themadchemist

Made a stand for the boat & stained it. Added the rowlock blocks & oar locks. Glued the trap, buoy & oars doen & the Main Peapod is completed.

Finished the lobster trap construction & gave it watered down grey washes to give it a weathered wood look. Tied it to the bout & added the 2nd rub rail to the boat....
 

Good afternoon
Foremast work continues, still to be fully shaped and pinned 

these past few weeks,  leading up to this wonderful day,  has been quite hectic........but that doesn't mean that I haven't been doing any modeling.  an already started kit has come into my possession,  which kicked off a super cool idea.   after assessing what I will need to do,  it has been tabled,  until I finish some of these projects I have in the works.  Christmas was good to me too.....getting a couple of kits that are unrelated to ship modeling......but I also got the Academy 1:400 scale kit of the Titanic
 

 
....that too will be a future project.   a couple of days ago,  I put some time in at the table,  on the Andrea Gail.   I had some bollard pins in inventory,  so I made up the bollards for the A.G. and the trawler Syborn.
 

 
I still haven't drilled the holes for the portholes yet,  so I thought I'd make the railings for the fore deck,  drilling the holes for the stanchions.  there are a few short ones behind the pilot house,  and two that run along the fore deck,  to the bow.
 

 

 
there is a cap for the tip of the bow,  that I made next.
 

 
the bollards were cut to size,  and dug out the last ship's wheel I have on hand
 

 
going back to the railings,  more were added
 

 
getting to the port side,  the rack and podium still need to have the adjustments made to it.  I need to trim the ladder and open up the railing leading to the fore deck.   the adjustments were made
 

 

 
...and those railing were added at this time
 

 
next will be the stern reels
 

Merry Christmas everyone!
 
Got in a little boat time late this morning and decided to take a break from the mini coopering. I started working on the compass box and decided it needed to be put together with box joints. Sounded logical being a box and all...
 


 
The joints were filed using guitar nut slotting files working from .010" up to .032". I still have a little fine tuning to do on this corner, and then do 3 more corners. Maybe this isn't very logical at all...

Hello again -
 
Thanks for the likes and comments, and a happy Christmas Eve to everyone.
 
Just a quick post about the last bit of work before I go on vacation for two weeks.
 
Since the last posting the standing rigging has been completed.  Here are two shots of the overall model with the upper standing rigging complete.  No different techniques were used, just a selection of thinner lines as the rig got higher.  The final lines, the fore t'gallant stay and the outer bobstay, are tensioned by lanyards between eyes worked into the ends of the lines.
 
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1a
 
Here is a closeup of the foretop before any of the running rigging goes on.  You can see that the upper deadeyes are not in a perfect line.  I have seen similar irregularities in photographs of later, much later, working merchant sailing ships.  I do not think that pirates would have been as careful as the Royal Navy, or even the French navy, at such details, so leaving one a little shorter adds to the realism.
 
1b
 
 
The first element of the running rigging was the spritsail, the spar handling lines, a furled sail, and the sail lines.  Here is how I approached it.  The spar is simple.  A properly sized length of square maple stock was planed to an octogon.  The center section which remained octagonal was marked off, then the spar was tapered and rounded with a small plane, Dremel sanding drums, then a sheet of sandpaper glued flat to a piece of acrylic.  This procedure is exactly like that used to shape the masts in an earlier log entry, just carried forward till the spar was properly tapered.  Cleats were mounted in the center section and stop cleats glued and pinned at either end.
 
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The first lines to go on were the stirrups and footropes.  Since the ship was quite small the spritsail only needed one stirrup on each side.  These were made by laying up an eye in the end, then wrapping the running end over the spar twice, leaving enough hanging down so the eye came 3 feet (1" in scale) below the top of the spar.  This would allow a sailor to stand on it and reach over to furl the sail.  An eye was siezed into the ends of the footropes sized to slip over the spar ends.  The free end of the footrope was slid through the eye in the stirrup and a small eye worked into its end.  According to Budriot the ends of the footropes were not lashed to the spar or to any of the lines circling the spar, but laced to each other.  
 
Once the lengths had been adjusted and set, and the center lashing tied, a series of small weights were used to make the stirrups and footropes  hang vertically, as if by gravity.
 
4
 
In the closeup you can see the first heavy steel clip pulls the footrope down near its seizing, while the second pulls down the stirrup.  The two smaller aluminum clamps were set on either side of the stirrup to mimic the footrope sag. 
 
5
 
 Once I liked the look the lines were painted with water to assist in the penetration of dilute white glue which was left to dry to set  the sag permanently.  
 
The various blocks and rigging fittings were added to the spar.  The first was the line for the sling.  An eye was spliced into one end which was wrapped around the spar and under the center cleat on the port side.  A round seizing secured it in place.  The running end was left free until it was time to lash the spar to the bowsprit.  It did, however, provide a way of temporarily securing the spar while various measurements were made.
 
Moving outward, the clew blocks were tied to the spar so they hung down, then the small deadeyes for the standing lift which sit on the forward face of the spar.  At the end of the spar a large single block was spliced on facing forward for the running lift, and a similar single block on a short pendant for the brace.
 
Not shown in the photo are a large single block tied to the center of the spar for the halyard, a small block in the center for the leach line, and the clew lines themselves which tie to the spar just ouboard of the clew blocks.
 
6
 
Then I turned to the sail itself.  The first choice was what to make it out of.  Working in 1/36 scale allowed me to use actual cloth rather than silkspan or other paper-based product.  I haunted fabric stores and searched the internet for the thinnest that I could find.  I found it at the New York Fashion Center.  Their Imperial Batiste measured out to 0.008" (0.288" in scale, or just over 1/4") which was acceptably thin.  As you can see in the photo, you can read through it.  Best of all, it is quite reasonably priced.
 
7
 
Now, how to shape it to a furled look.  Although most of my ideas on this topic have been developed over many years, they are succinctly stated in an article by Professor John Tilley of Texas A&M which can be found on this website at this location: http://modelshipworldforum.com/resources/Rigging_and_Sails/ScaleSails.pdf 
 
The first idea is that a furled sail has to have less bulk than a full one, and that this has to start out as a trapezoid, because the outer ends of the furl are even less bulky than the middle.  I modified this to add two triangles of cloth that would hang down as representing the clews of the sail.  To this shape a series of panel lines were drawn on.  The outer ones were angled to lie parallel with the outer edge of the sail.
 
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After that a lot of experimenting went on to get the size, layout and panel lines adjusted.  Then the edges of the sail were painted with white glue.  When dry the sail was cut out, the tabling folded and ironed, and the sail mounted on the spar.  It was soaked in clear acrylic matte finish and teased into furls that were tied with gaskets to the spar.  The teasing process continued throughout the drying process.  Where I was unhappy, water was liberally painted on the problem section to soften the cloth and the sail adjusted some more. I was so caught up in the process that I failed to take photos of my techniques, but I will do that with the fore and main courses, which will be furled in similar fashion.
 
9
 
With the sail mounted to the spar the sling was tied and siezed.  The halyad, the standing and running lifts, and the braces were tied, run through the appropriate blocks, and then to their belaying points.  Several, including the running lifts and clew lines, go through a long gammon block with six sheaves lashed to both sides of the gammoning.
 
10
 
At the belaying points, whether cleat or timberhead, the lines were secured with hitches. not knots or glue, leaving long tails for further adjustments.  Pirate Pete is supervising to make sure.
 
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So here is where it is as I leave for Santa Fe.  I know that there are some items that I will have to adjust when I get back, and please, please, if you spot any that you question, let me know so I can correct them before I go too far past to easily redo.
 
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My very best wishes to you all and your families.  I will see you in the New Year. 
 
Dan
 
 
 
 
 

I use to use Meguiar's on my '76 black and gold T/A. They make a great product. It was the only wax I found that gave a swirl-free shiny in that Black paint,
I remember using a soft bristle brush on all those decals also, Ouch!
I shoulda kept that car
 

This update is a bit overdue.  I've been waiting over two weeks for a sunny day to take photos. The last sunny day was three weeks ago, lasted about 30 minutes and I was on my way to a race.  The next forecast for sun is next Sunday - SURPRISE!  We had sun this morning!  SURPRISE!  My camera pooped out this morning while taking photos!  The mirror got hung up while taking photos and I'm getting error message.  I can't complain, I've been using this camera a lot for eight years, took well over 100,000 photos and never a problem.  But I did get a few good pics before it pooped out and also took some with my little point and shoot to finally do this update! 
Bye - Bye Mr. Sun!  Hope to see you again soon!
~~~~
 
Cap rail are done!  After I added the last interior plank, I used an 8" hardwood sanding plank to get a smooth, even and level (glue) surface for the cap rails to sit on.  To understand all the pieces of this puzzle, I made a 'mock up' cap rail with coffee stir sticks and figured out the angles at the transom and bow.  I added the cap rail, starting at the transom and worked my way to the bow stem, five sections per side with butt joints and it's done!    Phew!  Only two of the eight butt joints are slightly visible.  Going forward, I want / need to learn how to do scarph joints.
 
 
The bow stem is a wee bit on the short side, as in 'non existing', so I need to add some height to it.  I like these bow bitts, but I'm thinking they are a bit too tall.  The good news is I'm thinking they're tall enough to lop off a few inches and they will still look right.  There will be just enough room for the bowsprit and it will look good. 

 
Way back I added 4" to the height of the transom and thought I would need to remove 2".  With the cap rail added, it's just barely enough.  Still need to make the square opening for the tiller.  

 
In the last update I added the mast thwart and knees. The splash board was sanded down to height and added knees.  All but one of the kit metal cleats have been replaced with wood cleats of various types or belaying pins.     
The hull is only 3mm thick, not enough for the deadeye strop nails to hold onto.  Since I don't want the ends of the nails poking through, I'm thinking about going to order some scale hardware nuts and bolts for the strops and hull struts.  Blackened / painted, these will blend in very nicely.  

 
Painting is a necessary evil and I'm learning.  Preparation is key, I'm using gesso as a prep.  I'm getting nice results.  While making the rudder, do make sure it had an even bevel, I decided to give it a coat of the black paint.  And while I was at it, add some paint to the lower part of the hull, to get an idea how it was going to look.  I used the canned spray paint I've used twice before with excellent results.  The next morning the paint was gummy, like a heavy coat of crayon.  Ickky!  So that all had to be scrapped off and then cleaned to remove residue.  It was a mess!  
 
It seems like the more small parts I do, the more small parts there are to do!  The rudder is almost done, need to install the rudder and open up the transom so I can get the right height on the rudder for the tiller.  Then there's the belaying pins, hull struts, bow sprit and a few other parts.   
 
As always, thanks for stopping by.  Your suggestions are always welcome.  
 
Dee Dee
 
Wishing you and yours Happy Holidays.
 

 
(Edited to change photos to smaller sized photos)

I carefully reduced the thickness of the complete grating to just over 1mm using a mini sanding disc in my Proxxon IB/e.The grating was then wetted and clamped to a plywood former with slightly more than the required radius.The Ebony frame was then assembled around the grating using 30min epoxy.
After leaving overnight to dry,everything was sanded back to the required shape and size.The final two pics show the grating slotted in place on the deck.Final gluing will not happened until all 'treenailing' and sanding has been carried out.
A change of direction now as work is going to concentrate on Royal Caroline's guns.
 
Kind Regards
 
Nigel

Here's some info on the making of the tiny staves for the piggin using simple tools. The same method will be used for the bucket and lantern case. If you are a serious scratch builder, you would just use your Jim saw and thicknesser instead to make the custom size strips, and skip ahead to the tapering step. For a kit builder just needing a few custom sized strips of wood to bash a kit or scratch some items like these, this is an inexpensive solution to keep you going. You wouldn't want to make a ship's worth of planks this way.
 
The wood I used was cedar because it has a warm color that looks right for buckets, is easy to work, and best of all, it was free. There were some odd pieces of wood left in the garage by the previous owner of my house, and an old fence picket that had split was one of them. No doubt, the previous owner never got around to making buckets with it.
 
1) The first step was to whack off a length of the picket and cut that into rough strips. I whacked off a 15" piece just so I could have longer strips for stuff should I ever need them in the future. If you don't have a motorized saw of some sort, you could just cut off a 3" piece with a handsaw and then use a little razor saw to make some oversized strips. I used a bandsaw and a fence to cut longer oversized strips. I cut the strips so the grain would be quartersawn (the dark thin grain lines are perpendicular to the face of the strips). This was more for the looks than anything else. The dark rough piece was the face of the fence picket. The strips cut from this small cut-off of scrap wood is good for a dozen buckets or more!

 
2) The strips were brought to a 1mm thickness with a hand plane. Instead of trying to plane the 15" long pieces, shorter 3" long pieces were planed. It is really easy to snap a longer piece of a wood like cedar when planing this thin, and I can manage the short ones easily at my drydock work station. When you are planing this thin, you need something thinner but strong to hold the piece against, Don't use sheet metal! If you plane too thin, that could damage your plane blade. A thin piece of hardwood works great. This is a little veneer of Indian Rosewood that's about 40 thousands thick (.040") and is very tough.  I just butt the end of the strip against the veneer, hold the veneer with my left hand and plane with the right. Pretty easy and not much workspace is needed.


 
There are all kinds of small modeler's hand planes out there and I have an assortment, but I swear by my Stanley 12-960 low angle block plane.

 
My 2 cents on hand planes: Although the 12-960 dwarfs the little planes, it's features and adjustability make it much easier to use with very controllable, precise results. First off, the mouth (where the blade pokes through the bottom) is adjustable in width. You need a very fine opening to take the tiny shavings we will be making (about .0015"). If you look in the picture above, the 12-960 has been adjusted way tighter than the smaller planes without adjustable openings. The 12-960 has an easy adjustment (the big knob on the back) to control the depth of the cut. The others have a single set screw that you loosen to reposition the blade, and you may or may not end up with the ajustment being better once you re-tighten it. It takes a lot of practice to get a set screw holder type plane adjusted to within .001" tolerance, which is what is really needed for precision small scale stuff. The blade can also get rotated a little crooked when re-tightening set screws. With the 12-960, there's another adjustment that can correct a crooked blade. Once you are all finely adjusted, if you catch a gnarly change of grain in hardwood, a set screw holder can slip and mess up your adjustment. The 12-960 has an indexed holder that positively locks into a notch in the blade. Speaking of the blade, the 12-960's blade is about twice as thick as the others and is made of better steel that holds a sharp edge longer. I find this plane a joy to use. I bought mine about 15 years ago and it was made in Sheffield England then. I think they are now made in Mexico and hopefully they are still the nice tool that mine is. There are more expensive versions of this plane from L.N. and Veritas. but it's hard to beat this one at about $35. You can actually plane end grain with this low-angle version.
 
Once the strips were planed to thickness, the edges were trued up and planed to 3mm wide. I did this by simply holding the strip in my left hand and planing with the right. Sounds iffy when you say it, but it's actually very easy. You don't bear down on the wood, you just slide the plane past the strip and it scares the wood off the edge! No blood lost.
 
3) The 3mm x 1mm x 3" long strips were cut into lengths a little longer than the staves needed to be (about 9mm long for 1/25 scale). I then tapered the staves with the plane so the narrow end was 2mm wide. In hindsight, the fit would have been better if they had been a bit under 2.5mm. This was done by taking a short cut off the end to be the narrow end, followed by slightly longer strokes until the whole 9mm length is one continuous cut. Very little pressure was applied and it worked out to about 6 passes on each side. This looks scary, but I did it by holding the little stave in my left hand and planing with the right. Keep in mind that the blade is set for a .0015" shaving, so your fingers would pretty much have to touch the bottom of the plane to get cut! No blood in my bucket!


 
I back-beveled the edges of the staves with 220 grit sandpaper glued to a flat piece of hardwood. I have a courser grit at the other end. These sanding sticks are really handy and don't load up as bad as a small file. The bottom of the bucket was shaped from a wider 1mm thick piece of cedar. The bucket bottom (about 8mm dia.) was glued to the end of a dowel, it's edge beveled, and the bucket assembly continues as was shown in the earlier posts. The beveled notches on the inside stave bottoms were cut with a #11 Xacto blade to receive the bucket bottom. The tape around the dowel flares the staves out. It was necessary to adjust the stave tapers with the sanding stick because they were a bit over-tapered. The bands were cut from a thin plastic container's label (like the label on a plastic bottle of soda) and blackened with a Sharpie and stuck on with white glue. Geez, I guess I wrote another small book.



 
Best wishes
 

finally I attached the wooden door to the bulkhead of the ship. I will varnish this part soon...

Constructed bottom frame of the lobster trap, bent a plank around a paint bottle to make the hoops for the top of the lobster trap. Started assembly & painting of the buoy. Added a rub rail to one side. One end didn't meet the false keel like it was supposed to so I burnished the end down by rubbing it across the end of my workbench till it touched like it should. Glued hoops on lobster trap. Used an old hose sock to make the netting inside the trap. Cut out first one cut hole, sealed edges with fray check. Stretched out & glued net on.
 

Made a lot of progress. Added the seats, knees & inwales. Got the hull painting started. Started assembling the paddles.
 
 

an anchoring device for securing boat to the strand....
 
 
the little dreggen anchor from the Amati photo etch sheet is really too small, so I soldered my own one from brass, 16 mm long and appr. 15mm diam. over the four pikes
 
 
 

 
the midget anchor was considered too small (bottom left
 
 

 
boat has fallen dry at Cornwalls Atlantic coast
 
 

 
anchor hooked over the sheer capping
 
 
 
 
 
 
Nils
 
 

Only a small update,but otherwise I may end up missing a step or two.I have had a slight change of plan in that I am going to curve the gratings rather than sand the shape on the top face.This came about after I thinned the grating down and realised it should be a reasonably easy task to shape in a jig with the application of water.
I plan to get the full thickness down to a little over 1mm.This should give a 'finer' scale appearance.I have begun work on the forward combing.This is sawn from an ebony billet and the rebate added on the tablesaw before cutting into sections.The mitres were sized using the bench disc sander rather than attempting to cut these with the saw.
One of the athwartship sections has had the rebate extended to match the curve of the grating underside.This was done with scalpel and a jewellers file.All external faces at present are oversize,these will be cut after assembly.
The reason I chose to mitre instead of replicate the original joints it purely for cosmetic reasons.The joints will be invisible in the finished ebony,but I can achieve a better finish with no exposed endgrain on the corners.
 
Kind Regards
 
Nigel

Thanks for the "likes and" comments.
 
Just a break from building here while dimensioning my Swiss Pear supply for this.
 
For hull planking, I'm need 4 sizes of wood:  1/32" X 1/8",  3/32" X 3/16", 1/16" X 1/8" and 1/16" X 3/16".
 
I have an ample supply of planking wood that is  +1/16" X +1/8" and +3/32 X +3/16" that I'm converting down.  I've been testing out my technique on this and sorting things out.  For the first batch of 1/32" X 1/8", what I'll be doing is running it through the thicknesser to get it down to 1/32" (dead on exact) and then running it thought the table saw with a 230T blade to get the exact 1/8" I want..   For those on metric, 1/32" is equal to about 1mm. 
 
I give the raw dimensions as "+" because they're all a tad oversize and the oversize seems to be inconsistent.
 
I'm attaching two pics of the saw with the wood being run through it.  You can see that very little wood is being removed and also how I'm keeping my big paws away from the blade. 
 
I hope to have planking underway pretty soon.  In fact, maybe tomorrow, I'll take a break from dimensioning and do the counter.  Hmmm... I need some ebony for the stern above the lights so I'll have to do that also.
 
 
Overall view: 
 
Close up of blade area: 

Hi J.Pett!
 
Thanks! I didn't consider painting the bands because I had so much trouble trying to paint the 1/32" stripes on the oars. I gave up and used the Pactra tape on the oars. Here's the finished piggin bigger than life with warts and all. I guess I can say that the little splintered out stave edges give it a used look. Yeah, that's it!  It's a used piggin. BTW, these are the mylar jar label bands that were blacked out with a Sharpie.

 
J.P. - I know you have an interest in handplanes, do you (or anyone else) think it would be helpful if I posted how I made the stave blanks from a junk cedar fence picket?

my first wooden door; I like it

I drilled a hole for the boom at the stern of the ship. But the back side of the hole is drilled too. So I cut a piece of apple wood to cover the hole as you can see in the next post.

after some more sanding...

I have done the stringers between the decks and bulwarks. Then I made some inner reinforcements. I think it seems much prettier now.

Hey all! I´ve got ill since posting last time, a small inflammation in the heart. I now eat medicine that will cure the inflammation and after that I should be fine again.
 
Anyway I made some small progress on the model last days. I have decided what setup I want and I will make her when she got her masts in place, perhaps during the early summer of 1628. I think the unfinished look is interesting and dynamic.
 
So I have made the second step of the main mast and the rigging for how to raise it after info from Fred Hocker. When it was in place I could glue the tops and then continue with the ropes that connect the shrouds to the tops.
 
I have also prepaired the railing. Fragile stuff so fingers crossed I will be able to add them later on.
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
/Matti
 
 

Build log part 70
 
 
the little gig is now complete, first prototype for the oars is made
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
oar length appr. 2,3 the max beam width
 
 

 
oar shaft diam. 2mm, made from bamboo, could be a bit less but risk of breaking under rounding the shaft
 
 

 
fits in for the "HMS Pegasus" space on the gallows (in actual it would be a 28 ft gig).
I`ll better have to take off the rudder (hook it out)
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 
Nils

Thank you very much Kester,
 
thats a very nice and informative Input, especially because you experienced pulling on a gig yourself.
 
Now that the mast supports are fixed to thwart #2 and #6  the Crew oarsmen will be forced to sit on the opposite side to where the oars stick out, so that will be in compliance to your comment, thanks again....
 
Nils