US Brig Niagara by 6ohiocav - FINISHED - Model Shipways - Scale 1:64

[MEDDO]

I am pretty sure the April Meeting is not going to happen either. So far I have used google meet, Microsoft meeting, zoom, go to meeting,  discord and FaceTime for virtual meetings. All have their good point and bad.  will definitely reach out to @Feathermerchant to see if he is interested in setting some thing up

[6ohiocav]

APPLYING THE SHIP'S NAME AND RIGGING THE SHIP'S BOATS

 

I spent the last couple of days experimenting with "painting" the ships name on the stern and bow. Thought about decals and letter stencils but in the end, took the simple way out. Since the hull is painted flat black, I printed out the name in gold letters on a black field from my computer. I used Book Antique font. It turned out ok.

 

Then I rigged the ships boats to the davits. That was terribly tedious.... of course so is everything else I have done on this build.

 

Here are some photos.

 

Edited April 3, 2020 by 6ohiocav
grammar

[MEDDO]

Looking nice, getting line to run smoothly and look natural is always difficult for me

[6ohiocav]

Mike,

 

I thought about adding ballast to the little boats. I grabbed some lead slip shots from my fishing tackle box, but thought it might look a little dumb to see a pile of "cannon balls" in my ship's boats. In the end, I finally bit the bullet and glued them down. It was hard to put glue on the stern and channels.

 

Hope the ship doesn't get in trouble because the crew will have a hard time launching these boats.

 

The finish line is in sight.

 

Sounds like the club is going to give a visual meeting a try. Hope so.

 

 

 

 

[MEDDO]

14 hours ago, 6ohiocav said:

Hope the ship doesn't get in trouble because the crew will have a hard time launching these boats.

Imagine their faces when they slip the tackle lines and the boat is just stuck to the side of the ship...hovering........

 

 

[mikiek]

Yo Darrell - man I thought you had finished Niagara already. Well it's good to see you are making progress. The ships boats look fantastic. Love the clinker style hull. I painted mine inside & out but I like your staining much better. Stay with it.

[Sea Hoss]

Your Niagara looks fantastic! Love the look of that ship!

[6ohiocav]

Hey Mike, (Meddo)

The boats are indeed stuck to the ship. But I must say, I built them exactly to plans, and the lowering lines are hooked to rings secured to the bottom of the keel. When I rigged them to the davits, I thought I would just let them hang. Except that they kept rolling over to the side. So that begs a question - unless kept totally balance from port to starboard, how in the heck did the crew lower these guys with tipping them over?

 

Mikiek,

Great to hear from you. It has been a while. I am glad you have stopped in to urge me to the finish line. I missed your careful eye and sage advice.

 

Sea Hoss,

Thanks for the compliments. Having a forum member leave comments on my log is even better than successfully spinning a tiny oar in a cordless drill and not breaking it.

 

 

 

[MEDDO]

7 hours ago, 6ohiocav said:

Hey Mike, (Meddo)

The boats are indeed stuck to the ship. But I must say, I built them exactly to plans, and the lowering lines are hooked to rings secured to the bottom of the keel. When I rigged them to the davits, I thought I would just let them hang. Except that they kept rolling over to the side. So that begs a question - unless kept totally balance from port to starboard, how in the heck did the crew lower these guys with tipping them over?

 

 

That’s a good question. I’ve always seen the ring bolts secure it to the keel. When you do that the majority of the weight of the boat is above that pivot point making it very easy for it to tip over. I guess one way to do avoid that would be to secure the ring bolts higher in the boat like on the top of the thwarts or at the very stern or the top of the stern post. Although certainly the thwarts would not be strong enough to carry the weight of the boat. I assumed they just use guidelines to make sure it didn’t tip over when lowering. Maybe the keels were heavy enough to balance the rest of the boat and keep it upright....

[6ohiocav]

NAMEPLATE

 

I put the nameplate together. I scanned the image from the original rebuild plans from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, manipulated it on my computer and added my name, scale and date. I sent it to a trophy shop who burned the stainless steel plate. I made the base from some tiger maple I had in my scrap pile.

[MEDDO]

Name plate looks great

[6ohiocav]

DISPLAY CASE

While I was away from my log, I did work on building a display case and table. I had some great cherry that I harvested from my farm, and used that for the base. It has great grain. I added a decorative inlay.

I also decided to add LED strap lighting. That took some figuring. I decided to run the cord down one of the corner posts inside the groove for the glass. I cut a channel along the top rails. The strap lighting has adhesive that adhered to the bottom of the channel. I had to purchase corner splices. I have added photos.

When I dry fitted everything together and checked out the lighting, I realized that the channel was not deep enough to hide the glare from the LED light emitters. I will be adding some thin trim pieces to fix this.

I love the lighting. While it is LED, the system has a remote that gives me the ability to change the lighting quite a bit. I can set it with a low warm glow or bright LED. When I get everything put together and put the case in place, I will experiment to see what lighting looks best.

Next up, mounting the ship…. A daunting challenge that I should have considered a long time ago. More on that later.

[Sailor1234567890]

Have you tested it out to see what it will look like under light like that? I bet it's going to look pretty cool. 

[6ohiocav]

[6ohiocav]

7 minutes ago, Sailor1234567890 said:

Have you tested it out to see what it will look like under light like that? I bet it's going to look pretty cool. 

I have done a lot of testing. If you want to see all of the faults in living color, you can crank up the light intensity. It actually has convinced me that I need to install a similar lighting system for my work bench. My choices with this system however are endless. It has a warm light function, and I believe that will be the one I chose for the display. Besides that, I can change the light to green, blue, or red, or any combination of all three. I can make it blink, I can program it make it change color. In fact, I can turn my Niagara into a Christmas Tree if I wanted. Having said that, I do like the system and I wanted a remote to turn it off and on. The extra features just came a long with the package.

[6ohiocav]

MOUNTING PEDESTALS

 

I worked on a method of mounting my ship to its display base. And yes, like experienced model ship builders, this was something I should have done long long ago. Kudos to those that incorporate mounting bolts and threaded nuts to their hulls before it is planked. Being my first wooden ship model, when I started this project years ago, I was a lot younger, but not wiser. Just finishing the project was too much to comprehend let alone that there would be a time when I would have to actually mount it to something.

 

I ordered some brass pedestals with long wood screws. But screwing wood screws into a quarter inch wide plywood keel with no backing was not going to do it. So I opted to mortise a notch and glue in a stainless steel nut that would accept a two inch machine screw. The diameter of the screw was wider than the hole in my brass pedestals, so I would have to create new ones. I opted to turn them on my lathe from some spalted maple.

 

This was a long process, and a scary one as well. Working on the bottom of the hull of a finished rigged sailing ship is ridiculous. Taking a drill to the hull, while sitting on the floor, with the ship hanging off the edge of the bench is not for the faint of heart. I paid for my ignorance.

 

Here are a series of photos that show how I did it.  In the end, the ship is stable enough, as long as it is not hit with any rough seas.

Edited April 12, 2020 by 6ohiocav
grammar

[MEDDO]

Outstanding work. The end result came out really nice. When I get to a much larger ship will definitely have to do something like this at the beginning of the build. Although I really do like large carved cradles as well.

[6ohiocav]

Mike,

 

I actually made a cradle out of some curly maple. I used the laser cut template from the bulkheads to trace the vertical supports and cut them out on the band saw. Before I came up with a method to secure the hull, I decided I didn't really like my design. I thought it was too intrusive. That's when I turned to pedestals. The key though is to do this early in a build.

[Tigersteve]

Nice work on the late mounting and pedestals.  
Steve

[AON]

Darrel

I had gone through a similar experience (re: late modifications for mounting) so I know exactly how you felt.

It took me a few days of planning before I mustered enough nerve.

Alan

[6ohiocav]

RAISING THE FLAG

 

It is time to raise the flag! The shipwrights from Presque Isle have turned the US Brig Niagara over to the US Great Lakes Command and Capt. Oliver Hazard Perry. Capt. Perry's flag carried the famous quote "Don't give up the Ship" uttered by his late friend, Capt. James Lawrence as he lay dying on the deck of his ship the USS Chesapeake in battle with the HMS Shannon.

I printed an image of the flag onto printable fabric, cut it out, rigged it to lanyards,  and ran them through a block on top of the foremast.

 

We christen this ship the US Brig Niagara. I hoist this flag in honor to all of the sailors who fought and died for Country or Crown in the Battle of Lake Erie, a lake where I grew up.

 

And with that, this project is over. Once I button up the display case and take some final photos, I will mark this build log "FINISHED"

 

[Tom E]

Outstanding work Darrell.

She's beautiful!

 

All of a sudden I'm thirsty?

 

Tom E 

[Canute]

Excellent job.👍

 

And it'd be a sin to waste that fine Irish whiskey.

[mtaylor]

Beautiful work.  You did scare me when I was reading about drilling the holes for the pedestals but I imagine  we all were holding our  breathe until the result was shown. 

[MEDDO]

Like the flag. Like the whiskey

[6ohiocav]

Tom,

Thanks for the look. I raise my glass to all of my fellow Niagara builders.

 

Ken, Mark, Alan, Steve and Mike,

Trust me, I needed that glass of Jamison after the mounting process. I only broke off the tip off the dolphin striker, yanked the port side course brace from its pin, and loosened one of the hammock rails......there are just no handles to grab onto when you take a jack hammer to your ship.....so we put in for repairs and were able to make everything right again.

 

Edited April 12, 2020 by 6ohiocav

[6ohiocav]

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.

Edited April 13, 2020 by 6ohiocav

[ronkamin]

Fantastic job, my hats off to you. I only hope to get this good.

 

Ron

[Tom E]

Absolutely beautiful!

 

Tom E 

[jamcdonel]

Congratulations! A beautiful ship! I have obsessively read your log over the last couple days. Excellent work and fantastic results.