Lady Nelson by vossiewulf - Amati/Victory Models - 1:64

[vossiewulf]

Some progress on the margin planks. First, guess how wide the margin planks are.

While I'm at it, I know it's quite expensive but the NSK Evolution micromotor with the 90 degree attachment is something you really want if you build ships- it's a handheld disk sander and you can chew through half an inch of endgrain wood on a plank or remove a few molecules to refine a fit. It lets you set two angles at once and the output is a perfectly straight edge. It's pretty much the perfect tool for fitting the ends of planks on ships, so if you can somehow get it on a Christmas list, do so. It will speed your work considerably.

It makes getting a fit like this a lot easier than it looks.

I decided on a 6mm margin plank as that leaves me exactly 36mm on each side, so I can make my planks 4mm-4.01mm with 9 a side. It might have been 5mm but I really didn't want to make 4.138932mm planks.

Also decided on three planks for the margin with scarf joints. I blackened the edge with a 4B solid-graphite pencil.

Test fitting the first scarf.

The middle plank.

I see no way to bend these planks for the bow so I'm spiling the bow plank. I started with a paper template.

And transferred that to a piece of holly, some disk sander work and hand sanding, we have a pretty good fit. I knocked off there, tomorrow I scribe the other edge and cut the scarf and then move to the other side.

[BANYAN]

Nice work Vossie; looks good.

 

I have a micro-motor with a 90 degree attachment but it has one of those swivel clamping levers at the top; does yours have that too?  If so, then I am assuming you need the specialised accessories (sanding discs etc) to suit?  Again, if so, where did you get your from, my searches are restricted to a few drill/cutters and the like.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[vossiewulf]

1 hour ago, BANYAN said:

Nice work Vossie; looks good.

 

I have a micro-motor with a 90 degree attachment but it has one of those swivel clamping levers at the top; does yours have that too?  If so, then I am assuming you need the specialised accessories (sanding discs etc) to suit?  Again, if so, where did you get your from, my searches are restricted to a few drill/cutters and the like.

 

cheers

 

Pat

The standard Evolution handpieces have a lever lock, but the 90 degree attachment does not. It uses a collet key thing which is the only drawback to the tool I'm aware of, it's slow changing burs but I have a second Evolution handpiece that I use for burs, so this one at least for now stays in this configuration as I use the sander constantly.

 

I shop at Artco Tools because they're a professional supply shop for die sinkers and patternmakers and engine guys who do porting and they have everything to do with rotary tools. If you already have a micromotor and a 90 degree attachment, all you need are the disk sander mandrels and the PSA sandpaper circles. You can find the mandrels here and the sanding disks here. Artco also makes their own sanding disks that last longer than the NSK ones that can be found here. They don't quite fit the NSK mandrel sizes, but not enough to be problematic.

 

I suggest you poke around their store, they have lots of things interesting to ship modelers. Another one you should have in your arsenal if you don't already is rubberized abrasives in at least 1/8" size so you can chuck them in the micromotor. Think pencil erasers with abrasive grit embedded in them, they're extremely useful for removing metal and polishing metal pieces, they're used very commonly by jewelers polishing jewelry after it comes out of the mold. Since they're like pencil erasers, you can also shape them pretty easily, I just run them against a piece of sandpaper. Otto Frei has a pretty big selection also.

 

When using my mini disk sander, I brace my elbows either on my knees or the benchtop with the handpiece in my right hand and the work piece in my left. I then brace the heels of my hands together, leaving only the fingers holding the work piece moving, and I look at the disk from the side with it slightly off-axis from my eyes for obvious reasons. When braced this way, it's amazing how much fine control you have and it does feel like you could just strip a few molecules if you wanted to. Every one of the hull plank ends that all turned out near perfect were done this way, and it really isn't all that difficult.

 

[jwvolz]

Sharp work on the margin plank. 

[BANYAN]

Thanks Vossie, I may have to adapt a mandrel to fit my 90 degree fitting as, with mine (NSK) I have the lever lock on that and the straight piece has a twist lock.

 

Thanks for the info and links.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[vossiewulf]

Work crises interrupted the shipyard for a couple days, but I did get the margin planks finished last night.

 

Picking up where we left off, I had the outer curve on the bow margin plank. To get the inside curve, I used my digital calipers as a marking gauge again, something I do regularly- in this case set it to 6mm, lock it, and run one jaw along the outer curve while the other scribes a fine line. I then run a pencil down said line to make it easy to see, and a few light passes with a knife and we're done with just a few seconds of sanding the inside edge required. 

This is where we enter a good lesson on how not to think your way through a process. On the first side, I started by gluing the stern piece in first, but as I later realized this was the wrong end to start with. By doing it this way I ended up with no "out" on the final joint between the middle plank and the bow plank- the far end of the bow plank was already done so I had to mark the last joint and cut to those markings with no second chance. Here are the three port planks dry fit and glued- I got ok close with the final joint but not better than that, which didn't make me happy.

So for the starboard side, I started on the bow end and that was better, but unfortunately I had faced the scarf joints in the direction that made sense starting from the stern, and I couldn't reverse them since the port side was already done. The problem was that the joints faced the waterway, rather than facing the center of the deck- so for the starboard side I had multiple tries, but dry fitting and especially gluing were made much more tricky by having to fit the new piece in between the waterway and the previous piece. If I'd thought this out right, I would have started at the stern and reversed the direction of the scarf joints, that would have made this process MUCH easier. 

Done now.

And as noted, the joints are ok but not nearly as precise as I would like. The first one was perfect:

But the rest weren't so perfect due to my poor planning.

Now I'm trying to think my way through the rest of the deck planking. Hopefully I will do a better job of that than I did here.

[Rick01]

Looking good - this log will work beautifully as the definitive guide to "The Cutter Lady Nelson" with the "deliberate" errors showing how you need to think each set of actions through.

Rick.

[vossiewulf]

I am confused about the deck planking. I though nibbed plank ends were only on the bow, while on the stern the planks tapered as long as they didn't taper to less than half their widest width. However I have a drawing of nibbed plank ends showing it done on both bow and stern of what looks like a cutter, with the planks running dead straight and no taper. Can someone explain what is correct?

[shipmodel]

Hi Vossie - 

 

The short answer is - they are all correct.

 

Each shipyard, each designer, each shipwright would have had his own style and construction method that he preferred.  Even two similar ships coming out of the same shipyard, built by the same shipwright, might have different details depending on when during his career the ship was built.  Deck design would have been particularly variable, depending on the availability of longer or shorter planks at the time of construction.  Unlike some French designs, the deck of an English or American cutter is not a significant structural component, so the only consideration would have been how to make it sturdy with the least wood wasted and the least manpower expended.  Nibbing, hook scarphs, and other fancy joinery would have been limited to as few locations as possible, consistent with eliminating weak spots and reducing the chances of rot, unless the ship owner asked for all the bells and whistles.

 

On a model, however, the appearance of the deck planking is a significant visual element.  Like you, I have seen all combinations of nibbing, straight planking, tapered planking, hook scarphs, and many more besides.   I expect that some things have been done on a model that were never done on a working ship.  It is just a question of style.

 

So go for it.  Do the nibbing, the complicated scarph joints, hook joints and any other joinery that fits with the overall artistic presentation of your model.  Whatever you decide, you can rest easy knowing that there was almost certainly a ship out there whose builder made the same choices. 

 

Be well

 

Dan

[vossiewulf]

So I spent a long time staring and figuring out how to do this and having it being super complicated until I finally made the executive decision that the damned deck furniture was just going to sit on the planked surface and I wasn't going to plank around them. Three out of four of the furniture elements extended slightly width-wise across a plank line, which would have required... I don't know what they call it but instead of having a thin plank section they bevel that back and extend the next plank width-wise to cover the space. Almost half the planks would either be beveled short sections or planks with extended width, and honestly I wasn't sure I could make those accurately enough at this point. So for once, I'm not taking the double black diamond slope for this section and am simplifying a bit.

 

As for nibbing, I decided the planks will be straight run, no tapering and nibbed at both ends. Here we're finally all marked up ready to go. During the process of doing the marking I made more executive decisions about whether to cut planks and have them follow the four-plank shift or let them run long, there are several places where it makes more sense to let them run. I then made a big pile of holly planking that is exactly 4.04mm wide on the Byrnes saw. 

To make the lines between planks consistently visible, I found I had to blacken both sides of the plank joints, and run CA glue down between the planks to enhance the line. 

Exactly four planks between the stanchion thingies.

Speaking of which, why are those not glued on last? They're in the way the whole build and you end up dinging them and retouching them a number of times. And when it comes to deck planking, it leaves a very fiddly fitting process.

Coming along now.

[vossiewulf]

I forgot to say thanks Dan, that helped me a bunch in getting past the decision block.

[Rick01]

Tree nails for the decking haven't been mentioned yet but in case you're considering them here's a photo of full size decking showing how they blend in. I believe whoever spilt the tar pot was probably keelhauled and then left for our local White Pointers!! Rick 

[vossiewulf]

I didn't nail the hull, so probably not on the decking either although I haven't totally ruled it out. I will have to go look at Bob's Prince deck to see what he did as I'm not even sure what wood or color would work well with holly. 

 

Speaking of holly, it cuts easily but is somewhat fuzzy- edges coming off the saw and any edge that is sanded will generate some fuzz on the edges that has to be carefully cleaned away prior to gluing. Not a major problem but a bit of an annoyance if you're going to use holly planking.

[vossiewulf]

A few more strakes on including the tricky first nibbed one.

This wasn't easy as most of the plank is a cutout into the margin plank. Now had I planked a deck before, especially including straight-run nibbed plank ends on bow and stern I might have noticed that there was a chance that the nibs would interfere with the scarfs. But I hadn't so I didn't and we have a less than perfect location for the scarfs considering where the first nibbed plank ended up.

And overall.

 

[shipmodel]

Coming along very nicely and neatly.  Well done.

 

Dan

[BANYAN]

Nice neat work and should look great - the lads have been out and about 'swabbing' - those decks look well and truly 'holystoned'  

 

cheers

 

Pat

[vossiewulf]

Speaking of the color of holly, after seeing it in situ I tend to agree that it's too white for realism purposes, but at the same time using plain fir or maple isn't the right color either since holystoning a deck plus the normal bleaching of the sun would lead to a lighter color of those woods than is natural. So for pure realism's sake, you should deck with holly but stain it lightly to bring it down from the bone-white color of natural holly to that of bleached and holystoned maple or fir or whatever wood they used for your ship.

 

But at the same time one of the nice things about ship modeling is there is a long tradition of using plain unpainted woods and colors other than purely realistic with finishes- everyone agrees the structure should be accurate, but the colors are up to interpretation by the builder and as such the white holly is perfectly valid and definitely creates a dramatic look.

[popeye the sailor]

deck is coming along nicely    

[vossiewulf]

Done with deck except for clear coat. Starboard side fought tooth and nail to go off the rails, starting when I managed to put a big belly sweep into the first nibbed plank that's supposed to be all nice and straight. I had to make wider planks and then taper the rest of them on the starboard side to slowly remove that bend over four planks, lots and lots of fitting and sanding. But it looks reasonable now.

 

 

[popeye the sailor]

the cut is snug and neatly done........I see no problems with the scarfs.   great job on the deck..........my compliments   

[BANYAN]

Very nice - clean, symmetrical and a deck the Admiral would be proud of  

 

cheers

 

Pat

[vossiewulf]

Thanks folks. So... I know I have to finish the deck furniture, but any suggestions on order from this point? There is probably a rational order in which to do everything, but I have no idea what it is.

[Rick01]

It's been a while since I did mine, but as I remember I started at the bow and worked back. Are you painting the windlass, pumps etc. and I assume you're going to ditch the supplied pumps and make your own. You also need to install ringbolts in the gunwales for the ship's cannon tackle at this point. Not a fun job if you forget and the have to do this once the masts and Rigging have been completed (not saying why I know this 😉 ).  Parts 32 & 33 you may want to consider a thinner 32 then drill it for 2 belaying pins, otherwise you end up belaying ropes to the knight heads only. On the stern, the "brackets"  either side of the tiller have eyebolts fitted, I omitted the two immediately to the rear and substituted a horse instead. Seemed to make more sense and I have seen this arrangement on other models of this era. Whilst down this end check page 30 of Petersson, it shows an elbow again with belaying pins which I've added. There never seem to be enough belaying points - I'm pretty sure they'd have a few extra over and above the standard rigging requirements.

 

 

Rick 

Edited December 22, 2018 by Rick01

[vossiewulf]

Thanks Rick. I haven't decided on finish yet for the windlass and other bits, natural and black and red all are choices. Yes, was looking at the pumps and they will have to go. BTW do you know if brass blackener works on copper? I'd assume it does, but the kit's provided eyebolts are copper.

[Rick01]

Not sure about brass blackener on copper I couldn't source it in Aus. when I did my build so got "crude but effective" hit them with my gas blowtorch then painted with Tamiya "gunmetal" . It stuck to the eyebolts quite effectively. I've a collection of those metal cast pumps, I'm getting quite good at making both pumps and gun carriages now. ;-)

 

 

Rick 

[vossiewulf]

Thanks Rick. I am now confused about the windlass- after looking at Tony's period model pics and Chuck's builds the only thing I can say is a cutter had a windlass to control the bow yard. What they looked like seems to be highly variable. From Tony's pics, this is the one closest to the kit version, but it has a pin rail which seems odd, and I really can't see what is going on there. It seems they were square section passing through a mount that had a square pin that would pass through the yard, so the positions you could put the yard in where fixed and the yard couldn't be moved in and out dynamically.

 

I also assume that was something of a reefing mechanism where the bow yard is hauled progressively inward as wind force climbs.

 

And there was a flap-style ratchet mechanism but it had to work differently than shown in the kit drawings, which is just a strip of wood glue in place. I can't really see how that should look.

[Rick01]

OK - the windlass actually is used to raise and lower the anchors. Bit hard to see on that one but you can just make out the anchor cable running off the windlass and through the gunwales. The illustration in the drawings is pretty cramped but the ratchet system would stop the anchor cable running out unless that tab was lifted. As I understand it the bowsprit would have had a peg running through its support (part 26) just in front of the windlass pinning it in place, this would be knocked out and the bowsprit moved in or out in increments possibly using in/out haul rigging not connected to the windlass , the  bowsprit obviously needs to clear the top of the windlass to allow for it to be hauled further in. In that illustration you've found the pinrail runs along side the  bowsprit and would be attached to some other fixed mounts there and is coincidental to the rest of the fixtures there. Hopefully this makes sense - if not yell and I'll dig up some illustrations (I hope).

 

Rick

[Rick01]

Check this out for a short discussion/build of the type of windlass your cutter would have carried. 

 

Rick

 

 

[gjdale]

5 hours ago, vossiewulf said:

BTW do you know if brass blackener works on copper?

For blackening copper, you need to use Liver of Sulfur. Readily available online. I use the gel form. A little goes a long way. The best thing about it is that you can use it ‘in situ’ and just rinse off the surrounding wood with water if there is any overspill. Much easier to use than brass blackening solutions too! Ed Tosti uses it extensively on his builds (Naiad, and Young America) - he actually uses copper where he can instead of brass.

[vossiewulf]

Thanks Rick and Grant

 

Well I should have known the windlass was required for the anchors, but the image I posted above confused me- the lines coming off it and running through the grate down below doesn't look heavy enough to be an anchor cable.