Cheerful 1806 by GuntherMT - Syren Ship Model Company - 1:48 scale - Revenue Cutter

[GuntherMT]

What's up Cheerful boat?  We haven't seen you in a while.

 

So not much to report, but I've completed the gun port sills on one side, so figured I'd go ahead and post it.

 

The first thing to do was to cut out the forward gun ports from the plywood filler piece in the bow.  This went fairly well, but I managed to get it slightly wider at the top than at the bottom, which was unfortunate and left me with a bit of a pickle, so I decided to make them oversized, and frame them with boxwood.  Here it's cut oversize, 1/32 on all three sides, or so I thought (I failed, and it was still wider at the top, by 1/32).

 

 

Also pictured is the first two gun port sills between the bulkheads have already been placed.

 

First thing I needed to frame the forward port was the 1/32" strip of boxwood, which I didn't have.  Luckily, I just happen to have an awesome little table saw now, so I took a 1/4" thick piece of boxwood and ripped a 1/32" strip from it.  This saw is amazing.  Here is the calipers measuring my strip.  In the fraction mode, the calipers are accurate to 1/128".  It measured exactly 1/32" for the entire 15" of the strip without exception.  Happy dance.

 

 

I cut this strip to lengths to frame the gun port with, and glued them in place.  Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, when it was done I discovered that it was still 1/32 wider at the top than the bottom, so I glued another 1/32" strip in place on the forward end, and then sanded it down so that it was almost gone at the bottom of the port, but still full-thickness at the top of the port.  Came out pretty good.

 

 

After this I finished the rest of the 6 sills between the bulkheads on this side.  My method was fairly simple, I would cut a piece of 1/4" x 1/4" boxwood slightly long on the saw, and then I used this awesome sander thingy to bevel the ends to fit.  What is cool about this sander is that it will do 2 angles at once thanks to the blocks for it.  As shown in the photo it is set up to sand a 5 degree bevel using the mitre, and a 3 degree bevel using the block.  This allowed me to bevel the ends of the sills to fit very snugly between the bulkheads while following the line that was established using the strip of wood in an earlier update.

 

 

To keep the top of the sills level relative to the keel, I clamped a board across the bulkheads using the same established line (can be seen as laser etch marks on the forward edge of the bulkheads in the first photo here).  I then glued the sill in place beneath this board, after which I just un-clamped and removed the board, leaving the sill in place.

 

 

And the end result as it looks right now.  Up next I have to repeat all of this on the other side.

 

 

Thus ends today's wooden boat update.

[donrobinson]

Looking good Brian

[cobra1951]

The Boxwood lining will make your gun ports look better than the ones the plans tell you to make

[Stuntflyer]

Coming along nicely, Brian

 

I boxwood framed the forward chase ports too. I did it mainly to get a clean looking port instead of relying on having to shape the ply fillers. Either way, I think it would look fine since the port is thin enough to mask any minor shaping errors.

 

Mike

Edited July 15, 2016 by Stuntflyer

[rwiederrich]

Brian...may what method you used to fare your bulkheads and to keep them contoured to each other?

 

Rob

[GuntherMT]

Brian...may what method you used to fare your bulkheads and to keep them contoured to each other?

 

Rob

 

I just use sanding blocks, nothing special.  I use a combination of 'hard' blocks where there is no give, and padded blocks that allow the sandpaper to form around the piece a bit, just depends on what I'm trying to do.  If you look at the instructions from Chuck (you can download them from his site - http://www.syrenshipmodelcompany.com/revenue-cutter-cheerful-1806.php) he explains it, but there really isn't anything special to it except sanding by hand and taking your time to make sure that the planks will flow smoothly over the ends of the bulkheads no matter where the plank is placed from the bottom to the top.

 

At the very front where everything has to flow into the rabbet at the stem, I did it mostly with handheld sand paper folded over on itself to make it stiff.  It's really just a matter of eyeballing it, placing a plank on it to see where it needs work, and then sanding some more until it all just flows.

 

Edit: It's important to use blocks that extend across multiple bulkheads at a time, I think that's probably the most important thing because you are trying to get a smooth flow across all the bulkheads.

Edited July 20, 2016 by GuntherMT

[Jeff-E]

Two words Brian. Beautiful work

[SawdustDave]

Beautiful start Brian.

All that careful detail will pay off big time down the road.  Believe me, most of us learned this the hard way.

 

Dave

[Chuck]

How goes progress on this beauty?  😊  You are doing such a great job on this Cheerful.

[GuntherMT]

Progress has been stopped for quite a while Chuck, for various reasons.

 

My plan is to participate in the Medway group build to get me back into the shipyard, and after that hopefully get back to work on this.