Bob Cleek

Priming filled surfaces is always recommended unless one is using a "filler stain" or sanding base coat that is specifically formulated to be used beneath a specific finish coating. (Some manufacturers will produce a compatible "system" for filling and finishing.) I always apply sealer (shellac,) to sanded bare wood. Shellac seals the wood well from moisture and inhibits movement with humidity changes. Only then do I apply sanding under coat and/or surfacing putty, then sand and tack, and, if any fillers have been used in addition to the sanding base coat, again apply a coat of sanding base coat, sand, and tack, and only then apply my build up of finish coats. Gloss paint has little or no application in modeling. (It's not to scale.) Generally, an "eggshell," "satin," or flat finish is desired, so applying a base coat over anything like undercoat or surfacing putty (AKA "fairing compound") isn't as critical in modeling as when applying a high gloss finish to something like a yacht's topsides, but that said, the "fillers" are all basically chalk dust added to a carrier to produce varying consistencies between "cream" and "peanut butter," and that chalk will soak up the finish coats differently than the surrounding primer coating when it's all sanded, depending on the micro-textures of the differing products. That difference will often be glaringly revealed once the finish coats are applied, on a gloss finish particularly, by "dull" spots wherever there has been un-primed filler remaining after sanding fair. Painting over the filler ("priming it") with sanding undercoat and lightly sanding fair and tacking before applying the finish coats ensures the final finish, be it gloss (especially) or satin or flat (less so,) will be uniform. This is more of a problem with gloss finish coats, which can end up with dull spots wherever un-primed filler material is present. If one is finishing wood "bright" (clear,) especially with the fine grained woods usually used in modeling, there shouldn't be any need for "filling" or "fairing" the surface. A sanding of the bare wood down to around 220 or 320 grit should yield a surface which needs no grain filling or fairing before sealing with shellac. The shellacked surface can then be further sanded (lightly, without removing the shellac sealer down to bare wood again) to 400, or rubbed with fine steel wool, and the clear finish coats applied directly over that. As always with all of the synthetic coatings on the market these days, it pays to do a test on a bit of scrap wood to make sure the various coatings and fillers used are compatible. Some incompatibilities produce some pretty horrendous results that are difficult and time consuming to correct.

I would suggest that you seal the bare wood with shellac. Let the shellac soak in as much as possible on the first coat. Additional coats shouldn't be necessary if the initial coat is applied thin enough to soak into the bare wood. The dried shellac can then be sanded easily to a very smooth surface. If you sand through the initial shellac coat to bare wood, apply more shellac to the bare spots. (Or add another coat of shellac to the entire piece.) If your wood has significant defects, (nicks, dings, etc.,) apply a filler coating or putty over the shellac. The filler coating used will depend on the degree of filling that's needed. For minor imperfections, a few coats of "sanding undercoat," paint formulated with chalk added which will sand easily, may be all you need. If there are imperfections that aren't filled by a coat or two of the thick undercoat, a surfacing putty will be required. (Sometimes called "glazing putty," although it should not be confused with putty used on window glass.) After final sanding to a perfectly smooth surface, paint of any type (oil or water based) can be applied directly to the surface. If you are using black or very dark brown paint to represent a tarred hull, you shouldn't require any undercoat or base coat. Once upon a time, "paint was paint" and the compatibility of coatings was not much of an issue. Today, while shellac is a suitable wood sealer that's compatible with most any finish coating, there are many "coating systems" which aren't compatible with coatings of other systems. (Often water-based acrylic paints won't do well applied over oil-based enamels, etc.) You should carefully check the manufacturer's recommendations before applying different brands and types of coatings on top of one another. Running a "test patch" on a piece of scrap wood replicating the entire paint job you envision and using the same paints you intend to use on the model is always advisable. If there is a problem, one need only toss the test piece in the trash and try another approach. One the paint is on the model, if there's a problem (such as a failure to "dry") removing it is often a huge task.

If it's Costello, that makes sense. I was thinking of real Boxwood. No question that you do need to be able to cut billets to size. If you don't have a full-size table saw and/or band saw, you'd probably be out of luck on that score. I suppose one could buy a lot of sheet stock it cut up on a mini-table saw before it would be worth their while to invest in full-size woodworking stationary tools, even if they had the room for them.

Very tasty! One question, who's going to keep all the brass polished on this model... Or are you going to gold electroplate it all like they used to do with the metalwork on the old builders' boardroom models?

Yes, I'm aware of that. It was this that caused my question, actually. "Why would anybody do that?" In a yard building traditional wooden vessels, a guy who the boss caught ripping narrow plank out of the precious, high-priced wide flitches reserved for getting out garboard planks (requiring the widest stock) would have his head handed to him. Boxwood trunks are only 4" to 6" in circumference. That means that a four inch sheet would have to come from select, perfectly clear stock and there'd only be a few 4" planks that could be gotten out of only the largest of the boxwood trees harvested. These planks would likely be very hard to keep from cupping when drying, as well, because they'd have to be slabbed with the center of the trunk being in the middle of the plank, rather than being sawed from heartwood on either side of the center, as is generally done. All things considered, these relatively wide planks would be the most desirable and most rare parts of a large box tree and so the most expensive. It wouldn't seem to make much sense to pay for prime wide stock, only to rip it up for strip wood. It would be much more economical to rip strip wood from narrower planks and billets that weren't anywhere near as dear. It ought to be a lot less expensive to rip strip wood from billets than from prime wide sheets, but perhaps it isn't. I guess I may be confusing Costello "Boxwood" with real Boxwood, though. Costello grows up to two feet in diameter, so 4" wide planks aren't as rare as true Boxwood. While still not cheap, Costello costs less than true Boxwood, I believe, so maybe that answers my question: "With Costello, it really doesn't matter as much as with true Boxwood." Maybe when folks talk about "Boxwood" these days, they are really talking about Costello.

Thanks. I can see that, perhaps. I suppose it may depend upon the scale one's working at. I've never had any problem getting futtocks and floors, and similar parts, out of an inch or two inch wide plank, though. It certainly might make a difference if one were laser-cutting multiple layouts for kit manufacture, however.

I definitely agree with that. What I don't get, aside from laser-cutting by kit manufacturers, is why folks are looking for sheet stock. Sheet stock's milling is hugely wasteful of scarce, prime wide plank pieces, especially when one is only going to cut it up anyway, as compared to cutting the small pieces needed off of billets, or so it would seem to me. What's with the fascination with sheet stock? The original ships were never built with sheet stock. Just wondering, is all.

Port Orford cedar is readily available, but probably a special order item outside of the Pacific Coast. As for model building, I'm sure it's entirely suitable, save for appearance. POC's rings are more pronounced than AYC's and it wouldn't be the best choice if one was intending to finish the model bright. The POC would appear out of scale. Best to go with AYC selected to have very light rings. If the model were to be painted, of course, I don't think there's a lot of difference, really. POC can tend to have a coarser grain than AYC, but a lot depends on particular piece of wood.

Nice jewelry!

Port Orford cedar is closely related to Alaska Yellow cedar. Both species are actually cypresses. POC is also known as Lawson's Cypress. POC is a light brown color which darkens some with age. AYC is, as one might expect, yellow. Their structural characteristics, straight grain, and good decay resistance are roughly comparable.

Given its limited availability and high cost, the fetish for boxwood sheets seems odd to me. I get it that boxwood is great for carving all that small "gingerbread" on period warships that are so popular these days and that select stock is undeniably attractive. I wouldn't dispute the assertion that boxwood is one of the best woods around for modeling, if you're willing to pay the price for it. I also get it that sheets are very convenient for kit manufacturers turning out production runs of little fiddly laser-cut boxwood bits, too. I can understand that in a production environment using very expensive wide plank stock may be justified by the savings in production costs. That said, I'm not sure I understand the demand for boxwood sheets by modelers who aren't manufacturing kits and parts for sale. A 4.5"X 14" sheet of boxwood is, at 1:48 scale, eighteen feet wide and fifty-six feet long. God never made trees that big, (except for the Sequoia Gigantea, whose brittle wood isn't much good for lumber.) Even if the technology existed in the Eighteenth Century to mill a plank that size, the plank would likely warp so much in the drying it'd be next to useless. There isn't anything in a period ship built with wood that size or anything near it. Paying the huge premium for wide stock just to rip strips off of it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I guess others' mileage varies. What am I missing here?

She's coming along nicely under Our Blessed Mother's watchful eyes, Kevin. If I were you, I'd use paper plates of scale thickness applied to the hull unless the plates were all butted and backed, rather than overlapped. I'd wet the paper where it needed to follow any tight bends and glue it with PVA and then give it a coat of shellac, making sure it soaked in well. You shouldn't have an problems with the paper plates coming loose if they are shellac-impregnated. Once the shellac is dry, the surface can be sanded as may be needed and getting a good paint job should be no problem. It will take some experimenting, but you also might consider running a ponce wheel (which you'd have to make yourself to get the right spacing, I expect) over dampened paper laid on a slightly resilient surface. That might produce slight "bumps" that would simulate rivets well. I expect some types of paper would work better than others for this technique, but I have no idea which. The first consideration is how she was plated. There are several styles, e.g. butted edge to edge with backing strips, overlapping belts, bent lapped edges, and so on. That will dictate whether plate seams can be scribed into the hull or overlapping "plates" will have to be applied. See: https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrUi2jUQzlej3kAdFAPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTEycGpnZHQyBGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjg0OTJfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=ship+hull+riveting+patterns&fr=yhs-elm-001&hspart=elm&hsimp=yhs-001#id=35&iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmodelshipworld.com%2Fuploads%2Fmonthly_02_2015%2Fpost-246-0-52774900-1424910653.jpg&action=close ) There are also different styles of riveting. It was not uncommon to see outboard below the waterline rivet heads countersunk to produce a smooth surface to increase speed and fuel efficiency. And, of course, the rivet patterns have to be accurate, as well. That would require some idea of the framing layout. Having the plating plan is a huge help there. I'd offer the observation that, more often than not, rivets are overdone. If they are done, they really have to be to scale or the hull looks like it's got the pox. This thread might be helpful:

I was asking thibaultron, who mentioned he'd replaced his Atlas (Craftsman) with a mini-lathe.

For cutting copper strips, I've found that a standard office paper cutter works fine. The strips curl as they are cut, but taking each end in a pair of pliers and pulling them straightens them out perfectly.

Those are the steam engines, actually. Expanding live steam in these cylinders pushes the pistons which push the drive rods which turn the wheels. They call the whole locomotive a "steam engine," but really, the biggest part of it isn't the engine, but the boiler.

I'll give up my 12" Atlas lathe when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. How do you find the your mini-lathe measures up to the old Atlases you had, aside from the obvious size capacity difference? Is there anything you find the mini-lathe does better than the Atlas? Just wondering.

Lucky you! Your darling has the good sense to know her limitations. My culinary skills, which are not inconsiderable, were experienced by my dearly beloved as an existential challenge to her identity as a "great cook." (This being purely a matter of opinion, mind you, and, knowing the consequences, I've always kept mine to myself.) Over the last quarter century or so, we've negotiated a tenuous truce. The kitchen is "hers" and the workshop is "mine." We still bicker at each other about the messes we respectively leave on each other's turf. I keep my collection of razor-sharp high-carbon steel chef's knives in my shop these days, save for one or two. She banished them from "her" kitchen because "they are too sharp" and she's cut her fingers on them a time or two. (This by somebody who refuses to acknowledge that there is a proper way to dice an onion, which, of course, is not the way she does it.) Don't get me started on kitchen knives!

It's like heroin. It takes very little to get started, but before you know it, you'll be like the rest of us, totally strung out and looking for money to buy more.

That door latch is a great example of the joys of working at larger scales! Exquisite!

Archival construction "best practice" is to fasten all pieces with glued pegs. That doesn't mean, however, that the pegs are intended to be visible. Underhill's, and others', recommendation to fasten planking with pegs assumed the model would be painted. The current widely popular style of leaving modeling wood bright is a relatively recent thing based on certain Navy Board or "Admiralty style" models and, in many instances, is carried to extremes in present day models, which isn't to say to poor effect. The use of contrasting colors for trunnels and plugs, and, indeed, out-of-scale ones, is, IMHO, somewhat of an affectation.

"The floggings will continue until morale improves!"

Whatever one builds, it's important that it be built to last if the work is to endure. Building a good model, or anything else for that matter, takes a considerable amount of time. It all depends upon how much you value your time. We would have nothing of the great works of art from ages past if they hadn't been made to last as long as they have.

Nope, I don't think so and I've looked. I believe they are entirely proprietary to Foredom handpieces. There probably isn't enough demand for them for anybody to make aftermarket ones. Like all close-tolerance machine tools, collets of any type are always surprisingly expensive.

A piece of scrap light sheet metal (an old advertising sign, actually) and a few rare earth magnets work for me.

Thanks for your detailed explanation, Michael! Yes, Stirling and Sons' Integrity is a traditional pilot cutter design in hull and rig and well-respected. She's a beautiful boat. Her interior accommodations are not at all traditional, however. They've built the interior with period cabinetwork, but the layout is thoroughly present-day. This makes her far more marketable today of course. The number of berths is a dead give-away. These may please the owner who expects to be asked over and over again, "How many does she sleep," but the shortage of space for sail stowage, provisions, and other gear handicaps her as a truly practical cruising boat. Ironically, the traditional pilot cutter would have had close to the same number of berths, but these would have been the distinctive "pilot berths" to port and starboard above and behind the setees in the saloon. "De gustibus non disputandum est!" I see where they've installed one of the somewhat rare and highly desirable bespoke Pascal Atkey and Sons (Cowes) "Pansy" charcoal cabin heaters, theirs being the copper version. (to the left in the photo below) That's a nice traditional touch, to be sure. (I've got a stainless steel one with all fittings, in excellent condition, sitting on a shelf in my workshop and for which I have no present use. If anybody's interested... )