jablackwell

Jesse,
 
I've used this child's balloon blow-up hand pump for years to dust my models. You can pump it strong or gentle with no trouble. I bought it years ago to blow up my kids balloons.

Well folks.  The rope coils on the mast cleats were my last bug bear. They were a real pain, but I believe I started to recognize the issues...namely making them too narrow makes them twice as hard to get on. But that was the last thing.  No ships boat...would only detract what I think is a respectable first wooden ship build. 
 
That being said...she’s finished!  
 
I owe special thanks to my Admiral(!), my ship model club, and to Chuck Passaro for a great crutch in writing the Sultana practicum. Even with that, it was still challenging and I learned a lot!!!
 
So...here are the Launch Photos. I post a few more when I put her under glass in the next few days. 
 
I'm pretty proud of my first model ship...definitely not a bad result  

 

Added some rope details. Also made up the tackle and installed the Fore gaff. Slow going. But result was pretty good. Trying to take my time. 








Moving on!
 
 

Ok it's been a tough couple of weeks in the workshop. 
 
While working on the rigging for the topsail and topgallant yards the sleeve of my shirt 
caught the fore royal stay snapping the topgallant mast at the sheave. 
 
Soooooo the air was very blue for awhile and once it cleared and I could see straight
I disassembled the topgallant mast again, made a new one and re-rigged it ..... again. 
 
Once that was done I was able to continue working on the rigging with short sleeved shirts!
 
With the Main and Fore Topsail and Topgallant yards in place I've rigged the ties, 
buntlines, lifts, sheets, clue lines and braces. 
 
Next I'll move on to the Royal yards.
 

 

 

 
Now for the second and more painful workshop tragedy.
 
My shopmate for the last 11 1/2 years has gone on to the great workshop in the sky as is the issue
with beloved pets who never seem to live long enough. She was my faithful companion every day for
all those years always making moving around the shop a challenge. You see she was a 135lb (61kg) 
mastiff and she took up a whole lot of space though she thought she was a lap dog.
 
Tallie last fall on her 11th birthday.

 
And where you would more commonly find her. 
 

 
She didn't mind me stepping around her at all! 
 
A gentle giant who will be greatly missed.
 
 
 
 
 

Jib Stay installed

Hi,
the gun deck of the French Corvette - CORVETTE LA CRÈOLE DE 24 BOUCHES A FEU - is now complete.
There are 20 x 30-pounder carronades and 4 x 18-pounder cannons.
Here are a few views:

Thank you Heinz and Wallace.
 
More work on the Quarterdeck.
 
Belfry and forecastle breast beam in place.



 
Quarterdeck Barricade and Main Companionway.


 
Baluster and rail fitted as well.

 
 
Companionway to Admirals Dining Cabin rigged. The Screen Assembly is only dry fitted for the moment.

 
 
Robert
 

Watching your work and waiting your updates.... great log!
 
Am asking my self about the railing on the sides of the oppening under the lifeboats.... isnt any railing there on your model plans?. And if so...Is it because they needed to take out and lower the life boats very oft? Ofcourse that would have been a potential danger of somebody to fall in to the next deck.
 
Christos

Thanks for the liks, my last photo is a test rigging of the corronades! 
 
Svein.erik 

Hey guys, 
I basically did all I can do on the Arados before painting ( i need paint) Theres this huge hobby store 30 min away from me(hobby emporium) that im going to visit. It does not open till noon. That means I won’t be airbrushing today. 
Heres what I did so far. 
Assembled the 2 cockpits and canopies. 

assembled what plastics I could. 

 But then I changed my mind. Instead of having both planes with wings folded I’m going to have one with wings out.  I have already cut the wings so I had to glue them back together  on one of the planes. 

thats it for now. Oh I know what I can do  while I wait for the store to open.   Paint and assemble the new radar to replace the one that broke 4 months ago.  I guess i will be airbrushing today 😀

Completed yards.....
 
Jesse
 

Welcome John

FYI  Context      Who Am I
 
Goals For Me. Since this is my first Model in 20 years, I want to finish it.  I want it to be more of a display piece rather than anything else. Accuracy may take a back seat to display.  An example would be that this ship was coppered.  But  I would rather it show the wooden hull if i can do it so that is good looking.  However, please tell me if i do things are wrong. No matter what, I want my failures in accuracy or anything else to be choices that I consciously make rather that stupidity or ignorance.
 
So please give me as much criticism as you have time for.
 
 
Jan 8, 2019 - First picture. False keel mounted onto holder with frames dry fitted.
 
Jan 20,2019
 
Using CA thin and/or med. The frames and forward false deck are tacked in place

I had tried to fit and tack the stern false deck but discovered that I had misaligned the stern filler blocks (parts marked 18 in picture)🤮  Had to remove the partially tacked stern false deck and the filler blocks. Out came the CA dissolver, several different razor saws, and a good small sharp Paring chisel😂

Put the filler blocks back about 1/8" lower. Tacked the stern deck into place and filled the gaps caused by the fixes. Sometimes moving a CA tacked piece causes some destruction.🤪
 

Going to call this attempt a win and move on!  Gammoning turned out pretty good. Lesson for future is don’t make the gammon hole in the stem rounded!
 
Moving on...
 

 

They aren't "bulkheads" or frames. They are station lines. The stations are depicted in a standard draft at each station line on the baseline. (The lines pictured were drawn for the purpose of modeling and have some modeling-specific information in them, however.) These station lines, together with the other lines in the draft, define the shape of the vessel. The table of offsets, correspondingly, defines the dimensions of the lines. While, in smaller craft particularly, frames may coincide with station lines, that is more a matter of coincidence than anything else. In a larger, heavier vessel, such as the one above, were every frame to be represented with a station line, the drawing would be so full of lines as to be unreadable and for the purposes of defining the shape of the hull, unnecessary.
 
Station lines have nothing to do with the construction details of the vessel.  The construction of a vessel is addressed by the construction drawings, if there are any. (And in period vessels, there rarely are, as such details were left to be worked out by the master shipwright.)  If you want to build a model using bulkheads, stations may be used to define your bulkheads.  If you wish to build a model with frames the way the vessel was actually built, as with an Admiralty model, you will have to research the methods of construction at the time the vessel was built and apply that research to determine how the parts were fashioned to build it.  The Admiralty had detailed rules for construction, sometimes called "scantlings," which you can look up in resource materials.  These scantling rules dictate, based on the overall size of a vessel, the size of framing timbers and frame spacing, the thickness of planking, and on and on.
 
The task of translating "lines," as above, to patterns for the actual parts of a vessel is called "lofting," because it was usually done on a wooden floor in a loft at the shipyards. Using the scale lines drawings and the scantling rules, the loftsman draws all the parts of the vessel full-scale and "takes up" (transfers) these "loftings" to create full-sized patterns which are then used to define the shape of all the parts that go into the vessel. If one wishes to build a model of the vessel with the lines above, they will have to "loft" the construction drawings at the desired scale and work from those in constructing the model "Admiralty style" in the same way the full-sized vessel was built. (Which, without the actual prototype available, will always be an educated approximation, since the form of the parts was often dictated by the size and shape of the raw wood available to the builders at the time.) 
 
A command of lofting is essential to using lines drawings to create scale models.  With it, one has a huge selection of vessels from which they might select a subject to model. Without it, they are left to those relatively few subjects for which plans for modelers have been drawn up and offered for sale. (This is one reason why so many models of the same few ships keep getting built from commercially produced kits. Therein lies the distinction between "kit building" and "model making.") A good basic explanation of lofting is contained in Howard I. Chapelle's book, Boatbuilding. A far more comprehensive treatment of all aspects of lofting, including, for example, the methods for determining the degree of bevel on each frame of a hull, are contained in Alan Vaites' book, Lofting. (Both are readily available.)
 
The common use of lines drawings is relatively recent, coming into use sometime in the Seventeenth Century, IIRC. Like all drafting, naval architectural drafting is a "language" which must be learned. The Lords of the Admiralty and the other bureaucrats who decided which vessel would be built were often, like most laymen, completely incapable of "reading" a set of lines on a sheet of paper. This why the Admiralty models came into being... to provide a readily understandable three-dimensional representation of the vessel proposed to be built to people who were unable to translate a two-dimensional set of lines to three-dimensions in their heads.

I will certainly pull up a seat to pay attention to this one. Thank you!  My next build (whenever that will be) is going to have treenailing. 
~john

and the 2nd part...

Here are the pictures ...

TITANIC IS FINALLY FINISHED!
 
I have posted completion pictures in the Gallery of completed kit ships, but I couldn't resist this one that shows the "place of honor" for this model in my office.  Ensures that I will look at it multiple times each day.  😁
 
A few final construction notes.  Some of these you'll see better in the Gallery pictures:
The kit instructions use a plain wood dowel painted brown for the masts.  Couldn't stand that idea so I found a walnut dowel of the same size and used that. I bought a finished walnut base.  The kit includes a MDF base, but I've never figured out how to make one of those look like wood, and I didn't want a black base under this one. You'll see a yellow stripe down the side between the white and black parts of the structure.  This is in the box picture, but not in the instructions.  I did it by using the planking strips, which were perfectly sized, and pre-painting them. Even conserving the supplied rigging thread, I ran out after rigging the Marconi antenna and didn't have enough for the leads down to the ship, so I used some spare from another kit. I wanted to get this done this week as we are headed off for 5-6 weeks for a long Asia trip.  When back and time adjusted, I'm going to do the Dumas Chris Craft Commuter next.  Should be a different challenge to get the finish right.
 
Thanks to all who have followed this build -- for your encouragement and help.
 
Regards,
David

Thanks, Mike - I will check this out for sure!
~john

Hi Mike,
Sure. I'll do that later in the afternoon when I get home.  There are some (not many) images of the prop being made in my build log here, I think on the first page of the log.  More to come later today.
 
~john
 

I started with wood glue PVA and then tired of that rapidly and got some 15 second CA. It was just enough time to get the pieces in place properly before setting ;-)  DO make a jig: it helps a lot.

Mike, PS - with the sides, note that the side facing the aircraft is flat. The curve starts at the hub and tapers to the tips. Ignore the angle of the prop blade when working on the side view.
 

Hi Mike,
 
I started by gluing the layers altogether being careful to get glue on every square millimeter of the surface before bonding. A couple of days later, I unclamped the layers and then shaped the side view first, tapering evenly to the tips.  I started that using a sharp pocket knife, then ended up with rough sand paper. I then worked on the front/back views of the prop. It might help to take a pencil and sketch in the shape near the central hub. Go slowly with this part. I used an XActo blade (11) and then medium sand paper until I was close.  The whole thing was then finely sanded and stained/varnished. 
 
If you've not made one before I suggest getting a block of balsa or other carve-able wood and giving it a whirl.... mistakes are easy with the prop. Look at lots of pics online for the Sopwith prop.
 
~john 

Hi Jeff,
 
Thanks! I enjoyed the build a lot. It got me away from ships for a while and I am now refreshed enough to want to take on the Syren ;-)  Thanks also for the search tip for figures. I did some serious hunting for 120mm scale WWI figures and came up with a lot of soldiers and some German aces.... I kept hunting around and found three resin editions of WWI pilots from the Michigan Toy Soldier Company michtoy.com :  Eddie Rickenbacker, Billy Bishop, and Frank Luke.  They haven't arrived yet, but I'll post some images once I get them in and painted a little.....
 
~john