Experiments in Card/Paper Modeling

[John Fox III]

I've been intrigued lately when viewing build logs on the NRG web site, among other places. Decided I would give it a try and see how it all works. I started by viewing the vast number of CAD ship plans I've developed over 40 years of modeling sailing vessels.

 

I was interested in something fairly simply, but one I had enough information already drawn up in plans. I ended up settling on the clipper Flying Cloud. I drew up the plans 27 years ago for a ship in bottle model at 1:750 scale. For a card/paper model I decided on a scale of 1:350, making the hull slightly over 8" long.

 

I spent a little time taking the original plans and adapting to a bulkhead type of model. My original was a carved solid hull. The following images show my drawings for a card/paper model. The .jpeg images were exported from QCAD, as exports the line weights are too heavy. I have the same images as PDF images if anyone is interested.

 

The solid lines are cut lines, the dotted lines are where parts get glued on. The "X"'s are areas that have added thickness, to make a solid area for the masts. The waterline is not a cut line.

The rectangles outside the hull lines designate where spacer pieces would lay.

The following drawings show the spacer pieces. These were drawn before I actually thought it all out. In the end, though designed to be single pieces that slide into the gaps between the bulkheads on the horizontal dotted lines, that would make it too difficult to glue and cutting it off later. I ended up simply cutting individual pieces and gluing them in place.

The photos above show the hull after the first layer of spacer pieces were glued in. You can see a few places on the first photo where the doubled bulkheads spread apart slightly due to being squeezed where they fit onto the keel piece.

The photo above shows the hull with the second spacer pieces glued in place. I made to cut these so that the bulkheads were pushed together. I then applied CA glue to all the joints between pieces and covered all the edges.

More to follow.

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 5, 2020 by John Fox III

[amateur]

If there is more to follow, I'll keep waiting

 

Jan

[mtaylor]

Interesting post.  If there's more and it's one ship or even two, let's move this to the Scratch area.  Or you can just open a log there.

[John Fox III]

1 hour ago, mtaylor said:

Interesting post.  If there's more and it's one ship or even two, let's move this to the Scratch area.  Or you can just open a log there.

I really had no idea where to post my log. There most definitely is more, I have it all saved in a .doc file I keep as I work along, but only the text transferred when I tried to copy it and paste it here. I had to crop and resize each photo again to post them. I have no idea how to move the posting.

[mtaylor]

For now, we'll just leave it here but use the log for updates.

[John Fox III]

Continuing with the card/paper model of Flying Cloud.

The next step was to fill in between bulkheads and keel at the bow and stern with layers of board cut to fit as I added them. Photos below shows the results after cutting and shaping them a bit, and applying CA glue to harden them. I also started sanding the bulkheads edges to fair in the hull shape. What I found was that in many places the weaker inner parts of the board would splay the outer harder parts outward as I sanded.

 

I continued sanding and fairing the hull, had to apply CA glue between each sanding session. It took quite a few sessions to get the hull as fair as I could. I then cut 1/16" wide strips from the board stock to use as planks. I found that as carefully as I could, using an X-acto knife and #11 blade, the cut edges were not perfectly vertical. I used this slight angle to close gaps while planking. To do this I alternated using the printed and non-printed sides of the strips on the outside.

 

At the bow and stern I used larger pieces of board to make it easier to plank above the deck line. The following photos show the first side planked.

I did not use a traditional planking style, I started at the keel, the waterline and the top of the bulwarks and worked my way with as long a strips as I could. Then filled in with individually cut pieces to fit.

 

One thing I learned was that this cardboard was not very stiff, had to be careful when holding the plank to a bulkhead edge, as it tended to push the board inward slightly between bulkheads. I used CA glued applied with a needle to attach each plank. I then coated the entire outside of the planking with CA glue to harden it. For the second side I decided to use a different cardboard stock, one without the colored/printed side at all. I planked it in exactly the same way as the first side. Not sure why I did this, except the stripped first side sort of looked odd to me. Following photos show progress to this point.

[wefalck]

As they say: what is underneath nobody cares about   I gather this is the first layer to give the shape ? For a second layer in areas that will not be coppered a more prototype style of planking might be advisable.

 

Also in cardboard modelling it makes sense to fill the space betwen bulkhead to ease fairing and planking. It is advisable to use a material somewhat softer than that used for the bulkhead, so that the sanding does not tough them. Personally, I would have used (because I have it) a foam called Rohacell, which is essentially foamed Plexiglas. There are other types of hard foames on the market that could be used. This prevents the planks from being pushed in or sagging. You will have a very stiff base for planking that way.

[John Fox III]

1 hour ago, wefalck said:

As they say: what is underneath nobody cares about   I gather this is the first layer to give the shape ? For a second layer in areas that will not be coppered a more prototype style of planking might be advisable.

 

Also in cardboard modelling it makes sense to fill the space betwen bulkhead to ease fairing and planking. It is advisable to use a material somewhat softer than that used for the bulkhead, so that the sanding does not tough them. Personally, I would have used (because I have it) a foam called Rohacell, which is essentially foamed Plexiglas. There are other types of hard foames on the market that could be used. This prevents the planks from being pushed in or sagging. You will have a very stiff base for planking that way.

I actually gave thought to doing something between the bulkheads, but silly as it may be, this being my first experiment with card/paper ship modeling, I am planning on using nothing but paper and cardboard. My only foray beyond this is a very small amount of Bondo used to fill in some small places to bring the hull to fair. The hull only being a bit over 8" in length, I plan on painting and not planking any further. Future postings will show this a bit more, as well as my attempts to make paper masts by forming tubes over various diameters of rods of differing materials.

 

[John Fox III]

The work on the hull progressed by sanding down all the planking, to get as smooth and fair a surface as I could. I sanded, then applied poly varnish thinned 50/50 with paint thinner until it no longer soaked in. Waited for the varnish to dry, then sanded again. I repeated this process many times. While sanding I could see areas where the planks pushed inwards slightly, and small gaps in the finish. I used Bondo glazing and spot putty, applied with a stiff piece of styrene plastic, to cover the gaps and low spots. Again, after Bondo dried the hull was sealed and sanded. I did this perhaps 3 or 4 times before I had a smooth surface over the entire outer hull shape.

 

Once I had a decent hull shape I used a razor saw to cut through the bulkhead extensions that held the hull to the cardboard mounted on the maple board. The following photos show the hull to this point.

 

 

 

Work on this first hull progressed with carving the insides of the bulkheads down to the deck levels. I used a chisel type blade in my knife to do this work. The raised forecastle and quarter decks were reasonably easy to work, while the lower mid deck was difficult. I did add some extra pieces of cardboard to the center keel piece in the locations that would later have holes drilled to accept the mast extensions. All the deck areas were then sanded down to the deck lines on the bulkheads, a small amount of Bondo was added as the extra pieces did not quite come flush with the deck level. The following photos show the work thus far.

 

 

I next worked on making templates of all the deck areas. I used thin paper cut to approximately the right size and shape at first, then pressed them into locations and creased it sharply at each of the bulkhead extension inside the bulwarks. The paper was removed and cut to follow the crease curves. I traced these templates onto thinner card stock and tested the fit on each deck location to finalize the exact shape for each deck area.

 

A piece of thinner cardboard was then soaked in a bath of maple stain, to saturate it completely and evenly with color. I had tried just brushing stain on the board first, but the colorization was too uneven. Lines were then drawn on the board, spaced 1/32" apart, and the thin board templates used to trace the shape of the decks onto the stained board. These were cut out and tested to fit in their places, but not glued down yet. I also traced the outside edges of the main, lower, deck onto a non-lined area of the stained board and cut waterways for the hull. Following photos show some of this work.

 

 

More to follow as I work along.

 

Anchors A Weigh!

John Fox III

Edited November 25, 2020 by John Fox III

[John Fox III]

Greetings All,

 

            The work on the card and paper clipper model continued with quite a few more sealing and sanding, with small amounts of Bondo. Once I had a decent hull I made up the keel, stem and stern posts out of multiple layers of board.

            After reading more online about card models I learned to saturate the card stock with thinned down poly varnish, in order to make it stiffer and less prone to fraying when sanding. It also made cutting a wee bit harder, but worth the effort as it shapes up nicer when saturated. I did this by using a large art paint brush and applying the thinned varnish, then letting the card stock dry, and repeating the process until no more varnish would soak into the stock.

            The keel and stern/stem posts were made from this saturated card stock. I then used epoxy glue to install these parts. Unfortunately, I had to use painters tape to hold the parts in place while the epoxy cured, this resulted in removing the sealed surface of the hull where the tape was attached. It left fuzzy areas, so more sealing and light sanding was necessary to seal the entire surface of the hull again.

            At this point I used extra prints of four of the bulkheads and the spacer used to glue the bulkhead tops to the board to design and cut out card stock pieces to make up a couple of stands for the hull. The following photos show the results of this work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More to follow as work progresses.

 

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[wefalck]

If you use a fast-drying solvent-based varnish or sanding sealer, it is easy to stick parts on with exactly the same varnish. Nearly no need to hold things in place while a glue is drying/curing.

 

I am first (laser-)cutting parts and then soak them in varnish. Resoak them after sanding.

[Moltinmark]

15 minutes ago, wefalck said:

If you use a fast-drying solvent-based varnish or sanding sealer, it is easy to stick parts on with exactly the same varnish. Nearly no need to hold things in place while a glue is drying/curing.

 

I am first (laser-)cutting parts and then soak them in varnish. Resoak them after sanding.

I have been looking a glowforge and am wondering if that is what your laser is? 

[wefalck]

The Glowforge ones seem to be relatively serious one with a 40W CO2 laser, requiring proper ventilation etc. They also seem to have a serious price tag, starting from US$ 2500 (not sure about price over here in Europe ...). Perhaps one day I will upgrade, but for the time being I am making do with a cheapo (100 €) 4W diode laser and a 80 mm x 80 mm working area. Limited capabilities and precision, but it helped me to produce some small parts with complicated shapes that would be difficult to make in a different way.

[John Fox III]

            Before continuing with this build article I would like to review some of what I've learned, and how it affects the work as it progresses. First of all I have learned that I need to soak/saturate the card stock from packaging much better. Originally I only used multiple painted coats of thinned poly varnish to do this work. I was only saturating the uncolored side, which is in effect sealed off by the printing. I have since learned to sand the colored side of the card stock, using 320 grit sandpaper and a small wood block, to roughen up the surface and remove as much of the sealed surface as possible. The second thing I've learned is to use a small plastic tray, in my case the base of a plastic container used locally to hold bakery goods, to literally soak the stock for at least five minutes. This worked much better at hardening and saturating the card stock. It makes it slightly more difficult to cut out parts, but keeps the fraying from unsaturated inner parts of the stock down to a minimum.

            Although not evident from the photos shown thus far, the hull does have some places where the top of the bulwarks are not symmetrical side-to-side. One side has a slight bulge and the other a bit too much tumblehome inwards. I believe this is due to the fact that I did not cut the slots for the individual pieces well enough, in some places the bulkheads were not perfectly 90 degrees from the keel piece. I didn't realize the problems this would cause later. I figured that although the center keel piece was forced out of alignment at the deck level, once the tops of the bulkhead pieces were glued to the spacer piece it would straighten out. I was wrong, the top of the center keel piece was pushed sideways slightly in places, but I could not see this until the hull was planked and cut from the spacer piece so I could view that area.

            As a lot of the work involved soaking or gluing, and then waiting for up to 24 hours to continue work, I decided to see if I could improve on the hull by starting over completely. Remember, this whole things is an experiment to see what is possible and what can go wrong and how to improve things with card/paper modeling. I am still working with the original hull,  as experimenting with it will help improve things overall.

            I redesigned the bulkheads and added some additional pieces to make what I believe will be a stronger and better hull. The following images show this new design.

            Like the previous plan drawings my CAD program exports rather poor images, I have all these drawings as PDF drawings if anyone is interested. The major changes to these plans are the additional longitudinal stiffeners and the open areas on most bulkheads at deck level. I am hoping that it makes cutting down to deck level much easier and more accurate. I also extended the bulkheads on each side right at the top of the bulwarks line, to make planking in that area much more accurate.

            I did make up the parts for the new hull, using the above mentioned soaking technique to the card stock this time. While the results were much better overall, it was a bit more difficult to cut the thoroughly saturated stock not to mention a lot more slot cuts were needed. The following images show some of the work on cutting out and gluing together that different parts. Each was made twice, and then each pair glued together to make up the final pieces.

 

 

            After the pieces were glued together to make up the hull parts, I dry fit each piece to all the pieces it would interact with in the final hull form. I made sure each piece fit easily and the pieces remained square to each other. It took a lot of time, and if a piece fit tight enough but slightly off square I would slightly enlarge the slot so that it would be square. Slightly over sized slots turned out not to be a problem, as there are so many pieces that fit together it did straighten it all out.

            The installation of the longitudinal pieces did require them to be installed on all the bulkheads that they interacted with at one time. And, due to the limited open areas above the deck level, they had to be put in place at 90 degrees to their final position. They were then slid into place and rotated to fit into their respective slots. A bit fiddly to do, but it worked out quite well due to the dry fitting and trimming of all the slots.

            The hull parts were put together in sub-assemblies, which were then added to the center keel piece. The larger center section had to be added first, then the stern and bow areas added. The following photos show this work.

 

 

            All the joints were then glued with white glue. This hull form was very stable. This time I glued the spacer print directly to a 3/8" maple board, and glued the tops of the bulkheads to that. Unlike the first hull, this time all the bulkheads lined up perfectly on the spacer print, with no adjustments needed. The following photo shows the final results of this process.

 

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[wefalck]

A systematic approach always helps !

[John Fox III]

Continuing with my work on experiments in cardboard/paper modeling.....

 

            Work on the second hull continued with the start of a first layer of planking. This time I used well saturated cardboard that was thinner than that used on the first hull. These planks were stiffer, but also much more brittle. I also changed things up a little by using a white card stock, also saturated with thinned poly varnish, to delineate the waterline. The following photos show this work in progress. One thing to note is that this time I did not fill in the bow and stern areas with solid card stock, not sure if it was a good idea or not, it make planking much more difficult.

 

            One thing I am trying to accomplish with these experiments in card modeling is to see how far one can go with only cardboard and paper. I expect at some point I won't be able to take it all the way, but the only way to really find out is to experiment.

            While working on the planking for the second hull I would take breaks from that work to try out a method to make spars for the models. I used a variety of different sized aluminum and brass tubing, as well as a long miniature drill bit in my efforts. I wrapped very thin paper around the largest tube in my selection, carefully rolling the paper between my thumbs and forefingers on both hands around until the paper was tightly wrapped. I then let up slightly, removed the larger tube and inserted the next smaller tube and continued. I repeated this process until I had a tube that was slightly larger on the outside than the desired finished mast. While holding the paper tightly to the last tube/bit I applied CA glue to the point where paper ended, working from one end of the tube. I then slid the paper tube nearly off the tube, and saturated the entire outside of the tube with the CA glue.

            I then removed the paper tube from the brass/aluminum tube or drill bit, and used a thin sliver of bamboo to seal and harden the inside of the entire tube by dipping the sliver of bamboo into the thinned varnish and letting it drip from the tip of the sliver into the open end of the paper tube. I repeated this three of four times on each end, then pushed the bamboo sliver in and out to clear any excess varnish. I wanted the inside of the paper tube completely sealed, but also completely cleared so that the metal tube/bit could be reinserted. At this point I put the metal tube/bit back into the paper tube and sanded the outside of the tube to attempt to get the desired taper. After sanding a bit I would reach a point where the CA glue had not saturated and the paper would start to fray a bit. I would then add more CA glue to the outside of the paper tube, and continue again with the sanding. I repeated this process until I had the desired spar shape.

            Though the photos included below only show the finished mast parts for one model, I made many more tubes. I had to make up tubes that would be thick enough to be stiff at whatever desired size I needed, but that meant cutting many pieces of paper and gluing them up to determine the length of paper that worked best, i.e. not too much paper to make the tube walls too thick, but enough to make the tube as stiff as possible.

            The next portion of the work was making up layered solid pieces of card stock, to add to the tops of the mast tubes. These layered pieces were made to be as thick as the tops of the paper tubes, masts in these cases. These pieces are designed to make up the mast doubling areas. The layered pieces were then measured so that they were about twice as long as the mast top area, then one portion was cut and sanded into a solid, round stem. This stem portion would be inserted into the paper tube top end. Then they were sanded and cut into the proper side and shape for the mast tops.

 

            Work on the masts continued with making and adding the cheeks. I first made a template by gluing a cutout from the plans onto a single layer of card stock. I used that to trace the shapes onto a thicker layer of card stock, and cut them out. I glued them to the masts, then sanded a taper into the cheeks, thinner at the bottom to full thickness at the top.

            While doing this work I also glued the card decks onto the hull. I did glue a card stock beam to the underside of the stern edge of the forecastle deck. The holes for the masts were then cut out of the decks.  I also glued pieces of thinner white card stock to the insides of the bulwarks. I used thin paper pushed tightly to the deck and bulwarks to get the curved shape needed, then transferred that to the final card stock. The following photos show the work on mast cheeks and first hull with decks.

 

 

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

 

 

[wefalck]

How will you taper the spars and work in the square and octogonal sections that they probably have ?

 

Not that I would push the use of card that far, particularly as is will not be visible after painting. I know card-modellers working from printed kits like to push the use of card to the limit, but then the model has a certain 'style' in which the card as such is recognisable. When the card as such is not visible, I would rather use wood or metal for the masts and spars.

[John Fox III]

13 minutes ago, wefalck said:

How will you taper the spars and work in the square and octogonal sections that they probably have ?

 

Not that I would push the use of card that far, particularly as is will not be visible after painting. I know card-modellers working from printed kits like to push the use of card to the limit, but then the model has a certain 'style' in which the card as such is recognisable. When the card as such is not visible, I would rather use wood or metal for the masts and spars.

See the written portion and photos above, it explains and shows how the squared portion of the masts, at the doublings, is made. I am not writing up these experiments to excite interest in card modeling, in my experience many people don't think something is possible in modeling. I've built literally 100's of miniature ship models over 40 years as a professional, and am at a point where I experiment with different things just to see what is possible. I am very determined, and usually don't give up until I've exhausted everything I can think of to make any part from any materials. I only post my experiments because it might impart the idea to not give up, but keep experimenting in mind when modeling. You might find you can do/make things you never thought possible.

 

I do not plan to paint any part of my experimental clipper models, there are problem areas such as the darker areas on the white masts shown above, where the glue between paper layers comes through. I know other card modelers use paint, and colored foil materials for their planking. And of course wood for spars and to stabilize the interior structure. If that "works" for a modeler, fine. I just want to find out what might be possible if one uses nothing but card and paper stock, and if I take it that far, thread.

 

Wood spars would of course be much easier, and far faster. I've made countless 1000's of them in my time. Again, just want to see how far the idea of card stock and paper will take me.

 

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[wefalck]

OK, I get the point. Somehow, I assumed that the 'experiment' would be somehow finished as a 'real' model.

 

I myself also like to experiment with different materials, but this is rather driven by the need to make smaller and more delicate parts or to use thinner materials in order to be in scale thickness. Thus for instance, I am currently striving to make 1.5 mm double blocks from laser-cut Canson-paper - the theory in my imagination looks pretty straightforward, but at iteration nine, I still did not manage to produce what I want ...

[John Fox III]

3 hours ago, wefalck said:

OK, I get the point. Somehow, I assumed that the 'experiment' would be somehow finished as a 'real' model.

 

I myself also like to experiment with different materials, but this is rather driven by the need to make smaller and more delicate parts or to use thinner materials in order to be in scale thickness. Thus for instance, I am currently striving to make 1.5 mm double blocks from laser-cut Canson-paper - the theory in my imagination looks pretty straightforward, but at iteration nine, I still did not manage to produce what I want ...

It may very well finish up as a completed model, I just don't know that yet. All I can do is keep trying and see how things work out.

 

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[John Fox III]

            Work on the card/paper models continued with finishing up the masts and bowsprit/jib boom. The process for making the top and topgallant masts was similar to the work involved with making the lower masts. Various sized rods and tubes were wrapped with brown paper, using a tube or rod of the appropriate size to make the final paper tube a bit larger than necessary. The next steps were to sand the glued paper tubes to the proper size and shape. This work was very tedious as the CA glue applied to the outside of the tubing only saturated the paper for a few layers. As the sanding reached those unglued layers the paper because fuzzy and started to unwrap a bit. At those points an additional application of the CA glue was necessary. I found it necessary in many cases to have to repeat these steps quite a few times to get the tubes to final shape.

            The doublings for each mast overlap were made by making mast tops and trestle cross trees out of 3 or 4 layers of varnish saturated white card stock. I found that using the thinnest card stock worked best for these parts. Holes were drilled and cleared out to shape using an X-acto knife and #11 blade.

            The problems arose when using thicker card stock during the drilling and cutting phases of the work. The inner portions of the thicker card stock were not saturated with the varnish, and would start to separate as I drilled, or cut. This caused the drill bit to just push aside some of the inner card stock, which caused that portion of the part I was working to swell up and become thicker. Even when working with thinner card stock this happened to a lesser extent. What worked for me was to drill a few increasingly larger holes, then add a bit of CA glue into the hole. In this case I started with a #80 drill bit, then a size #76 followed by a #70 sized bit. Once these tiny holes were drilled I added the CA glue This hardened the area around the hole on the inner layers and helped stabilize the part. When larger holes were needed, larger drill bits were used, applying the CA glue to each hole after drilling.

            The same sort of technique was used when cutting and shaping the outside of white parts of the doublings, for much the same reason. Cutting to roughly the correct size and shape for a part, CA glued was applied to the edges, where the individual layers of the card stock were exposed. This work stabilized the part, and kept the layers from separating while further cutting and sanding to final size and shape.

            As with the doubling portion made for the lower masts, the tubes were connected together with pin like extensions of a part, or with card pins made from layers of stock glued together and then sanded round and to fit inside the necessary tubes. The white portions of the upper mast in each doubling was just a white paper tube, made like all the rest.

            The most difficult masts to make were the topgallant masts. In all cases I was simply unable to sand them down to a fine enough shape and size without their collapsing or unwrapping of the brown paper used. A fine pin of solid stock was glued into the tops of the tubes, with a bit sticking out the end. The work was similar to the other masts, sanding and applying glue as necessary. The following photos show the final results, including an exploded view of each portion of the total mast assembly.

            Note: While my purpose was to make an entire model from nothing but glue, paper and card stock, it would have been far easier and much closer to exact scale if I had been working with wood for masts and sheet styrene for top, trestle cross trees and mast caps. It took far longer to work with the paper and card stock, especially when having to use separate colors for the parts to keep from having to use paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            Simultaneously to work on the masts for the models was continued work on the second hull. The brown saturated card stock planks were added to finish the lower hull on the side shown in the earlier photo. The other side of the hull was then planked in the exact same manner. After planking was complete, as thin a coat as possible of epoxy was "painted" onto the entire hull surface with a thin, stiff brush. My previous attempts to thin two-part epoxy with rubbing alcohol never worked out right, the glue never cured. Not being thinned made applying a thin coat much more difficult in the end.

            Once the epoxy coating had cured, the entire hull was lightly sanded with 320 grit sandpaper, to even out the coating. As desired, the coating hardened the card stock surface making it far easier to sand and even things out.

            In an effort not use paint on this hull, I decided to use two colors of card stock. I found a moderately copper looking card stock at a local shop, and used black construction paper for the second color. Both stock were saturated with thinned poly varnish and allowed to dry. A wooden jig was then constructed to make it easier to cut 1/16" wide strips from both colored stock. At that size it was a bit out of scale, about 2' wide.

            I found that there is a vast difference between the construction paper and the copper colored card stock at this point. The cut edges of the card stock were white, meaning the color was only applied to the outside surfaces, where as the construction paper was solid black through it's thickness. I did a little research online to look for card stock that might work better, what I found was that there are two types of card stock. The "normal" stock has color only on the surfaces, while the "solid core" card stock had color the same as construction paper. Unfortunately, the solid core stocks were much heavier and thicker, so I decided to use what I had.

            While researching the stock, I did find that there are some copper card stock that looks just like metal copper, but none that were solid core. Another thing I found with my experiment was that the varnish fully saturated the construction paper, but not the card stock. The color on the outside surface of the card stock seems to seal it allowing minimal saturation. This led to the black paper being much stiffer, harder and brittle, but the colored stock being the opposite. The colored paper easily bent to fit against the first planking layer, while the black paper would crack and break if attempting to force it to shape.

            The second hull was now planked, using the white plank line on the first plank layer as a guide to separate the copper lower hull from the black upper hull. The effect of this planking looks quite reasonable from any distance, but close up one can see the white edges of the copper stock in areas of extreme curvature of the hull. There are also a few places where the fit wasn't quite right, and a small portion of overlap of the previous plank installed happened, which left a raised portion of that copper colored plank. There are also a few spots where the planks left very slight gaps, allowing the brown planking beneath to show through.

            In the end, while the second planking definitely is not as good as I wished, it does do a reasonable job of duplicating a ships hull. I will attempt to keep the errors from the first side planking to occur on the second side as I work. Were I to do it again, I might make the hull form a bit smaller, so that the much thicker solid core card stock could be used for the colored planking without compromising the scale. I may attempt to alleviate the problems of the copper colored planking by lightly sanding the copper stock to get rid of raised areas and then use a green colored thinned paint "wash". My thinking is that it would look somewhat realistic, but would compromise my idea of not using paint.

            The following photos show the planking work to date. There are some areas that shine on both planking colors, these are areas where it was necessary to apply some CA glue to the outside of the planking.

 

 

 

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

 

Edited March 16, 2021 by John Fox III
photo in wrong place originally

[John Fox III]

            The experiments continued with finishing the colored planking on the second hull. The keel, stem and stern posts were added and covered with the copper colored card stock as well. The entire hull was then coated several times with thinned varnish. The following photos show the hull as it stands now.

 

            The majority of my time has been spent making the yards for the masts. It was found that laminating black construction paper worked out the best for their construction. Using liberal amounts of CA glue to laminate the paper, including soaking the outside of the layered pieces. From that point the laminated parts were treated much as I would making yards out of wood. I first sanded them into a square cross section as thick as the center of the yard, then slightly tapered the pieces on either end. Then sanded the yard into a hexagonal cross section throughout. Finally sanding the yard blank round in cross section. As with most of the other paper/card construction, it was necessary occasionally to apply a bit more CA glue when an unsaturated area was encountered. I also noticed that the laminated construction paper was a bit more brittle than most woods, so care was taken.

            All the upper yards used a simple fitting glued to them in order to attach them to the masts with a bit of fine thread. The crossjack and course yards were attached using a hanging bracket arrangement which was as close as I could get, at the scale and using the material, to what was shown on the plans. I also used two tiny pieces of brass wire in making the brackets, which allow those yards to swing partway around the masts.

            The final pieces to these yard hangers was fake chain, which was made from 8/0 fly tying thread. The fake chain was made by tying double overhand knot in the center of a length of thread around a #80 drill bit, which was fitted shank side down into a length of wood. The drill bit was then pulled up and removed from the thread loop. A length of the same thread was then tied through the loop and extended down the length of the wood, where it was held mildly tightly with a rubber band wrapped around both wood and length of thread. The thread was then pulled away from the reinserted drill bit, to keep the loop directly opposite the bit while tying a second double overhand knot. It was impossible to keep tying these knots exactly opposite each other, so the fake chain looks a bit "squiggly" when just laying there. It does look fairly realistic when pulled tightly.

            The fake chain was tied, with a small piece of thread through the first loop, to a small wire eye bolt. The eye bolt was made by twisting a piece of extremely thin wire around a #80 drill bit, using a forceps to twist until the wire broke. This eye bolt was glued into a hole drilled just below the mast top. The thread chain was then wrapped around the center of the yard, and a second small thread piece was inserted through loops in the chain twice. It took a bit of practice to choose the right loops to pass this thread through so that when a knot was tied into the thread it pulled to chain tightly around the yard center. The knots in the two threads were glued and the excess thread cut and removed. The following photos show the pieces and results of this portion of my experimenting.

 

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

 

[Tim Holt]

This is quite interesting!  It's nice to see an alternative approach to our usual methods.

[druxey]

Ingenious - especially your technique for producing (sub)miniature chain.

[John Fox III]

On 6/6/2021 at 1:06 AM, Tim Holt said:

This is quite interesting!  It's nice to see an alternative approach to our usual methods.

Greetings Tim,

Glad you find the build interesting! It's a bit frustrating learning techniques that work with card stock, lots of attempts at making parts that did not work before finding ways that did work.

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[John Fox III]

On 6/6/2021 at 6:13 AM, druxey said:

Ingenious - especially your technique for producing (sub)miniature chain.

Greetings druxey,

Thanks for the kudo! I have been building sub miniature ship in bottle and light bulb models for over 30 years, using solid carved basswood hulls and all wood and styrene parts. The miniature chain method was developed for those models.

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

[John Fox III]

            My work on experimenting with card/paper model ship building continued with finishing up the second hull, the one with colored card stock second planking. The hull was cut free from the building board by slicing through the bulkheads at the top of the bulwarks. A simpler stand for the hull was made from blue colored card stock. The following photos show the freed second hull in the stand.

 

 

            The photos above show that I also added card stock blocking at the extreme bow and locations for the 3 masts. The multiple longitudinal bulkheads definitely define the deck areas much better than the first hull in my opinion.

            Work progressed with cutting down the interior edges of the bulwarks, removing the excess stock that was included in the bulkheads to make the hull more stable during planking. I used several tools that I built, made up from pieces of 1/16" interior diameter brass tubing and pieces cut from a single edged razor blade, with wooden handles made from maple. I used a Dremel moto tool with a cut-off wheel to cut the razor blade pieces of various widths at the cutting end. I shaped the other end into shanks that would fit into the brass tubing, then slid them in and glued them in place. These miniature chisels work nicely, and I've used them on many models in the past.

 

 

 

            The photo above shows how the interior planking of the bulwarks on the first model's hull turned out. I was not happy with these results, the uneven run was the result of not quite having faired the bulkheads properly, and partly due to the miniature clothes pins used to clamp the single piece planking in place. I decided that on the second hull I would experiment in ways to improve these problems.

            I ended up filling in the gaps between bulkheads with card stock before final sanding the bulkhead interior sanding. This definitely helped even things out, and kept the clamping devices from indenting the interior planking pieces. I did the same thing for the stern of the fore castle deck and fore face of the quarter deck as well. The following photos show this work.

 

 

            I then proceeded to cut away the tops of the bulkheads above my blocking. I decided that with the double layer of planking, the bulwarks would be thick enough with just a single layer of card stock glued inside.

            The next work was to cut and glue the white interior planking. This was a process of using paper to make templates and then transferring those outlines to the card stock and cutting. These strips and pieces were then glued in place. The results were much better than the first hull at this point. I also drilled the holes for the masts. The following photos show this work.

 

 

            Work continued on this second hull with making paper templates of all the decks. These were traced on stained white card stock and stained white paper with planking lines drawn on it. All of these parts were cut out and fitted to the hull, to make sure they fit properly. I then stained more white card stock, traced the deck parts and cut out some waterways for the model. I was not happy with the way these waterways looked, they were a bit too wide and attempting to cut or sand them thinner just didn't work. I decided to remake the waterways by staining a piece of white paper and then gluing them to card stock and cutting them out. These looked much better, but are still probably a bit too wide for this scale. The decks were then glued to the hull. The following photos show this work, the waterways photo shows the first ones made, I simply forgot to photograph the final waterways.

 

 

 

 

 

            The most challenging work on this second model hull was my next work. I used black card stock to make the cap rail for the hull, in a single piece. I placed the card stock on the top of the model, held it in place with a stiff piece of thick cardboard pressing tightly enough to follow the entire curve of the top of the bulwarks. I traced the outline of the bulwarks onto the stock and cut it out. I used a small compass to then traced a line 1/16" inside the outer edge of the stock. The difficult part was to cut out this inside edge as carefully as I could. I can say that it took 3 attempts to get past this last step, as noted above with the waterways it is nearly impossible to re-cut or sand this thin card stock if any spots were too wide. I did use a black magic marker on the cap rails edges, as this stock has a white interior.

            The waterways and cap rail were then glued onto the hull. The results are shown in the next photos.

 

 

 

            At this point I believe I will be ending my card stock and paper modeling efforts. I found it very interesting, and in some cases rewarding, to have attempted this work. My personal conclusions would be that I definitely would rather work with wood, it's more stable and easier to "work" than card stock. I was surprised at how well some things worked, such as making up the masts and yards. But during building and fitting to the second hull I have already broken several of the yards. Saturated construction paper is just too brittle in the end, as I related earlier.

            If I were to attempt any more card stock modeling I would most definitely use "solid" card stock, this stock has the color saturated through it's interior and not just on the outside faces like the stock I used. I also would probably not hesitate to use paint, or color printed detailing, on any further modeling of this type.

            I also learned more about bulkhead model work than I had previously known. Making the plans for a bulkhead model from a set of lines plans, using QCAD software, is interesting work, and these card stock models a nice way to test out my methodology.

            As a parting shot, I did make up the chain plates for the model, but being made of saturated construction paper they were so brittle that I did not bother to add them to the hull.

            Thanks for your patience in reading my experimentation in card stock modeling.

 

 

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III

 

[ccoyle]

Your experiment turned out quite nice!

[John Fox III]

20 hours ago, ccoyle said:

Your experiment turned out quite nice!

Thanks Crhis, glad you liked it!

 

Anchor's A Weigh!

John Fox III