Captain Al

Masterful job.  I hereby promote you from lieutenant to first lieutenant even though I have no authority to do so.  There is a lot more interior detail than you even told me about doing.  I'm not jealous that I did not put greenery into my pots.  I thought we both agreed that our Bountys would be outward bound models.  Everything about the build is fantastic.  Thanks for sharing it all with me for the past year. 

Yes Nigel you are right on all points.  I noticed the fairing of the last frame this afternoon and thought I would fair it down more or fill in the blanks so to speak.  But I decided to wait til I was sure how the planks will run cause they may just cross that frame and have plenty of gluing surface just beyond it.  If that's the case I just need to make sure the frame isn't standing proud.  I've never heard of hooded drop planks so I will quickly add that to my "to do" list and look over your build log.  Thanks so much for the suggestions.

Nice to know you're still working on Bounty.  So am I, but I'm still bogged down in the planking phase.  You've done fantastic in all phases of your build.  What would you say was the hardest part so far?  Its great that you can get such good support here on MSW.  I don't post to my log any more cause it seems no-one is watching.  But I do get answers to questions if I post them in other forums.  BTW, just a rough count but it looks like you must have 1112 knots just to complete the ratlines.  That doesn't include attachment points or any other lines.

Well it sure is nice to hear from you and glad you are still at it.  I am very impressed with your planking.  It looks fantastic.  I am now into that phase of my Bounty so I know first hand now what a challenge it can be.  Are you satisfied that on your open side where your planks do not end on (and get glued to) a frame, that they are sufficiently stout (thick)  that there will be no play in them -- at least not enough to snap them?  I've been considering where to end mine and this is my primary concern.  It looks like you used a few wedge shaped planks here and there.  But I don't see any drop planks or stealers.  Is that true?  The wedges look fine; super fine for that matter.  All in all, a very nice planking job. 

I'm not very clever but my thought would be, tight enough to be taut but not so tight as to put any real tension on them and the masts themselves.  I think the idea is that they look more taut than running rigging, but since this is a model, they're not really holding up the mast.  And also remember, depending on the point of sail (which direction the wind is coming from) the windward side's shrouds are tighter than the lee side.  Not knowing how delicate things up top are, I would not risk putting any more tension than is needed to look good.  I wonder, will the thread you use have much stretch over time?

Let me be first to congratulate you.  Masterful job!!  I may not be eligible though for the modification prizes as I believe I may have some insider information.

I appreciate your reply Nigel and will probably do a bit more experimenting before settling on a finish.  Thanks for the reminder to abrade -- I always forget that and it does make a big difference.

Dan, thank you for your input.  I was not meaning to stain the top surface of the decks, but the ply underneath (which the real thing didn't have).  I would not have given it a second thought except for the fact that with the open hull design it is easy to see underneath these decks, and I don't like the pinkish color of this ply.  So I went ahead (just two minutes ago) and stained the underside.  A lot subtler or marine like, but still plywood.
 
I am so glad to hear from you and know that you are following this build from time to time.  I've already learned a great deal from you.  More so though, I hope you are feeling well and getting through your medical issues in stride.  You seem like the kind of guy who can face life's obstacles as they present themselves.  I faced a similar problem with a lymphoma node touching my spine.  Talk about pain.  But the docs do wonders now and I'm sure you're in good hands.  Be well my friend.

I was wondering where you've been Capt Fisher. As for me, I've been plugging along slowly but surely on fairing the frames of my twisted Bounty. I've also done some filling in the bow and transom in preparation for planking. I'll put up some pictures and describe my work shortly. But I haven't been getting much response from anyone lately so I've kind of given up on my build log. I think I've read just about every relevant article and post on MSW, but I check it out daily just cause there is so much good stuff and always something new. Hope you get back to building and posting.

Yes it is Michael.  I have been using the razor saw for awhile now and its much better though it takes a few seconds longer to set up for it.

Definitely see what you mean there.  Enough to make you seasick!  Just kidding you Mike.  You know I'm impressed with your work.

Bill you are dating yourself with your terminology. Peace brother and power to the people...right on!

There was now nothing left to do but glue on the beams and then the deck. All I wanted was a way to make sure I could hold the deck securely down onto the beams. I had decided not to use pins except if absolutely necessary. Weights and clamps were my choice. But no matter how many weights I used there was always a frame tip that wouldn't hold tight. I realized that it was cause the actual point of pressure was not on the tip. Clamps would have been better at the edges but I couldn't figure out how to make a clamp or pair two clamps up and get them to hold the deck to the frame. I think there is a whole art to clamping, and I don't know it yet. And I didn't want to take the time to go out and buy more specialized clamps, so I improvised. The best way to describe what I did is visually, so take a look at the pics. In the end, this afternoon I finally glued down the deck. There is a lot of fairing of frames to do (some frame tips are actually sticking out beyond the deck) and to my horror the masts don't run down now through three decks. They did when the main deck was only sitting dry on the beams, but now, glued down they don't. I think its cause when I tested them last, I hadn't done the shimming of the frames. That little bit of difference has made the sweep of the deck just different enough that the holes on the top/main deck are now a millionth of a mm out of alignment. I'm praying that I only need to ream out the hole a wee bit and it will line up.
 
I have to laugh whenever I see how the weights are being used. But it is sure an effective way to get equal pressure across the whole of the deck, and apply that pressure right up to the edge.
 
Tomorrow morning we'll see how tight the deck really sits.

There was now nothing left to do but glue on the beams and then the deck. All I wanted was a way to make sure I could hold the deck securely down onto the beams. I had decided not to use pins except if absolutely necessary. Weights and clamps were my choice. But no matter how many weights I used there was always a frame tip that wouldn't hold tight. I realized that it was cause the actual point of pressure was not on the tip. Clamps would have been better at the edges but I couldn't figure out how to make a clamp or pair two clamps up and get them to hold the deck to the frame. I think there is a whole art to clamping, and I don't know it yet. And I didn't want to take the time to go out and buy more specialized clamps, so I improvised. The best way to describe what I did is visually, so take a look at the pics. In the end, this afternoon I finally glued down the deck. There is a lot of fairing of frames to do (some frame tips are actually sticking out beyond the deck) and to my horror the masts don't run down now through three decks. They did when the main deck was only sitting dry on the beams, but now, glued down they don't. I think its cause when I tested them last, I hadn't done the shimming of the frames. That little bit of difference has made the sweep of the deck just different enough that the holes on the top/main deck are now a millionth of a mm out of alignment. I'm praying that I only need to ream out the hole a wee bit and it will line up.
 
I have to laugh whenever I see how the weights are being used. But it is sure an effective way to get equal pressure across the whole of the deck, and apply that pressure right up to the edge.
 
Tomorrow morning we'll see how tight the deck really sits.

Plenty of progress. Plenty of obstacles overcome (hopefully). And I'm sure plenty more to come.
 
My last post concerned my preparation for putting on the main deck. My problem was that my frame tips were out of whack. Some too high, some too low. I decided to ignore the specs/plans and just work to create the contour for the deck in the easiest and safest way. I really didn't want to take a saw to any frames (remember, these are ribs, not bulwarks)or do much rough filing and sanding. As it turned out I was able to shim up all the low frames, a little here a little more there and produce the sloping I wanted. For shims I just cut already measured thickness wood and laminated one or two together and made the heights of these frame tips what I needed. For each tip that was raised in this way I also had to put in a shim on the notch that would hold the beam.
 
Then I decided to deviate a bit from the sequence of steps the instructions gave and install the stairways below deck before putting on the deck. I had finally found where the fifth step would go and this was both good news and bad. Good that I knew where it went, bad that the stringer for that fifth set of stairs had been destroyed getting it out of its template. So I had to rebuild the stringer. That was actually fun and in the end not disappointing. I used my Dremel scroll saw to cut the stringer's notches. I wasn't completely accurate, a couple steps came out pretty cockeyed but sanding them down made them almost look level. I need to find a better way to apply CA glue....I just dripped it directly from the squeeze bottle and obviously way too much comes out. I've been researching applicators and will try the sewing needle with the end snipped off next. Also maybe a sewing basting pin that has a little round ball at the end. Anyway, the pics show my work. And I still don't know how to insert pictures between paragraphs, so they are all at the end of this post I guess.
 
Getting that broken stairway in place and making it stay was another trip. Since my Bounty doesn't have planking over the bilge there was nothing to glue to at the bottom. Its supposed to just hang there, resting on the keel and propped up against the lower deck. Not much glue surface. So I added a little cross piece at the head of the stairs between the stringers, enabling me to glue across an inch or so instead of just the two little stringer tips. With the repair work I'd done to these stairs, they weren't precisely parallel stringers I guess and so they sat askew on the keel. I killed two birds with one stone by filing a little notch in the keel into which the left hand stringer fit, leveling the stairs and making the install more secure.
 
The other stairs from the lower deck down to the holding platform was a piece of cake cause it wasn't broken to begin with and cause it had a deck to sit on. So easy that I decided to embellish it and the lower stairs with the same type of railings that I made for the previous stairs installed a few years (it seems) ago.
 
With that I'm going to end this post and start a new one.

Plenty of progress. Plenty of obstacles overcome (hopefully). And I'm sure plenty more to come.
 
My last post concerned my preparation for putting on the main deck. My problem was that my frame tips were out of whack. Some too high, some too low. I decided to ignore the specs/plans and just work to create the contour for the deck in the easiest and safest way. I really didn't want to take a saw to any frames (remember, these are ribs, not bulwarks)or do much rough filing and sanding. As it turned out I was able to shim up all the low frames, a little here a little more there and produce the sloping I wanted. For shims I just cut already measured thickness wood and laminated one or two together and made the heights of these frame tips what I needed. For each tip that was raised in this way I also had to put in a shim on the notch that would hold the beam.
 
Then I decided to deviate a bit from the sequence of steps the instructions gave and install the stairways below deck before putting on the deck. I had finally found where the fifth step would go and this was both good news and bad. Good that I knew where it went, bad that the stringer for that fifth set of stairs had been destroyed getting it out of its template. So I had to rebuild the stringer. That was actually fun and in the end not disappointing. I used my Dremel scroll saw to cut the stringer's notches. I wasn't completely accurate, a couple steps came out pretty cockeyed but sanding them down made them almost look level. I need to find a better way to apply CA glue....I just dripped it directly from the squeeze bottle and obviously way too much comes out. I've been researching applicators and will try the sewing needle with the end snipped off next. Also maybe a sewing basting pin that has a little round ball at the end. Anyway, the pics show my work. And I still don't know how to insert pictures between paragraphs, so they are all at the end of this post I guess.
 
Getting that broken stairway in place and making it stay was another trip. Since my Bounty doesn't have planking over the bilge there was nothing to glue to at the bottom. Its supposed to just hang there, resting on the keel and propped up against the lower deck. Not much glue surface. So I added a little cross piece at the head of the stairs between the stringers, enabling me to glue across an inch or so instead of just the two little stringer tips. With the repair work I'd done to these stairs, they weren't precisely parallel stringers I guess and so they sat askew on the keel. I killed two birds with one stone by filing a little notch in the keel into which the left hand stringer fit, leveling the stairs and making the install more secure.
 
The other stairs from the lower deck down to the holding platform was a piece of cake cause it wasn't broken to begin with and cause it had a deck to sit on. So easy that I decided to embellish it and the lower stairs with the same type of railings that I made for the previous stairs installed a few years (it seems) ago.
 
With that I'm going to end this post and start a new one.

Bill you are dating yourself with your terminology. Peace brother and power to the people...right on!

Theo, you are a god send.  Your pictures should be published in the kit's instructions instead of the vague, almost finished ones they provide.  By seeing your's I am getting a real good idea of how this whole planking job needs to go.  And thanks for clearing up the issue of stairs, 4 or 5.  It was making me crazy trying to find that 5th stairway.  You noted that the stairs are not very authentic in several ways.  I found that true as well and made a couple enhancements to fix the problems.  I am planning to do some computer work today and post pictures, but just for the record, what I did was add a footer to give the staircase some decent gluing surface (I am a firm believer in making things stay in place once they are put down), and I added the missing railings cause I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt.
 
I have two questions....First, it appears that you are holding the model down on the work pad using L brackets and (here's the Q) a bolt through the bottom ends of the keel.  Is that right?    And second question, are those bungey cords you are using to strap in the planking tight, or just cord with small springs on the ends?  Either way does that work pretty well?
 
Here's a couple pics of my stairs.  I guess I shouldn't butt into your log, but I can't help it.

Good question Jud.  I am a novice at reading plans, and the only drawing in my array of plans that would seem to answer this is the one that I took the heigts of the frames from.  If, in the end, after all the adjustments and shims etc. that I have been doing in order to get the sheer right, the frames actually are lower at their tops than they should be, then the arch of the precut false deck would have to be greater.  But for the most part the arch conforms nicely to the arch of the beams.  The edge of the deck, however, extends a bit over the frames, again indicating that the arch is OK but the frames are low.  I'm going to have to deal with that as part of the process of fairing the frames for planking.  Like much of this adventure, I am going on the theory that if there's a way to make it work, I will find it.  Whatever may have been the source of these problems, I've surely learned some valuable lessons.  POF is definitely more challenging than POB.

Received my 'used' copy today.  Like new.  Great book.  Thanks again for referring me to the used book department at Amazon.

Well I'm moving along with my solution to the frame issue. After innumerable and painstaking measurements, finding that the tops of some frames didn't conform precisely to the plans and weren't level from starboard to port, I decided not to try to achieve perfection. I decided the best way to proceed would be to just make sure the sheer of the deck line (ie the tops of the frames) was nice and smooth, not radical and not bumpy, and looked much like it should. If I could achieve this I wouldn't worry that at various points the deck sat a few millimeters to high or low compared to the plans. After viewing both sides of the ship I decided I would take the starboard side as my starting point, and the center frame would be the low point as it should be. I was surprised to see that of the 14 other frames, only 3 or 4 needed shims or a bit of sanding to give them the proper (or a good) sweep. I think the tops of the frames needed to be slightly beveled anyway to account for the upward curve of the deck from its midpoint to fore and aft. After making these adjustments on the starboard side, I then needed to level them to the port side. I thought this would require cutting or shimming almost all of them but found only about five needed it. And they were all the aft frames. So I have proceeded to shim those on the port side. I've put on the beams and deck without gluing or pinning, and I think its pretty good. There are two frames that still need some radical shims which I'll quickly apply today. Then I'm going to just take a deep breath and nail down that sucker of a deck.
 
I'm looking for advice on the best way to hold down the deck while gluing. And what type of glue is best to use in this operation. Instructions say to work from bow to stern. If I use PVA glue and put it on all beams and frames at once, then start pressing down the deck from bow to stern, I think it will take so long the glue will be too dry when I reach the stern. But there will be no way to reach into the ship to apply glue to the beams when the deck is on (ie working progressively). I'll be able to reach the frames to glue the tips, but not very far into the beams. The weights you can see in the pictures below work pretty well. Using those I could probably work quickly enough to glue all the frames and beams and position the deck and then place the weights on, giving me time to pin it in "springy" spots. Any suggestions? Do most of you apply glue across the beams?

I just ordered a used copy from Amazon.  Thanks for the tip Brian.  I hope that when they say "good" condition that their definition of good is about the same as mine.

Well, just to show that my time isn't totally wasted in theoretical mish mash, I will describe my progress and post photos as well.
 
The last major post on my build log saw me complete the lower deck cabin and just start work on the stairway and the breadfruit plants. I was unsure whether to put some greenery into the pots as Cannon Fodder had done. I tried several different ideas and none worked well and all of them were too much work for too little payback. So I opted for the pre Tahiti Bounty. But to give the model a little more umph and authenticity I added rope handles to the buckets. This was a good learning experience in the use of a needle and thread and making tiny knots. My wife taught me everything I now know.
 
Next I went for the stair way. The only difficulty I encountered here was getting the stringers to pop out of their template. The laser cuts didn't go all the way through. The tips of two out of the ten broke off. I was able to repair one with CA glue but the other was a goner. Into the scrap heap. Thinking I would need to make one of my own, I pondered this until, lo and behold I discovered that only 4 stairs (and therefore 8 stringers) are needed. So I now have an extra stringer. Having built the little stair case I thought that it had very little gluing surface to it, so I added a footer which would glue directly to the deck. Then I thought about building a railing and/or bannister as well cause I thought there was no way the real ship would not have had one. I experimented with different size dowels and square timber for the stanchions but I could not find anything I could build with my current array of drill bits -- either too small or too large. So I opted to use the deadeyes that are supplied. For the rope I found my old sailing ditty bag full of odds and ends of waxed twine and assorted needles. Good find. The result of my work can be found on the following pictures. I still struggle to put captions and text on the pictures, so I resort to all the pictures at the end of the post.

Here's a weird analogy.  Picture ten runners running a 1500 meter race.  They start in individual lanes and run a couple hundred meters.  Then they're allowed to cut into the center lane and they all bunch up there.  So now there are 10 runners in one lane (more or less).  If you were to trace the path of all of the runners, you would have a tapering into the narrow one lane from the wide ten individual lanes.  There's still 10 runners but they are taking up much less space on the track.  Weird, I know.

My instructions for the deck planking recommend using a sharp #4 pencil to "simulate the nailing."  I don't know why this seems kindof mickey mouse to me, but it does.  Is there any other way?  Only other way I can think of is to poke tiny holes and then fill and sand, using a darker wood filler than the light Ramin wood of the planks.  More work but not that much more.  Any comments/suggestions/experiences?