vossiewulf

Yes, when painting the hull it's largely irrelevant, but it will always be relevant for the deck at least. Just something to keep in mind for the next time around.

Sounds like you learned a lot with the longboat and made good use of it here, the planking is nice and smooth. I'm not sure what the instructions tell you so you may have just followed instructions, but one suggestion would be to change your planking pattern to a four-butt shift which was pretty much standard throughout the age of sail. Here you've done a two-butt shift and that makes for very visible vertical lines where half the planks are ending. Instead, you divide your plank length by four and shift the next plank by 1/4 of the plank length, next one shifted another 1/4, then one more and the fourth plank will be in the same position the first plank is in. See below.

To me, the best choices are easy, Castello boxwood and Swiss pear, the primary deciding factor being which color you like better. Although I haven't used the latter, I've watched Kortes bending it about into noodles with steam on his Dutch boier model, and it's a preferred wood of many builders. The only downside is that both are relatively expensive. Look at Crown Timberyard.

Thanks @popeye, @Landlubber Mike, and @BANYAN. Mike, I am having lots of choice words trying to get those baskets in the right place on the buoys, I thought making those baskets would be the hard part, noooooooo. Pat, thanks, but I am taking advantage of using fly tying line, which at least lays flat when wrapped if not being flat coming off the bobbin. It's specifically designed to make it easy to do a smooth wrapping like that, fly tyers are at least as nutty about their things as ship modelers are about ships. If you find a place that needs small-scale serving, give it a spin, costs like $4USD a bobbin. I'm using 6/0 to do the basic serving of the line, and 14/0 for wrapping the loop splices, and I bought some 3/0 to serve larger things like stays.

Agree with Mark, the bulkheads clearly are designed for two more stringers going down the port and starboard sides and that will stiffen the structure significantly and make the following steps easier.

Thanks B.E. and Rick

Or use steam, you can even do it in the microwave, just wrap the wood in wet paper towels and nuke it on high. Then pin around a form and let cool.

It was a significant pain in the butt to do it on my cutter, not least of which is that on LN the rings are too close to the carriages so I had to simplify the rigging. But in the end I think it looks pretty good, maybe you shouldn't give up on the idea just yet

Working on the not simple rigging of the anchor buoys. I've made up the rings and six lines (one line on each side will double over to form the loop at the ends) for one buoy, so should be able to finish one and mostly finish another tomorrow.

Remember the primary red pigment of red ochre which was by far the most common red paint was iron oxide. Bright red isn't correct.

I don't know whether anyone answered one of your earlier questions, yes it makes total sense for blade dullness to show up first in ripping vs. crosscutting. Ripping is far more stressful because the blade is basically cutting end grain. Crosscutting is side grain and much easier.

I hate it when that happens.

None with that brand, but I can say having used Paasche, Badger, and Iwata brushes, all airbrushes are damned squirrely devices, like the electrical system on old Jaguars. I have Iwata brushes now which are well made, but it doesn't matter- the ONLY way to keep them operating correctly is to completely disassemble the airbrush, clean every single part, and reassemble it after every single use. And you must have either thin pipe cleaners or the tiny test-tube brush style nylon brushes that are made for airbrush cleaning. Seriously, don't ever put one down without doing that. The nightmare of cleaning them once the paint has dried is a massively bigger pain in the butt. Don't think that when you spray thinner through it and it comes out clear that all the paint is gone, it most certainly ain't gone and is hoping you leave it there so it can totally screw up your next spray session. On the up side of course is that nothing can give you the smooth finish with fine control that an airbrush provides.

Jo. although people are giving you good advice as to what to think about, my advice is do not go overboard with attempted precision in your first build. I promise your ship will not suddenly explode into flames if one of the bulkheads is one degree out from square, the worst that will happen is you'll have to taper filler blocks a little. It's always better to be perfect, but you need practice being basically accurate first and shouldn't slow yourself to a crawl trying for perfect. Speaking of filler blocks, I recommend you put them in between all bulkheads, I wish I had done so at first and not had to try to retrofit them later. I also promise that doing so will make your planking go much easier, with more accurate results and considerably less frustration about filling flat spots. That's one extra step that is in my opinion worth the time spent. Balsa is fine for this purpose and therefore very easy to sand. And I'll let you know if you need to answer me

Or it could be just a trick to make us THINK he's human! All the while he's operating with those 8 arms Am I understanding you Amalio that you remove the dried glue with the nylon brushes turning very slowly? I've never heard of removing PVA glue that way and I've been using it for too many years. Interesting.

Thanks Chris! I was mostly teasing Pat but I appreciate the kind words. I know, was just having fun giving you a hard time It's LIT m***********!

So many hours for "pretty good." Sigh Guns done, on to rigging the anchors. After looking at the pics, I'm not done with the guns, it seems the left side breeching rope eye on the pictured gun got turned 90 degrees somehow.

You don't really need to glue them at all against the bulkheads, just edge glue one to the next. If you feel you have to glue them, just tack them- use as little glue as possible in one spot which will make it easy to pull the bulkhead piece off later without damage. And this is a standard convention with plank on bulkhead ships, the upper parts of the bulkheads are just temporary forms for the bulkhead planking. Which itself will then probably be planked a second time from the inside.

Johann, it seems like with the gunport lids having a hole in them that this corvette always stowed its guns outboard like that, instead of inboard with the gun muzzle against the bulkheads? When did they start doing that? Also, it seems to me if you're stowing the guns that way, you're putting a lot of faith in the tampions that they won't allow any water in with the muzzle exposed to rain and spray. And the whole thing is extremely perfect. The gundeck would definitely pass the captain's inspection.

Jason sells holly strips at Crown Timberyard. I used them for my deck.

Oh, I agree wholeheartedly about Micro-Mark, most of the few tools I had from them were replaced long ago. But in this case, the set has been perfectly reasonable quality although I don't remember what I paid for it- I don't think it was $99. But I've gotten a lot of use from it and everything is still working fine. So if you can get the same thing cheaper, good deal.

The only safer table saw is the Sawstop. And it's expensive, and you can't cut anything but fully seasoned wood on it without risking the wood's moisture tripping the electrical resistance detection mechanism for bits of human bumping into the blade. When that happens you have to buy a whole new safety mechanism as it's destroyed in stopping the blade near instantly. And it doesn't stop kickbacks at all. Real table saws are just damned dangerous devices and when they get up into multi HP you should have giant heaping heaploads of respect for the machine before trying to operate it. I always force myself (ditto with shaper/jointer/any serious machine) to take a deep breath and look around and confirm again I know what the hell I am about to do before turning on a table saw. I worked for 5 years building custom furniture and had more than a few close calls and bad events. I still have occasional nightmares about the time I was tapering a table leg and the wedge-shaped cutoff dropped into the tiny slot next to the blade and bent it toward the work, and suddenly I had a 5hp saw trying to throw the whole taper jig at my face and only my full weight on it was barely stopping that from happening, and I couldn't remove a hand to reach the emergency cutoff. I don't know how long it really lasted but to me it was a very long time before a guy on the other side of the shop recognized the sound of the saw binding and came running to shut it off for me.

I recommend Castello Boxwood. It has a finer grain structure than any of your current options, and is easier to work than maple. If you're stuck with those three, I'd recommend cherry as it could be left natural and will turn that nice cherry brown on its own, and is somewhat easier to work than maple.

I've had the Micro-Mark set for about 10 years and have used it fairly often on brass, but not often on steel. However they have worked fine for either material and have cut threads that fit even 0-80 quite smoothly. Unless they've changed their supplier, I would consider it a good purchase.

When you reach a time where all your processes are perfected to the point that no further improvements can be made, you're no longer learning anything and it becomes just execution. That's where I start getting bored