alross2

Finished planking the deck today. There are about one hundred fifty 16" square x 24" basswood planks, plus ten 1/16" x 3/32" x 24" basswood mast partners. If a modeler is ambitious and wants to do scale length planks (let's say 40' as one member suggested), it will take about 700 of them. I wiped on and steel-wooled a couple coats of shellac, then added the laser-cut waterways. Tomorrow, I'll finish fairing the hull and maybe put on the keel, stem, and rudder post. The waterways actually fit the hull with just a tiny bit of tweaking! After this photo was taken, the transom was shaped to match the curve of the waterway.

Cut the six lower masts to length and squared off their heads. Made the first topmast, as well. The latter is made from 3/16' square stock that has to be rounded and tapered. It will have a slot for the fid.

WYOMING hull is planked and broken free from the building board. I've laid the ten 1/16" x 3/32" mast partners and am now planking the rest of the deck with 1/16" square basswood. It'll take about 200 strips to plank the deck. The hull took about one hundred 3/32" x 1/4" strips. My bench is about 36" tall, so... This is just after I broke the hull away from the building board and sanded the subdeck and bulkhead extensions flush. Laying the first planks of the mast partner. They need to be absolutely straight along the centerline or the rest of the planks aren't going to come out right. Mast partners on and the deck houses and hatches just set in place so I can see where to end the plank strips.

The garboards are two laser-cut pieces per side. The aft portion in particular takes quite a twist, so soaking and clamping is pretty much necessary. Because of the relative symmetry of the curved portions, each garboard has a small "k" lasered into the edge that meets the bottom of the keel.

Work continues on the WYOMING kit. I finalized the shape of the laser-cut garboard planks today, soaked them, and clamped them in place to dry. Will start planking tomorrow. Here are a couple more of the 11 x 17 plan sheets for the plans booklet.

Initial assembly of the wheel box, hoist house, and one of the main hatches.

So far this morning, I've attached all of the bulkheads, subdecks, filler blocks at the bow, and the keel stiffeners for the pedestals. Bulkheads and subdecks in place. . Bow filler blocks glued in place. Stern will also have them. They will be faired with the bulkheads once the frame is glued to the building board. The mast slots are boxed in with 3/32" strips and scrap 1/16" plywood. This just prevents sideward movement of the masts once they are stepped. A mahogany cradle is included, but for those wanting to use pedestals, 1/2" square stiffener blocks will be glued to both sides of the profile at the desired position of the pedestals.

Plans - keep in mind that the original kit plans were drawn decades ago when customers were closer to being scratch-builders than assemblers. With today's kits having lots of preshaped laser parts, photo-etch, resin, etc., they much more assembly-oriented. Consequently, the plans have to reflect the many preshaped parts to help the modeler succeed. Photo sets - When building the display model of all our kits, I am also fitting the preshaped parts to validate them. Because many of us (me included) are visual learners, I found it useful to take photos of as many steps as possible to get a feeling for how things were working out. Making them available to the modeler seemed like a natural thing to do. Kit designer - My Dad was a naval officer and the first model kit he bought me back in the early 1950s was a ship model. Over the next few decades, I assembled a lot of plastic ship and aircraft kits and became very interested in how things were put together. That's when I started to draw them. Life happened and, like most of us, I had to work for a living to support a family. While working on my PhD in the late 1970s, I started drawing plans for small naval combatants (PTs, MTBs, MGBs, etc.) based on the actual yard drawings and selling them to modelers. After a number of years designing technical training for nuclear power and teaching technical writing in a college, I got tired of the corporate and academic worlds and started building custom ship models. BlueJacket was just down the road, so I was a frequent customer. I designed my first kit for them (80' ELCO PT) in the mid-1990s and soon was doing it on a regular basis. Eventually, I was doing it full time. So far, I've provided those services (as an independent contractor) to three different administrations (the Hammers, the Margers, and the Damucks) and plan on doing so until I am physically unable or have croaked...

Boucher became BlueJacket in the 1970s. We still have that plan in the drawers out back. When I developed the existing kit of PERRY, I looked at it and compared it to Chappelle's drawings and some other references. The old kit's armament wasn't consistent with my references, so that was changed, as was most everything else in the original kit.

OK, back on the WYOMING kit development after a long hiatus. I've added a laser-cut building board to it and am currently assembling the bulkheads to the profile. Am making adjustments to the bulkhead shapes as they are assembled and revising their laser drawings - 1/32" here, 1/64" there, etc. The building board. It will be used after the bulkheads are assembled to the profile and will provide a stable base for planking the hull. Laserboard scroll work. First few bulkheads in place. . One side of the sub deck(s). Some deck house components. The long bars are hatch battens.

WYOMING, Percy & Small, 6 master.

At the turn of the 20th Century, were deck planks generally cut to standardized lengths or did the yards use random lengths to get the most use out of the lumber? Al Ross

I think the angle of the photo makes it look worse than it actually is. Here's a similar photo of this area of the display model for the kit, but from a shallower angle. I would agree that filling the outside a bit and doing some light shaving on the inner side would resolve your concern. Al Ross

I don't remember the source BJ uses offhand, but can find out for you. Essentially, it is resin-infused paper. When used with a properly set laser, it can produce extremely fine detail without burnout. The thinnest I've seen so far is .011". I normally use .015", .025", and .035", but think you can get it up to .060". This is the pilot house for OREGON. It is two layers of .015" laserboard bent around a former that will be included in the kit. When I tried it in 1/64" ply, many of the vertical pieces of the lower panels simply burned out. With the laserboard, there's hardly even any scorching on the back side.

If it works, use it! In the kits I develop for BlueJacket, I've gone to laser board for many applications where I used to use 1/64 and 1/32 ply. It bends easily, has no grain, and produces very delicate parts with sharp edges.

Some of the photo-etched coal scuttles.

Bow section with most of the bases for the various bits and pieces.

It never fails. We have two nice chain stops in the fittings - neither one fits OREGON. So, I made up a brass master this AM from brass tube, brass channel, and solder. There will be four per kit.

The best way to remove it is not to get it... I don't get it very often because I double or triple mask, first with pin striping tape (1/16' or 1/8"), then an overlap of 1/4" tape, then another overlap with low tack painter's tape (and paper if it's a large surface. Still, stuff happens sometimes. The underbleed I normally get is between the hull and a bright finished deck. In most cases, I use a very sharp #11 blade and cut alongside any objects against which the underbleed rests. This gives a nice sharp edge to end against when scraping. Then, depending on the size of the area around the paint, I scrape with the grain towards the sharp edge using a variety of chisel blades and a razor blade. You need a gentle touch and to keep the blade vertical. If it's paint on paint, now you have a definite problem. If it's gloss paint and the base coat is well cured, you can use a Q tip dipped in a mild thinner and lightly swab aqay the underbled color. Sometimes you can use automotive polishing compound and a soft cloth on some paints, as well. In all probability, with a paint on paint problem, you're probably going to have to remask and repaint. FAIR WARNING: I seldom brush paint any large surface. Generally, I use an airbrush and sometimes a rattle can. Consequently, I'm not sure how well this would work with a brushed surface.

Test fitting one of the twelve gunner's grates to the inside of the hammock net structure. The brass section at the ladder is 3/8" tall. The white strip is .020" styrene.

Starting to put on the little stuff. This is the aft portion of the main deck with bitts and hatches.

A little history on this kit - When Jeff and Suzi Marger owned BlueJacket, Suzi wanted a kit that a kid could build without any tools other than sandpaper. I came up with this basic design of a typical skiff you might find on a lake here in Maine. It's not exactly to scale, but close and kids had fun building it.

OK, bottom color on this AM. After peeling away all of the masking tape, I found some underbleed on the deck, but that's easily removed. The next activity will be adding the photo-etched coal scuttles and bases for the deck furniture. The waterline masking was a little tricky, as it is 1/16" below the top of the armor belt. I taped off the hull along the top of the armor belt with 1/4" striping tape, then used 1/16" striping tape below that. Regular painters' masking tape was applied from the 1/16" tape up. The first layer of color was from rattlecan of red primer, followed by an airbrushing of flat red.

Finish coat of white is now on the hull and superstructure and the mast is finished except for the binnacle and railing, which won't go on until the mast is in place on the model. Like Comment Share

The sponsons below the overhang of the 6" casemates are a simple shape but a bugger to get right.