USS Constitution by SawdustDave - FINISHED - 1:60th Scale

[Jack12477]

Jud, the USS The Sullivans is at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park on Lake Erie in Buffalo NY . It's been there since 1977 along with the Cleveland-class cruiser USS Little Rock and submarine USS Croaker. All three ships are open for tours.  She's also listed as a National Historic Landmark, and is on the National Historic Register of Historic Places.

[SawdustDave]

Thanks DDude / Jud....
Good to hear from you Pete.  Hope all is well with you these days.

Prime shop time has been disrupted since returning from "Baastin" due to an intensive yard work project.  After completely ignoring my lawn last year whilst fighting my ear infection, I have a lot of catching up to do.  The hurricane did a lot of damage to my turf throughout, especially around the trees and landscaped areas.  All this comes in the form of large "wash-out" areas and dead spots.
Then, of course, there's the weeds!
So, the painful solution is top soil dressing.... 40 pound bags of rich black top soil spread around my entire yard (front / sides / and back).  Since I can only work outside during early morning and late evening hours due to 90 degree heat here in N.C..... followed by cold showers and long rest periods, the Constitution progress has had to suffer.  What little time in the shop has mostly been creating pinrails and quite a large number of belaying pins from tooth picks.
I just finished raking out bags number 250 this morning (each bag handled three times).... looks like about 60 more bags will about do it.
Racing to get seed spread into the new soil before the rain comes this weekend.
 

[popeye2sea]

That is the USS Cassin Young ( DD 793 ).

 

Regards,

[jud]

 

 

1 hour ago, popeye2sea said:

That is the USS Cassin Young ( DD 793 ).

 

Regards,

Thanks Henry. that bed spring radar was bothering me, wrong for the Fletcher's I knew, could not see the twin 5" 38 that must have been aboard the Cassin which would have confirmed she was not what I thought. Still set me off on a search allowing me to discover a video I enjoyed, and was correct for the Fletcher's,' 2100 class', as we called them. No fore-aft below decks passageways was one of their faults, to rough for 01 level use, you stayed where you were.

jud

[popeye2sea]

I was on a Forrest Sherman class of DD.  Only about 10 or so years younger than Cassin Young.  That midships passage helped a lot.

 

Regards,

[JSGerson]

Just catching up as I was  doing one of my visits to Mom (she turns 99 June 5). I really like your supports on top of the pedestals. I never really liked those simple U-supports (brass or otherwise). They just seemed to me me that they put too much stress on the keel. That added shoulder appeals to my engineer side. I graduated many, many years ago as a civil engineer but never practiced as such. What kind of wood did you use? It looks like walnut.

[SawdustDave]

16 hours ago, JSGerson said:

Just catching up as I was  doing one of my visits to Mom (she turns 99 June 5). I really like your supports on top of the pedestals. I never really liked those simple U-supports (brass or otherwise). They just seemed to me me that they put too much stress on the keel. That added shoulder appeals to my engineer side. I graduated many, many years ago as a civil engineer but never practiced as such. What kind of wood did you use? It looks like walnut.

Mom 99!! Wow!  My Mom would be same age if she was still with us.  

 

The pedestals and the custom shaped top shoulder pieces are oak (taken from a piece of hardwood flooring scraps).   A mixture of a couple of different dark stains I had laying around.  I think one of them was dark walnut.
Trimmed poster paper to a snug fit to the hull shape, then traced the shape onto the shoulder pieces and cut out with band saw.
Result was very solid base which allows me to handle the ship often while continuing the build.

[SawdustDave]

PROGRESS UPDATE....

Since I haven't posted anything lately, I guess this is mainly to say howdy to all, and show evidence that we're still toiling away in the ship yard every day.

Since finishing the copper plates and turning her upright on her new base, I began adding most of the fixtures to the spar deck bulwarks, which were created off ship in order to do all those little bolt heads.  So here's where we are on that  task....

Forward end - both sides:

Aft end - both sides....

The belaying pins were turned from the end of tooth pics....

I am still not ready to install these bulwarks at this point because I still need to add a few more planks to the spar deck and fill in the forward decking around the bow area.

And.... before doing any of that, I must return to the gun deck area where EVERYTHING needs to be worked on.... beginning with 30 cannon installations.
So.... Here I am building cannon carriages because I refused to build a few each week along the way, as planned.

 

Looks like I'll be working on gun deck cannons for a long while.

 

Cheers

[Omega1234]

Hey Dave

 

Great to see that you're back to posting again. I was beginning to wonder where you were!  

 

Nice job job on the cannon carriages. 

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

 

[SawdustDave]

Never had to build and rig so many guns in all of my previous builds Patrick.
Thirty on the gun deck, then 22 demi's on the spar deck. 
This is gonna take a while..... no hurry.

 

Cheers

 

[Omega1234]

8 minutes ago, SawdustDave said:

Never had to build and rig so many guns in all of my previous builds Patrick.
Thirty on the gun deck, then 22 dime's on the spar deck. 
This is gonna take a while..... no hurry.

 

Cheers

 

Yep!  Can't argue with that, Dave.

 

Totally understood.  Take your time and there's no need to rush.

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[Greg the peg leg sailor]

I agreed with Patrick. Take your time and enjoy your efforts. 

Havagooday 

Greg 

[SawdustDave]

Build a carriage - turn a long gun..... build/turn.... etc, etc....

Actually, after wood carving, my second favorite "sawdust thing" would be turning wood.
Seen here, the next 24 pound long gun turned in hard rock maple - I don't suggest you try this with any of the softer woods like the dowels we use to create our masts and spars.

The big challenge is getting that little ball down to size before the turning pops out of the lathe. So far, I'm batting about 500 on that.

If all goes well, this is how each turning should come off the lathe....

 

 

Cheers

 

[BANYAN]

Nice turning Dave, with a coat of paint who would know they were wood

 

cheers

 

Pat

[SawdustDave]

Yep.

[Greg the peg leg sailor]

I agree with Pat. Bloody great turning mate. 1 down and how many attempt till all is done? If it was me I will probably get 1 out of 60, till I'm satisfied or the breakages will dive me crazy. 

Have you thought about casting and do multiple copies?

Havagoodone 

Greg 

[SawdustDave]

On 6/3/2017 at 8:28 PM, Greg the peg leg sailor said:

I agree with Pat. Bloody great turning mate. 1 down and how many attempt till all is done? If it was me I will probably get 1 out of 60, till I'm satisfied or the breakages will dive me crazy. 

Have you thought about casting and do multiple copies?

Havagoodone 

Greg 

Casting long guns.... Yes I did play around with casting these 24 pounders Greg.  It can be done, but my experience was another train wreck.  Injecting the two part mix into the mold and then removing the casting to find air voids and imperfections was very frustrating.  Part of the problem being that my "Smooth On" liquids are rather old and have been sitting on the shelf several months.  Part A is fine but the Part B has gotten too thick and doesn't mix very well.  I managed to get a half dozen usable cannons from a dozen attempts before my mold began to suffer and break down.

Hoping the mold I created for the shorter carronades will be more successful.  

The good news is, as of this morning, I have already created fifteen good long guns on the lathe.... with practice, they do get easier....plus the quality just gets better with each new turning.  I may even throw out a couple of the first guns.  We'll wait and see how they come out after painting.  

[Piet]

Fantastic progress Dave and those turned cannons came out great.

 

Cheers,

[SawdustDave]

CANNON RIGGING PROGRESS.....

After logging over 60 hours since June 1, here is a quick report on the development of gun deck cannons.....

• Turned, cleaned up, inserted pins, and painted all 30 of the 24 pound long guns.
• Mounted 15 finished guns onto previously built carriages.
• Created block and tackle rigging for 15 modules.... now ready for installing to starboard side.

A couple of notes regarding the rigging seen below....

Since these guns will be seen from the planned cutaway of the spar deck, I have chosen a couple of trade offs regarding the rigging details.... (GUILTY AS CHARGED)

The blocks are attached directly to the carriage with a wire pin - omitting the hook and ring.... and likewise, the double sheave blocks have wire hooks attached directly - omitting the two-piece hook/ring.  Seen here, those hooks have not yet been sharpened and bent into their hook shape.

 

Finally, note the ring on the restraining rope is attached directly to the carriage with a single hook attached directly to each end.

These trade offs, I must admit, I completely failed in creating the scaled rigging of all those omitted hooks and rings within a reasonable time considering I will be rigging thirty of these cannon installations within my live time (hahahaha)

 

[Piet]

Those are looking really nice Dave.

 

Cheers,

[mtaylor]

Looks to be a brilliant solution to pesky problem, Dave.   I can't wait to see the final result.

[Omega1234]

Hi Dave

 

I bet that when you started your cannons, you thought it'd be a long shot (pun intended) that you'd be finding it such a challenge...but, in true fashion, you've done brilliantly well.

 

Great work.

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[SawdustDave]

GUN DECK PROGRESS....
First, thanks Piet, Mark, and Patrick.... and all the mates who keep popping in.
 

I should note that it quickly became obvious to me that the blocks used to rig the long guns seen here, now mounted on the starboard side, are noticeably out of scale....too large.

I did consider scraping the attempt but decided, the rigging will never be seen once the spar decking is added to cover about 70% toward the port side.  I plan to leave roughly 30% of the spar deck along the port side as a cutaway revealing the gun deck details below.
Here's where we are now....

Having said that, since the port side guns will be visible through the cutaway deck, I have spent the last two days working on developing rigging that will be more in scale....i.e., smaller blocks and hooks.

The biggest challenge was creating blocks that I could drill the double sheaves into.... solution - hard rock maple.
Seen below, the new rigging shows the comparison of the over sized blocks used on the starboard side guns.

Note, I also went to a slightly smaller rope, and created hooks from brass wire, which I will paint black.

 

[Greg the peg leg sailor]

G'day Dave 

Your workmanship on this model is bloody incredible mate.  I'm constantly amassed at the details that you shown from the belay pins to the rope coils. So perfect!

Havagooday and happymodelling mate

Greg 

[usedtosail]

The new blocks look much better. Great job.

[SawdustDave]

GUN DECK CANNONS - UPDATE....

After 150 hours (logged build time), I am happy to report "completion" for the installation of all 30 of the gun deck cannons.

Although still slightly over sized, the smaller rigging blocks turned out noticeably closer to scale on the port side guns.  "Close enough for horse shoes." as the old saying goes.

Haven't decided where I will now begin building out all the gun deck details.  Either have some fun with the little furnishings within the captain's study, or go for the bowsprit instillation.
Just happy to finally be at this stage of moving forward.

[Greg the peg leg sailor]

G'day Dave 

Congratulations on completing this milestone. The guns look great mate. Did you say 150 hours? That sounds quite fast, if you ask me.

 

In Australia, instead of saying about the horse shoes, we would say: a blind man would be glad to see the difference!

 

Bloody great job mate! 

Havagooday 

Greg 

[SawdustDave]

1 hour ago, Greg the peg leg sailor said:

G'day Dave 

Congratulations on completing this milestone. The guns look great mate. Did you say 150 hours? That sounds quite fast, if you ask me.

 

I stand corrected Greg.....
Looking back in Mid-January, I did log about 60 hours cutting out carriage parts and creating a couple of cannon prototypes.

200 hours actual build time spread over several weeks seems like a lot when everything is so redundant.

Cheers  

 

 

[Piet]

Looking very good Dave, 200 hours well spend mate.

 

Cheers,

[riverboat]

WOW!!! Dave ....that is some awesome!! work on those cannons.

 

frank