74-gun ship by Gaetan Bordeleau - 1:24

[Sailor1234567890]

Vossiewulf, have you a thread anywhere elaborating a bit on how you carve those things? I'm trying to carve letters and am having a bit of difficulty.

Sorry for the slight thread drift Gaetan.

Cheers,

Daniel

[vossiewulf]

In simplest terms, I get the knife insanely sharp and then for each triangular chip I first cut lines from each triangle point to the center of the triangle so the chips for each side of the triangle can fall away independently, and then I remove most of the waste before making the final cuts. Removing the waste means much less force is needed for the final cuts and the less force used, the greater the accuracy. With chip carving everything has to be dead perfect, one triangle out of shape and it disturbs a pattern and is therefore easy to notice by anyone.

 

However letter carving isn't usually done with knives, primarily it's done with v-gouges of various sizes. Are you talking about scale lettering for a ship, or full sized for some other purpose? If it's small for a ship I might switch what I just said and recommend a knife.

 

Also let me see if I can find the photos I took of how I hold a pencil-style knife for precision work. Found it, as you see only my pinky and the knife edge touch the wood, and my ring finger is against the side of the blade and is pressing down into my pinky- the point is to have each finger pressing down on the next one, it makes for a strong and steady support. If you keep your index finger and thumb quiet, you can cut very straight lines using this grip. Or you can carve and do curves by manipulating the blade just with the index finger and thumb- the fewer moving parts and the more constrained their movement, the more accuracy you get.

 

Not sure if any of that helped, but we need to get back to Gaetan's beautiful ship build  If you want to discuss it further, please start a thread over in the modeling tools/techniques forum.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

3 things:

 

Unfortunately, here is what Ron said:
"I hate to disappoint but we don't have a good way to make this for you. Sorry, no quote.''
 

Vossiewulf, I am sure you will agree: there are sharp knives but there is also extremely sharp knives

 

May be after Christmas I will write to  a company to see if they would like to produce a good Standard Detail Knife which would be extremely sharp. Actually they do not really have any. I think that PM V11 steel would be a very good choice!

[vossiewulf]

Wow, that's disappointing, never had him say that before. Did he say why? Maybe a fairly minor change to the design would make it possible for him to make it for you? If he didn't explain, I would ask, I don't know of anyone good who is willing to do custom work like he does, and certainly not with the same quality of steel.

 

You can also work around his limitations by being willing to grind it down and shape it if needed yourself. That can be done reasonably safely to the temper of the steel by constantly dipping the blade in ice water and never letting it get more than warm under grinding. In one case I changed my mind about what I wanted, and took a blade he made and ground it quite a bit to change it to the new shape.

 

Let's figure out how to change your design so Ron can make it, and then you might need to invest a bit more time before you can put a handle on it.

 

And yes, I agree there is sharp and there is super sharp. When chip carving with the Hock knife, I can maintain super sharp for about 15 -30 minutes, after which I use the strop. I only do that a few times before returning to the 1000 grit stone to resharpen because strops, being soft, always start to round over the edge, and even the most subtle change in the bevel of the knife is noticeable to me when I'm carving.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

 

http://www.leevalley.com/en/wood/page.aspx?p=42607&cat=1,69168,69174&ap=1

 

the beginning of the solution: PM-V11,  2 blades for $60.

 

[vossiewulf]

That will work if Ron won't help, but will be a fair amount of work to process it into what you want. On the up side, PM-V11 steel and you'd definitely feel like it was your personal knife.

 

Below is a piece of wenge wood planed down with my Lee Valley low-angle smoothing plane with a PM-V11 iron. I don't anticipate having a need to do better than this.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

2019, the beginning of the construction inside the model ship.

 

First part,   planks to support the deck beams, very easy to position; the height in reference with the gun port openings  is the same everywhere.

Followed by 7 inner  frames. 

Still other parts to do before to fix everything.

[SJSoane]

Beautiful, Gaetan! Nice to see her underway in the new year.

 

Mark

[BANYAN]

As Mark says, nice to see the shipyard back at work again Gaetan.  Very clean work.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[mtaylor]

Beautiful work and the camera is showing it incredibly well.  

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

 Installation of reinforcement pieces. The easy way to assure parallelism between each one is to set a spacer.

 

2 of these have a double use: they will also receive the planking of the false and first deck.

 

Deck beams of the first deck will rest on a large plank on each side of the boat. Each frame will have 1 notch each side to sit them. The first deck is the one withe the greater span. For this reason, some of the frames will be made in 3 parts with taper notches. This is  a great method to assemble beams. Probably with the weight of the parts only, it would be enough to fix the parts of the beam. I remember the first time I tried it, I was surprise how strong locking this mechanism is able to perform; the same way as a taper sleeve but because the parts are assembled in an arc additional  lateral strengths comes to lock even in a stronger way the assembly.

 

Depending also from the needs, there will be beams from 1 part, example the first 2  in front. beams made from 2 parts will also be include in the first deck depending of the needs.

 

With the fabrication of the camera studio stand, it will be easy to insert  a full frame camera inside. One of the advantage is that it is easy to set the camera parallel to the model. I will try to give access as much as possible inside. For this reason, deck  and wall planking will be install only in essential circumstances. In a way there will be as less as possible longitudinal planks but more perpendicularly to the keel.

 

Parts are temporary fix until all the notches to receive the beams of the first deck are done.

 

I got an answer from Lee Valley and Veritas for the detail knife. Here is a part of the last paragraph:  ''We also have some other design we are working on. In order to avoid any conflict your product submission will not be reviewed by our designers. SO, I can only hope they can produce a sharp knife with their wood plane blade. While this time, when I will want to have a sharper knife, I will regrind one of those  blade  in a V shape or may be I could do a knife blade from  a half  wood plane blade.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Glued  most parts except the rail where the deck beams will rest. These rails must be still removable to  be able to cut notches for  the deck beams from the first deck later.

Half frames rest on these rails and to glue the half  frames , a spacer is added under the rails  so that the half frame can be glued somewhere.

 

Also the setup to take photos is now completed with a new tv. This way, it is very easy to observe very closely construction details photos

[Mau]

Gaetan, you are a master! What a precise work. So many details. The photos are the icing on the cake. So sharp and clear. Very good!

Congratulations !!!

Mauricio

[vossiewulf]

Gaetan, that is extremely cool. Also you probably know this, but do you know the artist's trick of looking at their work in a mirror? I do that all the time when making stuff, I take a photo and I mirror it horizontally, I see all sorts of issues once flipped that I didn't see in the basic image. Your camera setup is genius for that.

[druxey]

Just catching up with your progress, Gaetan. Your work is meticulous as usual and a pleasure to look at.

[SJSoane]

Gaetan,

 

Amazing work. Your tools down in the hold show just how large this project really is!

 

Mark

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Moldings around pillars  are cut at 45 degrees with my favorite knife, not with the saw.

[druxey]

Lovely detail of the mast wedge lifting rings!

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

At first sight, having  to choose a very good knife  for model ship making is a very easy thing, at least, this is what I thought when I bought my first Exacto. In the last months,  I learned that this subject is much larger. The shape of the handle, the kind of steel + carbon, the profile of the blade, just to name a few. In addition to this, sharpening is another domain difficult to master from water stones to leather. In fact, it is a good thing I shared my thoughts on this forum because Vossiewulf helped me a lot to understand what is a good knife and what is a good blade made of. This week, to put the cherry on the sundae, I received a very beautiful gift; 1 knife from North Bay forge, and another one made by the master himself. There are a lot of interesting features like aniline dye to enhance the color of wood, the finish is CA glue. Who could have thing to this? surely not me. the choice of steel for the blade and to top  all this the knife is balance.

 

First try in another subject with an action camera; a small camera, go pro style. I had 3 small webcam but I realized that they worked only with Windows 7. This kind of camera is mainly use for video, but it can take photos also. It is about 1,5 by 2,5inches. The fun thing is that it will be easy to insert it in the entrails of the model ship, also we can see what is the camera is seeing through the phone.

 

What will be the next step? Every time I take a photo inside the model ship, it is difficult to level the camera, so the next thing I will try will be a 3 axis gimbal stabilizer. This little gadget can automatically align the camera in the 3 axis.

 

[SJSoane]

Gaetan,

 

Beautiful knives! Let us know how they work!

Your photos look like they are taken inside a real ship. Beautiful construction.

What camera lens are you using to keep such great depth of field?

 

Mark

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Hi Mark.

 

Both knives are made of different kind of steel, the left one from North Bay Forge is made of steel tool W1 and the one to the right with the handle made by vossiewulf is made from  steel hardened to Rc 62 and this steel is  cryogenically treated and the address is:

 

http://www.hocktools.com/products/knives.html

 

The knife from Hocktools has a better steel than the other and it will hold his edge longer.

 

Both knives are grinded the same way in a V shape which is the most effective shape, to cut just like a razor. The down side of this V shape is fragility. The ultimate knife, to my understanding would be made of Lee Valley steel  PM-V11 with a V shape sharpened with water stone and finish with a leather belt.

 

The last serie of photos are taken by a YI 4K action camera and the fix lens has a very good depth of field, and another reason why the depth of field  is depth is simply because it is 8 feet deep. There is also the model YI 4K+ which in addition in video mode 60 fps instead of 30.

 

Another interesting fact from the shape of the handles, there is a recess  to  support  the index or the thumb, very effective.

[vossiewulf]

Glad to see they're working out for you Gaetan  I hope you use them for many, many hours of fun modeling and the creation of beautiful ships.

[captain_hook]

Wow. That size of the model is really big. It is more like a 1-room-apartment, so you can bring a table and two chairs and have a cup of tea inside the ship.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Captain_Hook,

 

Sorry, I do not have chairs but  I have tables

[DocBlake]

Very impressive!  Beautiful.

[BANYAN]

As with everything you do Gaetan, you strive for the highest standard you can achieve; your dedication certainly shows in the quality of your models (and photography) - impressive.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Thank you,

 

Pat,

 

Model Ship Building is multi disciplinary; and photography should be part of it. Unfortunately, this is not a very popular subject in this forum!

 

About photography, 1 question is often asked; what makes better photography? Smartphone or camera? Smartphone can give very nice photo.

Here is the simplest way to understand the answer: If I take the same photo with both and print with the same level of detail. Smartphone will get an 8 by 12 inches photo and the camera will give a poster.

[mtaylor]

I think it's because most use a smartphone or (as in my case) I have a camera that I've had for years and am too cheap to upgrade.  I note that many more people are now hanging backdrops behind their models and are using what appears to be better lighting so maybe your posts are rubbing off.    

 

 

[cog]

I think I'm just fortunate: The "camera" on my phone crashed irrepairable. So I just upgraded my DSLR. 

 

P.s. Phones aren't smart. At present a phone is just a microcomputer with voip, and some other hardware like a built in camera (webcam like)