vossiewulf

Bolded one very good point (well they all are but this one is possibly a blocker). I try extremely hard to not have glue on my surfaces anywhere but that doesn't mean I'm 100% successful. And I'm guessing it would bead and I'm not sure it wouldn't also bead if I put down a clear flat coat or something. I'll have to go experiment. I've always liked india black so yes that was another potential reason. If you go through my build log you'll see I've tested with dyes and my current plan is to use aniline dyes to take the boxwood to black, and I'm using dyes for the same reason I'm testing ink, it doesn't completely hide the wood. But the black dyes I have tested all seem to have a pretty red hue, enough to be noticeable and a more pure black would be better. Anyway, thanks Joel, will post back here with what I find.

Quotes from that page: " Unlike typical carvel vessels, the planking is tightly fitted, with the seams of each plank moulded to fit the adjoining plank..." "The set work is unique on a carvel vessel of this type, with similar only seen on a shell first barges in Europe (Goodburn, 2009)..." "The flat vertical scarfs on the outer planking are also unique to frame first construction. They appear in the place of butt joints..." Citing a unique vessel is not a good example to use. From another thread a couple down from here also about planking lengths, Chuck posted the real planking expansion for his Cheerful cutter:

Bf-109G-6?

Good timing, was just about to give a little mini-update, which is I'm in blukhead strips and marking plank ticks etc. and will start actual planking soon, and will be head down for a while so you can holiday yourself and not worry I am once again experimenting and trying multiple things and doing things over, so it's a slow phase again. This time I am using Frog low-tack tape to measure lengths of stations since it is somewhat flexible and sticks but it doesn't stretch. And then I'm doing the actual tick marks with my proportional dividers. I'm then drawing planking lines for some planks by laying pinstriping tape down along the tick marks. And to ensure I have no excuses, I'm drawing those lines after sharpening a .3mm lead The tape along the keel shows what the garboard will do, similar to what I did for first planking. It will curve away from the keel and terminate in the rudder post two planking widths above the keel. That will leave a nice simple shape for the stealers that have to go someplace. One thing that was hard, and I'm still not sure they are perfect, was drawing in these stations and getting them square with the keel. Are there any tricks to this other than create frame templates fit well enough you could use them as rulers? I have no issues drawing straight lines here, the problem is figuring out which direction those straight lines should be pointing.

Anyone tried this? In my continued experimentation with about every step of my first ship I've been working through various options for paint; it's easy enough for me to do a perfectly level painted surface in most cases, but that would be extremely inaccurate, I'm looking for something more organic, allowing the character of the wood to show but at correct scale- grain bumps/grooves that scale out to two and three inches high/deep are just as bad as a perfectly smooth finish. I remembered I have a nice set of india inks that promise to be lightfast and waterproof, and I also know from previous experience that it can be applied as glaze coats and have a bit more translucency than paint, so I decided to try the red (which is pretty close to most versions of RN bulkhead red) on a piece of boxwood, which is what the inner gunwales of my little cutter are planked with. This is the plank sanded cleanly with 400 grit and then given one "coat" of ink, which is really about three passes with thin glaze coats, waiting about 30 seconds between. The color is good but the grain has been raised considerably. This is after three "coats" (~ 9 glaze coat passes) with sanding between, first with 1200 that took it almost to bare wood again and second time with 2000 that was as much leveling as possible without removing significant color. Diffuse color. Harder to see here than in real life, but it has visibly more translucency than paints (that have effectively 0) while still having nice color saturation. I like the effect overall. And here's what the surface looks like. I also like this scale-wise, mine being 1:64- this seems pretty close to me for that scale. So, pros: Perfect consistency for brush painting Goes on with zero brush marks as glaze coats, looks like 2-3 would be = to typical brush painted coat Can be semi-transluscent allowing some of the wood to show. Translucency can be controlled between somewhat translucent to 0 translucent with complete color saturation Coats can be sanded < 5 minutes after final glaze coat. No kidding, dries fast. Use a hairdryer on low and you could run through the whole three coats and two sandings continuously with no significant waiting Seems reasonably tough, more so than I thought it would be and certainly more than Tamiya paints. A little piece of dust got in a coat and dried before I saw it, and it took a surprising amount of effort and resorting to putting on magnifiers to dig that little bastard out of the finish. But the scene of the crime disappeared completely with the next sanding and coats. Cons: ? Any experience/thoughts appreciated.

Since when are all hull plank joints scarfed? That's not the case, only drop planks and stealers were scarfed as far as I know, rest were butt joints always over frames.

Great, looking forward to more pics. No such thing as too many pics of Fokker aircraft. Well at least the E series and the F.1/Dr.I and the D.VII, in between were some really horrible aircraft before they moved to the thick airfoil section.

Thanks for the explanation Gaetan, reason I asked is as mentioned it seemed really obviously useful once I thought about it. I like especially how you managed to keep pretty large pieces of equipment mobile without losing much stability, it looks like you only had to raise the base less than 10cm, like 6 or 7? In your copious free time if you put together plans you could probably sell a few here and to the guys who do big (1:4, 1:3) aircraft.

What is that table Gaetan? Almost looks like a chiropractor table or something, designed to raise and lower. I guess that would be extremely useful when building as big as you do.

Ok this is what I have now. It looks correct to me and I think it pretty closely compares with Chuck's Cheerful. The planks on the top of this break would need to drop to close to half their width and that suggests one drop plank, and that is what he has on Cheerful. '' Cheerful, best side view I can find.

LOL Rick I appreciate it immensely but for God's sake go have your vacation and stop worrying about it Thanks on the planking I will try again, but if you see from the front it's just straight. If I make it meet the stem lower, it will have to curve down and that doesn't make much sense to me. Also it's not far above the line I used for the first planking which to me looked too flat. I'll see if I can find a middle ground and then leave it overnight and decide tomorrow.

I finished the starboard rabbet and am trying to lay out the final planking. As of now, this is the "prime line" that all else will be driven off of, the dividing point being where the planks either end into the rudder post or end overhanging the stern fascia/transom. Please let me know if this doesn't look right for some reason

Have fun Rick! Don't worry, I'll just keep count of what's your fault for not being here

I forgot the other part of the spookiness, it's noticeably easier to sharpen than A2, at least as easy as O1. So pay attention with the first sharpening to get a feel for the rate of metal removal. Tony thanks. Although it's Jay/Vossie, Grant is just commenting here. I answer fine to Vossie, have had some version of this name for like 26 years now. Ex-wife #2 who I'm still close to calls me that frequently, usually when she thinks I'm misbehaving. I read your discussion and some of the others on the topmast position to know that you could make an argument for either position but that forward seemed to be more common, so that's what I'm going to do. I wish I had known there was something of a consistent problem with gunports. In my case the issue is the kit designers have gunports following gunwale top line sheer not the deck sheer, and that results in guns at either end that can't shoot low and ones in the middle that can't shoot high. Well that's an exaggeration but they do have differing fields of fire. I think the problem is simply that on the real ships the deck sheer followed the top line sheer. This is 1817, but still quite close to the LN generation, similar top lines and gunports, but you can see the deck indicated just above the wales following that same sheer. Or at least I think that's the deck. If you're wondering I fiddled with this quickly to make it a bit clearer. But a couple more questions while I'm at it - 1. Why is LN carvel built, I thought clinker was still standard early 1800? 2. What in the world is the purpose of the upper mini-wale on LN that crosses the gunports? It's broken in 6 places, its contribution to bulwark strength is going to be pretty close to zero.

You have to understand Gaetan, a 1:24 74 built to your level and fully RC would probably be enough for people to make a physical pilgrimage to see it under sail in the local lake Me included. At 1:12, no need for RC you can ride inside with head through the quarterdeck, sailing her with a zillion little lines run down below deck

Yeah but remember the point is to collect it Although if you're creative you could probably sort of aim the belt sander at a little cup full of thinned glue, if you try that make sure someone records it and post it to Youtube. For educational purposes of course.

Good start Achu, looks like you're thinking of the right things, just need to keep looking ahead and relying on the experience of others until you've done enough to figure out the right ways for you to do things.

Moxis, any good CA glue should work very predictably and all that I buy these days do. It sounds to me like you're using too much, CA is not a glue you want squeezing out because one, that squeezeout is going to rapidly get rock hard and is not fun to remove, and two the glue sets much more slowly if there's lots of it. You want an extremely thin layer with maximum surface contact. Take two short pieces of planking material and put a very thin bead of medium CA glue on one, not enough that it will squeeze out. Press both of them together with fingers for 30 seconds. Now try to get them apart, good luck Medium is the standard thickness used, the thin is like water and only has certain useful applications. The thick/slow you only use when you need to fill gaps.

Another concern is that you can see the false deck edges were considerably less right than I thought they were, there are gaps on both sides where the deck dips well below the planking line. This is going to cause problems for getting the waterways right, they currently don't have a good level glue surface. Not sure what I'm going to do about it yet.

It's of course a double-edged sword issue, like pretty much everything. You get so much more adjust and also abort time- you can recognize a major issue and still easily pull the piece off and clean up both sides. But it also means you have to clamp the hell out of everything and that really gets complicated. What I'm doing is much less complicated and zero need for clamps, but I have to position everything exactly right the first time, even with slow CA they grab almost immediately. But as you see you can get very good glue lines when you use all 10 fingers to clamp a 1.5" length, and the other advantage is it's quick, you can walk your way down a plank in a short time as you only need to hold each section 30 second and then give it another 30 seconds to harden a bit- I finished the other side of the inner bulwark planking, most of the time being spent fiddling fits to be much better than they need to be. So that's done, need to do starboard side rabbet for outer planking then can start the outer planking. In an effort to get Grant treated for rabies due to excessive drooling, here I am cutting the stem rabbet for the starboard side. Rick, I also think this helped me with the planks at the bow, and I'd recommend anyone do it- but obviously do it before the stem is attached to the hull when it would be very easy. It provided a very positive lock for all the inner gunwale planks. Here it looks like the fashion piece came second, so I score this a win. And the bow looks nice and clean with the rabbet. And overall starboard side. Pretty much same as other side, very good glue lines except for the top strake. Which is really annoying as I was really trying to make that better on this side, but it's getting painted so moving on. Just bothered I'm not still sure what happened there.

Yes, I decided a couple of weeks ago that this is going to be the rigging standard I'll be striving for with my little cutter. And it's extremely unlikely I'll achieve parity

The Byrnes table saw zero-clearance insert blanks are aluminum. If the Proxxon doesn't have an insert I'd seriously consider doing what I had to to give it one, cutting away the surface around the blade and creating a mounting for a drop-in insert. Zero-clearance inserts are just plain required for precision work and his saw is of limited usefulness if it doesn't have one.

Thanks for the encouraging words everyone It's good the get thumbs up from people who know of which they speak. Grant, hopefully you paid the extra to get the PM-V11 chisels? That steel is downright spooky in how long edges last before having to resharpen. I got the PM-V11 iron for the first smoothing plane I bought from them, and all subsequent purchases have been with the PM blade/iron option. It's one of the rare cases where paying the premium for the best is actually a money saver, you sharpen so much less with PM-V11 tools that you make back in time more than every penny spent. But be prepared to understand our ancestor's cries of "wizardry!" when you chop through miles of hard exotic wood and find the edge is still super sharp, a part of your brain will want to put it down and back away and run go summon the village priest. Regardless they're great chisels even going with A2 or O1, and will make tons of nice furniture. Also don't forget it's in the woodworker's handbook that whenever you buy new chisels you have to go hand cut some dovetails with them Also WRT Mikhail's tools, as above unless you're intending to try carving consider getting a reduced set of just the straight and skew chisels from Mikhail, I'd guess maybe $150-$200 for I think 11 tools. All of the skews are single bevel and come in left and right hand versions in three sizes. Send a PM to me when you're ready and I will give you his email address. Rick, you were doing yellow glue right? I'm still using CA. I put glue on an inch or 1.5" length, hand clamp, move on, I always want to be managing the smallest practical joint with the least glue possible at any one time, bad glue lines for me are almost always the result of trying to glue too much at one time. Also there are many butt joints here, several of which are nigh invisible that allowed me to work with shorter lengths presenting simpler glue problems. I in fact wanted to do yellow glue here, but of all my small clamps only the c-clamps provide enough squishing power to get good joints, I am strongly considering making my own small cam clamps for ship work. I have always like cam clamps since I first learned woodworking, a standard 8" version should be able to do ~300lbs and if you're using them every day all day you can get amazingly fast at declamping and reclamping with them. Further, unlike spring clamps, they can apply a range of force from 0 to their max. I think that might be the best solution for this type of clamping, if nothing else before I start another ship I'm going to spend some time on infrastructure like making clamps based on my experience building this ship.

Thanks Popeye And Rick, the reason I cut the scarf joint while planking the inside of the bulkheads is because I will be doing that joggling of the deck planks. I hope Tony is still listening, he did a pretty fancy job of the planking on his. I've got a good top view of a well-done Cheerful, if nothing else I'll just copy that here. So we left off with the resolution of the Great Gunwale Debate, and BTW Rick haven't heard a peep back from Amati. While we were arguing back and forth with that, I did the port-side rabbet for the second planking. If you remember I did the first primarily with my rotary tool, this time for safety's sake I decided to use edge tools and it was a good reason to use Mikhail's tools. People shouldn't see them as carving tools, more than half the set is straight and skew chisels and I'm sure he would sell a set of just those. All of the straight and skew chisel tools are fabulous micro-joinery tools. First mark it out more carefully than the first one. Cutting the top and bottom lines with Mikhail's knife. Finishing with the same riffler I used before. This one seems specifically designed for model ship planking rabbets. All was well on the bow end. But as mentioned above, on the stern end the plans don't account for the thickness of the planking they told you to put on the transom, leaving it overhanging the rudder post where the final planking is supposed to end. So either we get a jaggy line or cut a piece of the rudder post out, I did the latter, starting with scoring the line. And then I used Mikhail's straight and skew chisels to cleanly remove the required wood, and lemme tell ya cocobolo isn't the most carving-friendly wood. Here I went back to the gunwale/bulkhead planking... what the hell are they? Both? Anyway the inner planking of the deck wall things And Rick, the answer is cut those puppies into as many pieces as possible Well more accurately, fit and mark as one plank but I rapidly concluded that particularly working with a hard wood like boxwood that I would want to glue short pieces if possible and remove as much waste as possible before applying pieces to the model. Here is another demonstration of my new tools, cutting a rabbet for inner bulkhead planking into a stem piece that's already installed. I also want to know why, within ten minutes of sitting down in the shop area, my fingers always look like I've been fighting in Stalingrad for three weeks. And successfully test-fitting a plank. As mentioned, for practice I cut a scarf joint in one of the strakes, just eyeballing the first half. Looks more or less right. Clamp it and the other half down and mark it with a knife, pencils are way too fat for this. Cut to the marked line, and theoretically it should be dead on. Overall view of progress. I am using my scraper to basically level each plank as it's glued on. Or you could wait to the end and try to level four boxwood planks at the same time. Your call Rick was right, you do get some good ripple removal from the inner planking. But like everything there are limits and I'm still glad I spent time getting them as close as possible to right back when I did the original bending. And as noted, it doesn't fix everything. This is one pernicious ripple that doesn't want to go away, highlighted in red. I played around with clamping before glue, and glad I did as it had to be placed in exactly the right place to correct close the gap. And now we have a completely fair line and no gaps and without any need for sanding or filling to get it that way, that makes me happy. Obviously I'm leaving the openings somewhat rough until the outer planking goes on and we can finalize them. This is the stern area done, and I can only see one out of four glue lines and the fit with the fashion pieces looks good so overall happy. And full view with port side inner planking done. The very top strake ended up with a visible line most of the way, not sure why, it looked as good as the rest dry fitting. But that's maybe a half star reduction, overall I'm pleased with the results, although this is as easy as planking gets. Proof will be in how I do with the bending and twisting of the outer planking.

Ditto I think the skylight, galley vent, and all the trimmings look great. Stick some clear acetate inside for windows and paint that puppy.