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knightyo

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Everything posted by knightyo

  1. knightyo
    Welcome aboard! I agree with you, but unfortunately for me, my spouse's tolerance for my hobby is inversely proportional to the size of my models. Thanks Christian!
  2. knightyo
    I'm also thinking about doing this on the inside with the rivets. You guys DO have me reconsidering the whole nail thing tho.... I'll make you a deal and stop the nail folly for now, and work on the quarter galleries and figurehead, while I think about what I've done.
  3. knightyo
    Here's the link to Alex's build which I'm trying to emulate a bit. Below is a pic of his Cumberland, and next to it the Constitution. I "think" the last pic is Alex's Cumberland as well. At any rate, these are the looks I'm trying to achieve.
  4. knightyo
    What are your guys' thoughts regarding the stern decoration? I think I ended up carving an item which was smaller than the pattern. I must have made mistakes, and "hid" them by carving off the offending parts. Should this carving be "thicker" overall? I think this could be pried off and replaced without risking too much of a catastrophe....
  5. knightyo
    It's begun! Remember how I said that these nails would be blackened? Even though the oxidizer I have is "designed" for pewter, I was going to give it a try. However, the admiral instructed me to read the MSDS sheets on the oxidizer. After reading said sheets, I decided it might be best to experiment with alternative blackening schemes. The first "recipe" was to use Palmolive dish soap. After about a week and a half, instead of blackened nails, I just ended up with extremely clean and bright nails. Not to be deterred, I followed the second recipe. This entailed boiling two eggs and crushing them up in a Ziploc bag along with the items to be blackened. This DID work a bit. I now have a set of nails with various "shades" of color. I was originally hoping for a consistent dark black across the board, but I'll admit that I do look the likes of these. They also look like they've been painted along with the hull. As you can tell, I'm trying to talk myself into being satisfied with these. I suppose they will also "tarnish" over time. Below is the start of the installation process, which is extremely satisfying. By taking close up photos like this, it's also helpful to identify areas which need to be filled! I'm also not happy with the uneven gap at the bottom of the gunport. We'll see what can be done about that.
  6. knightyo
    I'd highly recommend the Syren. The instruction provided literally walks you through every process, step by step. Also, if you get stuck at any point, there are a lot of logs to view, and people within the forum to help; especially the creator the the model, Chuck. Instead of a possibly frustrating experience, you'd most likely have a very good experience.
  7. knightyo
    Thanks Thomas! It's going to be very satisfying to finish and install those quarter badges. My pipette's arrived yesterday, so I'll be playing with the chemical blackening agent this weekend. Items to be blackened are guns, nails and "gun holder thingies". Alan
  8. knightyo
    Beautiful craftsmanship!
  9. knightyo
    It's looking really good Doug. Also, if you have a major error on your sills/lintels, you can file them flush with the hull, and insert thin pieces of wood to fit, which can be indistinguishable from the other method. I know I did that on a number of mine, and it's possible I did that to all of them! Alan
  10. knightyo
    There are now officially 4 nails in the Syren. Just test fitting halfway, here. And of course the camera didn't focus on the nails, and I hadn't noticed until uploading....I also intend to blacken these. I DO have a pewter oxidizer in the garage, but am not quite sure if that will work on brass. I'm researching this a bit. I also discovered that my pin vice is nowhere to be found. I used my fingers to enlarge the existing holes with a larger bit. That didn't feel wonderful, so hopefully I can find the pin-vice soon. If not, I'll head to the hobby store. I also discovered by taking this pic that the gunlid "straps" need to be sanded down a LOT, or replaced with metal. They definitely need help. Of course these will eventually need nails as well! Perhaps it would be neat to leave the nails shiny brass against the black of the straps. Although it would be strange to have a mixture of nail colors, I guess.
  11. knightyo
    For some reason, my post above wouldn't allow me to post the pic..
  12. knightyo
    In theory, there are 400 miniature brass nails in this container. The heads of the nails are just a bit larger than the shafts. I used a steel ruler to "cut" and shape the heads of the nails, as it has a 90 degree angle, and each "side" would get a 45 degree bevel. I'd like the heads to have been a little larger than the shaft, but this is do-oable. The issue encountered which caused consternation is that the pliers I used to cut the nails from the wire as they were complete also pressed the metal at each cut point, creating a flat end which was usually also wider than the shaft. Sooo... I had to file down the ends of every single nail down to the shaft width or less, so they'd insert into the hull. At least it was very easy to do so. The entire process was actually extremely easy; it just took time, and couldn't be done in one sitting. I just worked on them in numerous mini-sessions throughout the week. Why bother creating all of these, when they can be purchased, you ask? I do have a number of nails about the same size, and they just don't look as "realistic". I also wanted to try out a new technique to see if I could pull it off.
  13. knightyo
    This model is going to be gorgeous when sanded.
  14. knightyo
    Thanks guys. I woke up this morning and had a nice hot cup of coffee while perusing MSW. I then constructed about 180 little nails. That was really a fun way to start out the day. I think I have around another 220 nails to go.
  15. knightyo
    Stern before sanding.
  16. knightyo
    Photo of the inside before sanding. There's a part of me that really enjoys having horrendous "innards" to my models, which are then covered up with planking. You can see how much sanding needs to be done on the inside for a smooth surface. I'm also cutting out the center pieces of the templates, and setting them on the tops of the bulkheads. By doing so, it's really easy to see which inside aspects of each bulkhead need to be sanded.
  17. knightyo
    Front view after initial sanding. I went "all in" with my basswood filler pieces. I cut and glued basswood throughout the entire model, to ensure I'd have a nice and smooth surface for the planks to lay upon. After more sanding, this should be a pretty nice surface.
  18. knightyo
    This looks ghastly, but all of this will be covered with exterior wood later anyway. Here, I'm going for accuracy and strength. The stern "risers" have random pieces of basswood glued between them for strength. The counter section also shows basswood pieces which have been inserted between the pieces from the actual templates, which have been sanded to shape.
  19. knightyo
    Assembling the stern pieces with basswood
  20. knightyo
    The difficult part about these particular bulkheads, is that if you cut them out to match the inside thicknesses of the templates, the tops of the bulkheads are very thin, and prone to breakage. This is alleviated by gluing scrap material to the ends of the bulkheads. In this case, basswood.
  21. knightyo
    I do remember having scale issues. For those who are resizing their plans to a different scale, it's definitely a good idea to be careful. I had to create an entirely new profile former due to printing the plans out incorrectly for the scale I chose.
  22. knightyo
    Bulkheads cut out, and dry-fit into place. They haven't been glued yet, as evidenced by the mis-alignment of a few. I think I took the pic just to see the general shape of the hull.
  23. knightyo
    The profile former is just standard plywood. The photo shows the attachment of the rabbet piece
  24. knightyo
    I used to have a Triton log, but it went down with the crash years ago. My priority is to finish my Syren, but thought I'd post my old photos with a few comments. I don't see a lot of POB logs on here, and suspect people considering the POB version might be hesitant due to the lack of logs, and mentions of a bulkhead which might be out of scale. I've rescaled the plans to 1:64 which is my preferred scale. The keel pieces are pear. The photo shows a number of test pieces.
  25. knightyo
    Below are a few of my nail "tests". The broken stick right to the left of the gunport has the smallest of the nails I created today. The next stick has larger nails. I also applied black paint to the upper nails to see how they looked against the hull. If I do end up using black, I'll chemically blacken them. The black nails pictured looked misshapen, due to cheap acrylic paint globs on top. Also... Apologies for the dust and cobwebs! I expected to see that when looking at the model again. What I did NOT expect to see was the little dash of red paint on the left side of the gunport. That will be remedied tomorrow.

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