18th Century Armed LongBoat by Dr PS - FINISHED - Model Shipways - Scale 1:24

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

Used bit of CA to glue temporary 1/16” spacers in place on edge of previously glued floorboard. Easy back-and-forth motion breaks spacers loose after next floorboard is glued into place. 

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

I did not notice something until now, but the curve of my bulkheads do not seem symmetrical resulting in the starboard side of the boat being steeper from keel to the shear than on the port side. It is slight but I see it on the boat.  The photograph below shows just one of the laser cutout scraps. I saved all the scrap sheets and everyone seems to show this non-symmetrical behavior.  Sigh! 😔 Can anyone else see this or is it my imagination?

[coxswain]

My eyes don't work as well as they used to, but it seems steeper - tell you what - cut a piece of paper to this shape, and fold it in half - proof positive either way!  I've seen other MSW members do it many times with the older die-cut kits........  Steve M

 

P.S.  Hope it comes out well, you've come so far......a lot of work at stake here.....

Edited May 25, 2019 by coxswain

[CPDDET]

I used the paper fold method mentioned above. Bob Mastini covers it in his book Ship Modeling Simplified. Works great and will tell you if the bulkheads are symmetrical. 

 

Good luck, you're doing a fantastic job.

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

 Thanks all for the suggestion. I came up with a better solution which most builders  probably cannot do. I had an extra sheet with #1 bulkhead on it which I cut out and flipped over. You can see from the picture below that the starboard side is steeper than the port side. It is not much but it is noticeable. I think when completely built it may not be too bad. Reshaping the bulkheads could have been done but it would have resulted in one side of the frame being thinner than the other. 

 

This should be corrected in laser cutting control if others are experiencing this. I find it hard to believe that I have two sheets with the same skews. 

 

I will continue on with this build. 

Edited May 25, 2019 by Dr PS

[iMustBeCrazy]

There might be more going on than you suspect.

 

As these images may be skewed by the camera position you should check on the actual frame (you can use the corner of a piece of copy paper as a square). Also note that the dimensions shown are not to scale.

 

In this first image the curve of the hull was drawn on the left and then mirrored to the right using my centreline. The image does not seem to be skewed.

 

The second image is skewed so I can't do the same but the internal centreline does seem to be different to the external centreline.

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

I cut the above bulkhead apart and aligned the frames at the sheer end as well as the hull curve. The result is about 1mm difference at the keel end.Not much but it is amazing how the eye can pick up this slight difference on the assembled hull. I conclude that it should not stop any boat building. I press on!

Edited May 26, 2019 by Dr PS

[Arthur Wayne]

Interesting stuff Paul. I'll be interested to see how your laser cut cockpit seats fit. 

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

 have completed the platforms.  The shape of the hull was drawn on two cards for each platform.  The frame locations were noted and marked then cut out on each card.  For each platform, the cards were slid togther and taped into position so they would accurately convey the shape of each plateform.  The glued together 1/4" x 1/16" basswood strips were then cut to match the templates.  I then carefully separated the wood near the center and adjusted the wood to fit into place on the boat.  Then the two halves were glued into place after I was satisfied that everything was fitting well

Edited May 30, 2019 by Dr PS

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

Next I tackled the Thwart Risers.  First I made a scoring jig to score the risers.  The jig took about 20 minutes to make and score all the 1/4" strips I would need.  Below is a drawing of the scoring jig. I plan to make a similar jig for the Thwarts.

 

 I set masking tape at the appropriate height and glued the first Thwart Riser in without a hitch.  The second one caused me no little grief but I finally got it positioned correctly after three tries. When removing CA glue with Un-Cure, it is important to grab the right bottle and not some ultra thin CA glue - Sigh!  Just as a passing note, water tends to obliviate the score lines, so if you can get it done without soaking, do so.Drilling hole for bit placement from bottom.Scribing linesModified jig for making passes to risers on boatUsing wood strip to help align masking tape Finished with Thwart Risers

Edited May 30, 2019 by Dr PS

[Sea Hoss]

Nice system, nice work!

[CPDDET]

Great idea, that scoring jig.

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

Finished Thwarts and the support posts which were kind of fun to make  Again, I found the key to success was using sharp #11 blades  

Marking off 1/4” drops and cutting 1/32” deep cuts all the way around. 

Made slices on corners from 1/3 mark to the 1/32” cuts first and then trimmed the rest. 

Sanded with medium sanding sticks in order to get final results. 

Finished product before staining. 

Installing stained Thwarts and posts.  

 

I will show final results with completed cockpit seats in next  log entry. 

 

 

Edited June 2, 2019 by Dr PS

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

Continuing my last log entry, I would like to describe my work on the cockpit seats. 

 

As Arthur Wayne describes in his log, the locker lid was not long enough to extend from front to back. Similarly  I found mine to be too short as well. My solution was to cut the last “board” off and replace it with a wider one. The photos below will illustrate my solution. 

Cut off l”board”

Adding wider stripe using cockpit seat

Using cockpit seat to mark curve on locker lid for cutting. 

The laser lines line up when cutting the last “board” off. Also, the new strip offers a natural “gap” for the locker hinge.

As a final note to this entry, I found that the instruction booklet says to glue the mast bracket to the mast Thwart but is not shown in following booklet photos. I don’t know if this creates any problems as the mast bracket can be glued now or at several succeeding step.  

Arthur Wayne suggested the fore and aft floorboard planks needed to be wider. I agree although I am not sure as to how much wider. 

Edited June 8, 2019 by Dr PS

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

I have completed the cap rails with some complications. Getting the shape using card stock as per instructions went OK. I cut the cap rails as one continuous piece per side thus departing from the instructions. Shaping was not too difficult. except fitting at bow was moderately difficult. After gluing, I found that I needed to have the outside of the cap rails extend over the transom sides.I will fix this later by inserting an extension. 

Edited June 5, 2019 by Dr PS

[Arthur Wayne]

Looking good Paul, you've almost caught up to me now! 

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

Arthur, maybe I’ll catch up with you, however I’m hoping not as your build log is very helpful. That said, I’m nearly finished with the Thwart Kees, Transom Kees and Breast Hook.  This has been one of the most time consuming steps outside of planking. It looked so easy when I started.  For the Transom Kees I had to glue tabs under the Cap Rails next to the Transom. The tabs were helpful when positioning the Kees. 

 

Some time ago I did a crazy thing and bought another complete kit which on sale.  I have needed too many replacement parts to request them from Model Expo. I found that some wood sheets in both kits have differing thicknesses. It would seem control needs to be improved on this. To get things right, I should have requested all wood sheets but I didn’t. Sigh 😔 Maybe others can benefit from my saga and check thicknesses out before leaping. 😳

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

So far - - -  see log entry above. 😎

 

Edited June 7, 2019 by Dr PS

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

I think the word “hexagon” on page 27 of the instructions should be “octagon.”

[Nirvana]

Yes, you're absolutely correct. Octagon it should be, after looking at the pictures. 

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

Well, I started windlass with eager enthusiasm. First I made another jig (I like jigs) to ensure the lines drawn along the 5/16” square “rods” were straight and uniform. It is shown below. 

Next I proceeded to draw all the cut lines. 

Here’s where my enthusiasm waned. The first try was too short as I measured wrong. The second try was a flop. The third and fourth tries were OK but not to my satisfaction.  I stopped on the fifth. 

The handles were fairly easy to carve.

The finished windlass with handles is shown in the boat below. 

I wonder where the sailors sitting in front of the windlass put their legs? 😳

Edited June 9, 2019 by Dr PS

[Nirvana]

I think the windlass was removable.

When building the small longboat I didn't attached the windless, I omitted it. Yes, leg space must had been an issue. 

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

It’s possible they only used the windlass while in port. I need to do some research on this. 

[Arthur Wayne]

As I understand it, the windlass wouldn't always be present on the boat but rather installed as needed. I've read reference to the boat and windlass being used to assist in retrieving the ships anchor, as well as being used as the "muscle" to hoist items from ship/dock to the boat for transport to the ship/dock. 

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

Jumping ahead a bit, I decided to form the rub rails with 1:8” x 1/8” x 24” basswood from Hobby Lobby. And since I love to design and use jigs, I made one for shaping the rub rails.

 

If you look at an Xacto blade, you will notice that it has an extended oval. Xacto blades can be easily snapped be holding the blade with pliers and glove or rag and extremely bent. Try to get the break so that the resulting “legs” are the same length. Then mount the blade/cutter onto blocks which are separated by 1/8” using CA glue. Add additional blocks as braces as well as making it easier to hold.  If necessary, use file or Dremel to obtain the final shape. Test on smaller picture eces and do additional final shaping. I made several attempts at the legs and opening with a Dremel (tool shown below) before I got what I wanted.

 

The groove in the block will  guarantee  proper alignment as you scrape  

 

Wood grain will usually be an issue. Use lite pressure when scraping. Some sanding will probably be necessary. I widened the gap of the cutter so that the scrapes did not leave a lip on either side of the strips. I then scraped until I got a rounded edge the width (1/8”) of the strip. Another tip, with a pencil mark somewhere to indicate which side you are scraping. 

 

 

 

Edited July 8, 2019 by Dr PS - Paul Schulze

[Arthur Wayne]

Very cool Paul, wish I would have seen this a few weeks ago! I never considered mounting a scraper like this, I'm going to give it a shot on the next profile job I need to do. Was your kit supplied brass PE scraper twice as small as it should have been as well? 

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

 

 

Yes it is very small, and being soft metal, I have no idea how it would scrape anything very well much less be easy to hold. I just hope I don’t break one of my strips when I get around to putting them on.

 

I wish I had a stock of boxwood. Where do ship artisans get it?  I sort of remember something like The Lumber Mill or something like that. 

 

BTW, I tried to delete that last two photos in my last post and they just keep reappearing. Any suggestions?

Edited June 12, 2019 by Dr PS

[Dr PS - Paul Schulze]

 

Well, I’m ready to paint the hull. I made one attempt using blue masking tape but the red paint started leaking underneath it as it seemed to get buckled when it got wet from the paint. The clear satin seems to slick for the masking tape to work.  I wonder if electrical tape would work?  That is one listed for masking in the front of the manual. Another one listed was low tack automotive tape whatever that is - maybe something for painting. 

[Nirvana]

I used automotive custom tape, seals the painting area extremely well without tacking hard to surface. 

Used the same type of tape on Bluenose.

[Sea Hoss]

Looks great, gonna use your scraper idea!