Brig Niagara by ronkamin - Model Shipways - 1/64

[mikiek]

3 hours ago, ronkamin said:

In the past when I painted over raw wood the job looked rough. I spoke to a couple of wood workers and they said never paint over raw wood, either use a sanding sealer or a primer. They said Acrylic paint raises the grain of the wood. I though I would give the sealer a shot and see how it turns out.

They probably know better than I. I've always had the notion that you seal for staining and prime for painting.

[ronkamin]

That was opinion for many years. I figured I would give it a try and see how it works out. I am always willing to try out new ideas.

[ronkamin]

I finished planking in the transom and the ceiling on the inner transom. I believe it turned out well.

I planned on painting the bulwarks by hand, no masking, but quickly realized my hands are not as steady as they used to be. So I painted the main area yellow and the masked off and painted the gun ports and the sweep ports.

 

I burnished the masking tape and put a coat of clear coat prior to painting, but still had some minor bleed under the tape when I painted the hull plank under the gun ports. It’s minor enough to be able to do a touch up.

 

I believe it came out pretty good.

 

 

Now on to installing the ceilings.

 

 

 

[mikiek]

A good start Ron.  I like the yellow.  Don't get too wrapped up with the perfect paint job right now. I promise you, you will most likely have to go thru the whole exercise again later - at least once more. Your hull will get scratched and dinged during the rest of your build.

 

Be careful on your "touchups". It's easy to get into a vicious cycle. Touch up the yellow to cover the black. Dang, got some yellow on the black. Touch up the black to cover the yellow. Dang, got some black on the yellow.................

 

I had 3 thoughts on the bleeding. When you apply the clear, slather over the wood and the tape. Brush strokes work up to and over the tape. Literally try to force it up under the tape. Better the clear than your color. Then when you paint the brush strokes should start at the tape edge and flow away from the tape. Secondly, you might try a roll of Tamiya tape. A lot of modelers  (including me) use it. It comes in several widths, if you're getting a trial roll go for the narrowest. I think it's about 1/8". Lastly, when you brush the clear up under the tape it will take a LOT longer for it to dry so have patience and give it the time it needs.

 

When you burnished, what did you use?

 

Nice to see some color on her, isn't it?

[6ohiocav]

Ron,

 

Your build looks great. Your gun ports and sweeps are very neat and tight. the paint looks good as well. This is a great ship to build. Good luck going forward.

 

 

[ronkamin]

Mike,

 

Thanks for the tip on the Tamiya tape. I have been using blue painters tape (Blue Hawk) and been brushing the clear coat parallel to the tape, overlapping the tape by 1/4" and letting it dry overnight before I put on the  finish coat. I'll give it a try putting it on perpendicular to the tape.

 

As for burnishing the tape I use a stylus, these were used on older touch screen computers, I have a few left over from my working days. The tips are about 1/8" diameter and made from plastic. I just run it on the edge of the tape to made sure it is sealed tight.

[mikiek]

Stylus, or would it be stylii  in your photo?  Good idea.

[ronkamin]

Yeah the photo would be stylii

[ronkamin]

Finished putting in the ceilings. It took a little longer than expected, but am happy with the results. Sanded smooth and put on a sealer, and am ready to start painting.

 

Put on two coats of the dark green and am ready to mask so that I can put on the red around the gun and sweep ports. I am going to follow mikiek’s suggestion and bought some Tamiya masking tape, and see how that works out.

[mikiek]

Ron - the second part of that Tamiya recommendation is after the tape is applied and burnished, paint some clear paint over the edge of the tape. Let it work into any slight openings between tape & wood. You're trying to fill minor gaps with the clear rather than having your red work its way in. THIS IS CRITICAL!

 

Isn't it funny how a build takes life when some color is added?

 

What are you going to do with the stringer on top of the bulwark?

[ronkamin]

I agree, I plan on burnishing with my stylus and then coat with a clearcoat prior to putting on the color coat. I am using a water based varnish as the clearcoat.

As for the stringers on the bulwarks, I was going try painting them first then installing them. In this way hopefully I can eliminate another masking step.

 

I am running a little behind, I took my workshop down over the weekend to install a new floor. Hopefully will have that complete today. i am wanting to get back to working on the Niagara.

[6ohiocav]

Ron,

 

The paint job looks great! I agree with Mike, paint makes all the difference, and of course, a bad one ruins the best craftsmanship. Yours is spot on.

[mikiek]

Hey Ron - I was asking about the stringer because something looks off in the pix. It could be the angle, but it looks like you could use another strake in front of the stringer - on top of the strakes already there. The stringer looks like it is recessed behind the face of the planking. Does it need to be covered? Maybe you're on your way to doing that and I'm not following your plan?

 

I see you're about to get to a spot where I got suckered in. I wanted that hand rail on top of the bulwark, and I wanted it NOW. Resist the urge if you can. That poor thing will get the dookie beat out of it with all the work you're going to be doing. That's not an easy piece to replace.  With all that said, DO cut out the rail pieces and lay them on top of the bulwark. They will give you a good indication of how your bulwark construction went. If there are any corrections needed, you can get to them now while you have good access.

[ronkamin]

Mike

I did not install the stringers yet, I believe what you see is a strip I installed above the gun ports. The plans showed the planks went up to just below the top of the bulwarks, the stringers installed on top so that they would be flush with the top of the bulwarks. If I did this the gun ports would end up to small. Something did not add up on the drawings. I decided to add strip to the top of the bulwarks and plank up to the top  I will be installing the stringers against this strip. Once the stringers are installed they should be proud of the planking. What you see is the strip I added to the top of the bulwarks. I hope this makes sense.

 

 

Thanks for the tip on the hand rail. I will check the fit before I go any further. I will also force myself to not install it yet. When I built the Pride of Baltimore I installed the gun carriages early and this caused all sorts of problems. I had to remove them and reinstall them later in the build.

[mikiek]

It makes perfect sense. You're right on track. I figured it might have been me that wasn't getting it. Nice drawing too.

[ronkamin]

My daughter and granddaughter visited for Easter so it put a hold on my work for a few days. Well I finally finished painting the ceilings, took a while masking of the gun and sweep ports. Pretty happy with the way it turned out.

 

 

 

When that was complete I prepainted the stringers and installed them. Before I start planking the hull I decided to install backers for the deck boards. In my last build I did not do this and found that I did not have a glueing surface near the bow. I figured it would be easy to do now with everything exposed.

 

 

Well onto the counter planking.

[mikiek]

Nice work Ron. Usually pictures will bring out every little error in the paint job. Yours came out pretty good.

Edited April 9, 2018 by mikiek

[6ohiocav]

Looks great Ron.

[ronkamin]

Counter planking has been completed and the fashion piece has been installed. I deviated from the plans slightly for the fashion pieces. Painted the counter and transom. Here is where I could appreciate some comments. The transom and counter are painted a flat black and it looks pretty dull. I have been considering overpainting the area with a satin varnish over coat. Actually I have considered also coating the bulwarks, inner and outer.

 

I have looked at some pictures of the ship in Erie Pa. and the ship looks like the paint is a satin or semi-gloss. Comments please.

 

 

I completed the fairing of the hull and began planking.

Here is a better shot of how I modified the fashion piece.

Ron

 

 

[6ohiocav]

Ron,

Looking good.  I opted for flat black - no finish. I have stayed away from any over finishes. All of the natural wood was tung oiled. Dull finishes have been my friend. Just my personal taste though.

[mikiek]

The accepted belief is shiny models look strange. Maybe on the real thing but at our scale it's overpowering. I think  your black is fine. I mixed a custom black that is even flatter and more non-reflective then yours. I've found that sometimes you need a few coats even though it doesn't look like it. Paint is paint and all paint jobs look better after the 2nd or 3rd coat, black included.

 

Whether you do that now or wait until later is debatable. I guarantee you will ding the hull more than once, requiring one last paint job when everything else is finished.

[ronkamin]

I decided I will stay with the flat finish on the complete ship as suggested by Mikiek.

Planking is moving along slowly. It seems to take a long time to get some of the compound bends. I have been using a hot water bath, then when the wood is pliable enough I form it on the ship and wait for the wood to dry. Slow process. I have tried in the past to wrap the wood in a damp cloth and microwave it, did not work well for me. It seemed the wood never really got pliable, thus many a cracked planks.

 

In my off time I started the deck planking. I am trying to build it off ship then mount the whole assembly as one piece. Once I get the it all assembled I will detail it with a three board pattern.

 

 

[mikiek]

Ron - you could always use a hair dryer after you placed the wet wood. Not to shape or bend, just to hurry up the drying.

 

I did the deck like you. For the first build it was a good step. You will need to consider the underside of your decking. Anything that protrudes under the deck you will have to notch out in your frame's top edge. I'm not describing it well, but take a look in my log where I had to prep the frames to receive the deck structure. I just got after it with a Dremmel, but it was ugly when I finished. Maybe your deck surface will be different. You might show us a pic of the deck underside.

 

Also keep in mind not all ship designs allow you to drop in a completed deck. Niagara gets wider as you go from keel  to hand rails. A lot of bigger ships are widest at the 2nd or 3rd deck and begin to get narrower on the main deck. The bizarre term for this is tumblehome.

 

I don't mean to worry you. It's a perfectly good, perfectly valid way to do a deck. There are just a few different considerations you should be aware of.

 

Planking is coming along just fine.

[Jim Rogers]

Ron your planking looks great.

[ronkamin]

Mike

 

I will need to talk to the Admiral and see if she will let me borrow her hair dryer. Need to do some negotiating  Great idea, never thought of it.

 

Regarding the deck, my plan was building the deck minus the furniture, just marking the layout. I will then install the furniture once the deck is mounted. I tested installing the deck, and it goes in fairly easily.

 

My concern with installing the furniture before installation, is the furniture would be installed on a flat surface, when installing the deck, it should have a slight crown. Not sure how well this would work out?

 

Ron

[mikiek]

Ron - what did you glue the deck planks to? I made a frame but some use an entire sheet of wood. You have to glue it on top of something. Whatever that something is will elevate the planks slightly higher that if you glued them straight to the frames inside the hull. You will need to compensate for the elevation or eliminate it. Otherwise the deck planks will be almost level with the waterway and you don't want that.

 

Pardon me for posting pix in your thread but they are worth the 1000 words right now.

 

Here's the frame with a few planks glued. I think I used 1/16x1/16 sticks for the frame so in my case the planks are elevated 1/16" higher than they should be.

 

BTW - regarding furniture I framed out places where they would go.

 

When the deck is complete you've got planks glued to frame (the deck frame) and all that drops in on top of the hull frame. Therein lies the problem. The deck planks will be sitting 1/16" higher than designed.

 

So in my case I Dremmeled out grooves in the top of the hull frames deep enough so the deck frames did not rest on the hull frames. The actual deck planks did. Man there's just not a good way to explain that.

 

Thought this was all I would need at first.

But there ended up being a lot more.

There were gouges all over those frame pieces. You would have the same problem if you used a sheet of wood instead of a frame but I'm not sure how you would compensate for that.

 

Once again, I am not slamming your decking method. In fact I endorse it when the boat design allows it. You just have to think ahead some.

 

 

[ronkamin]

Mike

I am putting the planking on a sheet of 1/16" balsa. My concern was by doing this it would raise the planking by the 1/16" and cause problems when installing the cannons. Reading a couple of other build logs this was a problem. I believe I solved that problem by adding an extra 1/8" rail on top of the bulwarks. When I start the assembly following the plans I found the gun ports were too small, height. By adding the extra strip eliminated that problem. look at my post of March 28th to see what I did.

 

I will check my other measurements to see if this extra sheet will cause any other problems. What other problems do you forsee.

 

Thanks for the heads up, better to find the problem now then later when it would be really difficult to fix.

 

Ron

[mikiek]

By design the deck planks should lay on top of the hull frame pieces. So with your sheet, it is now 1/16" higher than it should be - as you noted. It makes sense that the guns didn't fit, there's not a lot of extra room. They were probably 1/16" to high. If I understand, you raised the ceilings of the gun ports? If yes, that fixes the gun fit problem. However the deck planks are still 1/16" higher than they should be. I don't know if that puts them higher than the top of the waterway or not. If it does this may be a problem.  Have you decided what kind of edge you will put around the deck planks? Nibs? Faux Nibs? No nibs? The higher deck might have an effect there. Also, the deck planking at the stern, the ones that run side to side instead of bow to stern. Those need to join the deck smoothly. You may need some sort of transition there.

 

Just stuff to consider.

 

Oh, just thought of something else. Another tough one to describe.  You will likely need to move back the holes that go through the deck for the masts. The masts sit angled. The plans show holes in the deck based on the deck being at a certain height. If the deck is raised, the mast hole will move back. A little trig would tell you how much but I suck at math. Compared to the location on the deck layout plan, any deck toys in close proximity to the mast may need to move also. I'm thinking the pin rails that surround the masts for sure. There may be other items. I have a grate right at the backside of the foremast that would have had to be moved, but I may have placed that one there by a WAG. Just be aware. Things may need to be placed relative to the mast hole rather than relative to the front/rear of the deck. Hope that makes sense.

 

Not to worry, none of this is insurmountable! It will be a good exercise.

[6ohiocav]

Ron,

looking good.  I did my deck the same way you did and after giving consideration to the size of the gun ports, everything worked out fine. I used 1/16 birch plywood and cherry veneer planking, which actually met the mark on thickness of the deck planks as per the plans.

 

The notches in the keel set the angle of the masts. Just follow that.

 

[JerseyCity Frankie]

Another thought: grind down the bulkheads on their outboard ends.

Or shave them down with a sharp chisel/Sanding blocks. Leave the crown of the deck where it is at the keel. Now your deck has curve to it that I believe the kit ommits. Im building Niagara too and I’m laying the deck on the bulkheads and I note the deck looks completely flat. TEAM NIAGARA!!

Edited May 4, 2018 by JerseyCity Frankie