Flying Fish by gak1965 - FINISHED - Model Shipways - 1:96

[gak1965]

Just a bit of an update. Progress is slow but steady. I have 10 full strakes on both the port and starboard sides, and the bulk of the knuckle is formed. I'm using a "5 bulkhead" scheme, but will likely move to a longer plank once I've dropped into the region that is going to be plated.

 

One interesting (for lack of a better term) observation related to COVID impacted supply chains is that I can no longer get Tamiya tape from my local store. They have none, of any size. The store people tell me there is one factory and they are not producing at anywhere near the previous level due to COVID safety protocols My color test sections used conventional painters tape which doesn't work as well for me. I'm glad that they are following protocols and will get by, but just mention it for some color.

 

[gak1965]

And another brief update. Planking is proceeding apace. I've added a few steelers in the stern to reduce the amount of bend required. Should be done in another week or so, followed by an extended session with wood filler and a number of grades of sandpaper.

[mbp521]

Beautiful job on your build so far. This is truly a nice kit from MS. I started this kit about seven years ago and stalled out after having completed the hull, decking and deck furniture. We moved in the process of the build and I haven't picked it back up since. I caught the steam era bug and have been there for the last several years. It is my plan to pull it out of mothballs once I've completed my current build. It'll be nice to get back to the age of sail for a bit. I'm sure following your build will provide me the motivation to pick it back up again.

 

-Brian

[gak1965]

21 hours ago, mbp521 said:

I caught the steam era bug and have been there for the last several years

 

-Brian

Thanks for the vote of confidence! I visited Vicksburg National Military Park when we were moving from Los Angeles to DC and saw the Cairo there. It is a great subject and easy to understand how it catches people's imagination.

[gak1965]

Thanks for the likes and for following along.

 

The hull planks are in place. The first three shots show the hull before any serious fairing work, the next photos are after the application of some filler and some elbow grease with 150 grit sandpaper (or at least I hope that is the order that they show up - I have a very hard time getting the files to load in the order I want, but I digress. Tomorrow and over the weekend, I will continue the sanding, fill in a couple of remaining gaps and then give it a nice sanding with 220 grit to get a decently smooth surface. Once that is complete, I'll get the stanchions and the bulwarks and the forecastle ceiling planks and it will be time to paint the hull. I like to put the hatch coamings and then plank the decks, so paint before deck.

 

 

Two other quick observations. First, you can now get Tamiya tape again at my local store. Hopefully that means vaccinations and recovery. Second, it is interesting to compare and contrast the hull forms of the ships I've built over the years. Despite being a fast sailer, this has a really deep and flat bottomed hull compared to say, a Baltimore Clipper like the Pride of Baltimore, but very similar to Passat. USS Constitution has the deep draft, but is beamer compared to its draft and has a more V shaped bottom; Niagara is both shallower draft and way beamier, and has a less flat bottom than the Fish. It's not really surprising I suppose, since form follows function, but it is still interesting.

 

Enjoy your weekend all,

George K

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 12, 2021 by gak1965

[mbp521]

George,

 

Looks like photos came in just fine.
 

I love the sleek, graceful lines of these Clippers, it’s no wonder how they could just cut through the water like they did. Donald McKay was a true artisan and a master of the extreme clipper design. 
 

Even though you are still in the early stages of the build she is really coming along nicely. Good idea to paint the hull before planking the deck. It keeps from having to clean up any overspray and saves on the precious Tamiya tape. 
 

-Brian

[Keithbrad80]

Things are looking great! 
 

Bradley

[gak1965]

2 hours ago, mbp521 said:

I love the sleek, graceful lines of these Clippers, it’s no wonder how they could just cut through the water like they did. Donald McKay was a true artisan and a master of the extreme clipper design. 

 

The thing that amazes me about McKay and his cohorts in the late 18th through mid 19th century is the degree to which they kind of intuited the kind of engineering concepts we get today through controlled experimentation and/or computer modeling. They were experimenting, but with the full size ship (or bridge, or building, or whatever). By the turn of the century, navies at least were testing models in large tanks (the US Navy built its first basin in 1896, and Robert Massie discusses how the RN designers tested a number of hull models when designing HMS Dreadnought in 1905 - finding a hull form that allowed for adding additional armor while keeping the powerplant and speed the same). But McKay, Palmer, Griffiths, and, heck, Humphreys, Pook, Eads, etc. had none of those advantages and still made great ships.

 

I'm not saying we don't have people like that around now (I'm trying to restrain myself from moving into 'get off of my lawn territory' as I head into my late 50s), but modern engineers can model and have a much higher chance of finding the fatal flaw before they build the thing. Gotta admire their guts though. And McKay in particular, who I think bet the firm at least twice on his design being successful.

[mbp521]

I have to agree with you. I personally think that those guys were smarter than the designers now days in the fact that they didn’t have the technology that designers now use. It was pure mental and mathematics on paper. They didn’t have that luxury of using the computer do their thinking for them. It did take guts and know how (along with some trial and error) to produce these beautiful ships. Total respect for those guys. 
 

-Brian

[gak1965]

Thanks for the visits and the likes. I've started on the bulwarks, putting a temporary batten in place to position the stanchions and then securing the bases with CA glue. The somewhat eclectic order of stanchion installation was (at least in theory) to prevent pressure on the batten from causing deformation - I put a number on each end and then installed port and starboard pairs where I thought they might do the most good in terms of maintaining the 'natural shape'. As with most people, I mad the stanchions longer than necessary with the intention of cutting them down to size.

 

Once all the stanchions were in place, I started putting the bulwarks on. Before I could do that, I realized that I needed the planksheer to extend all the way to the knightheads (otherwise there was a gap between the garboard strake and the forecastle bulwark, so I fabricated two planksheer extensions. The bulwarks are made with 1/32 by 3/32 planks. I've only completed one, and have not yet completed the section around the stern, which is going to require some serious steam bending. After the planks were in place, I used my Dremel to cut the stanchions down to size, and used a bit of filler to fill any gaps.

 

 

You may note that the final plank extends a bit over the stern bulkheads. It looks like that is not the case uniformly across the after bulkheads. The further aft, the more it appears that the 5 planks will reach the top of the bulkhead pretty exactly. I'll need to see how many bulkheads are impacted. If it's only one or two, I will build up the bulkhead with some scrap to level it off. If it's most of them, I'll sand down the bulwarks until it runs smoothly to the forecastle. Honestly, my suspicion is that I will do the former. I think it much more likely that I will get an even set of bulwarks if I add 2 or three extensions to the bulkheads rather than try to sand them down well into the waist (the forecastle looks pretty good - no serious mismatches there. That may mean adjusting the aft cabin when it is installed, but I'll at least be aware of it ahead of time.

 

One thing to keep reminding myself is that building a ship is a question of making the adjustments when things don't follow the plans exactly. Every ship I've ever made has required some adjustment in order to make it work. The Niagara needed a huge adjustment on the gunports. If you had followed the plans exactly you would wind up with carronades that hit the ceiling of the gunports. Evolve and adapt.

[mbp521]

George,

 

Really looking good so far.
 

I’m right there with you on making adjustments. There hasn’t been a single one of my builds where some form of “tweaking” didn’t have to be done. All part of the build though. 
 

You will definitely need to soak and steam those aft boards around the stern. I remember having several snap or split on me even after a good soaking before I got them to lay down right. 
 

-Brian

[gak1965]

Okay, well I've put the starboard bulwarks in place. 

 

In order to get the stern bulwarks to fit well, I soaked them in boiling water so that they would become ductile, and then fitted them as tightly on stern as I could realistically do with just the clamps and no glue, and then let them dry overnight so that when I did apply them they wouldn't create large gaps as they became less waterlogged. The next day, I had a nice set of U-shaped planks.

 

The next step was to attach the planks, and then start the process of final hull and bulwark shaping. That is not yet complete, but here are a couple of views of the ship to date:

 

 

Ultimately I did not build up the bulkheads to even the poop and the bulwarks, but rather sanded it down because I thought it would give a better look. This seems to be the case, and I'm glad I took that path. I've tried to tread lightly with filler on the bulwarks as it would be bad to have a bunch of it oozing through any gaps and appearing on the open waist of the ship. One nice thing about warships is that they have ceiling planks all along the bulwarks that hide all kinds of gaps.

 

For the clipper history buffs, a quick question. Does anyone know if the stanchions on the Fish were extensions of the frames, or whether they were floating stanchions fitted between the frames? It doesn't matter to the model, I'm just curious. When I got some initial information on Discovery I learned about the floating stanchions that were apparently common on a lot of later wood construction, but I don't know when the transition occurred, and I still find it interesting for some obscure reason.

 

George K

[Vladimir_Wairoa]

very very beautiful built George. im following on this with interest & inspiration. 

[mbp521]

George,

 

nice job on the stern bulwarks in getting them shaped. This was an area that I struggled with on my build, but you nailed it on the first try.

 

For your question about the stanctions, I am no expert on these but I believe they were an extension of the frames. If you take a look at Ed T’s build log on the extreme clipper Young American, while be it this was a William Webb construction, not a Don McKay ship, their construction was similar, you’ll see that about every other frame was extended above deck to for the stanctions. This is a great build along with an outstanding tutorial that provides a wealth of info on extreme clipper construction.

 

Keep up the good work. 
 

-Brian

[gak1965]

Thank you all for the kind words and the encouragement. I've followed your various builds ( @Vladimir_Wairoa your Cutty Sark, @mbp521 your USS Cairo and @Keithbrad80's Flying Fish) with interest. Since at least two of you are further with the Fish than I am, a question, did you bend a 1/16 by 3/16 strip to make the main rail or carve it out of something like a 1/16 x 1/14? I don't think I'll need to do anything special for the covering board at the poop - it's pretty straight except where there is a laser cut section - and there is a lot of surface for the adhesives to grab on to. The forecastle covering board may also be okay with a bit of a bend, so long as I start at the forecastle. I think that the main rail will probably be fine with some bending (or maybe some bending, but in two sections) but would be curious how you handled it.

 

On a related note, to any of the clipper folks out there, the decks of the Fish were listed as white pine. Anyone have any notion of how or if they were finished, if at all? Just wondering to decide what kind of stain to put on the deck planks. I can use 'pine' stain, but if they used some treatment that made it darker, it would be nice to know. @Keithbrad80 had a great method for making his deck look a bit worn, but I like to build the ships as if they are headed out on their maiden voyages, so curious what they would have looked like new.

[Keithbrad80]

I started at the poop with the laser cut pieces as a starting point but thankfully I didn’t have to carve the main rail. The curve from the poop to the forecastle is pretty straight and didn’t require much bending, I made several smaller pieces though at the forecastle since the curve was a little bit to much to bend. I used the same material though as the main rail for the forecastle instead of cutting from a large piece. If you wanted to do it in one piece you could start with a larger sheet of bass wood and draw the shape of rail out and cut that out. 
 

For the decks I have seen a lot of people use a pencil to highlight the caulking in between the planks, compared to what I did this should leave you with a nice clean deck that you can stain afterwards. Remember don’t use CA if you plan to stain! Your build is looking awesome, and I can’t wait to get back to my own build. 

 

Bradley

[Keithbrad80]

1 hour ago, gak1965 said:

listed as white pine.

Also, have you ever heard of holystones? They were used to scrub the decks to clean them but also it might the decks really white, I didn’t do nearly as much research on this build as you did, I wish I did, but you could look into that and see if there is a way to replicate those results or if they even holystoned the deck of the Flying Fish. 
 

Bradley

[Vladimir_Wairoa]

1 hour ago, gak1965 said:

Thank you all for the kind words and the encouragement. I've followed your various builds ( @Vladimir_Wairoa your Cutty Sark, @mbp521 your USS Cairo and @Keithbrad80's Flying Fish) with interest. Since at least two of you are further with the Fish than I am, a question, did you bend a 1/16 by 3/16 strip to make the main rail or carve it out of something like a 1/16 x 1/14? I don't think I'll need to do anything special for the covering board at the poop - it's pretty straight except where there is a laser cut section - and there is a lot of surface for the adhesives to grab on to. The forecastle covering board may also be okay with a bit of a bend, so long as I start at the forecastle. I think that the main rail will probably be fine with some bending (or maybe some bending, but in two sections) but would be curious how you handled it.

 

On a related note, to any of the clipper folks out there, the decks of the Fish were listed as white pine. Anyone have any notion of how or if they were finished, if at all? Just wondering to decide what kind of stain to put on the deck planks. I can use 'pine' stain, but if they used some treatment that made it darker, it would be nice to know. @Keithbrad80 had a great method for making his deck look a bit worn, but I like to build the ships as if they are headed out on their maiden voyages, so curious what they would have looked like new.

George, 

i have to say i dont have experince bending small ril so far...but id be inclibed to say ...depends on how you are going to bend it. 3/16 its quite a lot for easy bend , i can imagine soak and bend it over violin bender ....i woul try. if doeant work i would cut shape around forecastle and stern and bend reast where is no stee pround easily. 

im pretty intereated as we with folks finished measuring another McKay clipper glory , so i will have it alser cut and will tra to build her following model shipways fish planes so exactly as you work. i have them at home and i liek every bit of it. its proper way to build a clipper so im finally looking forward to buidl clipper properly.  im glad i can watch your steps and observe:) have fun. 

[mbp521]

George,

 

This was one of the more difficult rails to build and after several attempts at trying to bend them I gave up and carved mine out. 
 

Here is how it came out. 

 

Forgive my crudeness of how it looks. I started this ship about eight years ago and it was only my second full build. That’s mainly the reason I shelved it until I gained more experience.

 

As for the deck, I just left the basswood strips natural with a coat of clear satin varnish. This I figured would give it the look of freshly holy stoned wood (with a little sheen of course). Not quite accurate, but this is the method that I use in almost all of my builds. 
 

 

Hope this helps. 
 

-Brian

[gak1965]

3 hours ago, Keithbrad80 said:

Also, have you ever heard of holystones? They were used to scrub the decks to clean them but also it might the decks really white, I didn’t do nearly as much research on this build as you did, I wish I did, but you could look into that and see if there is a way to replicate those results or if they even holystoned the deck of the Flying Fish. 
 

Bradley

Yep. I tend to associate holystoning with naval vessels rather than commercial ships, the former carrying way more crew per unit weather deck than a commercial vessel. USS Constitution, a vessel of similar length, had a crew of 450 versus what, maybe 25-50 on a typical clipper? Frequent holystoning apparently damages the deck; there is a reference in Wikipedia about the US Navy at some point saying stop because it was damaging the decks of the battleships (even the Iowa's had teak decks).

 

Amusingly, in the early 1970's novelization of the Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever", Edith Keeler mentions how clean Spock and Kirk have made the storeroom, and Kirk thinks that something finally came from doing all that holystoning as a midshipman.

[gak1965]

26 minutes ago, mbp521 said:

George,

 

This was one of the more difficult rails to build and after several attempts at trying to bend them I gave up and carved mine out. 
 

Here is how it came out. 
 

 

Forgive my crudeness of how it looks. I started this ship about eight years ago and it was only my second full build. That’s mainly the reason I shelved it until I gained more experience.

 

 

-Brian

You are selling yourself way too short. I would be thrilled if my efforts were half as "crude" as yours...

[gak1965]

Hello all.

 

FIrst thank you for the assistance and the encouragement, it has been very helpful.

 

Over the last couple of days I carved and attached the covering board/main rail. There are two laser cut pieces, everything else needs to the bent or carved. The laser cut pieces are 1/4 inch and are supposed to project 1/16 of an inch, so I marked 3/16" in from the edge of the counter and aligned the laser cut pieces on them, which alas left a gap that needed filling with a piece of cut 1/4 x 1/16 wood.  

 

The covering board remains 1/4" x 1/16 until just abaft of bulkhead 14 (where there will be an edge board, supported by a set of knees eventually. This is straight enough to manage with some bending. It shrinks to 3/16" by 1/16" from there to bulkhead 5, and this could be handled with a bit of bending.

 

 

The remaining sections (6 all told) had to carved in matching pairs from 1/2" x 1/16" stock. Two sections from bulkhead 5 to bulkhead 2, two from bulkhead 2 to bulkhead A, and then a final set of segments that reach around the knightheads (and had to be carved around them). A bit of sanding to resolve some minor shaping issues on the poop deck, some stain and we get the following:

 

 

I also took the opportunity to put some ceiling planks under the forecastle. I painted these white rather than the grey used elsewhere because I expect it to be dark in there, and want as much light as possible reflecting off any internal details.

 

 

I was disappointed at how differently the various basswood strips took the stain. It's less obvious than the photos tend to show, and will likely be even less so once the topgallant rails are on. I am putting additional coats of stain on the lighter rails in hopes of balancing them a little more. Nevertheless, I may yet paint it buff or brown rather than leave it bright (at least on the inner sides) as the instructions suggest.

 

George K

[gak1965]

On 3/20/2021 at 9:47 AM, mbp521 said:

For your question about the stanctions, I am no expert on these but I believe they were an extension of the frames. If you take a look at Ed T’s build log on the extreme clipper Young American, while be it this was a William Webb construction, not a Don McKay ship, their construction was similar, you’ll see that about every other frame was extended above deck to for the stanctions. This is a great build along with an outstanding tutorial that provides a wealth of info on extreme clipper construction.

 

 

Reading Ed T's log on the Young America is an almost surreal experience. The man is an artist in mixed media that also has solid engineering behind it. I don't know if you've ever seen any of the ship models in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (this is the one I remember most https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/works-of-art/ship-models/objects#/NG-MC-651,0, which is 4.5 meters long and 4.1 meters tall), but Ed's work could take pride of place there or the NMM in Greenwich, or anywhere else for that matter. Just amazing.

[Vladimir_Wairoa]

I really enjoy your progress George. 

[Keithbrad80]

Wow this looks great! I was up and down about painting mine at all until it was a little late. It’s good to see you painting as you go for a much cleaner result! 
 

Bradley

[gak1965]

Brad, Vladimir, Brian, and Cathead, thank you for the answers and the encouragement. I've made some progress since the last post. 

 

Step 1 was to install the stanchion extensions between the main rail and the topgallant rail. Before I did that, I spent some time restaining sections of the rail so that the stain variability was reduced to something I considered acceptable. At each stanchion between the poop and the forecastle, I measured in 3/32 from the outboard edge of the main rail and marked the location. For the poop and the forecastle where there were no stanchions, I kept the same spacing, with the exception of the stern, where I increased the number of stanchions by three fold to properly define the stern (as is shown on the plans). I then glued pre-painted 1/16 square segments in place, using the marks I had just made, and aligning the angle of the extension to the angle of the stanchion beneath. I made no effort to get the length exactly right, as I was just going to cut the excess off later.

 

I used the same strategy for the stern bulwarks as before. Put the segment into boiling water, strap it in pace around the stanchion extensions and then clamp in place until dry.

 

 

The only difference is that I pre-painted the inside of the bulwarks before gluing them in place so that I wouldn't have to put any paint on the main rail. Once in place I used a cutting blade on my Dremel to trim them down to size. I had to reseat a number of them. Unlike the primary stanchions which sit in holes in the planksheer, these were CA glued directly to the rail and the bond was not as strong. No matter, cut another section, glue it in, trim the tops; by that point the bulwark was shaped and not going anywhere.

 

 

The ship now has its primary coat of paint. I mentioned earlier that McKay wanted to paint her green, and so I have done so. This means I have kind of slipped away from the historical now, but I'm trying to be rational about it. The green I'm using seems fairly similar to a number of modern versions of green where the name at least appears to have been in circulation at the relevant time (it is pretty close to the Great Western Railroad colors). I only painted the green from the planksheer to the load waterline, which will be the edge of the sheathing. Below that I painted it black since I think that will provide the best color for the underside of the plates. Similarly, I painted from the planksheer to the bulwarks flat black. It needs a bit of touch up, but letting the paint fully dry before I do so.

 

 

 

I don't know why McKay ultimately painted her black, but when people make changes like that I assume that the answer is money. Maybe green paint cost more. I may take one more non-historical step on the build, and that is to pick out the planksheer with a very thin line of gold paint, to kind of highlight the green to black transition. My logic is I think it would look nice, and if McKay had the money, he would have done so. We'll see - step 1 is to do the touch up. 

 

One final thing - this is a big model. I went through an entire bottle of black paint doing the hull.

 

George K 

Edited April 5, 2021 by gak1965

[Keithbrad80]

That looks really great George! The green really shows the research you did for this build. I had a lot of trouble with this part so it’s good to see you breeze through it!

 

Bradley

[mbp521]

George,

 

Love the green scheme. I went with the traditional black with white trim on my build, but I like the way the green stands out. It adds a nice touch of uniqueness to her. 
 

I want throw this out there. It’s been a while since I was at this stage on my build, and I don’t recall what the instructions dictate, but if you are planning to install the hold vent tubes, now is the time to do it. I remember struggling to drill the holes and setting the tubes because I had installed the top rail first. I can’t remember if I got ahead of myself and put the rail on first or if that was the way the instructions call out the assembly, but they are much easier to place while you still have everything open. Just a thought.  

 

-Brian

[Vladimir_Wairoa]

very nice. 

[gak1965]

2 hours ago, mbp521 said:

I want throw this out there. It’s been a while since I was at this stage on my build, and I don’t recall what the instructions dictate, but if you are planning to install the hold vent tubes, now is the time to do it. I remember struggling to drill the holes and setting the tubes because I had installed the top rail first. I can’t remember if I got ahead of myself and put the rail on first or if that was the way the instructions call out the assembly, but they are much easier to place while you still have everything open. Just a thought.  

 

-Brian

Hi Brian,

 

I was planning on installing the vents and I expect you are right on that, and it will require a bit of rethinking the order of installation. Based on that, logic says to install the decks and coamings first, and probably cut the bulwark sheaves before installing the vents and then the topgallant rail. That way, it's still open, but I'm not mashing the vents with drills, or knives, or bits of deck. Just out of curiosity, did you use a drill or a pin vise to make the holes? I need to see if I have a large enough bit, but after I broke off a mostly rigged jibboom on the Niagara it needs to be a very big hole for me to pull out my drill.

 

I usually install the coamings first, and then the deck. Even though it is a bit of a pain, I think it looks a little more 'real', but not sure about doing so on the Fish. At a minimum, I think I will install a (shortened) coaming on pre-laid deck where the aft cabin facade sits on the main deck. Otherwise, I think I'll need to run the planks to an under-coaming support that runs the full beam of the ship, and the longer such extensions are the harder it is to maintain the camber properly. Elsewhere (including on the poop) I should be able to install the coamings first without much problem.

 

Thanks again for the tip!

George