Phantom 1868 by BETAQDAVE - Model Shipways - Scale 1:96 - N.Y. pilot boat - Highly modified hull, deck furniture and fittings

[BETAQDAVE]

    Since the Pandemic was declared on Friday (The 13^th go figure.) it looked like I would have quite a bit of time available to actually write up a log for this ship that I started way back in 2013.  At that time I was still getting my feet wet so to speak with computers.  Writing a log, coordinating it with pictures and sending it through the computer was way out of my comfort zone back then. 

    But since I started with my hybrid model of the 1:87 whaler Wanderer by Aurora and am doing a log for that during construction, I thought I’d do sort of a retroactive log of the construction of my Phantom.  Since I am quite a ways into the build already, most of it is from memory and my notes.  Eventually the log will catch up with the build, but as I am building both ships at the same time, it will undoubtedly take quite a while.  Also, the photos were taken recently rather than during actual construction, so they will be mostly out of sync with the log.   So without further ado here goes nothing.

[BETAQDAVE]

    I’ve built and sold several tall ships in both plastic and wood before.  But having reviewed the kit directions and Chuck’s practicum, I decided to look for more info on this ship before going any further. I also read How To Build First-Rate Ship Models From Kits by Ben Lankford and decided that I wanted to incorporate some improvements to the kit as there seemed to be some uncertainties about many of the details of the Phantom anyway.

    For one thing, since having searched quite a  bit for info on these pilot boats in that era, it seemed that since almost all of them had one or two small boats onboard to transfer the pilot to the ship in need, I decided to add one to this ship.  I found some pilot boats had what they referred to as pilot yawls, which had partial clinker built planking.  Then I looked for and found info on it and decided to put one of these on the deck.  So far I haven’t worked on this yet.

    After recently reviewing the impressive scratch build of the Eagle by Pete Jaquith on MSW, I found that a lot of the modifications that I had already added to my build were not really as original as I once thought.  I took the solid carved hull, removed the bulwarks, and shaved the hull down to the inside of planking as far down as the line of the copper sheathing. Then I installed the shear strakes, notching for the timberheads thru the strakes and into the hull. When I finished installing my hull planks, I applied some strips of my stock basswood for bulwarks and put in the scuppers by omitting the bottom plank at the openings. 

    On reflection later, I think that I should have put a bit of a bevel on the edges of the planks so they would stand out better. Once it was painted black, it was hard to discern that they actually were individual planks and not a solid hull.  It seemed like a bit of wasted effort there, but as I had never planked a hull before it was fun anyway.

    Since this kit was a solid wood hull model, I started by making templates for the hull and keels.  I selected the templates at stations four and seven and constructed this simple cradle shown below that was made with some 1/8” foam core poster board to support the ship during construction.

    Early on I decided to build up the bulwarks by adding the stanchions with planking applied to them, rather than carving them out, so these were removed right away.  Once they were removed, I proceeded to slowly carve and sand the hull into shape using the templates to guide me.  When I was finally satisfied, I cut, shaped and fit the keel, stem and sternpost until they fit properly and attached them with wood glue and nails.

     As far as the deck of the ship goes, Model Shipways changed what I considered to be a prominent feature of the ship by not recessing the sunken cockpit and just substituting some metal coamings and leaving the deck flush.  One could easily see that the ships wheel would not have any clearance with the deck, especially since the deck grating provided with the kit was so thick.  So I decided to throw out the metal cockpit coamings and rout the floor down another foot to scale as was mentioned by Chuck in his practicum.

     To do this I traced the outline on the plans of the inside face of the cockpit walls and added 1/32” outside of that outline.  This new outline was located on the deck and transferred to the surface.  Using my Dremel drill with the routing accessory set at 1/8” depth, the recess was cleaned out to that line.

    Now that that was done the next thing I did was to discard the scribed decking sheets!  For one thing, the decking layouts shown on the plans could never be done with a sheet. The stern decking was supposed to follow the curve of the hull and the decking on the foredeck needed to be nibbed into the shear strake.  For another thing, even on a deck with all the planks running parallel to each other, the grain of the wood would make it all too obvious that it was not made up of individual planks.  After all, we are for the most part trying to make it look realistic!  So I cut enough 1/32” x 3/32” strips of my stock of basswood in 20 foot to scale lengths to use for all of the decking.

    I started on the fore deck.  The first step was to mark the location of the deck beams below and a centerline on the hull.  The outline of the coaming for the companionway was also marked.  The shear strakes were then steam bent to follow the edge of the hull.  These were tacked into place temporarily.  I marked the location of all the stanchions on the strake and cut a notch for every third one. Those notches were extended into the hull below about 3/8”.   

    Then the individual planks were set in place, starting with the two on each side of the centerline after first rubbing a #2 lead pencil along the ends and edges to represent the caulked joints.  All of the planks were glued down with carpenters glue in a three butt shift pattern.    

    I continued installing the decking, alternating from one side to the other, cutting notches in the strake and tapering the ends of the decking where nibbing was needed. Rather than having the end grain exposed on the face of the step in the decks, I shaved the face back 1/32” and installed the decking up to the new face.  The decking was omitted over the marked location of the companionway.

    A 1/32” thick strip of basswood was steam bent and installed to cover that end grain that was shaved back earlier. It was installed overlapping the decking on the fore deck and trimmed off at the top of the step.

Moving on to the aft deck, the centerline and locations of the beams below were drawn on the hull along with the outlines of the coaming for the skylight, companionway and wheelhouse.  I steam bent the shear planks on the sides and cut a piece to fit across the stern.  Once again these strakes were marked, notched for the stanchions, and temporarily tacked in place.   Next, I glued down a 1/32” x 1/16” strip of basswood with a slight overlap of the step facing for the edge plank.  Once the glue was allowed to set, the planking here was laid similarly to the fore deck. 

    However, the deck pattern here required the planks to be steam bent and laid down parallel to the shear strakes.  Alternating from one side to the other, the decking was laid toward the center until they met in the middle in a herringbone pattern at the stern.  At this time decking was also laid on the floor of the cockpit.

    Before finishing the decking, all of the tacked down shear strakes were temporarily removed.  Using the ends of the beam lines previously marked and now revealed, a flexible straight edge was lined up and using a sharp HB pencil lead, I lightly poked a slight depression in the decking and twisted the point around a bit to make a representation of the treenails.  The decks were then scraped smooth and given a coat of Minwax light oak finish that I let set briefly and then the excess was wiped off with a soft cloth.  The decks were sanded with #400 wet/dry sandpaper and given two coats of matt finish polyurethane that was lightly sanded smooth.  The caulking and treenail impressions left showing, provided a nice bit of detail even though it’s a little out of scale.  It looked good to me, so I was happy with it anyway.

    To leave me more room to work, I decided to skip doing the bulwarks until the deck houses and some of the fittings were finished.

    Trying my hand at making the deck furniture from solid blocks as called for in the kit, I was not at all happy with the results.  Thinking that I could certainly do a better job than that, these were quickly trashed.  Seeing that the cockpit had already been carved out, I decided that I could also leave the companionway hatches open and make the interior of the skylight visible.  Of course this meant that now I would also have to carve out the spaces below them. If I was going to do this, now was the time to do it.  So…… once again I broke out the router and chisels and went to work. 

    Once these areas were carved out, I also thought that putting decking on the floors would be a good touch.  Although it wouldn’t be all that visible once the deck houses were put in place, I installed it anyway.  I also lined the interior walls with some grooved 1/64” plywood.  Same reason I guess.

    Moving on now to the coamings, I selected some 1/8” square basswood strips from my stock.  I cut the pieces to size, cutting half lap joints for the corners.  I assembled them with wood glue and set them aside to dry.  After the glue set up, I filed a slight bevel on the outside edges.  The coaming for the rear companionway was quite troubling at first until I realized that it terminated on the main deck where it ran into the cockpit walls.  There were no coamings around the cockpit walls at the main deck or the walls inside the cockpit.           

    At this time it was time to decide what kind of color scheme I would use.  Since this was to be my version of the ship, I planned to deviate somewhat from what the kit suggested.  I would introduce a bit more contrast, by making the coamings and the shear strakes a light green color, rather than the light buff deck house that would be used on the remaining deck house walls and the inside of the bulwarks.  The roof, hatches, cockpit walls, and the cap rails would all be stained with Minwax light oak and then two coats of matt finish polyurethane. 

    So now all of the shear strakes were given a couple coats of the light green (from my last remaining bottle from Floquil) on the areas that would be visible and they were finally glued in place.  The coamings were also painted with the light green paint where they would be visible and then set aside until needed.

    Returning now to the cockpit, the first step was to cut a strip of wax paper followed with a strip of paper coffee filter and line the cockpit walls with them.  I ripped some very narrow strips of 1/32” basswood to use for the vertical panels. I cut several pieces of them long enough to reach from the decking on the cockpit floor to the bottom of a cap rail 1/8” above the upper deck.  These were then glued to the paper filter lining on the walls for the inside panels and left there to dry thoroughly.

    Once dry, I cut several more pieces for the outside panels long enough to reach from the upper deck to the top of the inside wall panels already in place.  These pieces were then glued to the outer face of the inside wall panels with their joints offset from the joints on the layer below. 

    Confused?  Well, this actually left me with a cockpit wall above the upper deck 1/16” thick and 1/32” thick below the upper deck.  The top of this double thickness wall was sanded even for the application of the wall cap.  With the coffee filter paper glued between the layers to hold it together and the wax paper preventing the assembly from sticking to the wall of the pit, it could be slipped out of the pit in one piece.  This allowed me to trace the outline on a piece of stiff card to make a template for making the cap rail.  I took the resulting outline as the finish outside edge of this cap and drew the inside edge to the required finish width of the cap.  I made the cap in five pieces and even made scarf joints with two quarter knee pieces at the corners so no end grain would be exposed.  (They were only about 1/16” long!)

    I sliced a 1/32” strip of maple from a piece of ¾” maple and sanded it down to 1/64” thickness for making the cap rail. Once it was glued down to the template with rubber cement and with carpenters glue at the joints, I set it aside for a few days to be sure it was held together good. 

    Very carefully it was separated from the template and glued to the top of the cockpit wall while it was set in the recess.        Wow, wasn’t that easy? This whole assembly was then removed to be stained and sealed. Oh wait, the ends of the wall assembly would still need trimming to join into the sidewalls of the rear companionway. I can hardly wait!  Showing it to the Admiral, she thought I was nuts!!!  Here is a photo of the cockpit walls with the cap rail already applied.

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by BETAQDAVE
typo

[BETAQDAVE]

    So, for something a little less nerve racking now, I moved on to the building the skylight.  All of the deck structures were built with basswood and separate from their coamings to protect them while working on the rest of the model.  I drew up three versions of its construction before choosing the one closest to the layout shown on the plans.  The walls were built first using 1/32” x 1/16” as a bottom plate arranged in a simple jig set up to hold it together as a flat rectangle with butt joints in the corners while glue up with carpenters glue.  When the glue set up it was removed from the jig and reloaded with more of the 1/32” x 1/16” material, but I made the butt joints offset from the arrangement of the bottom plate.  This was then glued and dried. 

     Using a small square, I laid out the arrangement of the vertical posts and glass bars on the plates making three openings on the sides and two on the ends.  Each opening had two bars apiece.  The posts were made of 3/32” lengths of 1/32” x 1/16” glued between the top and bottom plates.  But, before I assembled the walls, the plates were stacked on top of each other and taped together.  Using a #68 bit the holes for the glass bars were drilled thru the top plate and not quite thru the bottom with my Dremel drill press to assure alignment of the holes.  Now the plates were glued up with the posts glued in between and the assembly was painted light buff deckhouse.  Once dry, I inserted short lengths of some hard black wire for the glass bars through the holes and applied an additional plate on top of the end walls shaped with the camber for the roof that was also painted.  I drilled for and installed four small brass locating pins into the bottom of the assembly for later attachment to the coaming.  For the glass, I took some clear plastic from a packaging shell and cut it for a force fit inside the skylight frame so that I wouldn’t have to use glue that might obscure the plastic.

   To make the roof of the skylight I cut some very narrow strips of 1/32” basswood which I put over a cambered waxed form covered with coffee filter paper. I used some wood glue on the paper and assembled the strips edge to edge and let dry.  The filter paper was very thin but when glued to the planks the assembly held together quite well. (Although the filter paper got quite wet with the glue, it didn’t wrinkle up at all.)  This assembly was then trimmed with end caps that were fit and glued on.  I finished these roof planks the same as I treated the deck planks and when it was glued onto the walls it had a much more realistic look to it than my first attempts which had been cut from a sheet and scribed.  Here are some pics of the finished skylight below.

    For the wheelhouse, I cut off the end of a piece of basswood that was formed to match the required W and L dimensions so that no end grain would be visible.  One end was then tapered and filed down to form the roofs sloping cambered top.  A piece of 1/64” square basswood was cut and fit for the trim piece.  The face of the wheelhouse was drilled for the ships wheel shaft.  The assembly was then painted light buff deck house.

     Since the roof on the wheelhouse was much thinner than the other deckhouses, I used some of my grooved 1/64” plywood instead.  Since the grooves were too far apart, I scribed lines in between them.  The roof was stained and finished like the decking on the top and the perimeter of the bottom.  Once dry, it was glued on by clamping it with a cushioned pad on the roof side to ensure it would follow the shape.  The edges of the roof were then finished; the wheel was painted a dark brown and glued on with medium CA.  Below are a couple of photos of the completed wheelhouse.

 

Edited March 28, 2020 by BETAQDAVE
typo

[lmagna]

Nice work Dave

[BETAQDAVE]

    The fore companionway was next.  Having the companionway hatches left open made everything much more involved as more of the insides would be visible and I needed to search quite a bit to find out what the inside even looked like.   I tried to incorporate most of the details shown in the following sketch compiled from several illustrations from the internet.

    The side and closed end walls were made with 3/32” basswood with the end wall arched on the top for the roof.  For the open end I took some 3/32” square basswood and routed a 1/32” center groove and glued it vertically to the front edge of the side panels for the pair of drop panel door slabs to slide into.  I cut a piece of 3/32” basswood and glued the ends onto the sidewalls with an arch on top to match top of the end wall.  This was for the roof support across the middle of the hatch opening to align with the water dam to support the cut off roof boards. At this point the assembly was painted light buff deck house and set aside while I worked on the sliding hatch cover.

    The 1/32” x 1/16” runners were tapered and a thin groove was cut along the top for the hatch slide anchors made with some thin shim brass.  A pair of notches were cut into the inside face of the runners for removing the hatch cover and also notched for the dam.  I even notched for the drain holes in the side runners by the dam.  After cutting the dam to fit the resulting opening and gluing it between the runners, everything was painted light buff deck house.

    Now for the roof itself which was made similar to the skylight roof, but with a notch cut out for the roof hatch.  One other difference in the roof was that rather than putting any end cap trim on the ends of the roof boards, they were run straight thru. Then of course it was finished similar to the deck boards.  Once dry, the roof and runner assemblies were glued up with carpenters glue and set to dry.   As you may have noticed by now, I am a strong believer in painting or finishing the individual pieces before assembly, which even at this small scale still allows a sharp division between the different finishes without masking. (I must admit that I got a bit carried away here, adding so many details that would not be visible on the finished model, but at least I know they are there.)    

    While this portion was drying, I had to make the sliding hatch cover.   Once again I glued narrow strips of 1/32” basswood over the cambered waxed form with filter paper.  For the hatch cover I didn’t put finished trim pieces across the ends of the boards, I just trimmed them off square.  This was then stained, finished and allowed to dry.  Taking some 1/32” basswood strips that I sanded a camber on the top edge, cut these to length and notched the ends for the shim brass hatch slide anchors and attached them with AC glue.  Now I used 2 strips of 1/32” square basswood to serve as the slide covers.  All of these parts were then painted in light buff and glued onto the bottom of the hatch cover. A tiny bit of blackened copper was also glued on with AC to the top of the cover for the upper latch.

     As the companionways were to sit on top of the coamings, I made a sill stop of 1/64” basswood to sit on top of the coaming for the drop panels.  The rear companionway was a little different than the one on the foredeck in that the open end had stepped down into the cockpit area, but otherwise was made similarly. Since there was no coaming inside the cockpit, I made a sill from 1/32” basswood with a 1/64” sill stop.   Here are some photos below of the fore and aft companionways.

    The entrance doors for the companionways were made with two separate pieces: an upper and lower drop down panel.  I made each of the door panels with two layers of 1/64” grooved plywood glued together with carpenters glue.  On the outer face of the panel the grooves were run vertically and the inner face they were run horizontally.  I cut the panels to size, leaving a 1/64” rabbet where the panels overlapped and an arch on the top edge of the upper panel to match the curve of the sliding hatch covers.  These were stained, sealed and set aside for later installation.

The following four photos are of the finished door panels.  The first shows the outside faces, the second the inside faces, the third shows how they appear when joined together, and the final photo shows how I plan to display them by the forward companionway on the finished model.

    The cockpit walls were carefully cut and filed on the open end so the walls were able to terminate at the sides of the companionway walls.   And finally, I cut and fit some of the 1/64” plywood to serve as the inside wall facing and at the same time serve as a guide to slip the companionways into their coamings.  I still need to make the access ladders and decide how to finish the insides.  If painted dark, it would hide most of the detail inside; while if painted a lighter finish I would need to see what other details would be visible.  At this point I’m not sure, more internet searching may be needed here I guess.  The deck houses and cockpit wall assemblies were all removed now and set aside at this point. 

[BETAQDAVE]

    Switching gears now, it was time to work on the outside of the hull once again so the ship was now supported in the cradle with the waterline level with the benchtop.  I made this makeshift waterline marker shown below from scraps and ran a line around the hull with the pen. 

    Using an exacto knife I carefully followed that inked line with a depth guide clamped to the blade to limit the depth of cut to 1/32”.  Then I cut a block of 1 ½” thick lumber to size and glued a piece of foam padding to the bottom side and drilled for two screws through the block and into the carved out companionway areas so I could mount the hull upside down in a vice as needed. 

    Now I proceeded to shave 1/32” from the hull with a narrow chisel one plank width at a time using a plank as a guide.  I starting from the waterline and worked my way up to and including the shear strakes.  The shear strakes had been made early on from 1/32” x 5/32” basswood planks that followed the edge of the carved hull.  At that time 1/16” wide by 3/32” deep notches were made in the shear planks and cut into the hull at the location of every third stanchion.  Now a slightly overlong 1/16” square basswood stanchion was glued in place at every notch with carpenters glue and left to set up for two days to be sure that they were solidly anchored.  The edges to be left exposed were painted light buff deckhouse.

    Then I steam bent a 1/32” thick basswood plank to follow the curve of the decks.  This was then clamped to the notched stanchions to hold the false timberheads in between, which had also been painted light buff deckhouse, in their premarked locations.  I glued down their ends with carpenters glue, and after this set up for a couple of days; the clamped guide board was removed.  There were no details of how to plank the transom on the plans and I was unable to find any relevant details anywhere else for this type of ship. So, I planked the lower transom with parallel planks laid horizontally and ran the ends of the side planks to butt into it.  I think that is referred to as a round tuck pattern.

    The sides of the hull were planked with both 1/32” and 1/16” thicknesses of 1/16” wide basswood in scaled lengths of about 20 feet.  I started at the level of the lower deck with one row of 1/16” thickness.  Two rows of 1/16” thickness were added above this row for the bulwarks.  Two additional rows of this thickness were run below the deck shear.  The upper bulwarks were made with two rows 1/32” thick planks. Where the scupper openings were located, I filed off the bottom 1/32” of the plank width before applying the planks. The remainder of the hull planks laid was all 1/32” thickness.  The bottom row of 1/16” thick planks were blended into the 1/32” thickness below with sandpaper.

    The shear strakes and the decking were masked with Frog Tape and the inside of the bulwarks were painted with light buff deckhouse.  Once the bulwarks were dry, the tops of all the timberheads were filed and sanded even with the top of the bulwark.  Then the outside of the hull was finish sanded and given two coats of hull black to just below the waterline.  As I mentioned earlier in this I think that I should have put a bit of a bevel on the edges of the planks so they would stand out better. Once it was painted black, it was hard to discern that they actually were individual planks and not a solid hull.  It seemed like a bit of wasted effort there, but as I had never planked a hull before it was fun anyway.

     The cap rail was next.  My first attempt was made in one piece as was suggested in many of the logs on MSW.  I took a sheet of 1/16” basswood held down on the top of the bulwarks and used a pencil to run along the outside outline of the top of the bulwarks onto the sheet.   The sheet was flipped over and remarked with the overhang added. The finish width of the cap rail was then added to get the inside edge.   The inside edge of the rail was marked out and using my scroll saw I cut it just outside of the lines.  I sanded the lines down to its finish size and laid it out on the ship.  Although it turned out to be accurate, I was not happy with its appearance at all, since it looked like it was cut from a sheet, which does not make an accurate representation of the real thing.  I didn’t like the look of the basswood for the cap rail either. 

    However, since I had an accurate outline of the overall shape to work with now, I could redo it with some 1/16” thick maple strips that I ripped down on my full size garage table saw.  I decided to cut it into four approximately 20 scale foot sections on each side and one additional section across the stern.  Scarf joints were used at the joints of the sections together along the sides and a pie shaped filler piece was cut for the bow.  At the stern a simple miter joint was made with a knee piece in between.  Diagrams of the design for the joints made are shown below.

 

    Here is a photo of the joints as done on the model itself.

 

[BETAQDAVE]

    Now it was time to tackle something that I had never done before, coppering the hull!  I spent a lot of time combing through all of my books, magazines, MSW and finally the internet for needed details.  All in all, I came up with my own method.  Sorry, but I didn’t take any pictures of this process.

     Rather than trying to split the copper tape that came with the kit which would leave me with a scaled 12” width which would leave me with no overlap, I just bought some copper tape used for stained glass work from Hobby Lobby instead that was 5/32” wide.  That’s very close to 14” at scale which was the actual width of the copper plates on the ship. I decided against trying to indicate the nails on the plates for two reasons.  For one thing, they would be very tiny at this small scale.   And two, since they were hammered in flat they would leave very little visible evidence that they were even there.  So cutting them to the proper length of 50” at scale was all that was required.

    I started by mass producing the individual plates by simply stretching out the tape and stepping off tic marks on the edge of the plates with my old drafting dividers with the opening set at that scale 50” length.  Once the tape was marked, I simply cut them with a pair of scissors, being careful to make the cuts perpendicular to the edge.   The only tedious part of making individual plates was separating the cut plates from the backing paper.  It required a steady hand with a sharp scalpel and a lighted optivisor on your head to see what you’re doing.                              

        Just drawing the layout for the coppering on the hull was the next problem to solve.  Since the exposed width of the plates was 12” at scale, I locked a pair of my old drafting dividers at 1/8” and I inserted the shouldered points into both legs to keep from poking the points too far into the wood.   The lines of the strakes were then laid out by placing the bottom leg on the previous line with the other leg held perpendicular to that line and poking a hole into the hull with the upper leg, spaced about every ¼” along that line.  When done, I just connected the poke marks with a flexible straight edge and a pencil forming the new line parallel to the previous line.  This allowed me to leave a scale 12” exposure and still have a slight overlap.

     As near as I could determine from the plans, the gore line between the upper and lower belts was a line that more or less ran parallel with the keel from around the midpoint of the hull and then curved up to within to about a strake or so below the waterline at the sternpost.  So basically, this lower belt just covered the skeg of the hull.  The next strake of plates continued up the hull until it overlapped the gore line.  I ran the plates just beyond this line and trimmed them off so there was a slight overlap with the upper belt.

     The first strake was started along the bottom edge of the keel which allowed the first plate to reach the knuckle of the hull and run up onto the hull itself a bit.  Then the next strake would start at that knuckle, thereby overlapping that first strake.  From there on, I just kept on marking one strake at a time parallel to the keel until I reached the gore line of the upper belt.  From there on the strakes were marked parallel to the gore line of the belt.  I continued this procedure, alternating port and starboard sides of the hull to ensure the layouts would align with each other at bow and stern.   Once I had all of the strakes drawn on the hull, the area to be coppered was given two coats of polyethylene and sanded smooth to ensure a good bond with the tapes adhesive.   

    At this point I noticed that I seemed to have forgotten to make the rudder, so I glued up three pieces of 1/8” basswood and filed it to the proper shape.  Rounding the rudder post portion, I left it extended about 3/8” to fit into its hole in the hull.   Notches were filed for the hinge joint.  The very upper portion that was above the waterline was painted hull black and the coppered portion was given two coats of poly.  I decided to make the pintles and gudgeons from brass rather than the paper suggested in the kit, so I needed to bone up a bit on making ironwork and soldering.  Narrow strips were cut from some shim brass sheets and bent around some 1/8” forms into U shapes.  The U shapes were stacked on top of each other, the ends cut to their proper lengths and were soldered together in pairs while still on the forms.   At first I was going to blacken them, but decided instead to paint them a bronze color, since I remembered reading somewhere that bronze and copper were more compatible than iron and was used more for ships of this era.

      I started coppering the ship at the sternpost with a full plate, overlapping that odd horn on the bottom of the keel.  The plate was just trimmed around the horn and pressed into place.  The next plate in line was overlapped, leaving the previous plate with a scale 48” exposure.  This was repeated up to the front edge of the stem and trimmed to match its curve.  The hull was then reversed and this strake was repeated on the other side.  About every third plate or so, I used a wooden stick to firmly burnish the plates. 

    The second row of plates was laid similar to the first row but starting with a half plate at the sternpost.  When the rows of plates for the lower belt came to the gore line with the upper belt, the plates were left overlong and then trimmed off with a knife leaving a slight overlap.  Once the bottom belts for both sides of the hull were finished, I went on to work on the upper belts.  The same procedure was followed there until the top rows of plates were trimmed off at a scale 8” below the waterline.  A final strake of plates was then laid parallel to the waterline with the top edge of the plates 6 scale inches above the waterline.

    Going back now to the the very bottom of the keel, I needed wider plates to cover the bottom and be bent over the keel edges to overlap the bottom row of plates. Since the 5/32” tape was a little bit too wide, I used some of the ¼” tape that came with the kit.  This allowed about a 1/16” of lap on the sides which looked about right.  I continued coppering the bottom of the keel with 48” scaled lengths of exposure that were offset from the bottom row of plates by half, right up the curve of the stem to the waterline, but switched to plates that were cut to 5/32” lengths so the plates could more easily follow the curve.

    Returning once again to the rudder, it was given its coat of copper plates below the waterline.  I used plates long enough to start at the rear edge on one side and finish at the rear edge on the other side.  As it went around the front edge it was carefully trimmed at the pintle notches.  Then the rear edge of the rudder was finished similar to the wrap at the stem of the ship.  The hole was drilled for the rudder post in the transom, the pintle and gudgeon assemblies were then pressed in place on the edge of the rudder and glued with medium AC.  The rudder post was then slipped into the hole in the hull and the gudgeons were pressed into place on the sternpost and also glued with medium AC. 

    Once I had all of the copper plates in place, I burnished all of the plates with my wooden stick to ensure a good bond and brushed on a coating of poly to seal it.  The hull was set upside down and left to dry for a few days.

    OK, at least this is a photo of the coppered hull when it was finished.

Edited April 16, 2020 by BETAQDAVE
Forgotten photo

[Sea Hoss]

Looking great!

[BETAQDAVE]

    At this point all of the holes in the bulwarks were formed.  A notch had been cut for the bowsprit before doing the cap rail using a 1/8” square piece of basswood for a guide and the scuppers were also formed while planking the bulwark.  But I still needed to drill out the oval shaped holes for the mooring lines.  These four holes were located and drilled by hand with an undersized drill bit held in a pin vice.  Then they were shaped with a fine round file and some #400 wet/dry sandpaper glued around a small dowel.

    The holes for the hawse pipes were drilled similarly and the pipe lips were glued in place with CA.  Looking again at the mooring holes, I questioned the fact that no similar lips had been provided in the kit for those mooring holes.  The plans appear to show them, but since mooring was more likely not done with chains there wouldn’t have been a lot of wear on the holes.  For now, unless I find out later that they actually had metal lips, I’m not going to add them at this time.  This is a shot of the mooring holes as shown on the plans below.

    The ship was then set back in the cradle with the waterline level to the base.  I made some templates from the plans out of some stiff card stock showing the rake angle of the masts to the deck.  The cradle was securely taped down to the base plate of my drill press and the plate was tilted to match the angle on the template.   Here is a loosely staged photo of the set up for drilling the main mast below.

    Then being a little leery of making a hard to correct later mistake, I triple checked the setup before actually drilling the holes.  Once the hull was drilled for the 5/32" masts, I went to the plans and located all of the other holes needed in the hull. These were then drilled for all of the items that would be difficult to get at once the rigging was begun.  That included all of the cleats and eyebolts in the stanchions that needed to be blackened before installation.

    The bowsprit was tackled next.  I took some of the 1/8” square basswood supplied with the kit.  The portion exposed beyond the stem was filed round and cut to length as shown on the plans.  Several holes were then drilled for the two cleats inboard and the two sheaves for the stays outboard.  The sheave holes were elongated and a brass pin was drilled through the sides to act as the sheave.

    There was now a bit of ironwork to be tackled. (Metalworking’s something that I am not very skilled at yet.)  The gammoning iron and the majority of the rest of the ironwork was suggested in the instructions to be formed from card or tape because of the small scale, but I had done that in the past and wanted to try doing ironwork with actual metal on this ship wherever possible.  Since the pintles and gudgeons had worked out ok, I thought it was time to continue pushing the envelope of my metal modeling skills.

    Taking a sheet of thin brass shim stock, I heated it with my torch and cut some very narrow strips with my coping saw.  I cleaned up the edges with a fine flat file and went to my scrap maple bin and made a form to bend the strips into the required shape.  Next time I try this method, I will make the form out of metal as the maple (although it’s a hard wood) became deformed and was only good for one use.  When I had the two pieces formed, the top end was soldered together.  It was painted hull black and loosely slipped into place until the bowsprit could be installed. 

    The wood jackstay was made next from 1/32” square maple. These were then glued into place with wood glue.   Once they were set I drilled the dozen closely spaced holes along the joint of each jackstay as shown on the plans for the gasket ropes.  I stained the portion of the bowsprit beyond the bulwark with Minwax light oak and inbound with white paint and once dry, the rope gaskets were threaded in place. 

    The next item to make was the metal wry band at the end of the bowsprit which required an eyebolt on each side and the bottom.  The band itself was simply a short section of hollow brass tubing that was a snug fit near the end of the bowsprit.  The hardest part was drilling the holes for the eyebolts on the round surface.   I did find that by cutting the tails of the eye bolts off just long enough to go through the band, I didn’t have to worry about drilling through the bowsprit itself so the holes were drilled while the band was slipped onto a scrap piece of dowel.  The eye bolts were soldered to the band and a thin fine round file was used to smooth out the inside of the band. This was then painted with hull black paint before installation.  

     As the band was about to be slipped into place and glued, I discovered that I had forgotten the old carpenters’ adage “measure twice, cut once”.  I realized that once the wry band was installed there wouldn’t be any bowsprit beyond it!   The bowsprit was about 3/32” short.  While that may not sound like allot, @ 1/8” scale that’s about 9” off.  Rather than remake the whole bowsprit, I actually shortened it some more.  Cutting it back to the middle of the band, I added a short piece to the end of the bowsprit reformed to the correct overall length and applied CA to the joint as it would be hidden inside the band.  Fortunately I don’t think that the lines will put too much strain on the joint so I may  have just lucked out this time with a quick fix to hide my error! 

    Before the bowsprit could be mounted on the ship the bitts with the windlass fitting needed to be cleaned up and installed.  I formed a pair of bent brass wires for the portable handles, drilled holes in the windlass barrels, and glued them with AC.  The upper portion of the bitt post corners were eased with a file and I carefully painted the windlass black and the bitts light buff deckhouse.  Once dry the bitts were glued into the deck with medium CA. 

    Now the bowsprit was slipped through the bulwark and into the hole in the bitts.  The cleats were glued to the inboard end of the bowsprit.  And finally, the gammoning iron was glued to the stem to finish the bowsprit installation.  Here is a photo below of the completed assembly as it stands now.

    As you can see from the photo, I installed an eye bolt according to the plan detail apparently for attaching a block for the jib downhaul.  I say apparently as there isn't one shown for the fore stay sail block.  Also, the uphaul end of the same line just shows the block being secured to the stay itself.  Before I start the rigging I shall have to investigate further to see which attachment method was actually used.

Edited May 6, 2020 by BETAQDAVE
typo

[BETAQDAVE]

    I continued working on a few more features of the bowsprit by forming three turnbuckles which the plan refers to as stretching screws.  I previously put a small tutorial in the Shop Notes section under “Metal Work, Soldering & Metal Fittings”, so I won’t repeat it here.  The topic listing is Turnbuckles and it was entered on March 16, 2018.

    Once these were made, I worked on the stay fittings that are mounted on the stem.  The details for these fittings on the plans were rather vague.   They appear as a pair of separate pieces with a gap in between them.  With the thickness of the stem being about 12” on the actual ship, I thought this to be rather unlikely since the pin of the shackle would need to be over 14” long to tie it together.  I thought it more likely that the fitting ends would be bent around the stem and joined together similar to the gammoning iron above.  This would allow the use of a much shorter pin on the shackle and a more secure connection.  (Or so I chose to believe, and thus was the way I made mine.)

     Anyway, the upper one is a single eyed fitting with a shackle to join to a seized eye spliced end for the forestay.    At this scale, shackles were still beyond my skill level, so I substituted simple brass split rings for them.   The lower one is a double eyed fitting with two shackles.  The top eye is to join a seized eye spliced end for the jibstay, while the lower eye is to join to a seized eye spliced end for the bobstay.

    The upper iron fitting was tackled first as it seemed simpler to make.  A narrow strip of shim brass was heated and cut overlong.  The strip was doubled over a metal bar the same thickness as the stem and the bend was pinched together forming a tab about 3/16” long that was then drilled for the brass split ring/shackle.  Once the hole was drilled, the tab was filed to shape and the “shackle” was installed, bent closed and soldered.  Since an actual shackle is a slightly elongated shape, I squeezed the ring slightly to imitate the shape.  The lower iron fitting required quite a bit more filing to make the final shape, but other than that it was similar.

    The next feature I worked on was the splash rail at the bow.  1/32” maple was used to make the side pieces by rubber cementing the two pieces together and shaping them on my belt sander so that they would match.  Once they were shaped and separated, half lap joints were cut into the tall ends at the bow before they were steam bent to match the curve of the cap rail.

     A separate piece of maple was carved for the intersection at the bow with half lap joints made to receive the half lap joints previously made in the side pieces. All of the pieces were then painted hull black on just the exposed surfaces and set aside to dry.  Two coats of Minwax light oak finish were applied to the cap rail, sanding it down with #400 wet/dry sandpaper. While that was drying, the half lap joints of the splash rail were joined with carpenters glue off the model.  (They were taped down to the original one piece cap rail to keep them aligned.)

    Once the glue set overnight, the splash rail assembly was set and glued onto the cap rail with carpenters glue after scraping the finish off several spots of the cap rail for the glue.  When the splash rail was finally fixed in place, a small round file was used to make the notches on the topside for the rigging lines and touched up with hull black paint.  Here is the finished splash rail in place below.

    Since the face of the splash rail on the model was barely 1/16” high, I decided to skip trying to put the ships name on it.  (The printing would have to be smaller than the fine print on contract papers.)  Next on my list was to make some of the metal deck fittings.  Some of them, like the pumps, ventilator, stove pipe and cleats, were simply cleaned up, painted and glued with CA into predrilled holes in the deck.  The eyebolts were blackened before installation with medium CA. 

    Some of the other metal fittings had to be custom made.  The crossed pipe guards were bent from four pieces of .022mm stiff blackened wire around a U shaped metal form. Pairs of these U shaped guards were crossed over each other and were glued into four predrilled holes with medium CA glue.  The crossed joints at the tops were soldered together once in place on the deck.   The photo below shows the guards in place.

    The boom buffer fitting was also custom made and due to the very limited space available to install it and the related eyebolts and blocks, it was a rather tough one to make.  The photo below shows that it was basically a bent four legged “table” with an oval shaped hole in the top.

    The photo also illustrates the value of not permanently attaching the deck structures until most of the rigging is in place, especially when building at such small scales.  Imagine trying to do a feature like this with the wheelhouse in the way!

    I bent two overlong pieces of the .022mm stiff blackened wire over a wide U shaped form to make the supporting legs.  The “table” top was a flat rectangular piece of brass with three overlapping holes drilled in a row in the center and then filed smooth into an oval shape.   The “table” top was placed bottom side up with the legs clamped in place to the bottom and soldered together.  Once the “table” was completed, it was set into position and using the tips of the legs to mark their positions on the deck, four holes were drilled.  The height of the top was adjusted by shortening the legs.  It was cleaned up and blackened. 

    Now a hole was drilled for a blackened eyebolt to go directly under the “table”.  A single 3/32” block was tied to the eyebolt with a long link passed through the hole in the “table”. The “table” legs and the eyebolt with the long link were glued with medium CA into their predrilled holes at the same time.  (Could have used another set of hands for that, but there was no room.)  Another blackened eyebolt was glued to the deck about 1/8” from the “table” toward the starboard crossed bollard with another single 3/32” block tied to it.   A 1/8” double block was stropped with a pair of opposing 4mm hooks for later attachment to the main boom sheet band.            

     Using the .20mm tan rigging line attached to a becket on the first single block. The line was first run through the double block, back through the single block, back once again through the double block and finally through the second single block for later tying off at the crossed bollard. I thought that hooking up this block and tackle arrangement would be easier to do at this point, rather than waiting for more obstacles to work around later. 

    At this time I questioned the fact that the plans called for two crossed bollards and an additional four uncrossed bollards, especially since there were only four mooring ports.  In the end after a search on pilot boats, there seemed to be a lot of conflicting opinions on that subject.  Some said anywhere from two to six, and some just called for cleats rather than bollards.  In the end I chose four, one for each mooring port.   The ones at the bow were just straight posts, while the ones at the stern were made with cross bars.  The cross bar bollards are shown below.

    Taking a length of 3/16” square basswood, I cut four 3/8” pieces and filed down the lower portion into round mounting pins.  The cross bars being rectangular in cross section needed matching holes in the posts.  I made the bars from 1/32” x 1/16” maple, so I drilled two 1/32” overlapping holes and filed the opening to match.  I found that exposed ends of timbers in this era were capped with copper for protection from rot, so after painting them light buff deckhouse I put some of the copper tape from the hull on the ends.  Here is a photo of them on the model.

    As I look at them now I feel that the timbers look overly large, so they may be reduced before gluing them in.

    I looked over a rather poorly cast anchor and decided to modify it to make it a bit more realistic.  The shank and the shackle were OK, but the cross bar stock was basically a lump on the side of the shank so it was filed off and custom made with a length of .022mm brass wire.  I drilled a .028mm hole for it in the head of the shank to leave a little extra room allowing the stock to fold up if that’s how I want it displayed, because at this point I have yet to decide.   The wire for the movable stock was heated, cut to length and a right angle bend was made on one end.

    This movable stock required two ball shaped end caps and a stopper ring near the middle.  These were all made from the Britannia coaming walls that came with the kit.  The first step was to cut a slightly oversized flat round disc from the wall and thin it down to the desired thickness of the retaining ring.  Then a .022mm hole was drilled through the disc.  The straight end of the stock was slipped through the hole in the shank and the ring was then soldered to the middle of the bar and then filed down to its final diameter. Since the ring was so close to the shank, I used a couple of heat sinks to make sure that the heat wouldn’t deform the shank.  There was also a small chain and pin used to lock the stock in place, but at this scale it would be very difficult to make so I just skipped that detail.

    The two end caps were made similarly, but once cut; I left them twice as thick as the stopper ring.  They were both drilled, but only about halfway through.  After they were both soldered on, their caps were filed into ball shapes.  The anchor was then painted iron /hull black.  The photo below shows the finished anchor sitting on the deck.

   

[BETAQDAVE]

     Shifting gears once again, I turned to making the masts. I started by tapering the masts.  The photo below shows my set-up for tapering the foremast from a 5/32” dowel that came with the kit. 

   The first order of business was to bottom out the dowel in the hole previously bored into the hull.  I ran a pencil around the bottom of the mast at the deck, removed it from the hole, measured the height of the mast off of the drawings, marked the top of the dowel and added 1/8” to it.  The dowel was then cut off at this mark.  I inserted the portion of the mast that would be below the deck into the drill chuck. To steady the dowels other end, the remaining 1/8” of it was set into the 5/32” hole in a drill index with a scrap of wood to back it up.  This was then clamped in place to the table. 

    Using a sanding block with #180 grit sandpaper and the drill press set at medium speed, the block was held at the bottom of the dowel until the top end of the mast matched the diameter on the plans.  I used my digital calipers to check my progress. Since the kit instructions did not indicate exactly what kind of shape the taper was to take on and the plans only showed a straight even taper, that is how I shaped it.  I used a straight edge held against the dowel to keep track of my progress and just continued running the block up and down the whole length of the exposed dowel until I had a smooth even taper.

    Once I had it shaped to my satisfaction, the dowel was removed, cut to its final length and the very top was filed square until it fit into the metal mast cap fitting.  All the masts, gaffs and the main boom were shaped similarly.

    The mast coat was next.  This seemed daunting at first as you need to basically form a doughnut from wood.  It actually turned out to be fairly simple.  Taking a 3/8” square basswood timber, I sliced a piece off of the end of it the height of the mast coat.  This piece was glued onto a piece of paper and left to set.  When dry, it was clamped in a vice and I drilled a 5/32” hole through the center of this piece.  A short piece of the 5/32” dowel was inserted into this hole to serve as a handle and temporary reinforcement. 

    Since this left the end grain of this block exposed, it was a simple matter to split off small slivers of wood with a sharp razor blade until I was left with a wooden ring the diameter of the mast coat.  The remaining ring was given a coat of poly to seal it after I had sanded it into its final shape.  The paper was peeled off of the bottom leaving a nice wooden mast coat as shown below to be set aside until the mast could be mounted to the deck. 

    I took a short break from making the masts to make up the two sizes of mast hoops from used paper grocery bags.  I took lengths of appropriate sized wood dowels and wrapped them with wax paper.  I cut strips of paper from the bags and wrapped them tightly several turns around the mast hoop forms after giving the strips a thin coating of wood glue on one side.  These were then clamped and set aside for a couple of days to thoroughly dry.  Taking the clamps off, I rolled a razor blade over the forms to separate the individual hoops. (I made sure to make plenty of extras.)  The resulting hoops were soaked briefly in Minwax light oak stain.  After these were dried again, I soaked them in diluted poly to give them some added stiffness. 

   The photo below is a detail from the plans showing the foremast details described in the following text.

    There were three mast bands plus the mast cap that needed to be formed for the upper end of the fore mast.  The lowest band was done first.  I used some thin walled brass telescoping tubing that I had on hand to make the bands.  A short length of tubing with an inside diameter equal to the mast diameter at the location shown on the plan was sliced off and slipped into place on the mast and secured with CA.  This band needed one lug to attach the forestay on the front face and a pair of lugs on the port and starboard sides to hold the double shrouds.  I made small brass split rings that were soldered to the band to serve as lugs.  This band also required a short bar extended from the back side of the band to attach the throat halliard block assembly.  For this detail I took a short length of 1/16” solid brass bar and flattened one end on an anvil.  This flat end was then shaped and drilled for a shackle.  Then I soldered the other end of the bar to the band.  I found out that the trickiest part here was just trying to solder a fitting on without unsoldering the ones you had already put on. 

    The lower cap or yoke that holds the bottom end of the signal pole was done next. This was one of the simplest as all that was needed was to solder a band sized to insert the end of the 5/64” signal pole to the face of the band on the mast.  The third mast band was also pretty straight forward since it only needed a single lug on the backside of the mast.  All of these bands were slipped into place and glued with CA.

    Once the other bands were set in place I returned to the mast cap fitting.  The back-side of the square cap needed a single lug, so I soldered a brass split ring to it.  A peculiar fitting called out as a span iron on the plan detail was also needed.  I sized a length of tempered 1/16” brass wire to match the plans and bent it around a round metal bar with a diameter that matched the outside width of the square portion of the mast cap.  Taking the resulting “U” shaped bar to an anvil, I flattened, shaped the ends and drilled a 1/32” hole through both ends of the “U”.   The mast cap was glued onto the square tenon of the foremast with CA.  I drilled a 1/32” hole all the way through the square part of the mast cap and the mast to align with the holes in the span iron.  A short section of 1/32” brass wire was cut with one end blunted to imitate a bolt head.   This wire was passed through the assembly leaving a small projection exposed and given a small spot of solder to imitate the other end of the bolt. This allowed the span iron to freely move in place.

    The signal pole was cut from a slightly overlong piece of 5/64” dowel that was chucked into the drill press and shaped with a taper at both ends.  At this point, I applied Minwax light oak stain to the foremast and the signal pole followed by two coats of satin finish polyethylene.  The white portions of the masts will be painted later.  The six brass split ring/shackles were all hung in place and soldered closed for later attachment of the rigging.  At that time I will squeeze them all into more of an oval shape.  My finished version of the foremast detail is shown below.

 

      The photo below is a detail from the plans showing the mainmast details described in the following text.

    There were four mast bands plus the mast cap that needed to be formed for the upper end of the mainmast.  I started with the lowest band first that needed lugs to attach the shrouds to, so once again I soldered a small brass split ring to each side for that.   This band also needed a short bar extended from the back side of the band for attachment of the throat halliard block assembly.  This was handled the same as the short bar on the foremast.

    The next band was totally different from all the other bands since a topmast spreader was needed.  The detail of this spreader on the plans, called for an angle iron trestle tree with outriggers to port and starboard.  There are no cross sections to show if the outriggers are a continuation of this angle iron shape or just a flat iron bar welded to it (since I didn’t think that such a complex fitting could possibly have been formed from a single piece back then).  The kit instructions called for a solid round metal bar bent into something of a narrow triangle shape, bent with integral holes formed on the ends for the backstays.

    In the end I decided to do things a bit different from either method.  I used a short length of the brass tubing again for the band and then cut two narrow strips of shim brass that matched the length of the band.  One piece was cut to the overall length of the spreader and the center of the spreader was soldered to the back side of the band.  Taking two lengths of very small diameter brass tubing (just large enough for the backstay to pass through) cut to match the width of spreader bar, I soldered one of these to each end of the spreader.  Another piece of brass tubing to match the diameter of the end of the topmast was soldered to the front side of the band.  Then the other narrow strip of shim brass was given a slight bend in the middle that was soldered to the front side of the topmast band.  The free ends of the strip were then cut to length and soldered to the brass tubing at the ends of the backside of the spreader.

    The next band up was a simple band with one lug on the backside of the mast.  Another split ring was soldered on for the lug and a split ring/shackle was attached and soldered shut to finish this one. 

    The final band was to serve as a diagonal brace for the extended stub on the backside of the mast cap above.  I think that I may overbuilt this compared to the plan detail, but then I thought their version was rather weak for the heavy weight of the main boom that it needed to support, especially when in port as there was no boom rest.  The band was formed and glued in place with CA.  The top of the mainmast was squared off to fit the mast cap and this was also glued in place.  A small split ring was soldered to the front of the mast cap for the triatic stay.  On the backside of the cap, the extender bar itself was formed with a length of 1/16” round brass bar.  Another piece of the bar was also used to make the diagonal brace.  The brace was cut to length and shaped with files to fit snugly to the face of the band and the extender bar.  The ends of the brace were then soldered to both the band and extender bar.   The joined end of the extender bar was smoothed with files making a flat area on both sides of the joint.  This flat was drilled through for the split ring/shackle which was then soldered shut for attachment of the main boom topping lift single block. (The kit supplied 3/32” block also seemed too small for the weight involved so I may substitute a larger one.)  

    The topmast was tapered at both ends and given a shoulder near the top for holding the two backstays, the main topmast stay, and the gaff topsail halliard. The topmast was then slipped through the mast cap and the heel socket and glued with CA.  I haven’t fitted a ball truck yet for the flag halliard, as I’m not sure how I will handle it.  Here is a photo of my version of the band area of the mainmast below.

    The main boom rest was made similar to the mast coats, but with a slight slope to the top surface allowing it to be level with the deck surface by drilling the center hole at a slight angle.  The rest was glued in place with wood glue and set aside to dry after taping the mast rings on the mast above.  Six small scraps of basswood were equally spaced around the mainmast below the boom rest and glued with carpenters glue.  Being such tiny pieces, I decided it was easier to file them into shape after gluing them on.  This photo below shows my boom rest.

      As I did to the foremast and signal pole, I applied Minwax light oak stain to these also, followed by two coats of satin finish polyethylene.  The white portions of these and the mast coats will be painted later.  The mast coats can’t be glued in place until the fife rails are attached because they are wider than the opening in the rails.  As far as the fife rails are concerned I may decide to make them from maple rather than the metal fittings that came with the kit.

    My next entry will be making the boom and gaffs.

[BETAQDAVE]

    The plan detail that shows all of the main features of the main boom and the gaff ends is shown below.

    I tackled the main boom first.  Taking the 1/8” kit dowel to the drill press, I tapered it at both ends.  Once again the plans gave little information other than saying the maximum diameter should be about 1/3 of the way from the mast end of the boom with that also being slightly larger than the open end.  The taper was supposed to be a parabolic curve, but of course at this small scale it will be hard to tell, so I just kind of eyeballed it and made it taper evenly. 

    There was no plan view to show dimensions or the shape of the boom jaws, just the detail shown above.  I looked at various drawings and photos of other schooners until I settled on kind of a compromise which turned out to be rather wing like, but were fairly easily fabricated from scraps of 1/16” maple. 

    I filed the sides of the boom flat where the jaws would be attached and glued them in place with carpenters glue.  After I gave it a couple of days to let the glue set up nice and solid, the jaws were filed and sanded in place.  (I thought that would be easier than shaping them first since it also left me with a convenient handle.)  Four impressions were made on each side of the jaws to indicate the bolts.  When installing the eyebolt for the tack lashing, it was discovered that I had made an error by installing a bearing block which is only for the gaffs, not the boom! (Pay more attention to the drawings dummy!)  So when I install the parral beads later I will remove it and install a filler piece.

     The two cleats for the peak lines were next.  The cast metal cleats that came with the kit looked way too large to attach to the boom, so I took a 1/32” x 1/16” stick of maple and carved my own.  It was easier than I thought, and with a little more practice, I could have done better, but making any of these 1/8” scale tiny fittings from wood can be very tedious and a bit frail.  I think the trick is to basically shape as much as you can while you still have the rest of the stick to hang onto and then cut it loose for the final touches.  After these were made and stained, I soaked the parts briefly in thin CA to strengthen it a bit, although these particular parts will not be under much stress on the model.

    Next up was the boom sheet band.  I made the band from a narrow strip of shim brass that was annealed to soften it up a bit. Although the actual fitting was made from two separate pieces with a gap between them, the scale was too small for me to duplicate it that way.  My method was to bend the band in half and pinch about 1/32” of the folded end tight in my vice.  I opened the fold slightly and held a 1/8” drill bit on the resulting seam.  I rolled the open ends of the shim back around the bit and pinched them to meet together opposite the fold held in the vice. 

     I left enough of the shim ends exposed on the open end to set in a clamp and drilled holes in the resulting lugs for the 1/32” brass wire yolk.  This wire was bent into a “U” shape to align with the holes in the lugs.  I slipped the band into its final position on the boom and pinched the open end closed after giving it a touch of CA to glue it in place.  The open end lug was then given a very small sliver of solder to hold it closed.  The wire yolk was then set into the holes with just a bit left projecting through the holes.  I applied a spot of solder on the exposed ends to serve as tightening nuts.

    Four short pieces of 1/32” maple were positioned near the end of the boom for the reef pendant cleats.  They were set with wood glue and three more even shorter pieces were glued in place for the stopper cleats for footropes and clew earing lashings.  Once these were solidly set in place their shapes were formed with files and holes were drilled into the reef pendant cleats.

    And finally a small band was fitted onto a shoulder filed on the very end of the boom for the topping lift.  I made this band with a lug a little differently than the others by just pinching the band tightly around the shoulder. (I thought attaching a split ring here would be too large.)   I gave it a touch of solder, filed down the end, drilled a hole in it for the lift and set in place with medium CA.  The boom was stained with Minwax light oak and two light coats of satin finish polyethylene.  The results of my labors on the main boom are shown in the two photos below, showing the different lug and my error on the jaws still to be repaired.

 

    The main and fore gaffs were very much alike except for their length so they were tackled together.  The plan detail showed previously just showed the main gaff with a note concerning the two differences of an eye band and a gaff topsail sheet block on the main gaff only.  Below are additional details on the jaw ends of the gaffs as shown on the plans.

    The gaffs were made from the 5/64” birch dowels that came with the kit.  Before tapering the gaffs the first thing that I did here was to drill holes into the open ends for the peak line eye bolts.  (Drilling a centered hole in the flat end of a 5/64” dowel, while not easy, was still easier than drilling it after tapering it thinner still!)  They were shaped similar to the main boom with my drill press.  The gaff jaws were assumed to be smaller, but since there were no dimensions given, I had to wing it.  (The detail drawings are great for giving you a sense of the overall appearance, but not having been drawn to scale it forces you to make an educated guess for sizes.)

    So once again I filed down the flats for the jaws on the mast ends and glued some more of my 1/16” maple on them like I did for the boom.   (This time I made allowances for the bearing blocks!!)  These blocks were shaped from maple and glued in place at the angles indicated on the sail plan.  I filed the jaws to shape and made the bolt impressions on their sides.

    One note here, when attaching the jaws to the boom and gaffs, I cut some custom tapered shims that I glued down to a flat scrap of wood to align and support the face of the jaws while the wood glue set.

    Both gaffs required an iron “U” bolt close to the bearing blocks to hook the throat halliard blocks to.  For these I bent a piece of 1/32” brass wire to shape, drilled holes in the ends of the gaffs and these were glued with some medium CA.  Also required, was an eyebolt attached to the bottom side of the main gaff only, for attaching the gaff topsail sheet block.

    Two eyebands were needed on each gaff for the peak halliard blocks, so I cut those bands and glued them in place with CA.  The main gaff also needed an additional eyeband near the open end for a topsail sheet block which was filed with a very slight shoulder for it.  I will later solder small brass split rings to all four of these remaining bands before attaching the blocks and attaching the parral beads.  I shortened the eyebolts for the ends of the gaffs and glued them with a touch of medium CA.

    Both gaffs were fitted with a pair of tiny maple stopper cleats for the earing lashings of the main and foresails which were once again filed to shape after being glued into place with wood glue.  The gaffs were also stained with Minwax light oak and two light coats of satin finish polyethylene.  The following photos show the results of my labors on the gaffs.  

    While there still remain some details to finish (or correct) on both the masts and spars, I will take care of them on a later posting.      

[BETAQDAVE]

    Taking a break from my Wanderer build, I shifted my focus to fabricate and install the lower portion of the deadeyes for the Phantom.  Rather than using Chucks method of tying the deadeyes on with thread, I decided to try my hand at soldering again. Here is a photo of all the tools needed to complete these tiny fittings.

     This close up shows the process in order from left to right.

     The first step was to make the deadeye strops by wrapping some .27mm blackened brass wire around a 3/32” dia. drill bit, leaving the tail ends slightly extended from the bit.  These ends were trimmed off even and flattened with a hammer.  A deadeye was inserted into the opening and pinched closed as shown leaving a thin flattened tail that was smoothed with a file to solder to the chain plate.

    The next step was to make the chain plates.  I took a sheet of .026 mm brass to the bench and clamped it down with a metal ruler and proceeded to repeatedly score a 2.0 mm wide strip with an old #11 Exacto blade with the tip broken off until I could snap the strip off.  The strip was cut into eight 13.5 mm lengths and the corners were trimmed off one end with a metal snips. (That’s 6 to use, and 2 extra just in case.)

    When that was completed a sharp metal awl was used to mark (one at a time) the locations of three .69mm holes on the trimmed end.  I flattened the plate and drilled each hole before going to the next one.  Once all three holes were done the plate was flattened once again and sanded smooth.

    Now that the three main components were done, they were pinned in place on this jig and soldered together.  My procedure for soldering is still a work in progress, but after several failed attempts I managed to work it out by first putting a dab of solder paste between the face of the chain plate and the back of the strop.  Then another dab of paste was placed on the face of the strop that allowed me to stick a tiny bit of solder on top of the assembly.

    When the tip of the hot iron was held against the chain plate, the solder behaved as hoped by melting and flowing were it belonged to make a nice shinny joint.  The excess solder was filed down flat so they could fit into those tiny slots that were now drilled and filed into the cap rail for the chain plates as shown below.

     The masts were temporarily set in the deck with a length of chord clipped to the masts where the backstays will be anchored. That chord allowed me to align the chain plates with the backstays as shown below.

     Once the angle of the chain plate was established and marked on the hull, the plate was held in place to mark the location of the bottom hole in the plate.  I used a .69mm drill to make the hole and tapped a full sized pin through the hole into the hull. The plate was secured with the full size pin in the bottom hole, the other two holes were drilled directly through the plate and half sized pins with a tiny dab of CA on the end were tapped in place.

     Now that all of the chain plates were installed, they were given two coats of Model Shipways MS4828 iron/cannon black paint.  Some touch up painting is still needed, but the next phase of the project will be to mount it on a finish base to reduce the chance of damaging what I have already accomplished. 

      Here is the ship as it stands now.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Edited January 11, 2022 by BETAQDAVE

[BETAQDAVE]

    Heading out to my scrap lumber supply in the garage, I pulled out a 15” long piece of 1X8 prefinished oak to rip down to 5” wide for the display base only to discover that my table saw is out of commission right now, since one of the rubber caster wheels had been crushed by the weight of the saw.   So the band saw had to be used instead. Since the band saw gives me a rougher cut than the table saw, I also had to use a heavy hand plane to smooth it down.

    I measured the plan to determine the placement of the support pedestals and marked the location of the holes on the display board. The ends of the board will still need trimming and a rabbet needs to be formed all the way around the board to hold the plexiglass cover, but I will have to do all of that at a later time.

    OOPS! I thought things were going too smoothly and I was right. 😢  While handling the hull to temporarily set it upside down on the drill press to drill the mounting holes in the keel, I inadvertently broke out a small section of the port side main cap rail right at the lower mainmast deadeye. So now that’s something else I’ll need to repair after getting the ship mounted.

    The hull was placed upside down on a piece of plywood with some leveling blocks to make the waterline parallel to the plywood. The positions of the two holes 4.5” apart were then marked on the keel at stations #2.5 and 7. The whole setup was put on the drill press table and maneuvered into position below the drill bit. Very carefully, I drilled the 7/64” holes to the proper depth into the keel with a brad pointed bit while trying to avoid damaging the copper plates.

    Long ago, I had turned a matching pair of pedestals out of walnut for mounting a plastic WWII warship that ended up being made of brass. Rather than order another set of brass pedestals, I decided to modify the walnut ones to suit the sloped keel of the Phantom.

    First I measured the required height difference in the two pedestals and put a mark there on the lower portion of the short one. By slipping a tight fitting dowel into the mounting screw hole, I went over to my disc sander and held the dowel perpendicular to the disc as shown below.

 

    I slowly pushed the pedestal into the disc while rotating the dowel until I came to the mark. Here is the modified pedestal next to the original one at this point.

 

    The slots in the tops of the pedestals were cut to fit the width of the copper plated keel and the mounting board was clamped in my padded woodworking vice. Then I laid the model on its side and lined it up with the holes for the screws as shown below.

 

    One screw was pushed through the board, the pedestal and into the hole in the keel. Once this one was started, I did the same with the other screw and alternated from one to the other until both were secured. I inserted the masts just to be sure it was vertical and here she is temporarily mounted on the board.

 

    Now that the model was on a stable base, it was time to make my repair of the damaged cap rail. The damage was only about 1/8” long, but that’s what made it so difficult to fix. I had to take a file to the remaining portion of the cap rail so I could form a less ragged replacement piece and remove the finish to allow the glue to have something to grip. I used a scrap of 1/32” thick maple, a bit wider than needed, to leave me something to grip with a hemostat while machining it.

    The ends were trimmed to match and a notch was filed in the joining edge to go around the deadeye strop. Once it was shaped to fit snugly into the gap, I clamped the hemostat in one arm of my triple grip third hand as shown below.

 

 

    Adjusting the orientation of my patch to align with the model in the base, it was slid aside to allow me to carefully apply some carpenters glue to both the model and my patch. Sliding the third hand back into position, I carefully backed away from it and left it to dry.

    Having left it undisturbed for two days, the clamp was removed, and although it still projected beyond the edge of the cap, I found it to be securely attached. So, using some fine files and a very fine grit sanding disc in my cordless Dremel tool, the edge was trimmed back flush with the existing cap. Since my Dremel tool only required a light touch, I thought that it wouldn’t break off the patch. That’s why it did the majority of the stock removal.

Refinishing the patch and the area around it with polyurethane, I found that only close examination would reveal the repair. Who could ask for more?

    I’m not sure what to tackle next, as my table saw in the very cold 🥶 garage will be out of commission now until things warm up to allow me to repair the crushed caster. I don’t want to keep taking the model off the base anymore than necessary as the grip of the mounting screws will loosen and I don’t want to install the masts and rigging until it is permanently mounted. Perhaps I will work on finishing some of the deck fittings like the fife rails since the metal ones don’t look that great to me anyway. I think that the bollards that I made look too big, and will be redone also.

[Wawona59]

Hi Dave,

 

I recently joined MSW and am still kind of finding my way around.  I'm so glad I cam across you build log for the Phantom.  I too will be starting a build log for the Phantom as my first project on MSW.  I'll be facing some of the same construction issues that you are doing.  I inherited a started Phantom model several years ago.  It's been sitting on a shelf in the garage for several years.  When I finally opened the box, I found that the carved bulwarks had been removed down to deck level.  I was planning to cut notches in the solid portion of the hull to receive individual timberheads.  Lo and behold, that is the approach that you took!  I'll be reading your Phantom build log more thoroughly.  I also really like the joint you used to spliced the top rail.  I'll be doing something similar.

 

BTW, I'm also going to check out your Aurora Wander build.  I built this kit in the late 60's or early 70's.  I was displayed in my parents' living room for years.  When I went away to college, my parents sold their house.  The buyer liked the Wanderer model so my parents included it in the house.

 

Nice work Dave!

John Newcome, Wawona59  

[BETAQDAVE]

    Welcome to the clubs John, both MSW and the Phantom build club. Many of our members have tackled this kit as one of their first wooden ships. Originally I bought this kit as a graduation gift for my uncles son while it was on sale. Unfortunately, (Or maybe fortunately) I discovered by way of my uncle, that he didn’t think that his son would be interested, so we ended up just giving him money instead. Since it had been quite a while since I last built a wooden ship, I decided to tackle it myself.

    Chuck Passaro made a build log that pretty much follows the kits’ manual. I would suggest that you read his log first since his guide goes from the beginning to completion of the model. I have deviated quite a bit from his version, but it was mostly to add things that the kits’ manual either over simplified or omitted all together.

    My only regret that I have is that I forgot how hard working at this small scale was. I think I would have preferred making it from scratch at 1:64 which would have made all of the tiny parts much easier to handle and add the smaller details, but perhaps I could do that later, if I hang around that long.

    At any rate, I continue to soldier on with it and switch over to the Wanderer whenever I feel the need for a little more variety in the hobby.  As far my Wanderer  build goes, the vast majority of the plastic parts I will be making myself since those parts are inaccurate and/or poorly detailed. 

    Good luck on your build, and don’t be afraid to deviate as you see fit.  

    

Edited February 19, 2022 by BETAQDAVE

[BETAQDAVE]

    I decided to tackle the bollards next since they seemed to be a simpler project. The ones I made previously appeared over-sized when placed on the model, so these were now discarded. Originally, two posts were made with a rectangular cross bar and the other two were without. This time, all four will have the cross bar. Since these posts wouldn’t be under any strain once installed, I just used six 2” lengths of 3/32” square basswood stock for the new posts. (I’ve learned the hard way, that small pieces need to be cut overlong to leave a “handle” until cutting the piece loose and to make extras.) To be uniform, I made extensive use of the stop on the Micro Miter Box below for all of the cuts and made the same cut on each piece before moving on to the next piece.

    On the face of the first post, marks were drawn at the locations of the top, bottom and sides of the mortise for the cross bar, the height above the deck and the overall length of the piece to serve as a pattern. The mortise is centered and 1/16” down from the top of the post. The mark for the deck is 1/4” below the top of the post and the overall length is 7/16”. The cross bar is made from 1/32” X 1/16” maple and is cut overlong at 1”.

    The first cut in the post was a shallow one all the way around the post at the top of the deck mark to limit the filing of the peg. The next cut was to separate the post from the rest of the stick. The post was set in the vise with the shallow cut up against edge of the vise as shown below to allow the use of a flat file to form the peg at the bottom that will be set into the deck.

 

    The mortise was formed next by putting the post in the vice to prevent it from splitting while forming the hole. Two side by side 1/32” through holes were drilled first with a pin vice.

 

    Then I used my smallest square file to square the corners of the mortise until the cross bar was a tight fit.

 

    The cross bar was inserted into the mortise until it projected 1/16” from the opposite face of the bollard. The remaining end of the cross bar was also trimmed off leaving a 1/16” projection with a fine sanding disc mounted in my cordless Dremel tool. Once the cross bar was in place, I used a #78 bit to drill through the post and the bar joint. I sliced a tiny sliver of wood and inserted it through the hole to lock the joint. Here are photos of the four bollards put in place on the model.

 

 

    There was some thought of putting a copper cap on the tops of the bollards again, but after a little more research I found that it was not all that common a practice on pilot boats. Besides that, I would have to put a cap on all the vertical posts to be uniform. The completed bollards were sanded, given a light coat of light buff deckhouse and set aside for installation later.

    Next on my list is the fife rails.

 

Edited March 2, 2022 by BETAQDAVE

[BETAQDAVE]

    The metal fife rails that came with the kit shown below didn’t look much better than the kit supplied anchor so I decided to see if I could do better job with wood.

 

    They also differed both, from the detail drawings on the plans and the ones shown in Chucks’ practicum shown here.

 

 

 

 

    You can see that the cross bar between the posts and the side half cleat are higher than the fife rail on Chucks’, as opposed to them being even on my kit and the details. The posts are taller than mine, and the spindles are much thicker. The belaying pins included with the kit were much too short to project below the rail which would not allow the belayed lines to be tied off.

    The first step was to rip a 3/32” X 3/32” maple strip about 6” long for the post material. I marked one face for the cuts and using my Micro Miter Box with the ultra-fine toothed double-edge razor blade once again, I cut it into six sticks about 1” long. In this case, the final length was 7/16”, leaving 9/16” left over to hang onto during the machining.

    Since this was another process of making each piece an exact duplicate of the others, I utilized the adjustable stop for every cut. The stop was not reset until that particular cut was repeated on every piece. The first cuts were made 3/64” deep and 7/64” down from the top of the post on two adjacent sides. The next two cuts were duplicated 1/16” below the first cuts.

    Clamping each post in my machinist vise, I carved out a 3/64” deep notch between those two adjacent sides with a fine file between the first two cuts for holding the fife rail. Returning to the Miter Box, a very shallow cut was made on all four sides of the stick 21/64” down from the top of the post to mark the overall height of the post above the deck. 7/64” below that cut, the post was finally cut loose from the stick.

    Now each post was clamped in my vise with the 7/64” bottom left exposed. Once again I filed a round peg with files and sanding sticks for insertion into the deck. Here is one of the resulting fife rail posts.

 

    Then I also needed to make two throat halliard half cleats to be attached to the posts. There is one on the starboard side of the main fife rail and one on the port side of the fore fife rail. I decided to carve these from wood, since cutting one of the kits’ metal ones in half would still be over-sized. These cleats are a prime example of fabricating extremely tiny parts, (1/16” wide X 5/64” high X 5/32” long) so I will provide some photos of the process here.

To start with, I sacrificed these hardwood clothes pins for the material as shown below.

 

 

    The long skinny portion was clamped in my vice, leaving the short fat end exposed. Using sanding sticks and files, the top and bottom were shaped.

 

    Once the top and bottom of the cleat were shaped, the sides of the cleat were thinned down and tapered to the final profile.

 

    Now that the main portion of the cleat was finished I released it from the handle with that razor toothed hand saw and repeated the process for the other cleat.

    

    The cleats will be painted iron black and glued to the appropriate fife rail post.

Edited April 3, 2022 by BETAQDAVE

[BETAQDAVE]

   I’ve been away from this log for quite some time now for various reasons including spending time on my Wanderer project and some health concerns, but I’m back now to continue catching the log up with the actual construction.

   So now that the “easy” part was completed, it was time to make the fife rails. I originally tried using some 1/16” thick maple, but while trying to cut the shape, the part kept splitting along the grain of the wood. So the grain needed to be accounted for by using another layer of wood with the grain going the opposite way. Which is to say, I needed to make my own 1/16” thick plywood!

   Unfortunately, the thinnest maple that I had on hand was already 1/16”. This seemed to be a real problem until I decided to glue two layers of my 1/16” maple together with the grain running opposite to each other overnight and sand the result down to 1/16”. Sounds simple enough, right?

   The idea was simple, but to actually do it was another matter all together! Each of the layers also had to be the same thickness to get the benefit of alternate grain directions. I squared up the edges of the slabs and took out the roughest sanding stick that I had (180 grit). Gripping the small pieces with just my finger tips and nails, I started the sanding operation.

 

 

   After the first hundred strokes and measuring the minuscule results, I realized that this was really going to take some time! After each hundred strokes the opposite side was sanded to keep each layer equal and the sanding stick was so clogged with wood dust that it had to be cleaned up with my Magic Eraser shown below before continuing.

 

   As it turned out, each side of the two wood slabs required over 1,000 strokes to get to the required thickness.  Once I got going, my stubborn streak took hold of me, and I refused to give it up, but ohhh, my aching fingers!!!

  I drew a template to scale on plain white paper for the fife rail and glued it to the topside of the slab with rubber cement.

   But then despite going through all of that work, I found that drilling the small holes for the belaying pins still caused the layer with the grain running the narrow direction to fail.  I also had trouble when sanding up to the lines on the paper template because the template would deform or pull loose.  Thinking that it was because of the cement, I tried using white wood glue, but it did the same thing.

   Finally, I gave up on using both the plywood and the plain white paper template, since the rails will be painted anyway. So I dug up some 1/16” thick scraps of plastic for the rails.  I used drafting vellum this time and redrew them which held up much better to both the glue and the sanding.

   Since both the plastic and the paper were very slick, I had to machine it as if it was metal. So to keep the drill bits from wandering, a sharp metal awl was needed to dent the plastic for all the holes.

   The first step was to drill a 13/64” hole to give me the inside radius of the front edge of the rail.  After that, I used some round and square files to clean out the rest of the opening for the masts.  Two 3/64” x 3/64” notches were filed in the back corners to fit into the post notches.  A 0.71mm bit was used to make the through holes for the belaying pins. (That’s 9 holes for the main mast and 8 for the fore mast as shown on the plan detail.)

   The fife rails were then turned upside down and a pair of 0.69mm holes were drilled for the top pins of the spindles.  These were drilled just short of going all the way through the rail.

   Finally, the rail was filed down to the outside edges of the template.  After pealing off the remnants of the template the assembly was test fit together as shown below.

 

    Once one of the posts was glued to the rail with thin CA, it was set aside to dry overnight.  The next day the upper portion of the post was filed to its final shape as shown below.

 

   Now the other post was given the same treatment.  I was a little careless using the thin CA to join the pieces as it had spread a bit too far, so the four closest holes to the posts needed to be cleaned out, but it was ready for painting.  I wasn’t sure just how badly the Model Shipways paint would work in my spray painter, so I tried something a little different this time.

   I mixed up a small amount of light buff deckhouse paint with six drops of paint to six drops of water.  Once mixed, I gave the parts four coats and used a blow drier and light sanding to speed up the process between coats. 

   Actually, the Model Shipways paint I have doesn’t seem to be a very finely ground pigment as it definitely needed sanding between coats, but then my first order of their paint had several jars that were more like dried up hockey pucks than paint inside.  On close examination I could see that they still needed a good sanding!  How I miss the discontinued Floquil paint!!

   Although the spindles included with the kit for the fife rails were metal, they were still quite fragile to work with, not to mention the fact that just holding on to them is quite a chore. In Chucks’ practicum the spindles appear to be much heftier than the 3/64” ones included with my kit, because in that photo from his article shown previously, they appeared to be about the same diameter (3/32”) as the thickness of the posts.

   I thought about trying to chuck some 3/32” thick brass wire in my drill press to see if a decent copy could be turned with files and sandpaper, but for now I will try working with the spindles that came with the kit. Both ends of the kit spindle pins first needed straightening before they were filed smooth. These were painted with the same procedure and at the same time as the fife rails.

   Finally with the arrival of the warmer weather, the one hang-up of fixing my table saw was finally taken care of.  One of the rubber caster wheels on the mobile base was crushed so I couldn't pull the saw out to use it.  I enlisted the help of one of my neighbors to make the repairs, since I am not able to get down to the floor anymore to do it myself.

   Although I had some 2 1/2” caster wheels on hand, the wheels on the base were 3” diameter.  The smaller wheels still fit with enough clearance, so we pulled the two wheels on the front of the saw and replaced them with the smaller ones which would least leave it balanced for moving the saw.  Since those two front casters have some leveling screws alongside them that take the weight off the wheels when the saw’s being used, I thought that would be good enough for my needs.

   I still needed to dull the sheen of the copper plates on the hull anyways, the ship was removed from the base so I could trim and finish the base board. That took longer than I thought it would just to readjust the saws alignment.  Maybe due to the fact that it wasn’t used in over a year or two?

   Once the board was trimmed and sanded, the ends and edges were given two coats of Minwax light oak finish while I gave the walnut pedestals a couple coats of hull black paint and set them aside.  After everything was dry, they were all given three coats of satin finish polyethylene, lightly sanding between coats.

   While waiting for things to dry, I smoothed over the copper plating on the ships hull to make sure there weren’t any loose edges.  I brushed some sun tanning oil on the plates and set the ship upside down in the sun for a couple of days.  Then I gave the surface a rub down with a soft cloth and finally gave it two coats of polyethylene to seal it.

Edited November 10, 2023 by BETAQDAVE

[BETAQDAVE]

    Having recently reviewed the scratch build log of Phantom 1868 by victory78 – New York pilot boat, I was intrigued by how much more can be shown at his larger 1:50 scale version. Most notable to me was the differences between the plans provided by the Model Shipways kit and his version. While I have no way of determining which version is correct, I suspect that since his version seems to include a lot more details that don’t appear at all in my kit plans, I’ll go with his version.

    One example of this was that the waterway and the margin plank on the foredeck are indicated as separate features on his, as opposed to the kits’ version of just a single plank. I’m not sure, but perhaps the kits’ smaller scale led to them to just simplify it.

Another notable feature that his version added, that seemed like it would have been a logical thing to see on a ship like this, was the reinforced deck doublings in the areas around the mast holes and bitts. It seemed so logical in fact, that I decided to include them to my version, especially since they seemed to be an easy feature to add.

    Since my bowsprit was not yet permanently attached, it was pulled out first to allow adding the doubled deck for the winch bitts. I made up these three somewhat simplified versions of the doubled decking area add-ons as shown below.

    You can see that I even included a version of his contrasting body wood for the winch bits, but was unable, at my scale, to make them separate pieces. So I just compromised, and was able to combine the two into one.

    He also made body wood for all of the deck projections, but once again, with the difficulty of working at my much smaller scale, I decided to skip the remaining projection trim. (I think that if I had known about them earlier in my build, I might have included them, but that’s water under the bridge now.)

    After completing the doubler decking sections and test fitting the winch bitt with the bowsprit reinserted, I discovered to my dismay that the bitts had been placed too far back from the bow and the extra thickness of the decking had also lowered the angle of the bowsprit! Once again it was back to doing some more damage control.

    So the pointed bow end of the doubling deck and the heel end of the bowsprit were both shortened, and the bottom cross beam of the bitts was filed down until the proper angle was restored.

    Whew! But wait for it… when test fitting the fife rails, I also discovered as you can see below that the spindles included with the kit were 0.16mm too tall and caused the rails to be tilted! It seemed like if I found one thing that needed correcting, something else also had to be changed.

    Comparing my wood bitts to the metal fitting that came with the kit, they were a match size wise. Which only left two possibilities. One, the spindles provided were too tall, or the fife rail fittings were too short. At least the error was apparently not mine. But, since the metal spindles couldn’t be shortened, I had to add 0.16mm to the bottom of the posts.

    Since I was never quite satisfied with the previous fife rail posts anyway, I wasn’t all that bummed out about it. Unfortunately, while taking my glued up fife rail fittings apart I broke one of the plastic rails, which would have been the hardest part to reproduce. Luckily it only broke into two pieces, so all it needed was to be glued back together.

    So I ripped down a couple more 3/32” x 3/32” maple strips as shown here and cut the notches for the fife rails as I did originally.

    Rather than filing a peg at the bottom of the posts again, I decided to add that missing 0.16mm to the bottom and to cut them off at 10mm and drill a hole into the bottom for a 10mm long 0.62mm brass nail with the head filed off. Which left about 6mm exposed to go into the deck.

    Since all of my light buff deck house paint from Model Shipways came out of the jar the consistency of a hockey puck, I ended up grinding it down and added enough water to get it somewhat usable again. The first time around I had made the mistake, of gluing the fife rails together prior to painting and as a result, the assembled fitting was very hard to sand between coats and the resulting finish was rather poor.

    So this time I painted all of the components before assembly to make them easier to sand between coats. Of course my paint was so watered down now, that I had to use six coats with light sanding between. I did manage, however to get a much smoother finish this time.

 

    While I had been careful to avoid getting paint into the notches, I forgot that the wood might still swell a bit from so many coats of watered down paint. So, another test fit was done, and sure enough, the notches had to be lightly filed for easier assembly. Now all I need to do is add the half cleats and reassemble the fife rail fittings for later installation on the deck.

    My next posting will cover making the navigation lights and the portable anchor davit.

 

Edited January 30 by BETAQDAVE