Top sail schooner by Piet - shipyard diorama - scale 1:2000 - Finished

[Omega1234]

Hi Piet

 

All kudos to you for even attempting what you've done.  I like it!!!

 

Nice job.

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[NenadM]

How??????????

 

Still without words! And breath!

[BANYAN]

I won't complain about 'fiddly bits' ever again - impressive!

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Piet]

Thanks very much everybody for dropping in at the micro mini shipyard and all the likes, it's much appreciated.

 

No update yet, just ran out of time, it's now close to my bedtime.  None tomorrow either, I will be busy cooking Piet's kicked-up beef stew. Have invited lour dear neighbor to partake of it.  I'll also have a fruit" salad of cucumber, avocado, cherry tomatoes, crumbled goat cheese, with an olive oil / balsamic vinegar glaze.  Salt and pepper of course.  Anyone care to join us?

 

To answer Igor's question, yes, I did decide on a thread but that'll be a story for the next few posts.  Like I said, I was still in the trying stage here.  As all yuns see, the masts, booms and gaffs are rather thick and lout of scale.  Soooooh, change will be forthcoming. 

 

Cheers,

[captainbob]

 I will be busy cooking Piet's kicked-up beef stew. Have invited lour dear neighbor to partake of it.  I'll also have a fruit" salad of cucumber, avocado, cherry tomatoes, crumbled goat cheese, with an olive oil / balsamic vinegar glaze.  Salt and pepper of course.  Anyone care to join us?

 

Cheers,

 

Sounds like a fine time.  Set me a place, but I might be a little late.

 

Bob

[Piet]

Thanks everyone for visiting, your comments and likes.

 

Hey Cap'n Bob, there is plenty of space in my virtual shipyard, glad to have you, make yourself at home, coffee is on.

 

Well, I'm happy to report that dinner was very successful, our neighbor Jill wanted to take a batch home with her.  A very good sign.

 

Today's update is about my attempt with rigging.  I raided Gwen's sewing box and found some very thing black thread.  It's cotton /  polyester mix but still looked a little too heavy.  I unraveled a piece to what I thought may be thin enough.  I immediately had a problem on my hand.  One was that it retained it's original twist as it was spun.  The other problem was the fuzz from the cotton.

 

I figured that with a little tension the thread would pull tight and also being careful in removing the cotton fuzz.  All best intentions didn't work out, as you can see in the pics below.

 

What I should have done was to find the polyester thread, then heat it up, either with a blow-dryer or a soldering torch. However, I didn't and being the stubborn Dutchman I put the fuzzy thread on anyway.

Beside that, I also had problems with the CA being very difficult to handle.  No matter how little I put on a needle as applicator it still seemed to make a nasty white clump.  Put cementing didn't give me a strong enough bond for the rigging.

 

I showed Remco what I was running into and he said that he had some extremely fin e mono filament thread that looked like being the thickness of a hair.  Problem is that it was white but could be painted black with either ink or permanent marker.  So he send be a couple of feet and at that time in the build I was already disgusted with how it looked and decided to start all over.  I didn't like the shape of the bow, the masts and other round work was too thick, the CA glue issue and the rear mast kept breaking.  Version 2.0 will have bamboo masts and round work that'll be shaved down closer to scale.  You can only go so far with making the bamboo thin enough and still being able to hold up to the rigging tension of the lines.  I found this out by trying it and had to come to a workable compromise.   

 

While waiting for Remco's thin thread to arrive I carved a new hull that had a much nicer looking bow, more clipper like.

 

Like I mentioned before, it was still being treated as a trial piece, not knowing yet if a scale of 1:2000 would be doable for what I had in mind.

 

So, this'll be the end of version 1.0 but the lessons learned will help me tremendously with version 2.0 as the future updates will show.

 

This closeup shows how ugly the poor little boat looks.  But the lessons learned were worth it.  Even with using boxwood for the round work it would probably have worked if I had shaved them down more and using  much thinner thread as I would up doing in version 2.0.   I have actually reworked 1.0 with bamboo round work and am ready to install the aft mast.  No, I may not use that first version if a new thought I am working on works.  Keep fingers crossed.

 

Same comment, ugly.  But yuns can see how she's supposed to look with the standing rigging.

 

This is version 2.0 still at the rough stage.  Still more shaping to be done.  The bow will be more refined after the bowsprit is cemented on.  I now need to find a way to control the CA not "glopping" up. 

 

Rather sleek looking hull from a seagull's vantage point.  So far I'm happy with it.

 

Cheers,

 

[mtaylor]

Piet,

 

Are you using the thin CA?  I'm not sure there's a solvent that will work as a thinner like with paint.   

 

Edit.. it just hit me... clear matte finish paint... thinned.  Or clear fingernail polish.. but I don't know if it comes in matte finish.

[IgorSky]

Hi Piet!

Let me share some information about the threads. Perhaps it will be useful to you.

I often use these threads for rigging on small models. I buy this mounting thread at the store for the fishermen. This thread is thin enough and it can be a different color.

 

 

 

I look forward to the next update in your build log.

Best Regards!

Igor.

[mobbsie]

Hi Piet,

 

Just found you mate, gonna pull up a chair and sit in the corner with a look of awe on my face.

 

I've thrown bigger wood chippings away than what your working with, perhaps I should send them to you.

 

Good luck with this tiny little build mate.

 

Be Good

 

mobbsie

[Piet]

Thanks Mark, Igor and Mobbsie for stopping buy and your comments.  Also my thanks to all who clicked the like button.

 

Yes Mark, I have used the very thing CA for it.  In version 2.0 I am using a different technique and it looks much better.  Yuns just have to wait till we get to those steps.  Acetone may work to thin it out even more and nail polish is not strong enough.

 

Thanks Igor for showing your spools of thread and the tiny model.  Your work was one of the triggers for my effort.  Yes,  the three spools I have look similar but when we reduce the size of a 90 or 95 foot ship to 7 mm then the thinnest of threads available is still outside my scale.  I really have no choice but to untwist the thread end use only a few of the individual strands. 

With version 2.0 I have solved the problem with the rigging thread and I will show all of you following this craze build how I have done it.  Actually, I have checked one strand of my hair and one of Gwen's.  Her hair is slightly thicker then mine and that's the size I need!  No, I didn't use her hair but found something else, just wait and see.  Patience, patience, patience

 

Hey Mobbsie, good seeing you here, welcome.  What do you think I am using, scrap pieces from my extensive scrap pile.  Just think how big a 4 X 10 inch beam is at scale 1:2000.  I can't run my fan in the garage to keep me cool otherwise all my parts blow away.  No kidding, I sneezed one time and a bunch of deck and hull planking blew away.  Yup, planking! 

Hey, I need all the luck I can get and all of yuns input. 

 

Cheers,

[NenadM]

Planking in this scale? You are kiddin' !

 

Or not?

[Piet]

Thanks to all for your likes and yes, Nenad - - planking.  The deck planking is from maple and hull planking from cherry.  The deck planks will be 10 X 2 X 180 inches. At the scale of 1:2000 that works out to about 0.12 X 0.03 X 2.3 mm  I am using the same measurements for the hull planking, except for the thickness, they'll be 0.04 mm.

Most of the planks have already been cut and are waiting to be nailed to the hull.  The future sawmill on sight will have tree trunks ready to be cut into frames, beams and planks.  There'll be plenty of that stuff laying around.

That's the reason for not being able to run my cooling fan in the garage or having any draft with the doors open.

 

I hope all y'all understand that I am really not going to plank the ship, she'll be a solid hull model but the shipyard must show stacks of planks just for show   However, there'll be a surprice in the offing as we reach a certain point in this project, so stay tuned   

 

The sail beams and gaffs are 0.2 mm at the mast end.  You should now also see that to make the booms and gaffs at true scale they'll be unmanageable, less then 0.1 mm.  So my compromise to 0.2 mm looks acceptable.  To clarify my CA predicament a little more - even with the tiniest drop of CA on the end of a boom or gaff the drop is still larger then the wood.  I wont go into my fix method here but will tell all yuns when I get to that part of the build.  It was a rather simple solution but it worked.

 

In trying to stay is scale as much as possible you can also see that the rigging lines must be extremely thin.  A three inch diameter stay will then be 0.04 mm.  The running rigging will have to be human hair and no, I am not putting running rigging on, just the standing rigging.  The round work and rigging lines have been my greatest challenge, so far.

 

And Igor, can you now see what I am up against with the rigging?

 

Cheers,

 

 

[Omega1234]

Hi Piet

 

I'm really enjoying following along and can't wait to see the next progress photos!

 

All the best.

 

Patrick

[Piet]

Thanks Patrick for enjoying my struggles with this project.  It sure didn't start out very well but better things are coming

 

I left off with a new hull in the previous post, version 2.0.  So far I like it and continued with adding the deck houses and lower masts and bowsprit.  This time I used bamboo.  This worked out much better and more to scale.  They measure 0.9 mm thick.

The bowsprit is permanently cemented into the bow, which allowed me to do a final shaping of the bow.

I left both masts removable for convenience so I can do the final shaping of the hull and adding the ship's boat to the roof of the deck house.

With the masts still off the ship I now could cement the top masts easily to the main masts.  I marked the location where the lower part of top mast should be on the lower masts and but a tiny drop of CA on the lower part of the top mast, then wiped off some of the CA with my finger and quickly attached the top mast to the lower mast.  This worked great, I had no appreciable CA showing.  It's looking much better then version 1.0, I think. 

 

I am extremely fortunate still having very steady hands which helps me tremendously with this delicate project, so far so good.  Next steps will be the trestle trees and the rest of the round work.

This shows the schooner with bowsprit and deck houses.

 

Both lower masts temporarily placed in their mounting holes.

 

Masts temporarily removed in order to mount the ship's boat on top of the forward deck house and cementing the top masts to the lower masts.

 

Here we see the top masts cemented onto the lower masts. 

 

Cheers,

 

 

[mtaylor]

Nice... I like the hull shaping.. coming along very well.  And the new masts look great.

[BANYAN]

Impressive work, especially at this scale Piet.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Piet]

Thank you Pat and Mark for your kind words, it sure is challenging.  Thanks also for all the likes, it's much appreciated.

 

Let's see, where did we leave off.  Oh yeah, the masts are done and now comes the difficult task to attach the cross trees, booms and gaffs.  In my typical stubbornness I wanted to add the cheeks to the booms and gaffs to attach them to the masts.  After I made them and tried to fit them to the masts so they can rotate on them It just looked much too clumky and out of scale.

 

I had to be attached them permanently and forget making them movable, it's just too small a scale to fool with and besides, it'll be housed inside a dome anyway.  Thinking how I could attach these pieces I figured using Remco's mono filament string.  I took a piece and tied it with a single knot to the end, then a dab with CA that I immediately brushed off with my fingers and let it cure. 

By the time all four pieces of round work were done that way I then put the boom or gaff to the mast with the mono filament on each side of the mast.  Then a dab of CA on each side that I also wiped off and let it cure.  With the white mono filament on each side of the mast it looks like the cheeks, bingo!  Next was cutting off the extra string, I didn't even have to tie a knot in it.

 

I did the same thing with the cross trees, making sure I wiped the excess CA off after each cementing session, that way I didn't have the ugly clumping of dried up CA.  At this scale even the smallest drop or residue of CA shows up like a big whitish blob.  All this was a little nerve wracking but my hands held steady and the optivisor helped.     

 

The booms and gaffs as well as the cross trees are from bamboo and about 0.4 mm thick.  I was afraid making them thinner because the rigging lines may bend them.  I don't think they are too objectionable.

 

I hope the pics show enough of what I tried to explain.

 

This shows my second attempt with making the boom and gaff cheeks.  After trying it again and failed - - again - - I had to give up striving too hard for reality.  New booms and gaffs were made.

 

This shows the method I used with the mono filament.  Holding both string ends with my left had and keeping the boom or gaff against the mast I just dabbed a spot of CA on the joint, wiping the excess immediately off.  It just took about 10 seconds for the joint to hold.  The mono filament is about 0.08 mm, just twice the thickness of my hair.

 

This shows the end result for the aft mast boom. Cleaning up everything required a very sharp #11 blade, carefully holding the ends of the booms and gaffs. I also worked from the mast side, holding the joints with my left hand index finger and thumb.  I lucked out doing this on all the round work.

 

This shows the the completed work on both masts.  I don't know if you can see the cross trees, it's rather fuzzy at that spot on the fore mast.

 

Cheers,

[Omega1234]

Hi Piet

 

Just amazing! She's looking great, that's for sure.

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[NenadM]

Oooooo ....

 

Huh !

 

Just incredible!

Edited June 30, 2016 by Nenad

[amateur]

How are you going to do the ratlines ?

It's increasibly small, fragile and looking good.

 

Jan

[Piet]

Hello everyone and thanks for your comments and all the likes, it's much appreciated.

 

No ratlines on this ship Jan.  She'll have only two shroud lines per side per mast and made from steel.  

 

Here's where I had re-engage the silk thread I had bought initially.  First I thought using my own hair or that of Gwen but she wouldn't part with hers and mine was too fine.  I did try using the mono filament for the stays but they were even too thick for scale.  I cut a piece of the silk threat and unraveled it so I had the individual threads as they came out of the silk worm's spinnerets.  They were the most unwieldy threads to work with, it was like working with smoke.  

 

What I did was take three of the strands and with a drop of nail polish that I squeezed into the threads between index finger and thumb, pulling it down several times till the nail polish set up. It stiffened up quite nicely and produced a more realistic thickness for the shrouds and the rest of the standing rigging.  It even took most of the twist out of it.  The lines between the boom ends and the gaff ends are two of the silk threads.

 

Attaching the shrouds was simply looping them around the lower masts, secured with a tiny dab of nail polish.  After all of them were secured to the masts I pulled two of the shrouds down to the hull, securing one at a time with nail polish.  I had to be careful not to pull too hard because they did pull the masts out of plumb. 

 

next was making the chain plates.  They were just four slivers of bamboo.  I left them long in order to have something to hold on to and with a tiny dab of CA ,that I mostly wiped away, I attached them over the shroud ends against the top of the hull.  After they were secured I cut them off with my trusty #11 blade.  In one of the pics below you may be able to see them.  

 

Next came the topsail yards.  Here too I tied a piece of mono filament to them and then around the mast with a tint dab of CA. 

 

After all that nerve wracking work I added the rest of the standing rigging and the topsail yard lifts.  I do have to redo one of the shrouds because they seem to have loosed up on one side and the aft mast is not quite horizontal anymore.

 

Holding the ship at normal looking distance she looks quite presentable, better then in the pics.

 

Okay, my next project was cutting the 75 Watt lamp to function as the globe over the diorama.

 

This shows the difference between the mono filament (bottom) and my hair.  It just worked out so that three of the single silk threads was slightly thicker then my hair, just right for my purpose. I did not measure the thickness but take my word for for it, they were thin.

 

This shows all the shrouds attached to the masts, 

 

This shows the top sail yards also secured and rigged.  As you can see the rear mast shrouds are a little loose but will be replaced at some future date. 

 

Cheers,

   

[mtaylor]

That's an incredible amount of detail for something so tiny, Piet.   Looks super.

[captainbob]

She's absolutely beautiful.  Well done.

 

Bob

[Omega1234]

Hi Piet

 

She's looking absolutely wonderful!

 

Well done.

 

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[amateur]

We'll never, ever complain again over fiddly detials on our massive 1:100 scale ships.

How many magnifiers do you use for this?

 

Jan

[BANYAN]

Incredible detail at that scale mate; you'll be trying out with a grain of rice before long

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Piet]

Hello everyone and thank you all for your nice comments and to all who clicked the like button.

 

Thanks Mark, she turned out better then I thought at first.  I did contemplate adding more lifts for the rigging but stopped while I was ahead of the game.  Who knows, I may just attempt it anyhow when replacing a few of the shrouds.

 

Thank you Capt. Bob, appreciate it very much.

 

Thanks you Patrick and coming from a miniature exert I really value your comment.

 

Hoi Jan, thanks for your kind words and no, none of us should grumble about having to make small things, it's all part of the enjoyment and challenge.  I just use a standard cheapy optivisor.

 

Hello Pat, good seeing you here and thank you as well. Hmmm, a grain of rice size ship eh?  Well one never knows what lurks in this Dutchman's crazy head.  We're not done yet with this project.

 

Okay, now for an update.  We are finally coming to cutting the cover globe from an incandescent lamp.  I used a regular 60 or 75 Watt light bulb with, I hope, the white powder inside.  Hard to tell by looking at it.  being the cheap Dutchman, ummm, frugal - - - I took one that hasd been burning for quite some time but still working, figuring it being on the end of it's life.

 

First I marked out the diameter of the groove it's supposed to sit in and then proceeded to drill a small hole at the base to allow the air to flow in.  This is supposed to prevent the glass to shatter.  I used one of the small dental diamond burs in my small WEcheer hand tool.  This worked out okay.

 

Next came the nerve wrecking job of cutting through the glass.  I thought to put a diamond coated cut-off wheel in a Dremmel tool mounted in a Dremmel drill press thingy.  However, in trying to hold the lamp and gently touching the cut-off wheel it started to chatter.  I really had very little control over the cutting action.

 

So, instead I put one of the diamond coated dentist burs in my small WEcheer hand tool.  By holding the dental bur flat against the glass I had control and could apply as little or as much pressure to the glass as needed.  

Holding the lamp in my gloved left hand it seemed to work just peachy, slow but steady.  It required quite a few rotations of the lamp before I could feel that I was close in cutting through.  Instead of cutting completely through with the dental bur I thought it prudent to switch over to a small diamond coated edge file.  This too worked quite nicely and after many heart stopping minutes I finally cut through without shattering the glass - Happy dance for a successful operation.

 

Next I swabbed the white powder out and cleaned the glass with soapy water and let it air dry. 

 

So I thought this was the happy ending but no such luck.  Unbeknown to me at that time the rotation direction of the burr created tiny hairline cracks in the lamp bulb part.  By putting the globe in the base groove several times a small part of the glass cracked out.  So, now I had to do the same operation again with a new lamp.  This time I reversed holding the lamp by the screw base so the bur would be rotating into the glass.  I let the lamp rest on another glove fer better support and to cut down of vibrations. 

 

After this operation was successful I used CA to seal the cut part of the globe.  So far it's holding up well even with it being placed into the groove of the diorama base several times.  Pffffffffvvvvhh  - -  sigh of relief.

 

Alright then, next are a few pics showing the process.

 

The marking is 48 inches in diameter. 

 

Here I am in the process of drilling the vacuum releaf hole. I also put some masking tape around the glass to prevent it from shattering.  At least that's what the intend was.  It actually worked more as a guide for the dental burr.

 

Here we see the successful drilling of the releaf hole.

 

Here is my setup using the Dremmel with a diamond cut-off wheel.  I abandoned this operation for reasons sited above.

 

Here you see the cutting operation in progress.

 

This shows the final operation of cutting through the glass sing a diamond type edge file.  You can see the glass filings on the glove.

 

A very clean cut and after cleaning the glass I applied CA to the cut part.

 

Cheers,

 

   

[BANYAN]

Nice work Piet, a very clean cut indeed.  ....and great to see you wearing the safety glove

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Omega1234]

Hi Piet

 

That would be very nerve wracking for me, what with the risk of shattering and splinters flying everywhere. I can only say that I'm glad it wasn't me!

 

Nice job,though!!

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[mtaylor]

I echo the previous two comments...  I would have been holding my breath, turning blue and possibly headed for the ER doing that.