tarbrush

I have been working on the superstructure lately. I used my razor saws to cut off all the molded in railings everywhere they appeared.   There has been lots of filling, sanding, priming, and painting. Lots of masking, too- every little sub-assembly has white on the vertical sections and gray on the decks.  
 
One feature of the ship was the black stripes behind the vertical ladders. They were painted black there because it would be impossible to keep white paint looking clean from all the black toed scuffs from the crew climbing up and down those ladders all the time!
 
I decided I would do more harm than good if I tried to sand away the molded on ladders to replace them with PE parts. So instead, I masked the ladders and airbrushed them black. (Actually a grey-black, as pure black is too stark in this scale.). After it dried I used the edge of my knife to scrape away the dark paint, letting the white on the raised ladder show through.  I rather like the effect- and it looks better in person than in this extreme close-up!
 
 

Working on the rest of the main deck and 01 deck structures...
Sometime after the Korean War, the ships all got a tripod mainmast for the air search radar, with a radar room under the mast on top of the aft end of the main deckhouse.  The Revell kit doesn’t have any of this, so I’m going to try to make it....
First, I cut the various pieces of “detail” off the aft end of the 01 deck with a fine saw, then sanded it flat. Getting rid of it does get me out of having to fill a bunch of sinkmarks!
The new structure is just a simple box made from sheet styrene, with extra PE doors and bits of styrene for detailing. Should look OK once it is primed and painted.
 
 

The 01 deck balloon shelter/ stack base and the pilot house have been installed.  The new radar room/ ET shop aft is being test fit.   The “box“ was too tall at first, so I took about 3/32” off the height- now it matches my drawings.

Yesterday and today I worked on the display base.  The base is a piece of 1/2” thick poplar, with 1/4” square bass keel blocks.  I primed and painted the base, but not the blocks.  Plan is to airbrush a thin coat of brown to unify the color...
 
Here is the model being test fitted.  I’ll have to sand a little bit of a valley down the centerline to accommodate the keel...
 
 

And a close-up of the almost-finished scratchbuilt  foc’sle and the original kit part for comparison...  Very happy with how this turned out!
 
 

OK let's see if I can get this picture posting thing figured out. 
 
Got the Building Jig #1 cut out, along with the Support Blocks for the Station Templates. Glued the paper patterns onto 1/8" aircraft plywood.

Milled the slots for the Station Bulkheads. My first time milling wood with my mill.........worked great! I was able to custom fit each Station Template as I went along. 

Moved the Building Jig and finished up the slots. 

PS: Here's the link to DocBlakes Sharpie build thread that I had to delete from the previous post: 
 

Thanks.
 
Got a little more done today. 
 
Cut out the station templates and got everything done except for the bevel on the sides. I'll wait until my new Byrnes Disc Sander gets here in a couple of weeks to do that part. 
 


Then I was able to get the material milled out for what will be Building Jig #2.
 

 
I'm really impressed with how easy it is to add pics to posts in this website.  Gotta try and not get too carried away! 
 
Jim

Well after my overnight soak of the Keelson I put it in the keelson press overnight. Next day it had only bent about half of what I needed. So next I put the end with the bend in it in boiling water for a few minutes and then wrapped a wet paper towel around it and steamed it with an old iron. Then into the press overnight. Success!
 

 
I received my new Byrnes disc sander yesterday so spent part of the day bonding with it. What a nice tool! 
 
I've found some discrepancies in the plans between the station templates and the bottom view that the building jigs are set up on. Anyway, I took the bottom views to be accurate so spent part of the day resizing the station templates and gluing them in place. All seems good and will start fitting the chines tomorrow. 
 

Thanks for the info Michael. I read the whole thread you linked to. Lot's of great info. 
 
Our Unisaw's might be twins. I think that's about when I got mine. Came with a 1 1/2 hp 230 volt motor that's still in use. I added a Biesemeyer to it about 30 years ago.
 
Anyway, after reading your linked thread, I was at Home Depot today, so I bought a 7 1/4" 140 tooth plywood blade (nothing special....$8.97) to try out. I needed two chines for my Sharpie build and one option was to mill them out. They needed to be 1/8" by 3/32 wide and cut at a 9 degree angle. I measured the kerf of my new blade to be .073" and 3/32" material width is .094. So here's what I did:
 
I set the blade to a 9 degree angle and ripped the edge of my 1/8" plank. Then I clamped my dial indicator that I use for setting up the 4 jaw chuck on my Sherline lathe to the rail for my saw fence and zeroed the dial. 

Ok......... then I moved the fence over .167 ( .073 for the saw kerf and .094 for the 3/32" width.............0.167").

And cut my chine. Then repeated the process.


It worked out great! The two chine pieces came out within .002" of each other. 
 
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but just wanted to brag a little and thank you for giving me a little input to think outside of the box. Next up is to fabricate a better setup for the dial indicator.
 
Jim
 
 
 

I gave my newly cut Chine lumber a good soak and then bent it into place on Building Jig #1. While it was still wet I hit it with the heat gun that I've used, in the past, for shrinking monocote on my RC airplane builds.  I wanted to see if that would help then chines assume the proper bend. It worked great! Plus it dried the chines so I could continue work on them.

That done, after getting back from the pool, I spent the afternoon fitting the chines to the keelson at the bow. Then moved on to adjusting the notches in the station bulkheads to get the proper fit to the bottom structure drawing. 


I thinking I'm getting closer to being able to glue something to something. 🙂
 
Jim

In between bouts of being outside getting fall yard work done, I managed to get the bottom planked (at least as far as it's going for now).
 
Next up is to start working on the bow stem area.
 

 
 

Got started on the bow stem assembly today. 
 
The tricky part was milling the inner and outer pieces for the bow stem. The object of an inner and outer stem is that the rabbet for the side planks can be made without having to actually cut a rabbet. It sounds like this was an actual practice for these Sharpies (back in the day).
 
I cut 1 3/4" off of the end of a 3/16" sheet and made sure it was a true rectangle.
 

That piece was clamped to an angle block and ran along the miter gauge of my sander........set to 90 degrees. I was then able to sand a 20 degree bevel on one side. 


Turned it around and then sanded the other bevel.

After sanding a flat on the edge of the beveled piece I went back to the cross cut table and sliced off the inner stem.
 

Made the outer stem in the same manner. 
 
Got the Horizontal Support Log and Inner Stem glued up. May wait a bit before gluing the outer stem in place. 

I don't know if this is too much detail to post or not. My thinking was that it might be useful information it this should ever evolve into a group build?
 
Jim
 
 
 
 

Thanks for your encouragement all. I am not very good at sheathing. I am now about 75% finished sheathing.
Thomas, I do not know the scale of the plates. Original plates was 14" x 48" on the real USS Constitution. The BlueJacket USS Constitution model is also a 1/96 scale model as is thier Kearsarge model. BlueJacket only offers one size copper plate. The  photo is of one of the plates offered.
The bottom photo shows the USS Constitution being sheathed. I thought it was interesting.
Bob
 

 

I completed the fore, main and mizzen masts. I placed the dowel for the lower masts in my small lathe and used 80 grit , 220 grit and a wood file to shape the taper of the masts. Upper masts are brass tube and rod. I placed the dowel for the yards in my drill and used 220 grit sandpaper to form the taper of the yards. These were easy and enjoyable to make. I used 28  AWG gauge wire for the ropes as I thought the kit wire to thick. I will set the masts in at a 5 1/2 degree slant aft. I will install the blocks on all of these next and assemble the masts with the yards before I glue the masts in place.
A note here: I think both sides of the weather deck is scribed for the planks. I would not use the side with the etched marks for the components locations. Some of the items do not cover the location marks on the deck. It does not look good. You can see some of this in Report post #48. Also, I should have marked off the beginning and end of the planks. Now the planks are as long as the deck.

Found drawings of higher quality. In the drawings, the forum in a small file. If anyone should be I can provide large files individually.

Manufactures fasteners for the model. It must be securely and efficiently. Just do fairleads and propeller shafts.

I did table lathe. However, I shorthanded for this ship. We'll have to do this long.

unit of propeller shafts and anchor hawse

Polishing for finish trim ... probably the most intelligent process, especially when a large ship model ...

Made seats mast mounting. This design allows you to quickly retrieve the mast of a model for the transport and quickly assemble at the site of exposure or storage.

The hull is reinforced and prepared for the production of decks and finishing putty.

Along with the main work on the body of the device, prepare brass sheets for covering the underwater hull. I bought the usual paper guillotine but replaced the knife and a table on a solid carbon steel. The sheet thickness of 0.3 mm. Guillotine blades with new cutting very precisely and as a hot knife through butter.

After making all the details, I processed by grinding them and started to build. I used ordinary PVA glue.

It's time to materialize virtual development.
Thus, in the construction of two identical spacecraft to the body size of 2350 mm (between perpendiculars)
I ordered the joiner bars for housing, because at home (without equipment) to make this work is not possible. I used alder wood.
Total (for two vehicles) 20 parts (with the largest size details 9000H300H900 mm). I rented my friend big CNC milling machine.

It created a very complex model 47 - mm gun Hotchkiss system.