appreciated. Regards