Flying Fish by Keithbrad80 - Model Shipways - 1:96

[ERS Rich]

Hello,

 

Quite a bit of good work, thanks for posting and hope your hand is better soon.  Having started out with the same craftsman combo belt/disk sander wanted to share two other ways to shape planks: hand plane and manually operated disk sander by Ultimation.  
 

Happy New Year!

 

-Rich

 

 

[Keithbrad80]

1 hour ago, ERS Rich said:

Hello,

 

Quite a bit of good work, thanks for posting and hope your hand is better soon.  Having started out with the same craftsman combo belt/disk sander wanted to share two other ways to shape planks: hand plane and manually operated disk sander by Ultimation.  
 

Happy New Year!

 

-Rich

 

 

Thanks for sharing Rich! I ended up doing something similar and cut almost all my planks using a small hand plane. I also need to build a better fence for my disk sander, there is a small gap between the fence and the sanding surface that I want to eliminate. 
 

Bradley

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone, 

 

I was able to find some time over the last few days to work on getting the railing done. I’m pretty happy with my progress, I got the topgallant rail done, and the spray rail in. I also got the bow chocks carved on the spray rail, which wasn’t too bad, its easy to bend this rail in place without and steam or bending.

 

On the plans they give two options regarding the pin rail below the main rail, one with a clamp and one without. I chose to install the clamp because it should make the belay pins easier to install, according to the instructions, some of McKay’s ships had these clamps to make installation easier but some did not to make spar stowage easier on deck. Last thing I got done today was just some general clean up, i took several different files and make sure all my lines were clean and when painted should look very nice.  

 

I have been slowly working towards finishing the hull planking, i still havnt done it... It’s the only thing left to do at this point so its the next step. Once that is done we will be almost ready for paint. 

 

At this point everything above the water line on the hull is done, so now that i have the basic structure of the hull done I can start really thinking about paint and copper. Here is some picture of the build:

 

 

 

 

Topgallant rail in the above pictures looks a little messy, once its painted the pictures should be much more clear. 

 

Installation of the spray rail 

 

 

Final shape of the spray rails. And finally the spray rails with the bow chock

 

the bow has some heavy wood filler right now, i was waiting for it to dry so i can hand carve the shape of the bow at this part. For some reason it didn’t look how i wanted it so this is probably the easiest way. 

 

It’s not a great picture but here is the clamp under the main rail:

 

So there is a lot clean up left but soon enough i will be painting and moving onto deck furniture. Thanks again for the comments and likes, they really keep me motivated. I got my last round of X-rays yesterday and confirmed the bone is no longer broken so back to modeling with two hands! Happy new year everyone, stay safe!

 

 

Bradley 

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by Keithbrad80

[ERS Rich]

Nice looking fantail!  Happy New Year!

 

-Rich

[Vladimir_Wairoa]

happy new year ! 

[Keithbrad80]

Thanks again everyone for checking in! Happy new year to all hopefully it is better than last year...

 

I only have a quick update about my shipyard for you today. Recently it started getting really cold here so I decided its time to move into the garage, after some cleaning and moving some stuff around I finally have a full blown workshop, although nothing has been organized yet, jut thrown on the tables for now. Before this i had two tables in a 100 sqft shed, so it will be nice to not be so cramped. 

 

 

I have a ton of reorganizing and cleaning left to do and some more shelves to build until I’m satisfied but it’s nice to be inside! Hopefully Ill have an update soon on the flying fish, I have been trying to improve my air brush skills before I paint. Thanks

 

Bradley 

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone, 

 

Another milestone for the Flying Fish! I finished planking and with that completes the basic structure of the hull, next up is primer and paint. For any who are interested I got my garage organized and almost everything is in the place i need it, and I will say it is nice having more space and knowing where everything is. 

 

 

I finished planking today and am pretty happy with it, there are tons of things I will do differently in my next build, most of my mistakes shouldn’t be noticeable once it is painted. My goal at the start of this was to use as little wood filler as possible and still achieve a smooth finish, and surprisingly i did pretty well, I filled some spots and got everything nice and smooth. 

 

 

I sanded the hull with 80, 120, 220, and 300 grit paper to achieve a smooth finish and get rid of any fuzziness on the planks. I then followed it up with two coats of clear satin wipe on poly and a sanding with 220 in between, which gave my hull a very nice smooth finish. Ill paint sometime this week hopefully with a white primer followed by black with my airbrush. Unless anyone else has any recommendations... 

 

This is the first coat of wipe on poly 

 

Here it is after the second coat and how it sits now

 

 

Thanks again everyone for checking in!

 

Bradley 

 

 

[WalrusGuy]

The planking looks so nice! It's breathtaking!!

[EKE]

This looks wonderful, Bradley.  Planking a hull of that size is quite a task, you must be pretty pleased with yourself!

[Keithbrad80]

8 hours ago, WalrusGuy said:

The planking looks so nice! It's breathtaking!!

Thank you! 
 

59 minutes ago, EKE said:

This looks wonderful, Bradley.  Planking a hull of that size is quite a task, you must be pretty pleased with yourself!

This was certainty the largest planking job I have ever done. I would say between the decks and the hull I had to cut easily over 1000 planks, maybe more. I have been planking since like September so it feels great to finally be moving on!

[EKE]

What a great shape that hull has, too.  Looks so fast.  I can just imagine that clipper charging through the seas under full sail and a 25-knot following breeze! Those boats were just magnificent.  Isn’t it great to make models of ships like these, to capture a bit of their magic in the mind’s eye?

 

 

Edited January 5, 2021 by EKE

[Keithbrad80]

2 hours ago, EKE said:

Isn’t it great to make models of ships like these, to capture a bit of their magic in the mind’s eye?

This is the reason I enjoy the clipper ships so much! I have never been aboard a clipper before but I could only imagine the view from the helm as she cut through the water. My next build is a fully framed 1:72 Young America, I ordered the books from seawatch books a week ago so hopefully I’ll start that in the summer, the hull is 42” long!

 

Bradley

[WalrusGuy]

Wow I can't wait to see you tackle the Young America. I wish to also build that beautiful ship one day

[hof00]

 

Hi Chap,

That's an Awesome build!!

 

Cheers....HOF.

[Keithbrad80]

2 hours ago, hof00 said:

 

Hi Chap,

That's an Awesome build!!

 

Cheers....HOF.

Thanks!

 

Bradley

[gak1965]

The hull looks great, nice clean lines. The bow on shot is really great, it looks just like the photos you see of clippers (and early 20th century windjammers) in drydock.

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone,

 

Not a huge update, I got half the ship painted with a white primer before I broke the needle on my airbrush... bummer. I ordered another one but also purchased an HVLP sprayer 

I primarily bought it to paint the house but figured it would do a really nice job of painting the hull very quickly and evenly, so that should be nice. 
 

yesterday I spent a while thinking about how I wanted to approach the copper plates. I’m using a pounce wheel to create the riveting patterns, I tried to create a jig where I would use a stamp to create the rivets but that didn’t work. Instead I created a two part jig for the copper plates. 

 

Step 1 is the bottom jig, I slide the copper tape in and run my pounce wheel along the top and bottom to create the horizontal rivets. I then take that same strip of copper tape and put it in the second jig and run my vertical rivets, I run the pounce wheel along the right and left hand side of the jig in each spot. This leave a rectangle of rivets with about .1” over hang on each side of the plate. Afterwards I take a straight edge razor I made dull on my grinder and push it into the plate, right in between the two strips of vertical rivets. This won’t cut the plates but instead will leave an impression to make them look like individual plates, but really it’s a 6 inch strip of copper tape that when I take off the paper should be easy to install. It has a steep learning curve so when I perfect it I’ll show pictures of the final result, which is a 6 inch strip of 8 plates 3/4 inch long with rivets on each side, once overlapped these should look really nice. Hopefully that will make sense when I post pictures of the plates, I’ll also draw up some basic plans so someone else can use it if needed. Right now it takes me about 30 seconds to make a 6 inch strip of copper plates. 
 

Bradley

 

[Keithbrad80]

Hello again everyone,

 

my new sprayer got the hull painting in primer in no joke 15 seconds or less. I could not be happier with the result, honestly this was the part of the build I have been dreading because I have never been great at painting. This sprayer has the delicacy of an airbrush but the volume of a can of spray paint. Here is my hull with a primer than again with the first coat of black paint. 
 

 

First coat of black paint, the last picture is right after being painted so it’s not that shiny

 

I think I figured out the copper tape, I’ll post pictures of that later. Thanks again!

 

Bradley

 

[EKE]

18 hours ago, Keithbrad80 said:

yesterday I spent a while thinking about how I wanted to approach the copper plates. I’m using a pounce wheel to create the riveting patterns, I tried to create a jig where I would use a stamp to create the rivets but that didn’t work. Instead I created a two part jig for the copper plates.

 

Hi Bradley! Great job on the hull painting.  Are you planning to do some filling before panting a second coat?  
 

I think your copper plate jig looks really well conceived, and should work very well.  Terrific job, can’t wait to see the results!

 

-Erik

[Keithbrad80]

8 hours ago, EKE said:

Are you planning to do some filling before panting a second coat?

I thought about it, but I prefer the look of planks under the paint, so after another coat of paint and two coats of wipe on poly those cracks are pretty much filled but you can still see the individual planks, which I like. I dont have very good pictures of the hull after the paint job but ill post one soon!

 

Bradley 

[Keithbrad80]

8 hours ago, EKE said:

Great job on the hull painting.

Here is a close up picture of the paint as it sits right now. That HVLP sprayer really made a huge difference! If you notice in the picture the paint is thick enough to fill most of the gaps but thin enough to leave the detail in the bulwarks. The effect is subtle, you wont notice from more than a few feet away but from up close my planking job can be shown off. 

 

 

Bradley 

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone, 

 

So I remade my jigs, I didn’t change the design but cleaned up the corners and made it easier to get copper tape in and out. Towards the end of my supply of copper tape I was pumping one strip of tape out every 20 seconds, I got about 400 strips made in about 3 hours! 

 

Here is step 1:

There is a small notch made that guides the copper tape in place and keeps it flat. Ill run my pounce wheel along the top border keeping the wheel pressed against the jig the entire time. Then ill run it along the bottom and slide the tape out, and slide it right into the second jig. 

 

Here is step 2:

So i slide the tape until it sits against the end of the jig, and roll my pounce wheel along each side of the openings. As you can see the jig is beginning to fall apart, after literally hundreds of cuts the pounce wheel started to lose its tip and the wood became so thin it almost broke. These seem like easy fixes if i wanted to make a permanent jig. Anyway here is the final results, a 6 inch strip with 8 plates. The riveting pattern may not be very realistic but different ratio pounce wheels and more jigs could quickly replicate any riveting pattern. 

 

First thing this morning I ran out and gave everything another coat of wipe on poly, so by the time I was done making copper plates I could start to install them on the ship! I made a super simple waterline marker with a block of wood and a pencil, i just took the dimensions directly from the plans and set the ship on a flat surface and slide the pencil across the hull while holding the block. It looks crooked but it gave me an accurate water line marking.

 

I got about 40 percent of the copper on, it took a few tries but once I got the hang of the paper backing the process went pretty smoothly. Here it is as of now:

 

The copper plates have a steep learning curve that are pretty unforgiving. I figured out pretty quickly that i needed to wear gloves the whole time, there is a few spots where the metal is folded or creased. I’m thinking a soft rubber spatula could be ran over the surface to get the surface smooth, I have used that method before to smooth plastic wrap so I’m sure its similar (hopefully!). Thanks for checking in!

 

Bradley 

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone, 

 

I’m about 98 percent done with the structure of the hull! I only have the rudder and taff rail, the taff rail stanchions I’m going to turn on my lathe and with my airbrush so it might be awhile before we see those, I have the rudder painted and coppered. First off I decided it was time to find a semipermanent space for the flying fish while construction continues, I’m mounting the hull with brass pedestals but haven’t made a mounting board yet so I just screwed it right into may table. It works well for me, this table is my “plans” table so there is nothing but my plans and the ship on the table, with my “construction” table close by so I can build what ever I’m working on and then install it on the deck without a bunch of stuff in my way. 

 

So this first picture is just the placement of the model and where I will be working on it. I then decided it was time to finish the paint, I didn’t finish it earlier because I was waiting until the right paint color came in the mail. It would have been much easier to paint before planking the deck like most of you probably know, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to paint it until recently, and so i waited until the hull was complete to decide. I think I chose the right choice in painting! Here it is after the grey paint on the bulwarks:

 

After drying, I painted the water way and plank sheer with an electric blue color by Createx Colors, I dont actually know what the color is because the label is missing in only the spot with the name of the color. Big mistake. I’m honestly not sure what went wrong with this one, its premixed paint for use in an airbrush. It dried different than the others and became super thin one it hit the wood, so it bled below my tape onto the planking. Its not terrible but the fact that it is there annoys me, realistically you wont notice this in the end.

 

I haven’t painted under the forecastle deck because I have to do that with a real brush, I also have some small spots to clean up and finish with a hand brush. 

 

Last note about the rudder. The rudder tappers in the back so I got that shaped with a little bit of 220 grit paper, I then painted it black and coppered it the same way I did the hull.

I only have the pintle and gudgeon straps to make and a few more copper strips to make and install, and then I’m totally ready to move on to deck furniture! Thanks again for the support!

 

Bradley 

[Rach10199]

On 1/8/2021 at 3:07 PM, Keithbrad80 said:

Here is a close up picture of the paint as it sits right now. That HVLP sprayer really made a huge difference! If you notice in the picture the paint is thick enough to fill most of the gaps but thin enough to leave the detail in the bulwarks. The effect is subtle, you wont notice from more than a few feet away but from up close my planking job can be shown off. 

 

 

Bradley 

I like the way it looks with the individual planks visible. Pretty much the same look I want with mine. This looks awesome!

[gak1965]

Looks great, fantastic copper work!

[Keithbrad80]

1 hour ago, Rach10199 said:

This looks awesome!

Thank you! I just skipped the step with wood filler, a lot of people prefer that look.

[BobMcM]

Fantastic job! Following with interest.

[EKE]

This is looking really great, Bradley!  Well done.

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone, 

 

Well the Admiral went back to work a few days ago and takes our daughter with her and I don't go back to work until the 25th, so I have this week and next week to make some nice progress before most of my time is spent else where.  

 

It’s always frustrating when you spend lots of time on something and it doesn’t work out, well that has happened to me over and over again lol. I worked on the rudder and the cat heads yesterday, at separate points I thought both looked excellent, and at separate times they both ended up in the trash. At least now I know what I can improve on and hopefully make a nicer product. 

 

Starting with the rudder, I’m working on the pintle and gudgeon straps, I decided soldering the straps to the pintle will give me the most realist look. I figured out a pretty good method for my self that works well, I cut and clean the brass wire (24 gauge I think) that will be used as the pintle. I then took two equal lengths of 1/32” brass strip and clamped them next to each other and inserted the brass wire in between them, this way they are square to each other and stay there while I start my torch. Next time, a medium temp and low temp soldering paste would make this easier, I only had a medium temp soldering paste on hand so when I applied heat to one they both melted, if I had applied a lower temp paste to one and a medium temp paste to the other I could have worked on them separately which would have been helpful. My joints must not have been clean enough because every one of these broke as I was trying to shape the straps. Thankfully these didn’t take me long to make, but breaking 7 of them in a row was frustrating enough for me to move on to something else. Here is a picture of pintle and gudgeon straps:

 

After seeing poor results on this I decided to take a break from that and move onto the cat heads. Which I thought looked so clean before I drilled out the sheathes, thankfully I only did this on one, so its not a total loss. I think the drill bit i was using (.9mm) was to small for my drill press, because there was a lot of wobble that I didn’t notice right away. I started drilling and splintered the bottom of the cat head so thats too bad. Some good news about the cat heads though is I already have the opening on the model cut so all I need to do is make one more cat head and drill the sheathes by hand.  The cat heads have a small gilded star or some other figure with a metal cap at the face of the cat head, my last name starts with a K so I put a K there. Thankfully I have another try at getting the K to look a little nicer. Here is a picture:

 

Last point here, I think I’m going to focus on one area at a time, with the size of this model it’s overwhelming to look at the deck plans and see how much has to be done. So ill start with the forecastle and when I’m happy with that ill move to the main deck than the poop deck. Thanks for comments and support everyone, it really helps!

 

Bradley 

[Keithbrad80]

Hello everyone, 

 

Today was more successful. I am almost finished with one of the cat heads, I shaped it on the disk sander according to the plans and carved the letter K into the face of the cat head. I didn’t figure this out until a little to late but I should have cut the sheaths before shaping the cat head, it would have made it less stressful. 

 

Here it is: 

 

I hand carved the sheaths this time, and reduced the hole that I drilled to .3mm. I think it turn out pretty nice! I started working on the anchor release, this took me awhile, I tried cutting the shape out of a brass sheet but its to small. So i had to use a tiny wire and epoxy it together at the center, I think it turned out pretty nice, the next step is to create the lever that holds this release. 

 

 

Once the anchor release is finished I can paint. Also once the epoxy full cures I’m going to file down the nail I used to hold it all together. Thats it for today, thanks again!

 

Bradley