jablackwell

This has been a productive week. Half of the hull is now coppered. There were some interesting moments, but there is one piece of wisdom here to make it all easier: it's just tape. Pull it off and start again if needed. ;-)  
Now to see if I can get the other side to look as good and in mirror image! 
 

 
 
~john
 
 

Started to copper the hull today after a few clean layers of poly were polished on. This process is a little tedious though not even 1% as difficult as I thought it would be. As with many things in life, the anticipation makes it seem so much more difficult. I finished with two completed rows:
 
~John
 

 

The whaleboats are completed. I think they came came out OK. I think I got enough of the important details in. Once they're loaded with oars, mast, Harpoons, line tubs I think they'll look good. I'll say this, I don't want to make any more little thwart knees for a long time. There must be twice as many that came out looking funny or are somewhere on the floor than there are on the boats. 
 


I've tapered the boom and Gaff, and made the jaws for the boom. I wasn't having a lot of success using the method of a drill as a lathe, so these were tapered by hand. A little at a time with 220, and 320 paper, using calipers with approximate diameters marked off every centimetre or so. Then, once the taper looked good, 400 and 600 to finish it off.  I'm happy with the look of the taper. Not as happy with the placement of the two holes for the belaying pins in the jaw, hence the filler in one hole. 

 

Closing in on finishing the last two whaleboats. Some painting,  cuddy board details (Loggerhead, cleat, steering oar brace), oarlocks, thwart knees, foot brace, lifting eyes, and they'll be done. (Wow...actually there's quite a few details I still need to add  🙂)
I'll save the gear for when I need a break from rigging.
I'm going to load all 3 boats on the davits with gear, and leave the spare boat on the tail feathers empty. I know the boats weren't fully loaded until they were about to embark on a chase, but for display purposes, that's the way I'm going to go. Hey, if it's good enough for Ronnberg's KC in New Bedford, it'll be OK for mine as well. 



Once I have these little guys finished, I can temporarily set them in their places on the ship so I can get the davits at the correct height and aligned with the lifting eyes on the boats.  Then I can go ahead and get the blocks on the davits, and secure the davits permanently in place, and add the davit braces.     
 
Work has begun on shaping the boom, gaff, and yards. I'm fortunate to still be working through this crisis, but work is slow with lots of down time, so I've been bringing the yards to work and sanding and shaping to pass the day. I've got the boom, gaff , lower and topsail yards shaped, but I haven't trimmed the lengths yet. The plan is to have these ready to paint and start adding details to them as soon as the whaleboats are done. 
 

I realized I had not posted any updates, recently. Reasons were multiple: 
- Waiting for parts and materials to finish the submersible.
- Started the construction of two motorcycles Honda CB750 at the same time (what was I thinking...?)
- Started restoring another pinball machine.... Bally Playboy 1978
 
Anyway, a major milestone was achieved recently with the gluing of the conning tower on the deck: 




It is starting to look like a Type-VIIc now: 


Next will be the rigging, that I have been preparing, while waiting for some elastic thread.
 
Yves

A quick update on the conning tower. I just finished cutting and filing three pieces of clear cylinders, from the transparent sprue. They are then painted clear green, clear red and clear yellow, using Tamiya paints. Let's verify that it works electrically: 


Intensity of the lights will be adjusted when the conning tower is glued to the hull.
 
Yves
 

FINISHED!
I spent the weekend cleaning off dust and touching up paint in preparation of placing the Niagara in its glass enclosure. While I designed the case with an option of removing the ship, it will not be an easy process, and I don’t have plans on doing so. So sealing it away knowing I will not be able to work on it, or tweak something, was a tough moment.
This was a great project. I give credit to the folks at Model Shipways for putting together a great kit. This was my first wooden ship build, and I would recommend the Niagara for any first timer.  There are easier kits out there (and a lot more harder ones) to cut your teeth on, but the Niagara is a good choice. It is reasonably priced (I bought mine at a half off sale). The instructions and plan sheets are good overall, and if followed, will produce an end product you will be proud of..
The kit lacks expensive wood, and some critical parts, but again, for the price, it is still a good purchase. With the exception of the hull planking, I swapped out all of the basswood lumber and laser cut parts with hardwoods (cherry and holly mostly). Those parts that the kit requires the builder to engineer and produce tested my model skills and have made me a better builder. I have seen the term kit “bashing” when someone “goes off the plan.” I guess I did this with this kit, but I can’t say I bashed it, I would rather say I enhanced it. Thanks Model Shipways.
I also have to give credit to Chuck Passaro and his Syren products. I used his rope, blocks, hooks, and hearts for all of the rigging. These products make any ship look great, even for us amateurs.
I also give credit to Model Ship World and my fellow Niagara builders. I would never have purchased this kit, let alone make the effort to build it, without the wealth of information and full color pictures available on this site. Builders like Bahamas Diver, Xken, Patrickmil, Greatgalleons, Mikiek, and others who sailed the lakes with their Niagara Builds were inspirations and great teachers. My project would have sunk to the bottom of Lake Erie without their guidance. They had my back.
I can't forget my fellow members of the Shipwrights of the Central Ohio modelling club. The long drive to our monthly meetings is always worth the trip. Great knowledge, experience and fellowship. Thanks Bill for everything you do for our club
And finally, to those of you out there that stopped in to see this project and lent advice and words of encouragement. As I am sure you all know, getting an “atta boy” from an experienced shipwright is energizing.
Here are some final photos as I mark my build log officially FINISHED.

Thank you so much for all the encouragements, the "Thumbs Up" and the support. Today was a major milestone with the completion of the electrical circuit: 

As you can see, we do have a lot of wires, connectors and adjustable resistors. Everything works, which is refreshing: 

First, the lights circuit: 





Then some special features: 

Display in the Radio Room.... The Sonar screen died during the construction :-(

The dangerous job of checking electrolyte levels in the Batteries room.

Fuel tanks lighted under the Kontroll Room. The main ballast was supposed to have some light too, but the LED is obviously too weak to penetrate through the greenish water....

The rear batteries compartment.

And the galley.... My camera does not cope very well with these light scenes and I will ask a professional to take some pictures, when the model is completed.
 
It is a very large model.....



There is still plenty of details to address and tons of work on the deck and conning tower. We are getting there....little by little.
 
Yves
 
 
 
 
 

Almost there, yes. I am trying to finish a nice and reliable electrical circuit and to not get mixed up with all the wires: 

I am using a lot of heat-shrinking tubing to keep all the various circuits (modules) independent of each others. 
 
Finally, the rear batteries compartment module is inserted. I will not glue it, as it sits very tight and sandwiched between the others. It will allow me to access some of the wires if anything goes wrong one day.

The enchilada is almost completed, at least for the inside of the hull. I still have to bring some modules to life by placing a few more crews, inside: 



Now, a lot of soldering remains to be done....
 
Yves
 
 

Jesse - it has been a real pleasure watching you work through the build: those flags are gorgeous. Nice work all around.  You have given this old guy the urge to get to the shop and resume work on the Syren which has been an idle build for about a year.  
Congratulations!
 
~john

Jesse - it has been a real pleasure watching you work through the build: those flags are gorgeous. Nice work all around.  You have given this old guy the urge to get to the shop and resume work on the Syren which has been an idle build for about a year.  
Congratulations!
 
~john

Jesse - it has been a real pleasure watching you work through the build: those flags are gorgeous. Nice work all around.  You have given this old guy the urge to get to the shop and resume work on the Syren which has been an idle build for about a year.  
Congratulations!
 
~john

Superb work, Yves!
Now all the small details you put in are combining to make a total composition. A scene that tells a story and gives a snapshot of what it was like in those amazing machines.

Well, it has been a while since my last update . . .
 
Currently progress is very slow. I built a nicer stand for my model (images 1 – 3) following Chuck’s initial example on his Syren. I also experimented with hanging my jolly boat from the rear davits and noticed a few things:
-        If I hang the jolly boat ready to be lowered it does not cover up the stern carvings and its details are displayed best (images 4 – 8).
-        Although I have some pear wood accents on my Syren model, building the whole jolly boat out of pear wood does not match the color scheme of my Syren and looks far too dark (images 4 and 5).  So I had to rebuild the jolly boat a second time using bass wood with box wood accents. Image 9 shows the work in progress.
 
Thomas
 

Image 1
 

Image 2
 

Image 3
 

Image 4
 

Image 5
 

Image 6
 

Image 7
 

Image 8
 

Image 9
 
 

Nice comments and likes really appreciated.  Gives me more courage to keep me going on the build which takes hours on hours. But its a hobby I enjoy so its worth every minute I spend on it. 
 
 I am starting various ends without finishing them.  Basically, knowing how fragile certain parts are and how easy to knock down a few of them while doing other work, I am preparing different parts of the fittings so I will find them ready just to fit together on the ship. 
 
I started some work on the never ending gunport lids.  I started with the lower deck gunport lids.  First I added pieces of planks to the lids to correspond with the wales on the hull.
 
When a lot of repetitive work is involved I try to make some kind of a jig as basic as possible as this will be used only once and can be thrown away.  I started with the hinges which needed one end bent at 90º.
Glued a piece of plywood to another piece of wood as a stopper and placed the hinge against it.

Find something flat, exactly the same width from the stopper to where the bend has to be,  possibly made of metal to get the bend as sharp as possible.  In my case I found an exacto knife blade.  With a single edge razor blade bend the hinge.



All hinges were bent in no time and exactly all the same.  The hinges for the middle gunport lids are slightly shorter so an adjustment has to be made for the jig.

Then came the scuttles.  The kit manual tells you to make the scuttles from a piece of walnut 0.5mm thick, glue the hinge to it and glue the whole assembly to the lid. 0.5mm is too thick,  the scuttle hinge will not sit flat on the lid. I had some thin sapele left from another kit and used it instead.  It too was still a bit too thick.  Instead of glueing the hinge to the scuttle and glueing it as a whole assembly I thought it would be better to glue the scuttle separately, sand it down to the required thickness in place, and then glue the hinge on top of it.



 
To glue the gunport lid hinge leaving 1mm gap from the inner edge of the lid, the scuttles and their hinges was going to take me ages.  So this is the jig I came up with to give me that 1 mm gap at the back of the lid and something to hold the lid steady without moving while glueing the small parts.  Nothing elaborate, but found it very helpful.


 
Here are the finished lower deck gunport lids all ready to be painted.   I also drilled the holes for the eyelets which I will fit after painting the lids. 

 
Robert
 
 

Hi😊 
am yust looking at the syren , it has bin stored away for some time , so i had to take it out and lookat it😃
an i hope i can start on it again soon😉

I finally got the flags on. I guess this means this build is finished. I would like to build a lifeboat to hang on the back but who knows when I'll ever get around to that.  Maybe that could be a mini-build some time in the future.
 
Now I have to get my Lyme damaged brain to remember how to get this labeled as "Finished"
 
Jesse
 

Hi Ed,
 
Thanks for the information here. I, too, have used CA for years on models: ships, planes, trains, etc etc. No ill effects. My planes spend time outdoors, but the glue joints are hidden: no direct UV. Most window glass if effective at blocking much if not all UV light these days. Depends on the house, age of materials and such.  There are UV reactive plastic beads that one can use to detect UV easily and affordably: https://www.amazon.com/Ultraviolet-Detecting-Beads-250-Pack/dp/B00906M148  if anyone wants to see what their ships are exposed to.  I am now tempted to generate a long term experiment with thread, CA, and a variety of conditions: inside, outside, behind glass, under stress, etc.  Tempting. Let me give it some thought. 
 
~john

All yards are finally lifted. Now I just have to belay the last two. 🤪 

Well, the deep space "submarine" Discovery XD-1 is now completed: 


It will be a little while before I go back to the U-Boot but who knows..... the urge may come back, quickly.
 
Yves

Main topgallant yard gets a lift

No progress on my Winnie but I finally found a day to fix my Cheerful.  It got severely damaged when i brought it to the joint clubs show.  The model got smashed on the ride back and the rigging pulled off the pin rails and the stern knees.  It was a bear to position those pin rails against the bulwarks with so much tension on the lines.  But i managed it without having to re rig anything except for the rope coils on the pin rails. The rigging on the bowsprit was also ripped away from the tip of the bowsprit. and that needing fixing.   Bigger job than i would have liked.
 
They are never the same after such a repair but I am glad its done.  It was also filthy and covered with webs and dust.
 
i will now put it away where it will be safe and protected.
 
Interesting size comparison and note the color.  The cheerful is all boxwood.  The cedar Winnie really looks good in comparison and its 75% cheaper.

Hello,
I'm glad you're still interested in my report.
Thank you very much for that.
The last guide blocks were attached to the inside of the bulwark in the waterway.  
In total I have now made 43 blocks (single, double and triple blocks).
In addition a picture of the front area of the battery deck:

Now in the next step I can attach the ratelines as soon as I have a decision to secure the lanyards.

So the hiatus is over. The Medway longboat is complete, sans rigging. I'll save that for another day. Now it's time to get back to this ship and finish her. #2 whaleboat in progress...
 

I just couldn't resist.  does this mean I'm officially hooked on ship building?