74-gun ship by Gaetan Bordeleau - 1:24

[dvm27]

You must be very organized to keep all the individual futtocks together with their neighbors. There must be over a thousand pieces. What if that box fell over...

[BANYAN]

I have workshop envy; any cures?

 

That is a very organised way of working Gaetan; you obviously have a very well thought through process of construction.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[vossiewulf]

What is that table Gaetan? Almost looks like a chiropractor table or something, designed to raise and lower. I guess that would be extremely useful when building as big as you do. 

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Thank you very much Pat, effectively, some process are very long to elaborate. I will explain an example in answering vossiewulf question.

 

The first model  at 1/24 was made on a low table which was even lowered later. The main disadvantage of a table is a fixed height. I wanted to find a better solution. Next step was a beauty chair with an oil cylinder. That was an improvement with a limited height adjustment but the  horizontal stability was not great. Legs were added to help. But still I was not satisfied. There had to be a better way.

 

Jewelers work on height adjustable table. This photo allowed me to enter in a new world to help to work ‘’in the better position’’. Working on the model at the wrong height is much more tired. I had to find a better height adjustable table.  I thought to a electric dentist chair. If  the back is expanded horizontally,  you have a good base to install a table. There are 2 adjustments on the table height and angle 0 to 45 degrees. On internet, in Quebec we have Kijiji who sell all kinds of used things. There I found a used dentist chair for about $500.  I am very satisfy with this new table. The only modification I did I changed the color blue to white, I prefer the look.

 

Then this chair brought me to the next step by making me to understand that working at the good height makes a lot of difference and it is a lot easier to work and you can work  for a longer period of time. When I began the first model at 1/24, I did a small table to be use a work bench charged with tools. It became very heavy so  tools were separated from the table. All the small tools for model ship modeling were regrouped in a same place, a chest with lower drawers to lose as less space as possible.

 

Then, only one thing was missing, a height adjustable workbench. I found a mechanism on Internet for an height adjustable table it can lift 300 pounds, around 150 kilos. I made a top for it.  All these big tools often needs to be moved at the good place to work. If I have to go 100 times to the sanding belt, I do not want to have to walk 10 feet every time, I want to have the tool close to me. The easy way to do it is to install wheels and then you can work more efficiently.

 

Our friend Mike, found at IKEA, a very affordable height adjustable tables : 2 or 3 positions, adjustable with a  hand crank or electric. Knowing what I know today, this is not the last tool I would buy, it would be the first one.

[druxey]

Very well thought out and described, Gaetan! Thank you for sharing your modus operandi. I found that an adjustable height table was invaluable, especially when rigging.

[Maury S]

Gaetan,

So you went to your dentist and instead of asking for an old scraper or pick, you asked for a chair?  Wow.   "If you don't ask, you don't get."

Maury

[Jeronimo]

Hello Gaetan.

Top!!!

Karl

[aviaamator]

Gaetan! Looking at Your workshop, I'm happy! That's something I should strive for! Bit of a pity the TV...

[vossiewulf]

21 hours ago, Gaetan Bordeleau said:

Thank you very much Pat, effectively, some process are very long to elaborate. I will explain an example in answering vossiewulf question.

 

Thanks for the explanation Gaetan, reason I asked is as mentioned it seemed really obviously useful once I thought about it. I like especially how you managed to keep pretty large pieces of equipment mobile without losing much stability, it looks like you only had to raise the base less than 10cm, like 6 or 7? In your copious free time if you put together plans you could probably sell a few here and to the guys who do big (1:4, 1:3) aircraft.

[herask]

on the picture with the tilted table there's a huuuge plan on the wall. is that going to be the size of the beast?! you could put a kid in there!! already drooling here... the last picture, that's an older project or did you put all those pieces together already?

 

Denis

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Druxey, you are right  about rigging. In fact, the higher we have to work on an object the more useful come this table.

 

Maurys, the chair came from the dentist  but he did not gave the chair.  

 

Aviaamotor, you mist 1, there are 2. By adding angle to the support bench, we can keep the object very close to the ground.

 

Denis, the size  will be 8 feet long, exactly as in the last picture, which is also a 74 at 1/24. Even an adult could be put inside the model.

 

 

 

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

 

Roughly,  62 frames are made of 1000 parts, each part has 4 sides to sand.

The setup is as follow : inside curve, ends, outside curves.

Then the tracing paper is remove with a scraper. A faster method is to pass the parts in the sanding drum, This machine is quite precise, much more than a planer because the adjustment can be made in 0,001 inch increment.

 

Frames part are divided in 3 groups : left, center and right components.

Left and right are put aside to keep the center parts which are going to be use to prepare the keel.

 

 

 

 

 

[BANYAN]

Thanks for showing your process and build sequence for the frames Gaetan.  It is very informative and shows how important it is to have a well thought through process in the mass production of frames.  It seems you have found efficiencies in this process rather than manufacturing one frame at a time.

 

cheers

 

Pat

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Hi Pat, 

 

often when a large number of items  are required,  if by example 10  item requires 5 operations 

you can proceed 2 ways:

you make 1 item at the time with the 5 different operations  

you make 1 operation 10 times

 

in both situation, you will do 50 operations

Ii this  case, because more than 1 type of sander is needed (oscillating and belt sander)

time is saved in concentrating operations on 1 machine instead of changing constantly of machine

 

1 part of the efficiency comes from saving of walking steps from 1 machine to the other

also concentrating on 1 operation at the time, it is easier to succeed and master 1 operation at the time instead of constantly  changing

better results can be achieved in trying to master 1 operation at the time rather than to trying to master all the operations at the same time

[vossiewulf]

Gaetan, one thing that always seems to happen to me in situations where I'm manufacturing a series of parts, and this was particularly true back in my custom furniture making days, was that just about the time I was becoming really efficient at a macro-process like you're describing above (X number of operations on Y pieces), I'd be done. The last five pieces would always be noticeably better and more quickly done than the first five, and had I another X pieces to do they'd get done way faster than that first batch.

 

But I'd be done, and it was always a bit frustrating because now I knew how to do that particular thing really well, but I'd never need to do it again exactly like that.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

COMPONENTS OF A FULLY OPERATIONAL ROPE MACHINE WHICH CONTROLS EVERY ASPECT

 

I have seen many versions of rope machine on this forum. There are many ways to fabricate a machine but I think that there are some basics principles which need to be respected to obtain a rope with all the necessary qualities like tension, number of turns, stiffness of the rope. To turn a rope is just a matter to have some components and understand  why they are used. 1 of the most common missing item is the swivel bearing. It controls the number of turns entering in the fabrication of the rope, it regularizes the number of turns entering by eliminating the surplus of turns by a balancing action.

 

3 photos: swivel bearing, explanation of the parts of the machine, extract from .xls file to predict rope diameter.

[Mike Y]

On 06/03/2017 at 2:11 PM, Gaetan Bordeleau said:

Our friend Mike, found at IKEA, a very affordable height adjustable tables : 2 or 3 positions, adjustable with a  hand crank or electric. Knowing what I know today, this is not the last tool I would buy, it would be the first one.

 

Yes, the IKEA table BEKANT is great, I still love it as on the first day I bought it  Note that IKEA sells the electrical frame separately as well, so you can put any solid tabletop on it, and not being limited to the default office-style top.

 

Just a few corrections:

1) The one with cranking mechanism have a much cheaper frame and wobbles too much for our purposes, I think. Could be good enough for drawings or tools, or if you do not mind the wobble. The electrical (bekant) is very stable and the wobble is close to non-existing, so it can be used as a main workbench.

2) The electrical one (BEKANT) has a continuous adjustment, not just 2 or 3 positions. There are two buttons - up and down - that allow to adjust it to any position between min and max. Just hold the button, table moves, release it when you are in the desired position. It is roughly 5-7sec from the lowest to the highest position.

[Mike Y]

Now there are two fresh logs of 74! Quite a thing to follow!

 

Thanks for sharing the details, experience and methods.

Your build logs are very educating, I learned a lot from them. Planning to learn even more from this one!

 

Also, considering the size of your models, I am really curious how they look in the interior. They are as big as a table, how do you manage to find a place for the display?

[kees de mol]

Very impressive

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Mike , here how it looks behind the movie screen.

[Mike Y]

Looks very cozy! It looks so much better without a glass... How do you deal with the dust?

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Mike, you are right about the glass, this one is an ordinary glass and can act  sometimes like a mirror and this we do not want.

Anti reflection glass would be much better.

 

There are 2 levels of protections; the first one, more visual than protecting from the dust, a movie screen and the second one a light fabric. For this case a glass would be expensive and mostly too heavy to manipulate.

[rwiederrich]

Impressive......to say the least.

 

Rob

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

dry assembly of the keel, long process of adjust and check

last picture beginning of assembly

[druxey]

The latest photos show what a mega-model this will be!

[albert]

Very big model and fantastic work.

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

For about the tenth time since I built the table top I redone it, most of the time for different try  for the color. Last week, I cut  about 6 inches in the depth and today I straitghtened the top because there was some curves in it. I used a long ruler, a  plane, a scraper, a sanding belt, an orbital sander. The result is good but up to today I was stuck with the idea that only a large belt sanding panel machine could do the job. Some time it is strange how we can limit ourself.

[md1400cs]

Gaetan,

 

This certainly an amazing project. Thinking just about the same for your working corporate office headquarters ha ha 

Brilliant work indeed,

 

Cheers,

[druxey]

Interesting set-up, there Gaetan. Would you have better depth control with two wedges of wood, one either side of the bit?

[Gaetan Bordeleau]

Traveling on a straight surface yes, traveling on a curve, it is harder to be guided by both sides especially if the radius is changing but for a constant radius it could be a good thing.