Flying Fish by Keithbrad80 - Model Shipways - 1:96

[robdurant]

Wow that's a beautiful job and her lines are really shown to great effect in those photos.

[Fentone]

That hull looks delicious, Bradley.

[yassin moh]

i started the pinting part 

[Vladimir_Wairoa]

joy to watch Bradley. thanks for showing. 

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone, 

 

So I had basically a week off so lots of time in the shipyard. 

 

I’m probably 75 percent done with the planking of this ship and honestly while it has been very enjoyable it has also been some what exhausting. The plans call for 3mm width planks and the hull is over 100mm at bulk head 10, multiplied by 22 bulk heads, so its a lot of work. But I will say i have learned a lot during this process and have had a lot of fun doing it, every plank is a small puzzle that has to be perfectly shaped and I have really enjoyed this build. 

 

So I convinced the Admiral that I needed a disk sander and now I have one lol, its a little too powerful unfortunately for planking this ship but I have still found many uses for it already.  Here it is:

It’s a pretty cool piece of machinery, but my intention was to increase my sanding speed for planking, so I built a jig of sorts. I took a sheet of the laser cut sheets and broke them in half making sure they were as long as the hull itself. I then took some scrap the same thickness as my planking and measured how large a plank should be at each bulk head and marked them down on my sheets gluing the scraps at these measurements. Followed by my other sheet on top, this created a clamp of sorts. If I was making a plank that would sit from bulk head 10 to bulk head 14 then I would put it in the Jig at that spot and sand it flush using the disk sander, and boom its a perfectly tapered plank for that specific spot. Here are some pictures:

 

 

It took me 4 tries to get it right, it was surprisingly difficult to get the right dimensions, I probably spent a total of 4 hours or more on this jig and it was useless. I realized way to late that it was faster and gave me a better result when I did things by hand. Duh...

 

Here are some pictures of the build at this point: 

 

Finally, I’m going to take a break from the hull. The process of planking is something I want to do right, I really don't want to rush through anything and potentially make mistakes or things I’m not happy with. So I’m going to focus on everything above the plank sheer, including the stanchions, and railings and deck planking. At least until i build the courage to finish the planking, ill certainly do it before any furniture is put on the deck, as i decided I do want to paint everything but want to invest in an airbrush first. Lots of stuff in this update, thanks again everyone. 

 

Bradley 

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone,

 

The Admiral and I are driving to San Diego (8-10 hour drive, we are about halfway) and stopped to get a hotel so I’m wide awake and figured I would update you all on the flying fish. 
 

I had almost 2 hours to work in the shipyard this morning and started on the bulwarks. I immediately realized I made a bone head move lol, the wood that was supposed to be used for the bulwarks some how got mixed in with planking wood so they ended up on the hull of my model lol. In my defense they are different by only 1/32” on one side, it really wasn’t a big deal because the scrap from planking could be sanded a little bit and worked perfectly fine. Here are my timber heads in place:

so the plans were very vague as to how these were supposed to be installed, I figured there is no harm making them extra long and trimming as need so that’s what I did. 
 

I started planking the bulwarks and got maybe 80 percent done before taking a week long break. It is certainly started to come together nicely in my opinion. Here is where we are at right now:

 

Thanks again every one for the support on this build!

 

Bradley

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone,

 

So bad news first... broke my right hand in several spots today so I won’t be building anything for awhile... 

 

Good news is I finally got my new airbrush in the mail! Eventually I will figure out how to use it, I have time now to watch some tutorials lol. 
 

Bradley

 

Edit: I may have been 30 minutes premature... although my hand is the size of a baseball glove only my ring and pinky finger are broken, which is great news!

Edited November 15, 2020 by Keithbrad80

[gak1965]

Sorry to hear that. Not ideal but better, I suppose, than the alternative.

[yassin moh]

So bad news hope you will be ok . I started making the decorations 

[Keithbrad80]

Yours looks great! Looking forward to how you do with rigging. 
 

Bradley

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone!

 

Big update on the flying fish, due to my hand i took a week off work so i had nothing but time to spend in the shipyard. 

 

I finished planking the bulwarks and didn’t really have any problems, if you set your stanchions in the right spot you wont have any problems. Here is where we are at:

,

 

The main rail wasn’t very hard to put on, from bulkhead 15 aft the main rail is to be cut from a bass wood sheet. I didn’t realized that I cut this part of the main rail wrong until i started planking the poop deck. One more thing about the photo above, these first three bulk heads in the bow have a frame that allows you to plank the ceiling and acts as support for the forecastle deck above it. No where in the plans does it suggest cutting these frames off but i noticed in other build logs and videos i have watched and read they had cut them off, and i could not figure out why they were doing that. Well i wish i cut them off a while ago, with them on deck planking is pretty tough, but thats ok you still wont be able to see this but I know its there.

 

Ok so the next logical step was to begin planking the deck. I am really happy with how this turned out, especially doing it one handed! So i always start deck planking by painting my planks black. I will say i clamped my planks together and tried to only paint two sides but did a terrible job, the only real down side is some extra sanding, no big deal! Here is a picture of the planks after being painted black:

 

Afterwards i plank like i normally would and i went with a 3 butt shift on the deck planks.  Nibbing has always made me nervous as i cannot figure out how to do it. I watched some videos i found, read through some build logs and reread a few books and still couldn’t get it right. I tried nibbing the first 5 or 6 strakes of deck planking under the forecastle but decided to just butt them up against the nibbing strake. 

 

The only downside to my method of planking is the planks are not very attractive until your done lol. Here is a few pics of what the planks look like before and after sanding: 

 

 

After i was done sanding up to 400 grit paper i wiped it down with some mineral oil and moved on to the poop deck.

 

 

I had to make a total of 4 knees, I’ve never made them this small and the wood quality isn’t great so this was very frustrating. I probably made more than 10 knees for this and all of them broke or didn’t look very good, here’s the size i need and another failed attempt at the knees. This one is glued but i cut it out and am going to make more eventually:

 

 

So the next step was to plank the ceiling and rebuild the frames for the forecastle deck. 

 

 

The final thing here is planking the poop deck.

 

So when ever I’m done planking the poop and forecastle, and have the topgallant rail on ill post another update. I’m getting close to finishing the basic structure of the hull, thanks for reading and sorry for the really long update.

 

Bradley

 

 

 

Edited November 25, 2020 by Keithbrad80

[Keithbrad80]

Also i have been thinking about tree nails in the deck planking, does any one have any experience at this scale? Would it be worth it or would the tree nails be too small to notice? Thanks again

 

Bradley

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone, 

 

Not a big update but some progress. I finished planking the forecastle but need to do some more sanding to get rid of the black paint. I decided its time to get the planking of the hull complete as well so next time I update ill have all the decks planked the hull planked and the Topgallant rail in. Thanks!

 

 

Bradley

[gak1965]

Very nice. I like the way that the deck color turned out. Are the tree nails. A toothpick end (let alone the body) at 1/96 is 3 scale inches. My guess is the only way to simulate at scale is going to rely on ink rather than wood.

[Keithbrad80]

6 hours ago, gak1965 said:

Very nice. I like the way that the deck color turned out. Are the tree nails. A toothpick end (let alone the body) at 1/96 is 3 scale inches. My guess is the only way to simulate at scale is going to rely on ink rather than wood.

So decided making actual tree nails was not worth my time. They would be tiny at this scale and probably not noticeable once the model is complete. Instead I have been trying to find the best technique for simulating them. Maybe pencil? Maybe if I drill the correct size hole then fill the holes with wood filler then sand flush? That might create the effect I’m after. I’ll have to do more research and practice until I get the desired effect. 

[Keithbrad80]

Hello again everyone, 

 

I finished deck planking! Well... I finished putting the planks in place and a good sanding with 60 grit paper. I still have tree nails to do, which will probably take me awhile but thats ok, its something I can work on for awhile when i have time. I experimented a bit with the tree nails and found the thing that looks best is just a .4 mm hole, and not filling them with any thing. Once sanded they should look pretty good, and from a feet away they will just look like tree nails. Now i did start this process on the poop deck with my Dremel but did a terrible job, so I’m switching back to drilling by hand which should produce a much much nicer look. 

 

After I’m done with tree nails ill start sanding things to their final smoothness and only a few planks left on the hull and I’m pretty much done with the basic structure of the hull. I spent a long time today going back over every part of the ship and sanding things to the correct dimensions so when the top gallant rail is done I can paint and copper the hull. Here is a bunch of pics of my build so far:

 

I couldn’t leave the knees the way they were so i cut them out and made some new ones. Here is a pic:

 

And then the one thing no ship modeler ever wants to happen, happened... I bumped my model off the table! As i was closing up for the day my jacket caught the corner of the table, just enough to roll the whole thing off the table. Thankfully the damage was kind of minor, I had started cutting the timber heads for the top gallant rail and getting them glued in place when it happened and of course knocked everyone of them off. It was frustrating but ok because i wanted to change a few things any way. Here is a pic of what i was doing before it fell:

 

Thanks again everyone for checking in! 

 

Bradley 

 

 

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Keithbrad80

[BobG]

Very, very nice work, Bradley!

[Keithbrad80]

7 minutes ago, BobG said:

Very, very nice work, Bradley!

Thanks Bob! Hope all is well. 
 

Bradley

[Vladimir_Wairoa]

3 hours ago, Keithbrad80 said:

Hello again everyone, 

 

I finished deck planking! Well... I finished putting the planks in place and a good sanding with 60 grit paper. I still have tree nails to do, which will probably take me awhile but thats ok, its something I can work on for awhile when i have time. I experimented a bit with the tree nails and found the thing that looks best is just a .4 mm hole, and not filling them with any thing. Once sanded they should look pretty good, and from a feet away they will just look like tree nails. Now i did start this process on the poop deck with my Dremel but did a terrible job, so I’m switching back to drilling by hand which should produce a much much nicer look. 

 

After I’m done with tree nails ill start sanding things to their final smoothness and only a few planks left on the hull and I’m pretty much done with the basic structure of the hull. I spent a long time today going back over every part of the ship and sanding things to the correct dimensions so when the top gallant rail is done I can paint and copper the hull. Here is a bunch of pics of my build so far:

 

I couldn’t leave the knees the way they were so i cut them out and made some new ones. Here is a pic:

 

And then the one thing no ship modeler ever wants to happen, happened... I bumped my model off the table! As i was closing up for the day my jacket caught the corner of the table, just enough to roll the whole thing off the table. Thankfully the damage was kind of minor, I had started cutting the timber heads for the top gallant rail and getting them glued in place when it happened and of course knocked everyone of them off. It was frustrating but ok because i wanted to change a few things any way. Here is a pic of what i was doing before it fell:

 

Thanks again everyone for checking in! 

 

Bradley 

 

 

 

hat off sir, very nice  work ! so beautiful . 

[Keithbrad80]

Hello again everyone,

 

I have finished the decks! For real this time... I tried tree nails in a few spots and couldn’t get them the way I wanted them so I’m going to go back and add them later If I decide to do that. 
 

I finished the deck with a sanding from 60 - 5000 grit paper, leaving a polished look. I do this because it brings out the color of the wood and really makes things look great, but it’s never that easy. Sanding with paper that high leaves the decks shiny which I don’t want so after 5000 grit I use #000 steel wool. The steel wool dulls the surface just a little bit and creates a rough enough surface so things can still be glued on, this way I get a high definition in the wood but it isn’t to shiny or polished looking. After sanding I cleaned everything using mineral oil and let it dry, finally I covered e dry thing in blue painters tape so I don’t scratch the surface or get glue on anything. Here is a few pics of the final product:

 

 

Also don’t worry about the planking on the poop deck in the photo above, it should all be covered by deck furniture. 
 

I then started on the timber heads for the top gallant rail which up to this point has been the most difficult part of the build. Each timber head falls in line with the timber head below it so it’s not to bad lining everything up it just takes time and lot of good measurements. I should be totally finished with the top gallant rail tomorrow. Here is where we are right now: 

 

 

after the top gallant rail is done then it’s time to paint! I’m making some good progress so far and I’m happy with the build up to this point. Thanks for the likes and support as well!

 

Bradley

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Keithbrad80

[Nirvana]

Bradley, that looks so good.

Don't let the painters tape sit to long, the adhesive starts to set hard after 4 hours.  Makes it hard to get it off without damaging the surface.

[Keithbrad80]

1 hour ago, Nirvana said:

the adhesive starts to set hard after 4 hours

This was enough for me to run back out to my shed in the rain to pull that tape off lol. I didn’t even think of this, thankfully it came off clean! 

Bradley

[Keithbrad80]

Hello again everyone,

 

This will probably be my last update for the year, and thankfully this year is almost over! 
 

I finished putting the timber heads for the top gallant rail in, and got about 40 percent of the rail on. Maybe I can sneak in a little time today to finish this step before putting everything away for the year. Here is a pic of all the timber heads in place: 

 

After, I planks the space below the top gallant rail and above the main rail. For anyone who builds this model later or is curious, the timber heads are supposed to be cut to .12” I found it a lot easier to cut the timber heads  to something like .14” and file it down by dragging a heavy file over both sides. This also ensures that both sides of your rail are level with the deck, cutting them and filing took a while but it was worth it to get a nice flat rail on both sides. Here is a pic of my rail and the planked areas:

 

I also included the gangways in this update. At bulkhead 10 I added another timber head directly next to the existing ones which gave me the correct dimensions of the gangways. Here is a close up of the gangways:

 

the vertical wood at the gangways might be too thick so I may have to remove it and use a thinner piece. Thanks everyone, happy holidays!

 

Bradley 

[Bill Morrison]

Hello!  I just found this build. OUTSTANDING WORK, and GREAT SAVE on the false keel! I'm impressed! Anyway, the kit now lists for $399.00 on Model Expo.  It is a current listing.

 

Bill

[Keithbrad80]

1 hour ago, Bill Morrison said:

Hello!  I just found this build. OUTSTANDING WORK, and GREAT SAVE on the false keel!

 

Thanks bill! Overall I would say the quality of kit is worth the 399 price tag. I got the kit pretty cheap because I bought it during one of model expos big sales, but it’s a really nice kit. I wouldn’t have had any problems what so ever if I didn’t have the issue with the false keel! Thanks!

 

Bradley

[EKE]

Hi Bradley!  I’m not sure why I haven’t checked in on your Flying Fish, but I’m glad I finally made it here.  She’s looking really great!  I just love clippers.  One day I’ll have the courage to build one.  I thought my Zulu had a lot of timber.   fantastic job so far!
 

I hope your hand is healing well.  Happy Holidays! 🎄 

[Keithbrad80]

38 minutes ago, EKE said:

I hope your hand is healing well.

My cast should be coming off right after Christmas so it will be nice to start the year with two working hands! 
 

Clipper ships are my personal favorite, especially to model. Once the hull is painted and copper the lines of the ship should really stand out. Thanks for checking in. 
 

Bradley

[Bill Morrison]

I'm looking for the old solid hull version.

 

Bill

[Keithbrad80]

46 minutes ago, Bill Morrison said:

I'm looking for the old solid hull version.

 

Bill

 

So I’m pretty sure the solid hull version of this kit has been out of production for awhile. The original kit was a solid hull but was discontinued in 1993 when the plans for the kit were rewritten to include a POB frame and all the necessary material for planking. I’m guessing this was done to attract different types of ship modelers. You may be able to find a vintage kit on eBay but i think you would have a hard time finding one. If you do let me know! I would love to see some one build this kit with a solid hull. Hope that helps!

 

Bradley 

[Bill Morrison]

20 hours ago, Keithbrad80 said:

 

So I’m pretty sure the solid hull version of this kit has been out of production for awhile. The original kit was a solid hull but was discontinued in 1993 when the plans for the kit were rewritten to include a POB frame and all the necessary material for planking. I’m guessing this was done to attract different types of ship modelers. You may be able to find a vintage kit on eBay but i think you would have a hard time finding one. If you do let me know! I would love to see some one build this kit with a solid hull. Hope that helps!

 

Bradley 

Bradley,

 

Thanks but I do know this.  I have been searching eBay but am not yet ready to purchase.

 

Bill