WANDERER by BETAQDAVE - Aurora - 1/87 - PLASTIC - heavily modified Whaling Bark

[BETAQDAVE]

    Before deciding to move the hatch to the correct location I had been concentrating on reworking the bulwarks.  Several things were revealed to be incorrect.  As I mentioned in the previous post, the most noticeable error was the overall height of the wall itself.  However, there were many other features of the bulwarks proven to be wrong.  The pin rail on the actual ship was just a widening of the main cap rail rather than the continuous separate rail that was shown on both the plans and the kit, so I had to toss the ones that I had already made quite a ways back. 

    On the actual ship there was an additional topgallant rail with a cap that will need to be added.  The stanchions on the ship were wider and closer together than the plans and the kit indicated, so the ones that I had already made and installed needed to be replaced.  The waterway also needed revision and some scuppers needed to be added.  Other than that, the plans and kit were just fine!

    So, going back to the drawing board (or should I say the Paint program), I drew up scaled cross sections at the different areas of the bulwarks.  The Paint program was quite difficult at first as I was not familiar with it at all, and as typically happens; there was no manual to explain how to operate it.  It was vaguely similar to a computer program that I used to use at work to draw framing diagrams, so I was at least somewhat familiar with it, but then again that was about 14 years ago.  Of course things have changed a bit since then and my memory isn’t what it used to be!

     This first drawing shown below shows the basic features to be added or modified to the majority of the bulwarks.  The toughest change to make, will be removing 7/32” from the top of the bulwarks with enough precision to give me an even surface to attach the new main cap.  I need to come up with an idea of exactly how I will go about that, because if I learned one thing after reducing the width of the main wale, plastic is much tougher to cut than wood!!!

    The second drawing shown below, illustrates the areas of the bulwarks where the belaying pins and the deadeye channels are located.

    This last drawing indicates the features of the bulwark at the opening by the cutting in platform.

    I will be experimenting for a while with some different methods of cutting plastic accurately, so unless anyone else has any suggestions on how to accomplish that operation, feel free to chime in.

[BETAQDAVE]

    After trying numerous solutions for cutting the bulwarks down with every tool at my disposal, the one that I settled on was to cut it down with a special hand saw and various sanding tools.  The first step was to cut narrow strips of painters tape to make my cut line more readily visible.  While this operation in itself presented me with a problem because of my weakened grip which made holding my cutting guide still while cutting the tape with a #11 Exacto blade.   Slicing my hold down fingers wasn’t something that I was looking forward to, so I just clamped the guide down to the table as show below before making the cuts.

    As it happened the height of the bulwark that I needed just happened to align with the bottom edge of the top plank of the inscribed plank on the model.  That made it a simple matter to align my tape with the intended cut line as shown below.

    These tools shown below were chosen for the operation.

     The thin flexible bladed Japanese saw was selected because of the teeth that were both fine and made to cut on the pull stroke which made it easier to follow my cut line.  The saw itself cut pretty smoothly, but the hardest part of this operation by far was trying to hold the hull steady enough to follow the line.  I ended up opening up my vise for a loose fit and used some rubberized shelf liner to give me a non-slip surface to lean the hull on.

    Not totally comfortable with my sawing skill, I made sure to stay just short of the guide line so I could sneak up on it with various sanders.  My grip strength was a hindering factor once again, so I wrapped a strip of the rubberized shelf liner with a rubber band around the handle and that helped quite a bit.  The Electro-File in the photo was then employed to quickly sand down the irregularities before switching over to that wider flat sanding stick. 

    The final step was using this wide flat sanding block that could span across the whole width of the ship to make sure that the top of the bulwark was flat and even for the later addition of the main cap.

    Here is the result of the whole procedure.  I was quite happy with the results.

[gak1965]

On 4/20/2018 at 11:52 AM, BETAQDAVE said:

 

    Before I actually started construction, I decided that I wanted to do a search in the internet for more details of the actual ship.  One thing that really caught my attention right off the bat, was the fact that the real ship only had four sails on the main and foremasts and not five as shown both in the kit and my set of blueprints. These two pictures below show both the box art and one of the pictures that I found showing the ship as it was built.

 

                                                            

                                                          

     Discovering this, I decided to really do some digging to see if any other discrepancies were evident.  There were a few, but nothing as glaring as the sails.

 

Hi Dave,

     Great build log, really fantastic work you are doing. I was curious about your concern about the sails. I am not an expert in this area, but the picture above shows what I think are a course yard, a set of split topsails, and a topgallant yard, but with what looks like either a separate royal mast or maybe I'm just seeing the point where the topgallant lift blocks are attaching to the mast. Either way, looks like plenty of spar to mount a royal. My understanding is that a lot of ships with royals didn't loft the yard unless they were actually using the sail, otherwise, it was stored, so I'm not sure that there is any inconsistency there. Do the plans you have comport with the topgallant lift blocks being where they are as compared to the painting?

 

At the end of the day, you could model her as she is shown in the painting without the royal yards- it's really just a choice.

 

Regards,

George

[BETAQDAVE]

    Well now I’m really up to my neck in it, as I returned to the major surgery of moving the main hatch.   The first order of business was to remove another section of the false deck to allow me to get a little better access to the beam aft of the main mast so the lower deck and hatch can be suspended from it.  This is how it looked before starting the changes.

 

    Once that was done, I worked on cutting the lower deck and hatch free from the beams above.   At first I was perplexed about how to do this since the posts were really in a tight spot.  Getting any kind of saw blade in there just wasn’t possible. 

    A Dremel router bit with a long shaft was chucked in the drill press and the table was raised to the point where the bit could just reach the top of the suspending posts.  I assembled a homemade clamp with a bolt, a large pair of flat washers, and a nut.  The washers were large enough to get some purchase and yet just small enough to pass through the lower hatch.  Hooking the lower washer around the bottom of the lower deck, the top washer did likewise on the deck beams above and the nut was tightened to hold the deck in place. Here is my set-up for this operation.

   

    By using the router bit in the drill press it allowed me to move the hull with two hands braced by the drill press table.  I chewed off the tops of the posts with light passes allowing me to keep the bit under better control while doing this freehand routing.  Once the posts were almost completely routed down, I used an Exacto blade to release the lower deck to allow me to shift the deck to its new location as shown below.

                                                          

    Luckily, the width of the hull at this point allowed me enough clearance to shift it aft without needing to further modify the lower deck.

    I made a template of the new main hatch and taped it in place so I could see what adjustments were necessary to the deck beams.  The aft end of the hatch would butt up to the face of beam #10 at the main mast and beam #9 needed to be moved to the forward edge of the new hatch.

    The two longitudinal beams were shortened to accommodate the new location of beam #9.  Unfortunately beam #9 had to be discarded since the only way to remove it was to rout it out.  So I cut a new beam and used wood glue to attach it to the side ledgers and support the remainder of the cut-off longitudinal beams.  I cut two new longitudinal beams that ran between beam #10 and the new beam #9 and glued in them in position for the new sides of the hatch. 

                                                   

 

    I will let the glue cure overnight before doing any more rough work on it.  I taped the template in place so you can see exactly how much the new main hatch location has changed.    

                                                                                                     

 

   The next phase will be to shift the lower deck and its hatch to match the upper hatch location.

[Bruma]

Dave, your dedication is remarkable, you are doing a great job!

👍

[BETAQDAVE]

On 2/4/2021 at 12:55 PM, gak1965 said:

looks like plenty of spar to mount a royal.

Hello there George

     While there appears to be plenty of mast above the topgallant sails, this ship was a whaler, and as such had a pair of iron rings mounted on both the main and fore mast commonly referred to as the "crows nest".  That is where the crew stand watch to spot their quarry.  To add a royal sail above the topgallant would have made it quite difficult to work that sail as the nest would prevent the spar from turning, not to mention the fact that it would interfere with their primary task of sighting the whales. 

    Although it may have been possible to move the nest above that extra sail, that would just have increased costs.  Since the minor increase in speed that it would provide was not much of a cost saver, the owners would not think that it would have been worth it.  I think that they were primarily concerned with their profit.

    As far as the plans go, they were really lacking in details, which is one reason for my going to such lengths to find more accurate info.

 

Dave

Edited February 7, 2021 by BETAQDAVE

[BETAQDAVE]

George, here are the plan details.  You can easily see the conflict between the royal yards and the crows nest.

The yard and or sail would be right about eye level with the lookouts.

[BETAQDAVE]

    First, I cut and set two partial beams on either side of the new hatch opening and the two LEDs that were removed earlier were glued into their new positions.  The clamp that was employed in the previous post was modified somewhat by adding an adjustable overlarge wood washer to better grip the main deck beams.

 

    Now the lower deck had to be shifted to align the lower hatch with the one above. That turned out to be a very finicky job to handle, since I felt that I was several hands short for the job!  I needed to slip two flat blocks of wood between the top of the angle braces and the bottom of the beams on each side, while at the same time keeping tension on the clamp to support the lower deck while maneuvering it into position and finally tightening the nut on the clamp. Perhaps if my custom washer was made of clear Plexiglas it would have allowed me to have a clearer view of what I was doing. (But as they say, hindsight is 20 20.)

     Anyway, despite the visibility issue, the deck was finally maneuvered into position and tightly wedged into position against the sides of the hull.  All of the wedges were set with carpenters glue by dipping a long bamboo skewer in the glue as it allowed me to reach pretty far down into the hull to put the glue right where I wanted it.  Here is the wedged and glued hull below as it stood at this point.

                                                         

    Once the glue had set, I removed the clamp and I put in two partial beams on either side of the new hatch opening.  The two LEDs that were removed earlier were also glued into their new positions. 

    While waiting for the glue to set again, I decided to try my hand at making the mast coats, which are basically shaped like tiny washers.  Using a small scrap of 1/16” plywood, a compass was set at the radius of the outer edge of the mast coat.  I made sure that point was set fairly deep (to use it later as a center for the drill) and the circle was drawn.

   

                                                           

     The hole for the mast was drilled while I still had something to hang onto.

     My scroll saw was then used to cut close to the line, leaving a narrow handle attached which allowed me to hold it while sanding right up to the outline with my disc sander.  The handle was then cut off and the remainder of the circle was trimmed by hand to the line in my vise.  Since the edges of mast coats were not flat, the disc was slipped onto the mast and using that as a handle, it was held diagonally against my small belt sander and the edge was given a slightly rounded over edge.

                                                            

    To finish the shape, I held the resulting washer down on a sanding stick and gave the bottom a bit of a bevel to match the rake of the mast so it will sit flush with the deck.  Three are needed for the main deck that shall be painted, and the one for the lower deck will just be stained.  I found that the main mast is also visible through the open hatch to the hold, so I guess I will make another stained one for there.  Here is one of the resulting mast coats in position.

                                               

    Next up on this operation was drilling the hole for the main mast through the lower deck.  Very early on in this project, I had made up a template where the rake angles of the masts were marked.  I dug it up and slipped a brad pointed drill bit that matched the diameter of the main mast through the upper deck.  Matching that angle, the point of the bit was pressed into the decking below, marking the center of the hole.  The bit was then carefully slipped through the hole in the main deck, centered on the lower deck mark, and drilled through on my drill press.

     I encountered a slight problem, in that the brad point apparently didn’t project enough, and the bit was able to wander too far forward. (Nearly to the edge of the hatch.)  This left the mast with way too much rake, and the heel of the mast couldn’t set in the pocket at the bottom of the hull. 

    A little more nervous surgery was needed with a rough round rasp to lengthen the hole into more of an oval shape (without destroying too much of the lower deck) until the mast heel could be set in the pocket.   Luckily, the mast coat was just able to cover up my mistake.  

Edited February 10, 2021 by BETAQDAVE

[BETAQDAVE]

    Now that the lower deck was secured, the fact remained that a bit more of that deck would now be visible through the new upper hatch.  Checking the sight lines through the new hatch opening, revealed that there was a fair amount showing, but the deck toward the main mast looked to have better access, so I decided to tackle that end first.

    I cut a 3/16” square piece of basswood for a tight fit between the sides of the hull, butting one edge up against the side of the suspended decks’ support beam to form a support ledger for the deck extension.  Leaving the top edge 1/32” below the top of the decking, I glued and wedged it into place.

    This left me a support ledger for the rear end of the new deck.  I took a left over section of decking and cut notches to fit around the corner posts of the lower deck.  The length of the decking was determined by the sight line towards the foremast, and I cut it off just beyond that line which turned out to be a scale 15 feet.  I duplicated the trennel and plank butt pattern of the lower decking and finished the deck to match as shown here.

                                                            

    Using another basswood timber, a support beam was cut and glued on the bottom side of the decking with thin CA glue for the forward edge of the deck.

 

                                                           

    Since the inside of the hull narrowed down here somewhat, the assembly was trimmed and test fit several times until its deck was level and flush with the suspended deck.  Once I was satisfied, carpenters glue was applied to the top of the support ledger and the decking was pressed in place.  Using the bamboo stick once again, the carpenters glue was poked down between the beams and used to set the front edge of the deck.  As I couldn’t use a clamp to hold the assembly in place, I just took a short scrap of wood the width of the space between the upper and lower decks, set it on the decking extension and placed a weight on it until the glue set.  Here are some views of this lower deck extension in place.

                                                            

                                                        

    The deck extension toward the main mast needed to be nearly as long as it was at the foremast, but the wiring was in the way and the access was more limited, so this section was handled a little bit differently.   I made up another deck extension similar to the previous one, but at a scale of only 6 feet long.  A ledger beam was made up for the front end of the extension and glued also with thin CA to the end of the decking as shown here.

                                                            

    Now in order to provide support for this extension, I decided to make somewhat of a partition wall that I could attach to the face of the main deck beam #12 above.  Taking a 2 inch long section of decking, a length of 3/16” square basswood was cut to match the width of the extension. With thin CA glue it was attached to the bottom end of it forming the wall itself.  This was stained to match the deck and is shown below standing backwards on top of the extension.

                                                          

    The partition wall was turned around to hide the base beam and glued with thin CA to the top of the extension decking, leaving just enough decking exposed to allow the wall to be vertical when butted up to the face of beam #12 above.  The wall was purposely cut 2 inches wide to leave a handle to hang onto the assembly and tilt it down into the opening in the beams above.  The ledger was given a generous coating of carpenters glue and the assembly was maneuvered through the gap and its decking was aligned with the lower deck.  The exposed portion of the partition wall was clamped in place with a large rubber band stretched from the face of the wall to the transom to force the extension up against the lower deck and the top of the wall was set with a few drops of thin CA.

    The assembly was allowed to cure overnight and the portion of the partition wall projecting above the beam was trimmed off leaving me with this below.

                                                          

   Some portions of the inner hull walls were still visible, so some stained scraps of decking were glued on to cover them up.  While I didn’t know if there actually were partitions in the lower deck, even with the LEDs lit up, it would be hard to see them anyway.  However, there were some support posts for the deck beams above that would be visible.  In this photo below decks of the CWM you can see examples of these posts.

                                                            

    To represent these posts I used some stained 1/8” square basswood for the post and glued one end of to a strip of 1/16” x 3/16” stained basswood to represent the bearing plate at their base.  Once the glue set, the bases of the posts were separated from each other.  Then after sanding the base projection around the bottom to about 1/16”, the stain was touched up.  Since the top of these posts will not be visible on the model, rather than fitting the top of the post to the bottom of the beam, I simply glued the top of the post to the side of a beam above and sanded it flush.  I test fit the hatch grating placement on the lower deck to get an idea of how much room remained for other details and this is the result of my work at this point.

 

                                                                

[BETAQDAVE]

    At first I thought about simply cutting the new hatch opening in the existing finish deck and patching the old hole, but unless the patch could replace the center of the deck from the trypots structure all the way back to the deck houses, the patch would be obvious.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough of the 1/32” deck planking with 1/8” wide deck boards remaining to do that.

    I did however, have two sheets of the 1/32” basswood decking with 3/32” wide planks, So I decided to use them.  While these planks are narrower than the ones on the lower deck, I don’t think that it will be all that noticeable. The trennel pattern needs to be slightly different, as each plank will show only one at each beam as opposed to the wider planking that had two, but the plank butt pattern will be the same.

    Taking the old finish decks and taping them onto the new sheets, the shape was traced onto the new sheets.  The new sheets were roughly cut with the scroll saw and finish shaped with my small belt sander as done before, but with the new hatch location cut out.  Next, the new decks were taken back to the drawing board and the butt and trennel pattern was applied.  Here is a photo comparison of the original plastic deck and the two wooden ones, showing just how far off the hatch location was.

                                                           

    Here is a closer view of the plank trennel pattern of the wood decks.

                                                           

    The silver lining in the extra work involved was that patching of the incorrect anchor chain openings in the deck, the holes for the bollards (which were never a feature of the ship), and the other erroneous holes would no longer be needed to be patched.

    The new finish decks were stained with Minwax light oak finish to match the old decks, given two coats of polyurethane and set aside to dry.

    Meanwhile two new sections of the false deck were cut and fit to replace the old sections that were no longer usable.  They were drilled and new trennels were used once again to glue them down.

                                                            

   Having set overnight, the stubs of the trennels were snipped off and the bulwark foil tape finish was removed in the areas where the new stanchions would be visible, since both their size and spacing were wrong.  (If anyone has any doubts about the effectiveness of the adhesive on the tape, rest assured that if the difficulty of removing them is any indication, they will stay put for a long time!)  

    I also felt that a little reinforcement for the decking at the chain hawse holes was needed, so I glued a hefty timber below the decking for that.  Then the trennel ends were all sanded flush to the deck.

 

     The anchor chain hawse pipe fittings were carefully removed from the old decking so I can use those holes drilled in the decking as guides for drilling matching holes in the new decks.

                                                     

 Taking strips of 3/64” square basswood, the waterway extension was added by shimming it in place and spot gluing it with CA glue.  Once they were held in place the shims were removed and I ran a continuous bead of CA on the entire run of the extension.  (Since the waterway will be painted white rather than stained, the CA discoloring of the extension was not a concern and the glue will allow the extension to become hardened.)

                                                          

    Applying the extension across the stern was the most difficult area to apply.  The angled stanchions were removed, but since the new ones will occupy the same spots, the tape was left as is.  I wasn’t happy with this first attempt with bending a single 3/64” stick, as it wasn’t wide enough to cover the edge of the deck when it was test fit. 

                                                           

    At first, an additional stick was added, but the joint was too obvious.  These were removed and replaced with this 3/64” x 1/8” strip scribed to fit as a 3/16” wide waterway.

                                                           

    Lastly, I replaced the white foil tape on the areas of the bulwarks that I had just removed in preparation to installing the new stanchions. 

[gak1965]

On 2/7/2021 at 1:44 PM, BETAQDAVE said:

George, here are the plan details.  You can easily see the conflict between the royal yards and the crows nest.

The yard and or sail would be right about eye level with the lookouts.

She’s looking great, and progress is being made. I’m still not convinced there is an inconsistency. The instructions for the MSW Charles W. Morgan point out that:

 

”The fore and mainmasts have royal yards, but the fore royal yard is sent down while the ship is on the whaling grounds. This is how Morgan is displayed. The main royal yard is rigged similar to the topgaleant. It has no bunt or leechlines, but it does have running lifts. Blocks are seized to the mast.”

 

The original of the USB Niagara also had royals that were not just sent down when not in use but unbraced. If the lookouts are for spotting whales, and the royals were only set aloft under light winds in transit you could have both without conflict.

 

In any case, it’s your ship and you choose what context to show it in.

 

Best wishes for continued success.

George

[BETAQDAVE]

    My strategy for gluing down the finish decking is to use 1/32” thick scraps of basswood (the beveled waterway thickness) as wedges to hold down the edge of the decking while clamping down the center of the decks with blocks of wood on the deck and rubber bands around the entire hull.  Since this will be a somewhat time consuming procedure I will be switching to some Elmer’s white glue that requires a longer cure time. 

    This requires the top edge of the false deck to have a gap of 1/16” below the waterway extension. (That’s 1/32” for the finish decking plus 1/32” for the beveled waterway.)  With a very sharp chisel I went all the way around the hull and carved the gap close to that required, and finished up with a sanding disc mounted in my Dremel tool.

 

    Once that was finished, I drilled those elongated holes in the finish deck for the anchor chain hawse pipe fittings and shimmed the fittings with 1/32” thick basswood so the top of the fitting was flush with the deck surface.  These were then secured with some thin CA.  Access holes for the LEDs in the deck houses were drilled and the opening for the skylight was cut.

                                                            

    Once the waterway extensions were installed, I used a pallet knife to fill the gap in the extension with some Elmer’s wood filler.

    The stanchions, made with 1/16” x 1/8” basswood, were tackled after the waterways were sanded smooth.  The basswood tends to finish rather fuzzy, so whenever I use these thin strips to make tiny repetitive parts, the first thing that I do is to lightly draw the whole strip between my fingers and a fine grit sanding stick.  Flipping the strip over to do all four faces this way doesn’t reduce the dimensions of the strip by much at all, it just takes off the fuzz and leaves me with a nice long handle to draw the strip.

                                                           

    Once the strip is smooth, one end of the strip is cut square, and it’s stood up vertically in place.  If any adjustment to the cut is required, like a back bevel or angle side to side, it’s adjusted with a medium grit sanding stick while using the excess as a handle. For these stanchions, I set up my Chop-It block with a sharp razor blade and set the stop just a bit overlong to the height of the bulwark, leaving the remaining to be sanded flush after placement. (Since the top of these stanchions must meet the bottom of the main cap so it can lie flat with no visible gap).

                                                           

    I determined that the center-to-center spacing of the stanchions was about four feet to scale.  Taking my original paper deck template and a compass set at this spacing, the locations were stepped off along the edges and marked.  The template was set in the waterway gap on one side and a stanchion was held in place above each mark and given a drop of CA glue to secure it.  This was repeated for the other side and finally the five stanchions at the stern transom were glued in place in the gaps left where the previous ones were removed.

                                                          

    On this ship there were a total of 44 stanchions visible, but this whole process only took about an hour to complete.  After the glue set overnight, the stanchion tops were all trimmed off.  Then after a bit of masking, my newly made - and as yet untested- spray booth will finally be utilized to spray the inside of the bulwarks white!  Here are  the trimmed stanchions in place.

                                                           

[JesseLee]

Dave your attention to detail and ability to create it is amazing to me.Seems like you don't miss anything!

[BETAQDAVE]

    Been away from my build (and the log) for a while now for many reasons, but I finally made a bit more progress by making the cavels.

Contrary to actual photos of the ship, both the A.J. Fisher plans and the Aurora kit indicated double timber or iron mooring bits mounted on the deck as shown below.

 

 

As a matter of fact, of all of the whalers of that era that I was able to examine, I couldn’t find any with this feature!

In truth, the photos actually indicated that mooring lines passed through round mooring ports and were tied off to wood cavels mounted on pairs of stanchions. Here is a detail sketch of the cavels below.

    I decided to model the arrangement of the cavels similar to those on the Charles W. Morgan. Two of these mooring ports passed through the outer hull, the solid blocking between stanchions and through the cavels. The other four just passed through the outer hull and were tied off to cavels on adjoining pairs of stanchions.

    Although Aurora had all six of these mooring line ports correctly located in the plastic bulwarks, they were also grossly over sized (nearly the full height of the bulwark) as shown below.  So the hawse lips on the outside surface of the hull had to be filed off flat, the holes filled in with plastic putty and sanded smooth in preparation to resizing them to match the size of the holes in the cavels and align with them.

 

 

These cavels were cut from some 1/32” thick hard maple ripped down to 5/64” wide. I nixed using basswood for these due to the fact that the two with hawse holes required drilling a hole nearly the entire width of the cavel and I envisioned problems with splitting them. (In fact, even with the hard maple, several of them did just that.)

    First, I held the strip directly up against the stanchions and marked the distance from the outside edges of the paired stanchions directly onto the strip leaving a bit extra for the horns.

    Second, a set of dividers was used to mark a consistent extension horn length and the cavels were cut and filed to their finished length. I found the horn ends themselves to be difficult to shape with any consistency until finally, I clamped the cavels at the bottom of my machinist vise with the end exposed just beyond the notch to line up the top and bottom of the cut vertically. Then by using a three sided mini file with one face riding flat on the edge of the vise, I filed the top edge of the cavel down until the bevel just touched the end of the horn.

 

    Then, with the piece still clamped in the vise, I filed the bottom edge until it also just touched the end to match.

 

 

    Once each end was done, it was flipped end for end in the vise and done similarly. Naturally, I cut several extras just in case any of them split. True, the angled end was a bit shorter than in the photos, but at least now the ends all matched each other.

The two cavels that needed the mooring port holes drilled through them were tackled next. Some solid basswood blocking to fit between the stanchions was cut and glued to the backside of those cavels. I marked the location of the holes in the center and brushed the face of the pieces with poly and let them dry before actually drilling the holes to help prevent them from splitting, since the holes were nearly the same width as the cavels. Drilling a small pilot hole with a pin vise, I gradually increased the hole to the inside diameter of the hawse pipe lips.

Once all of the cavels were all completed, I made this jig below from scraps to hold them in position 1/64” above the upper waterway while gluing them into place.

 

    Making those tiny mooring pipe lips maybe beyond my skill, but later on, after applying the self-adhesive backed wood-grain tape on the outer hull, I will attempt to see if I can form some new lips for the inside and outside lips. For now, I’ll simply leave the holes.

    Right now I needed to find a way to align those holes in the cavels with the holes passing through the blocking and the plastic hull, because I didn’t have enough room to get a regular drill in place between the bulwarks. This was eventually solved by using a much smaller drill bit mounted in this micro drill chuck that can handle up to a #61 bit and closes to 0. It’s perfect for getting into those tight spots.

    I simply laid the drill bit flat with the bottom of the hole in the cavel and drilled it by hand until the bit emerged on the outside of the hull. This gave me the position of the lower edge of the hole on the outside and by allowing for the size of the new bit, I was able to enlarge the hole to align with the hole in the cavel.

    Now that the cavels are installed, the insides of the bulwarks were given the final coat of white paint and all of the masking was removed.

Edited January 5, 2022 by BETAQDAVE

[Cathead]

Welcome back! That's a nice fix to an awkward problem.

[BETAQDAVE]

    Well, it’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally time to install the two-piece finish decking panels which required quite a bit of fiddly trimming to slip under the waterways and line up at the center-line. I test fit the two panels several times, both to make sure they fit properly and to practice my clamping procedure. That’s due to the fact that the white carpenters glue that I have, only has about a five minute window before the pieces can no longer be re-positioned.

    The port side was done first. Since the hawse pipe fitting for the anchor was made in two separate pieces (One through the bow and one through the deck.) the anchor chain had to be threaded through both of them before the deck could be attached. (Actually I darn near forgot about that myself!)

 

    Once it was threaded through, I tied a thread to both ends to keep it from pulling itself out later when I wouldn’t be able to access the pipes. The glue was spread quite liberally on the false deck to help give me a little extra time for the glue to set.  The deck panel was slipped into place,  the lighting wire ends were pulled through the holes for the deck house lighting, and was especially careful not to knock off the hawse pipe fitting attached to the underside of the finish deck panel.

 

    Several scraps of 1/32” basswood were wedged into the gap between the upper waterway and the finish deck to apply pressure around the perimeter. (As shown here on the starboard side.)

 

    This gap will later be filled by the beveled lower waterway. After that, numerous rubber bands were stretched across the hull with short blocks of wood slipped under them to apply even pressure along the carefully positioned center of the deck as shown below.

 

    The ship was then given two days for the glue to set and I removed all the clamps and wedges to examine the results shown below.

 

    To my dismay, when testing the fit of the starboard side deck sheet I discovered that there was an uneven gap along the center line stretching from the main hatch to the stern. By inserting an Allen wrench into the wiring hole as shown below and pulling toward the center-line I found that I could close up most of the gap.

 

 

    So in addition to using wedges along the perimeter, rubber bands with the wood blocks to hold down the starboard side deck along the center, I also had to apply some sideways pressure toward the center-line to close up the gap. So my hands were full, to say the least, trying to get everything done before the glue set.

 

    After letting the glue set again for two days, all the clamps and wedges were once again removed to reveal that although most of the gap was gone, a thin tapered gap still remained!  I sliced some tapered wedges from a sheet of decking and after numerous attempts of fitting, sanding, and refitting, I finally ended up with this barely noticeable filler.

 

    Luckily, I think most of the filler will be hidden by deck structures. I think that my next feature to work on will be the beveled lower waterway once I work out how to accomplish it. Making more templates seems to be the way to go as there will have to be several gaps left for the scuppers. I think the material shall be maple rather than basswood as it will more resistant to denting when it is pushed into place. As I work out the details, I will switch over to my somewhat neglected Phantom for a bit.

    At any rate this is the current status of the Wanderer.

 

Edited January 11, 2022 by BETAQDAVE
error 200

[yvesvidal]

I think you are ready for full wood construction....

 

Yves

[Wawona59]

H Dave,

Your persistence in facing and overcoming the challenges that you've faced in this build is remarkable.  Press on, and keep you eye on the prize.

 

I distinctly remember building this kit in 1971 when I was 12 years old.  I attempted a wooden deck but not nearly as nice as yours.  Because I did't know any better then, my deck consisted of gluing balsa strips to the plastic deck pieces to cover the ugly seams.  What sails are you planning to use?  I assume you aren't planning to use the thick plastic sails and molded in yards that came originally with the model.

 

Great job!

John Newcome Wawona59