USS Constitution by JSGerson - Model Shipways Kit No. MS2040

[JSGerson]

A few more images I forgot to post

[JSGerson]

Rudder Post Ports

For the time being, I’ve finished with the bow excluding the bowsprit and rigging. It’s time to work once again on the stern. First up, the two ports on either side of the top of the rudder post. The practicum calls them “chase ports” but chase ports are gun ports facing forward at the bow or aft at the stern. These are not gun ports on the USS Constitution. When the port is opened, you can see there is a round cross-section tunnel leading up to the tiller room area in the berth deck above. There is no room for a gun or even a man standing. Surprisingly, I could not identify where the tunnel opened in the tiller room.

[JSGerson]

I don’t know what the purpose of these ports is. I can only speculate that maybe they are used for the maintenance of the rudder assembly or even repair of the rudder at sea. Possibly, ropes could be lowered down to facilitate an ad hoc rigging of the rudder due to battle damage. Or it could be simply a way of venting air in the tiller room. If anyone knows what these ports are called or what their purpose is, please let me know.

 

The kit plans for the port doors show they are to be fabricated and installed in the closed position on the model. The practicum goes one step further and just etches the port door seams into the hull with an X-acto knife. No fabrication at all except for the round porthole because as the practicum states: “These ports are barely visible close up so no need to go overboard with them.” Well, as most of you readers know by now, I like detail. So, not only will I fabricate them, but I will also attempt to install them in the open position. I just can’t help myself.

 

My port doors were constructed like a sandwich. The outer layer was 1/32” boxwood to be painted black on the outside face, The middle layer is a piece of mica to be the porthole glass, and 1/16” basswood for the inside layer with its face to be painted white.

[JSGerson]

The port openings were marked on the transom and chiseled out using fine chisels and a Dremel rotary tool to a depth approximately equal to the port door thickness. Next, a hole was drilled vertically towards the tiller room area. The round opening size was determined by my calibrated eyeballs. The openings were painted white.

[JSGerson]

The kit provided photoetched hinges which were not suitable for my purposes:

·         The hinges on the actual ship extend the whole vertical length of the port door and over to the transom below the port opening. The kit’s photo-etched hinges are the same hinges to be used on the gun ports. Those are half of the hinge. The other half would be fastened to the inside the gun port opening.

·         I needed physical support for the doors. Because there is so little glueable surface area on the hinges, actual nails were required to secure the hinges to port doors and transom face.

 

With a pair of small scissors, four 1/16 strips of 0.005” brass plate were cut to size; the vertical length of the door plus the extension to attach to the transom. Two pieces per door were required.

 

Four holes were drilled into the hinges with a #69 bit to accept the small brass nails for each hinge. Two nails to go into the door and two nails to go into the transom. The brass nails for the port door had to be cut in half because their length was longer than the thickness of the doors. Getting the brass nails through the hinge and into the meat of the door was a little tricky.

1.      Locate the position of the first nail and mark it with a pin indentation.

2.      Drill the hole using the pin indentation to start the drill, to a sufficient depth to accept the nail.

3.      CA glue the half nail in the first hole on the hinge.

4.      Place the hinge with the half nail into the drilled hole in the door. This positions the second hole.

5.      Drill the second hole in the port door through the hole in the hinge.

6.      Insert the second half nail into the second hole.

7.      CA glue the nails and hinges

8.      Repeat for the remaining hinges

 

Once all the brass nails were inserted into the port door, the hinges were painted black as well as any required painting re-touches. You may have noticed that the nail heads appear to out of scale with the hinges. This couldn’t be helped as I had no other smaller brass nails. No mater though, they won’t be seen in the final assembly.

[JSGerson]

The last step was to add eyebolts on the inside face of the doors for the pull cord that opens and closes the door. Plain sewing thread was used. One end tied to the eyebolt and the other loose. Once the thread was stiffed with CA glue, the loose end was inserted into the round tunnel after the port doors were nailed to the transom. The stiffened thread looks taught, and no one can see it’s not secured to the inside the hull. The doors were positioned by bending the hinges, so they hung perfectly vertical.

[JSGerson]

WTF

I had expected that my next post would be the fabrication and installation of the rudder hinges. Since my last post, I have fabricated the gudgeons and was about to install them onto the hull. To do that, I was going to use the rudder I finished last August, to mark the positions of the hinge and gudgeons on the hull so they would align with the rudder pintles. There was only one teeny, weeny, little problem. My rudder has vanished! It wasn’t in the box I thought I put it in. I’m pretty good at finding tiny bits of stuff I drop on the rug in my work area. I swear that rug eats anything, and things don’t bounce on it in a logical manner. Yet, I manage to find what I’m looking for (most of the time) given enough motivation. This is a painted and copper plated object about 5” x 1” x 3/16” and I can’t find it after two days of searching!

 

There is no one else in my house as I am a lifelong bachelor except for my 14-year-old cat who grazes on her food throughout the day when she is not sleeping or asking for affection. She has never ever touched any of my model stuff in her life, but even so, I did check under the furniture in the whole room just in case. Nothing. It appears it has vanished to the realm of missing socks or some such place.

 

I do know of one method of finding it, and I’m afraid I am going to use it. All I must do is fabricate a new one. Once I’ve done that, the original one will miraculously reappear. So, today I reluctantly ordered a replacement part from Model Expo. In the meantime, to keep working on the model, I plan to work on the sea steps. I will post my progress with that then post what I have already done on the rudder hinges to keep the processes coherent for the readers. We’ll see what happens.

[histprof1066]

So sorry to hear about losing the rudder. When my model arrived, I mis counted the anchors, they sent me two instead of four... I didn't find the error until this past October, thankfully they sent me another free of charge. Some of these companies really do a good job about taking care of their builders. I hope this is the case for you. 

[JSGerson]

I have high praise for Model Expo as well. It costs them money to replace parts and they don't charge for shipping which is amazing.

[gak1965]

+1. They have sent me replacement parts (brass strip in my case). I told them that the error might well have been on my part, but they sent it with no shipping charges. I mean I probably make up for it in costs for extra thread and jackstay eyebolts, but still, it's confidence inspiring that they stand behind their product enough to sink the non-zero cost (Connie is $535 as of today) of one of their kits.

 

George K

[JSGerson]

Sea Steps

The kit plans indicate there are eleven sea steps on each side of the hull, climbing from the water line up to the spar deck. Each step is comprised of an upside down, three-piece, four-sided pyramid. Three sides step outwards by 1/64” per tier on the edges while the fourth side is flush with and is attached to the hull. Surprisingly, there very few images of the sea steps with detail. This one will have to do.

[JSGerson]

The practicum uses styrene as the material of choice. I chose to use wood instead of plastic. I used boxwood because it doesn’t splinter apart when cut to short narrow pieces and it can hold an edge. I used my Byrnes saw to cut a 3/8” wide strip, 1/64” thick from some stock material. Then I cut the strip into 5/64”, 4/64”, and 3/64” length strips. These strips were then cut again to 21/64”, 19/64”, and 17/64” length pieces respectively using my micro miter and razor saw.

[JSGerson]

Using a 1” right angle block, the pieces were glued into a pyramid stack. I used very tiny drops of white glue which allowed me to position and adjust the pieces into position before the glue set. I would have made a mess with CA glue. The steps were then painted white with a couple thin coats so I wouldn’t lose the pyramid details in the steps. Everything was painted except for the side that was going to be glued to the hull.

[JSGerson]

Comparing the US Navy plan No. 24999001 vs the kit’s, I noticed that the steps on the kit’s plan drop vertically straight down while the US Navy plan, six steps skew diagonally forward a maximum of 6.5” or 5/64” scale. The reason for the skew is there is a scupper cover the steps are avoiding. As it turned out, I did have the scupper located where it should be but did not have to make any adjustment that the eye could perceive.

[JSGerson]

To make matters more confusing, although both the Kit’s plan and the US Navy show eleven steps, the US Navy plan shows seven of the steps are below the gun port while the kit shows only six. To clear this up I checked my photos, only to find the actual ship only has ten steps total. It did show, however, that there are only six steps below the gun port. I think the eleventh step was removed at the very top to allow for the visitor gangway to be installed.

 

The step locations were marked by a piece of tape positioned on the hull which aligned the steps horizontally. A spacer block was used to ensure vertical spacing was consistent.

 

BTW, it’s been a week and I’m still waiting for the replacement rudder.

[histprof1066]

Looks good! I didn’t even realize that there was a plan showing this detail! 😯 My kit doesn’t have the steps in as much detail as yours, but I’m glad I’m looking at mine that I placed mine where I did. 
 

I am sure that I could find plans like the one  in your above post, but I think I would be spending all of my time looking at the plans and scheming than building lol. 

[JSGerson]

Histprof1066 - I wouldn't expect your model at 1:100 scale would have the level of detail as a kit like mine at 1:76.8. Each step were comprised of three separate pieces 1/64" thick. That was tough enough at the larger scale. I don't think you or I could have handled anything smaller with that detail.  My fingers would have been too fat for the task.

 

As for the plans I use through out my build, I started collecting the them from the US Navy and the Constitution Museum years before I even started woulding on the kit. I have them all identified and cataloged in a spreadsheet. I just do a word search and if I have a plan, I can find it almost immediately. I also sorted into folders, my 2,500 odd images of the actual ship I collected off the internet and fellow Constitution builders. These range from an overhead aerial view down to tight shots of individual items from multiple angles.  I also have a section photos based on the early history of the ship.  I found that if I Googled one thing, there was a good chance I would find something totally unrelated to my search, but worthy of being downloaded into my collection. If I had tried to find that image directly, more often than not, it would not appear as part of the search results.

 

That's what I enjoy about this build, the wealth of information that is available and accessible. 

 

Jon

[JSGerson]

Well, Model Expo came through sending me, at no cost. Kudos for their excellent customer service. The laser cut sheet that had the raw rudder. Just like before, the raw stock part was shaped, coated four times with Wipe-on Poly, copper plated, and painted. Now I’m ready to get back to the hinges. However, as of this writing, I still have not found the original rudder.

[DELTA RAT CALIFORNIA]

Just received my kit USS Constitution MS 2040 from model Shipways , looking forward to your build, 

[JSGerson]

Welcome on deck! Y'er in for a bumpy ride! 😁 I look forward to your build log. I've been working on mine since 2017 and still have not finished the hull. All I have left on the hull is finish stern and the hull side of the gun ports and I can resume work on the gun deck interior.

 

Jon

[helmarsowick]

Jon,

Thanks for the welcome note. I've been following your build for while. Excellent work. I plan to follow you as a primary source during my build. I haven't physically started the build yet as I'm finishing Bluenose currently. I'm doing rigging now. If I don't finish this first I'm afraid I'll never get back to it once I start Constitution. Over the last six months I've spent about half my time doing research. The bow and stern gave me pause but now feel they're doable. I visited the ship in Boston in February and plan to go again.

I'm still studying but plan to start in a couple months.

I had allotted about three years for the build but it seems it will be longer. I look forward to corresponding with you throughout our builds.

 

Helmar

[JSGerson]

As part of your research, here is what I did and strongly suggest you do as well:

• Download all of the US Navy Plans from the USS Constitution Museum website as a supplement to the kit plans. They have been invaluable in my build.
• Download as many pertinent photos of the actual ship from the web as you can. Anything that shows details of the stuff you are going to model. I personally have and cataloged about 3,700 images. If you can't find something, just ask, there is a good chance I may have it. (if you have any interesting ship photos that you would like to share, I'd be willing to accept them).
• Study other build logs of the USS Constitution to see how they handled the variety of tasks/problems they encountered during their build. I've actually copied those logs and so I can access them offline. Sometimes stuff just disappears from the web. You can learn an awful lot of useful stuff from other people successes and mistakes.
• Get access to reference material about the USS Constitution, building techniques (model and actual), etc.
• Visit the actual ship which you've already done and likely will do again.

I grew up in the Boston area and visited the ship about 4 or 5 times over the years, so I have a personal affection with the ship. My last visit was just before her last restoration in November 2014. I'll give you my 2 cents worth of wisdom (such as it is), just ask. Good luck on your build.

 

Jon

[JSGerson]

Rudder Hinges

For a simple mechanism, the hinges will require a high degree of precision to allow the rudder to pivot effortlessly. All the hinge parts must line up precisely or the rudder will bind. Also, the rudder must be able to move vertically to provide sufficient clearance space for the pintles to move into position to drop down into the gudgeons.

[JSGerson]

I had to do some thinking about how to fabricate the rudder hinges. Robert Hunt’s practicum opted to make a non-functioning rudder using styrene as the build material of choice. Looking at Ken Forman’s (xKen) build log (my go to alternative guidance), he created functioning rudder using brass which I liked. Both builders painted their hinges black. Others who used brass, sometimes left their hinges as bare shiny metal. However, looking at the pictures of the actual rudder, I noticed the color of the hinges matched the background colors of the green patina of the copper plate, the red waterline, and black painted hull. Does that mean the green hinges are made of copper? More than likely they were made of iron but were colored by the bleeding patina of the copper plates. For my model to have the same color of the copper plates as it ages, my hinges were made from 0.016” copper sheet. Remember, it’s a model, not a miniature replica.

[JSGerson]

I used my Byrne’s saw with a fine-tooth blade to slice the 1/32” strips of copper from the sheet without any problem. The strips were cut to length. Some builders attempted to simulate the hinge fastening bolts, but I decided, as much as I wanted to, to forego the attempt as the final product would most likely be out of scale or be too small to matter at 1/76.8 scale and not worth the effort, less than 1/128” in diameter or about 1/3 the width on the hinge.

[JSGerson]

The hull side hinges consisted of two parts, the strap structural element that attached to the hull and the gudgeon. The trick was to form the five gudgeons in perfect alignment so the rudder would be able to pivot smoothly. This was something that Ken Forman made note of. I modified his method so I could not only maintain alignment but made the silver soldering easy.

 

First, I formed the hinges by wrapping the copper strips over a 3/8” thick piece of stock basswood. Then I drilled a 1/32” hole into a piece of wood so a length of 0.032” stiff music wire could be inserted. A length of 1/16” brass tube was slipped over the music wire. The five hinge straps were draped over the same piece of wood that was used to form them and clamped on either side. The block of wood holding the music wire with the brass tube was then held in place over the hinges with a rubber band. When silver soldering paste was dabbed onto each hinge and the brass tube positioned onto the hinges, everything was in place. With a couple of passes with a small torch, the tube was soldered to all five hinges assuring the gudgeons would be perfectly aligned.

[JSGerson]

Using fine toothed hand saw, the hinges were cut apart. I thought about using my Dremel with a rotary saw or cutting disc, but I realized I couldn’t hold my hand steady enough for a clean cut. A few finishing touches with a file to clean off and smooth the edges, and the hull side hinges and gudgeons were formed.

[JSGerson]

The pintles were fabricated initially as a gudgeon with one extra step. After fabricating the preliminary gudgeons were formed, a length of 1/32” brass rod was sliced into five 1/8” pieces using the razor saw for clean cuts. These 1/8” pieces were inserted into the gudgeons converting them into pintles and fastened with CA glue to complete the process. CA glue was used because it set quickly, was strong, neat, and needed no additional cleanup.

[JSGerson]

Next, the pintle hinges were positioned and CA glued to the rudder while ensuring there was enough space for the gudgeons to slide under the pintles. The picture below is of the pintles dry fit up.

[JSGerson]

Rudder Iron (Chain Iron)

I decided that before I install the rudder to the yet to be installed hull gudgeon hinges, I better fabricate and install the rudder iron to the rudder while it’s still off the model. On the MS plans it looks similar to a simple tuning fork with a couple rings at the aft end. Looking at photographs, it’s a bit more complicated…of course. The kit does not provide any hardware for this item so it’s a scratch build. Once more the practicum shows how to fabricate it with styrene, while other builders tried other various methods using brass strips and tubes.