Omega1234

How's this for a stem!
 

Dear all
I have some bad news, I realised I made a mistake. I was trying to test fit the wood keel and it would not line up with the frames. It took me quite a while to realise that 2 of the frames were glued 3.6 mm forward of their position. Considering the 1:10 scale, this would be 3.6 cm in the full size boat, maybe insignificant but there was no doubt in my mind, re do! I had however included in the templates a back up base line so I can reuse the frames. 
I dismantled everything and cut the frames close to the new baseline. I made a new jig to line up al baselines and mark a new hole to pass a dowel through. I also had to sand off all the epoxy drippings. Lots of work to be done until the frames are again erected.
 

 
I took a brake from the frames to laminate the stem. It is going to be massive and the jig equally huge. I used scrap pine wood and mdf, my tools reached their limit and from all the power sanding there was a proper mist in the garage. My 3M mask is brilliant though, I was perfectly safe breathing through the filters! With the door open and the air filter full on, the air cleared quickly.
 

 
I cut the beech strips to length and bent them to shape. Beech is a lovely wood for bending, just wetting the wood makes it very pliable. I thought of using my electric radiator as a jig and it worked brilliantly.
 

 

 

 

 
After that, I laminated the stem. It needed a massive amount of epoxy thickened with talk powder but so far it looks good but really needs to cure overnight.
 

 
 

Patrick,
 
thank you very much, your kind compliment is well appreciated...
 
Nils

Hi Nils
 
Oh, my Lord, that's looking  beautiful!!!!
 
I love all the fine detail work. Seriously well done.
 
Cheers
 
Patrick

Update
 
Mounting the aft deckhouse with docking bridge
 
Nils
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

Hi Steve and Bob,
thanks for your nice comments,
 
Steve,
yes, by concentrating on little sections it provides rusher results, and a better feeling that something got done, and so by and by the total progress can be seen
 
Bob,
in opposite to the forecastledeck the railings were not soldered on, but only fastened per CA, because I remember having trouble with the elonggation of copper versa brass when soldering the railings to the bottom base rail. I first tried to bend a L-profile to the curve pattern but gave this up very quickly and used solid brass bar 1 x 1,5 mm.
 
 
thanks also to all the "likes" for clicking on...
 
Nils

That's a fine deck, and putting the rails on with all those bends is . . . oh ya, it's fun.
 
Bob

Nils, She's looking really great with all the details, each little section a project in it's self.

Update,
 
aft deck housing roof (planked deck) with docking bridge and railing. Access will be from aft over a stairway
 
Nils
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

There's whole books on hydro-statics and stability, but to put it as simply as possible, on a scale model, internal ballast is not enough, as this fellow learned:
 

 
You simple can't get the center of gravity low enough within the hull.  The more weight you add, the higher the CG moves as you're stacking weight up inside.
 
Because Macedonian and Constellation have long flat-ish keels, the best form of external ballast is a bar or tube.  I use a tube and would gladly use a lead bar instead if I could gather the gumption to cast such a beast. 
 
Some folks use fins.  A fin moves the weight further down, like moving the skinny kid further from the balance-point to balance the fat kid on the other end of the see-saw.
Here's Stad Amsterdam a model comparable in size to mine.  She uses a fin keel that you can see being installed in this video.
https://youtu.be/Yj3EBwU6Elo?t=152
If you watch her sailing you see she still heels way over despite the fin; because she's showing too much sail in what are basically scale storm conditions.  When it's blowing 20+, you're pushing into scale hurricane winds!
 
Fins are deep.  In that video they're launching at a bulkhead, and it takes two people to do the job.  I'm launching most of the time at a shoreline or ramp.  With a fin like that I'd have to wade out to water deep enough to launch the model.
 
By using a ballast tube, my launch-cart is basically a boat trailer and I hardly have to get into a foot of water to launch, as you can see at the beginning and end of my video...  I can also launch and retrieve all by myself, without help.

 
Whatever sort of external ballast used, there's one common feature that sells it hands-down; it's removable.  By unscrewing two threaded rods, I can easily detach the model from 42 pounds of ballast.  I can lift the model and move it around  alone, and safer for me and the model.  Constellation still needs about 15 pounds of ballast added internally to get her to her waterline and trim her or she sits about 2 inches too high.
 
I also have easily removable t'gallants and royals, the courses can be bunted up, and the model can essentially be under tops'ls and jib in a few minutes if the wind's too much for her plain sail suit.

The original plans had the cabin sitting on top of the decking, but I decided to inset it into the deck, as I thought it would give me cleaner joins (the straight lines from the sticks of the deck beside the straight lines of the cabin walls), and I wasn't looking forward to shaping the deck curve on the bottom of the windscreen. This meant instead cutting a straight V into the forward deck, which was relatively easy.

and then placing the planks on the side decking beside the cabin, thus giving a tight fit.
The cabin build was difficult, as I had to use the deck V to give the angles of the windscreen (side to side) and somehow hold the sides in place at the same time to attach the windscreen to them. But eventually it all held together.

Note that I am using three-ply for the beams to give more room for gluing ( and measurement errors). I should have done this for the hull frames, but we live and learn.
But - as I feared - the pre-constructed cabin really didn't fit properly. There was a gap between the windscreen and the forward deck, and a gap from the rear of the cabin to the well sides, and the whole cabin was 3 - 4 mm off to one side as a result of the centre of the deck V being offset..
Rather than start building a new cabin from scratch I decided to bite the bullet and site the front of the cabin on top of the deck, add extensions to the back to make it longer and commit surgery upon the side deck planks to make the cabin placement central.
The irony of the cabin extensions was that, in order to add pieces to lengthen the cabin I had to use two-ply to hold the extensions in place. Which was where the cabin building started.

After a lot of hacking, cutting, sanding, guesswork and gluing I had a cabin that fitted reasonably well and that would allow me to progress.

I am always amazed by the differences from the start of planking to the finished hull after painting. 
 
Michael

The next step was to build the cabin. The wood I'm using has a tendency to split when making longitudinal cuts, so I decided I'd try and minimize this likelihood by using temporary two-ply. I.e. I would glue the port and starboard sides together using (water-soluble) PVA, make the cuts and then soak the ply in water to separate the pieces. This would have the additional advantage that the port and starboard sides should be cut symmetrically; something rather lacking elsewhere. To further simplify the task I used the wider sticks.

I started with the windscreen, and the cutting went well. Unfortunately when the time came to separate the port and starboard sides the glue proved more resistant to dissolving than I had expected, and I had to pry the pieces apart using a knife blade. This resulted in a couple of the window pillars cracking. But I wasn't prepared to give up after all the careful and laborious cutting  I'd done, so I cut a few braces (which also joined top and bottom) and glued and clamped the lot in a vice. The result was very strong and more-or-less without blemish where the cracks had been.

Thus encouraged I started on the sides. The original plan had three side windows, but they had fairly narrow pillars between them. The result was that my cutting of windows produced two major breaks (being four breaks total for port and starboard in total). This really was beyond salvage, so I started again with only two windows per side, and a wider pillar.
The cutting was successful, and overnight soaking made the separation of the two sides easier. I added some bracing to attach the pairs (top and bottom).

I've taken some liberties with the shape of the stern end of the cabin sides, otherwise the rear wall would have looked odd.
 Once I had all the pieces with their final shaping it was time to assemble the cabin. This was a task I had been dreading, because there were a lot of angles which had to be glued perfectly and I couldn't think of a convenient jig that would give me the predetermined angles that the decking and well required. Perhaps I should have started the cabin considerably earlier.

I knew it!   when I saw that bit of bow spirit in the first picture......it was that gorgeous cutter!    sweet little nook you got there!   that's a super dolly/table...if you put a bench on the other side,  you'd be able to turn it around and work without skipping a beat!  jess say'in!  

It was a productive day today, a couple of friends came over and moved the model into the house,(stable temperature). I was getting a little concerned by the temp fluctuations in the shop. It is heated with wood, although there is a heat exchanger for the in-floor but it is not easy to keep it even through the cold which is on its way.
 
I also cobbled together a simple bench as part of the trolley that the model is on when I am up and dancing again in a week or two I will finish off the trolley base with some additional shelving. 
 

 
I also have a place to relax.
 

 
I was thinking if the ship was the same scale as the cutter it would be 76 feet long on the other hand if the cutter were the same scale as the ship it would be only 5 inches long.
 
And it allowed me to clean up the computer desk, so now I don't have to move stuff when i want to type or draw. the Computer on the left is for my drawing it is a stand alone and running XP the one on the right is connected to the web and is running 7 professional.
 

 
Michael

Hi Michael,
 
sounds awfull with your shin wound, at least no fracture, wish you a speedy healing process........  
 
Nils

Looks like a fine living space.  Your boats and a bed.  All you need is someone to bring you meals.
 
Bob

A clean room? What a novel concept, Michael! Nice work with the jewelers' saw, by the way.

The new model space is working out very well, feels very comfortable, and the worry of variable temperature affecting the model is gone.
 
Put a small strip light over the new work area under the ship.
 
The collapsible lifeboats lost all of the small wood cradles except one, I used it as a template and did the first rough shaping of 14 pieces with the jewelers saw. 1 more to go
 

 
I need to set up a small vice next in order to file them down to the final size. then I will separate them all.
 
I did think about it Denis but decided to keep it simple. And I am also getting inspired to work on the cutter as well now. I am beginning to see the advantages of having a clean room as well as the workshop for the different types of work.
 
Michael

good to see your back........any amount of progress is a welcome sight      well done on the fore deck.......did you cut all of the other structure pieces too?

I'll be adding rope coils about the fordeck to finish it up before I begin to add the forward rail.

Well I worked on the GR a bit today..finished laying up a port anchor underneath the cathead.  I added the forward passageway and the forward hold cover.
 
Even at this scale the parts are pretty small.
 
Rob

Thanks, Nils
 
Glad to have you aboard. Frank.
 
Lawrence, Phoebe's a nice boat and, yes, you need to build her.
 
Popeye as you know, building your dozen or so boats, you need to keep the boatyard busy or the workers get lazy and nothing gets done.
 
You're right, Rodger.  I keep forgetting about the help.
 
We'll get started soon.
 
Bob

Bob,
 
Don't worry about getting up steam all you have to do is tell the "help" what time the boat needs to be ready.
 
Roger

your not wasting any time Bob............the paint on the Pequot barely had time to dry       I hope there's a seat available........love to see what you do to these two little gems