Bluenose by JohnU - Model Shipways - 1:64

[JohnU]

22 hours ago, Rach10199 said:

Hi John, this looks fantastic! I don't see any tapered planks here, did you have to taper any at all?

Hi Rachel,

The Bluenose should not require drop planks. I tried to follow the suggested layout on the plans. This turned out to be a mistake. I ended up with the planks too wide at the upper part of the stem and had to taper them too much at the lower part to compensate. The planks under the counter also ended up a bit thin. Lesson learned. There are several good examples of planking the Bluenose in the build logs. Much better than mine. This was my first time planking and I learned a lot.

John

[JohnU]

Not too much progress lately. I managed to drop my airbrush on it's needle. 🤕 The good side of that is it was a really cheap one and I got to order a nice Paaische TG series. While I wait for that I'm going to work on the windlass. I love Retired Guy's work on this part. He machines all the gears and little pieces to end up with a working windlass. Be sure to check out his blog. Unfortunately, I don't have all those nice machine tools and will have to make do with the Britannia metal parts supplied in the kit. The windlass that came with my kit was a particularly bad casting. You can see some parts of the piece are missing and distorted.

 

Model Expo has a really great policy of supplying replacements parts free. Including shipping! Their warranty states they will replace a part for any reason; even a screwup on the customers part. I can't recommend their service highly enough. This alone is enough reason to purchase through them. F.Y.I the email address is: modelexpo.parts@gmail.com

And the URL for the warranty info is: https://modelexpo-online.com/About-Us_ep_7.html

After a couple weeks(Hey! It's free) the replacement part arrived. I was a little disgruntled. The new one was not very good. However it was, at least, complete. I was able to clean it up enough to pass cursory inspection after painting and assembly. Still doesn't look very pretty.

 

The next problem was to mark the octants off for the steel and wood whelps. I'm not very good at eyeballing these things. Using an old rotary table I had($35 on Ebay) A jig was made to hold the windlass upright and centered on the table.

 

I then used my home projects leveling laser in vertical mode to create a line on the part. A laser level has an amazing usefulness for many types of home projects. These are available pretty cheap at Harbor Freight and home stores. The one I have is Harbor Freight and one step up from the cheapest. It comes with a tripod and is compact. I just sat it on the workbench and leveled it.

 

A fine point marker in a contrasting color was used to mark the octants.

 

Looks pretty rough at this stage. It'll be OK once painted and all the whelps are installed. Still, it would be nice to have all those machine tools and do it right.

 

 

[JohnU]

The windlass doesn't have good definition of the ratchet ring. The divots are not even uniform and it just doesn't look right anyway. Even painting a ring didn't help. Working with these poorly cast parts is frustrating. While thinking about how to make this part better it occurred to me that zip ties have a ratchet strip and are available in a wide variety of sizes. Rummaging through my project supplies I found one that's a near perfect fit. It also adds the detail of the side rings. It's just a little to thick, but that will make the detail stand out.

 

Zip ties are a fairly hard, springy plastic. To get conformance at the diameter needed the zip tie was wrapped around a small screwdriver shank and heated with a heat gun until it was soft enough to relax the plastic. This produced a small diameter spiral after cooling. The zip tie was then expanded to the diameter of the windlass drum and trimmed to size.

 

To ensure a bond I used high strength epoxy. The ratchet strip is unidirectional so it's important to get it the right direction to match the pawl on the samson post.

 

This worked pretty well. Though I'm still dissatisfied with the piece. These metal parts are highly variable. The large gear from the boom crutch was well enough made to clean up and look decent. The large gear on this part is shabby. I'm also dissatisfied with the paint. I think I'll do that over before I install the wood whelps.

 

[Nirvana]

What a great idea with the zip-tie.

That windlass set up (Britannia metal) is a joke.

[JohnU]

Thanks!

 

I wish there were an alternative to using this particular part. The other metal parts supplied with the kit aren't so bad. Retired Guy did a fabulous job but he has a mini-lathe and milling machine. He first built the windlass using the part from the kit. He did a really nice job of that, but it was still a badly made molding.

 

A possibility would be using an inexpensive 3-D printer. A lot of parts could be easily made in excellent detail. The printing files could be a shared resource for builders. Perhaps a moderator on Model Ship World could start a shared archive. This would be a useful resource for many builders, not just for Bluenose. Producing these odd parts is cost effective using a printer. It could even be a little side business. If only the kit sellers would get on board and convert their production to 3-D printing the general level of quality could be improved.

 

The downside of that is one of the reasons for pursuing this hobby is to use one's hands and develop skill. 3-D printing moves that to the realm of mental/computer skill. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. We use many types of tools in this hobby and 3-D printing is, in the end, just another tool. However, part of the fun is working with our hands and solving problems.

 

John

[Nirvana]

John, I have a 3d printer that will be used for that purpose as well.

[JohnU]

The windlass is finished. Such as it is. The deck in this area busy enough it should pass. I do wish the part was better formed.

 

I'm having problems with the airbrushing. The new Paasche airbrush has developed an air valve problem. I'll have to get it replaced before doing more painting. I was able to get one primer coat on before it went belly up. It looks good. Wet sanding 400 grit produced a nice smooth finish. There is a suggestion of the underlying planking showing through. I feel that makes it look more realistic. In pictures of the prototype the planking shows faintly. It's ready for finish paint. Just need to get that airbrush working.

[JohnU]

More on the airbrush. I've spent two weeks off and on fooling with this. I admit to being a novice, but the learning curve was steep. I'm finally getting nice results. There's some art to getting the paint thinned properly. The Model Expo paints I purchased are very thick and even with Tamiya thinner it's tricky to get the right consistency. It's a little more than 1:1 on the thinner. I'm still working on that.

 

The biggest problem was the Passche airbrush. This is a quality unit but I could not get consistent results. Sometimes it would spray well other times I couldn't get the paint to flow. After much troubleshooting and reading up on the web I traced the problem to the air valve. There was very little air flow. The paint would not atomize properly.

 

The air valve looked OK. This was a rebuildable part. I disassembled it and could find not blockage. It turned out the supplied hose adapter was the problem. This is a simple Thread reducer with a hole in it. How could that be a problem!

 

Upon thinking about it, I realized there was an O-Ring in the end going to the airbrush. I was in the habit of tightening this all the way. What must be happening, unlikely as it seems, is the O-Ring squishes and reduces the diameter of the hole to a very small size.

 

he cure was to not tighten the adapter all the way. I immediately got lots of air flow and the paint flowed and atomized well. The O-Ring seals well just snugged up at these low pressures.

 

At last I can move forward with the painting!

[JohnU]

The hull was painted with a grey primer in the usual primer-sand-fill-primer iteration until the hull was uniformly coated and smooth as a baby's skin. I kept the paint thin enough the planks show very slightly. By the time the finish coat is applied there will be only a suggestion of planks.

 

A wide white band was painted around the hull at the level water line. I used the laser level that worked for the windlass but in horizontal mode. This required the hull to be mounted on it's stands. This is an appropriate time to do  the mounts anyway. A temporary mounting board was used for holding the model. The trick was to get the correct height as the keel on Bluenose has a slant to it. Fortunately, Model Shipways supplies mounts that are appropriate heights and pictures of the mounted model. It was fairly easy to determine the correct positioning.

 

After the paint was dry and sanded, Tamiya 1mm tape was applied under the laser line. This was a little tricky as the tape is so small and I'm working under the hull.

 

Came out pretty good. I burnished the tape. Hopefully there won't be seepage under it. The idea is that it's easier to mask a small area and paint over it than to create parallel lines of masking over the larger area to paint a thin line. Of course it's harder to paint dark over light. I may hit it with a light coat of primer to cover the white. We'll see how it goes.

 

In any case it's fun again now that I'm not being frustrated with airbrush problems.

[Nirvana]

John, your first stage of priming looks real good.

I learned long time ago to apply light colors first then darker.

As for my Bluenose.  See my log how I did the painting.  

Which worked out fine.

[JohnU]

9 hours ago, Nirvana said:

John, your first stage of priming looks real good.

I learned long time ago to apply light colors first then darker.

As for my Bluenose.  See my log how I did the painting.  

Which worked out fine.

Hi Per,

 

Looked up your build again with specific reading of the painting. I see you had problems getting up to speed with the airbrush too. It's the only way to go for a really nice finish. Once I got the hang of it and sorted out my problems it went nicely. Still a little tricky with the thinning. All the articles just say "start with 50:50" and "consistency of milk"; whatever that is.

 

I see you opted to paint white then mask water line and paint the upper and lower hull after. After seeing how yours turned out, I have high hopes for a nice water line.

 

John

[JohnU]

Almost ready to paint hull. The hawse pipes and rudder were installed today.

 

I had pre-drilled the hawse holes and partly shaped them when the knightheads and hawse timbers were installed. Epoxy was used to ensure a good metal to wood bond for the hawse pipe rings. After the epoxy had set enough to hold firmly the excess epoxy was removed.  Finished shaping and blending the holes to the ring was done with needle files. The black hull paint was used for the interior of the holes as the prototype appears to have the hawse pipes painted the same as the hull.

 

I had shaped and primed the rudder while waiting for paint to dry on the hull. The pintles and gudgeons were also made earlier. The brass strap that came with the kit was the correct size and was cut and shaped appropriately. Rather than try to make an actual gudgeon and pintle at that small size. I simply soldered a tiny piece of the strap to the pintle strap. This worked out nicely and cannot be seen when assembled.

Getting the straps mounted and aligned properly was the tricky part. This was solved by taping the rubber part to the rudder with masking tape then adjusting the hull part. Once a satisfactory alignment was achieved the rudder was removed and the position of the straps was marked with a pencil. These were then epoxied in place. The same was done for the rudder straps. After the epoxy had partly set I installed the rudder and made final tweaks to the position.

The excess epoxy was the carefully scraped away. The brass was lightly sanded and primed.

 

[Nirvana]

John,

Try Vallejo Air.

It's a paint ready to be sprayed. No need to dilute at all.

[JohnU]

On 2/5/2021 at 10:22 PM, Nirvana said:

John,

Try Vallejo Air.

It's a paint ready to be sprayed. No need to dilute at all.

Hi Per,

 

I see lots of good recommendations for Vallejo. For the next project I'll try the pre-mix paints. 

 

For now, since I have the Model Expo paints in the right colors, I'll finish this model with them. After some experimentation I have found the right formula. It seems consistent from color to color.

 

Since I solved the main problem with airbrush adapter I've been spraying away. I'm going to update the log tonight.  I'm a happy airbrusher now.

 

John

[JohnU]

Once the airbrush and paint were dialed in the hull painting has been proceeding smoothly. So far, despite initial fiddling needed, the Model Expo colors have been spot on.

 

After the white paint layer I had lots of runs. Paint was thinned too much. The mix was adjusted and the copper red bottom paint went on nicely with only a couple runs and one too thin area. This was due to my beginner skills which improve with each application. The second coat of bottom paint looks good. Time to move on to the top paint.

 

While you don't see it in this picture the masking tape for the level water line white is there. Next was to mask off the bottom and apply the top paint. This looked grayish blue in the bottle but dries a nice satin black with just a hint of blue.

 

This coat went on with no runs! No misses!. I'm getting the hang of the airbrush. Does a great job.

Next I masked the yellow trim line just below the waist and above the scuppers. I followed the line scored into the hull earlier. This line was now very faint from the paint fill-in. There was just enough left to act as a guide. My masking skills now need to catch up with my newly acquired airbrush skills. When I removed the masking there were several leaks to patch up. The masking for the yellow line was not sealed well and I had quite a bit to touch up for that too. The white line came out very well. There were only a couple tiny touch ups near the stem.

All the painting had partially filled the scuppers. I made a handy-dandy rectangular scupper clean-out tool from a piece of flat brass stock in the right size. Just sharpened one end slightly.

 

Then it was time to mask the hull and paint the stanchions and water-ways. Here's the finished result. I'm pleased with the colors but still need to do a little touchup. I also added the rudder and set it on the temporary mounting board. It's time to do topside work!

 

While I had the airbrush out and white paint ready, The pieces for the bowsprit mounting assembly were painted. The technique from the jumbo jib boom was used. Sand-seal with shellac-sand again and finish paint. Much better results than my first attempt. No Fuzzies!

 

[Yorky]

Looking good, must feel very satisfying finally getting some colour onto the hull!

Edited February 10, 2021 by Yorky

[bhermann]

That is a very nice looking hull - time with the airbrush is sure paying off!

 

Bob

[JohnU]

3 hours ago, Yorky said:

Looking good, must feel very satisfying finally getting some colour onto the hull!

 

2 hours ago, bhermann said:

That is a very nice looking hull - time with the airbrush is sure paying off!

 

Bob

Thanks! I was getting bummed while I tried to sort out the airbrush. The key was not tightening the hose adapter all the way. After that things went my way again😄. Learning to use the airbrush was definitely worth while. The results speak for themselves.

John

 

[Ron B]

On 11/25/2020 at 10:24 AM, Nirvana said:

John, very nice start of Bluenose, 

As for my kit, there were no walnut included, but since the hull is painted it didn't matter to me. 

Nice work on the details and as you will find out along the building way, you will experiment with various solutions to achieve the look you want.

For others who haven't tried the "razor blade type of saw", get one!

It will be a tremendous help while building. 

 

Btw, warm welcome to MSW. 

Hi John,

 

Looking at your log and it's Feb2021....I had previous experience from y teen years with razor saws, but recently purchased a Japanese saw ( slightly bigger and longer) that rips through basswood and plywood like the proverbial hot knife through butter...especially good for jig making as I am in a condo and have no real shop or power tools.

 

You have/had a lot of interesting construction techniques.

 

Ron

 

 

[JohnU]

22 hours ago, Ron B said:

Hi John,

 

Looking at your log and it's Feb2021....I had previous experience from y teen years with razor saws, but recently purchased a Japanese saw ( slightly bigger and longer) that rips through basswood and plywood like the proverbial hot knife through butter...especially good for jig making as I am in a condo and have no real shop or power tools.

 

You have/had a lot of interesting construction techniques.

 

Ron

 

 

Hi Ron, As the old saw goes: Necessity is the mother of invention. 😄 Part of the fun is working with ones hands. I could make lots of parts more easily with a 3-D printer and it would look really good. Not as challenging though.

John

[JohnU]

The quarterdeck is installed. On the Bluenose it's really more like a halfdeck, but I digress. This went pretty well using more or less standard technique. Much the same as the hull planks.

 

There was a problem that I'm not sure what the source of is. The Model Shipways hull has come out with the widest bulkhead two positions aft of the great beam where the quarterdeck begins. This makes the deck planks come out differently than the plans which show the widest bulkhead to be at the bulkhead H (Great beam).

Width H: 4.363"

             I: 4.424"

             J: 4.394"

            K: 4.272"

As you can see I and J are both wider than H. I did not realize this until I started laying deck planks. The plans show the same width for H and I with J slightly smaller.  This problem could have been avoided by swapping bulkheads to I-J-H order. Too late now. I had assumed the bulkheads were laid out in the correct order on the cutouts. Silly me.

 

If you take I to be the correct bulkhead for the H position the decking planks are correct as shown on the plans.

The plans show 24 planks from the center line at H along the great beam. 17 tapered planks and 7 nibbed planks(+ nibbing strake). That would exactly fit on bulkhead I. To fit them on H a plank must be dropped from the tapered group which would come out wrong for the aft end of the ship. Below is a trial fit that shows the problem:

 

Given the actual discrepancy is less than a plank width, I decided on spiling for the last plank to compensate.

 

Next some thought was given to plank size and pattern. A great discussion of buttshift patterns is found in the articles database on MSW. The most pleasing patterns use a five shift such as 13524. For a reasonable length plank such as scale 28', deck beams would need to be installed between the bulkheads at appropriate intervals. To use the existing bulkheads for the butts  at 28' a 3 shift pattern is required. I decided to go with 132, but on reflection😄, that's the same as 123 but in the opposite direction. It doesn't look as good as 13524 but with the deck furniture It should be fine and it's a lot less work.

 

I took the nibbing strakes directly from the plan. They were precut and sanded before installation. Planks were laid starting at the centerline and working outward. The taper was started at bulkhead K. The amount of taper was determined by measuring between the nibbing strakes at the stern and dividing by the number of tapered planks. This turned out accurate with little or no fudging. After the tapered planks were installed the nibbed planks were installed up to the last one. Which was spiled to fill the last gap. Here's the last plank going in!

 

Don't forget to mark the mast hole!! I did this with the first two planks while I could still see the actual hole.

 

At this point I could not resist putting in the masts to see how she looked! It's starting to look like a real ship.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 19, 2021 by JohnU
fix typo

[Nirvana]

John, interesting about your bulkhead situation and the deckplanking.

I didn't encounter that problem.

I am back working on my Bluenose.

Getting close to the rigging process. 

[JohnU]

15 hours ago, Nirvana said:

John, interesting about your bulkhead situation and the deckplanking.

I didn't encounter that problem.

I am back working on my Bluenose.

Getting close to the rigging process. 

I was careful to mark them as I cut them out. I remeasured the cutouts and they still came out of order. I should not have taken the order from the position they were in before cutting them out. If I had actually measured them I would have been OK. It'll be fine in the end. The difference will not be noticeable in the finished model. Another lesson learned.

John

 

[JohnU]

On 2/19/2021 at 5:33 PM, Nirvana said:

John, interesting about your bulkhead situation and the deckplanking.

I didn't encounter that problem.

I am back working on my Bluenose.

Getting close to the rigging process. 

Hi Per,

I dug into this a bit more. I found other logs where there was the same problem. Always Model Shipways kits. I also looked at your log and in the overview shots It appears to have the same slightly wider I & J bulkheads; though it's hard to tell from photos. I believe this is a mistake in the kit. They got the cutouts in the wrong order. If you simply swap the bulkheads the deck planking comes out exactly like the plans.

John

 

[JohnU]

The fore deck is now installed. Because of the bulkhead problem the nibbing strakes could not be patterned from the plans. The difference in bulkhead width means the elimination of 1 1/2 planks. I achieved this by eliminating a plank on one side and using a hull plank on the other. The hull plank is the same thickness but slightly wider. I put this plank near the waterway so that it's not noticeable. Because I could not lift the nibbing from the plan, I had to do it plank-by-plank.

 

The extra thick planks under the bowsprit were not a problem. Though they will be when I sand. At six planks from center I added the double wide planks for the windlass. The two planks that butt to the windlass planks don't fall on a bulkhead. To fix this problem I glued scrap wood under the decking to support the next plank ends. That takes me to 8 planks from centerline.

 

Now the hand nibbing begins.🤕 As I've stated before, carving is not my strong suit. The nibbing strakes were cut to length and shaped using the same steam iron method used for the hull planks. This greatly eased the process. I tried two different procedures to see which works best. On the starboard side, I cut the nibbing strake and glued the nibbed plank in place As I went. I found it especially hard to control the shape of the nib and to make the orthogonal cut. All-in-all it was hard to get a consistent shape. For the port side I cut all the planks to approximate length and laid them in place; gluing only the pattern planks up to the nibbed end plank. With the planks laid in place, the nibbing strake was marked from the planks. The planks were set aside and the nibbing strake was carved and installed. The nibbed planks were then cut to fit the nibbing strake. This worked pretty well except my carving wasn't pretty. You can see the support boards for the unsupported ends. The waterway chamfer stands out when the nibbing strake is in place. Nice detail!

[JohnU]

The deck is now sanded, minor repairs done and ready to apply a finish. The repairs were mostly cleaning and filling noticeable spaces between boards. There were only a few of those. There was one particularly damaged plank in a highly visible spot just in front of the great beam. The solution was to carefully gouge the plank to form a depression and glue a thick veneer onto it. Here's the repair:

 

Used mini-plane to thin a plank to about 1/64" and gouged a grove to remove the bad spot. Forgot to take a picture before applying glue.

 

Note the grove depth is tapered to the level of the deck. The plank is cut a little longer than the end of the taper and glued into grove. It's intentionally a little thicker than the grove depth:

 

After the glue is thoroughly set, the plank is sanded flush with the rest of the deck. Here's the result. Except for a slight mismatch of the grain and color, the repair is invisible:

 

This is my second planking experience. While it's not perfect, it's much improved over the hull planking. I'm getting better at it! Knowing my nibs were not going to be very good, I didn't pencil the nib part of the planks. Thy don't look too bad but I don't want attention drawn to them. Here's how it looks after sanding and before finish is applied:

An overview:

 

[JohnU]

I'm looking for suggestions on deck finish. I've seen both pros and cons for using polyurethane. A number of people have used min-wax. I'd like to airbrush the finish as it is thin, uniform and leaves no out of scale brush marks.

John

[bhermann]

John, I used Minwax Wipe-on Poly to seal the deck about 10 years ago.  It has maintained the wood color since then.  If that is the look you are going for, I can recommend it.

 

Interesting choice on not darkening the edges of the nibbing planks - if I'd been thinking clearly at the time I might have done the same.

 

Bob

Edited February 27, 2021 by bhermann

[JohnU]

1 hour ago, bhermann said:

John, I used Minwax Wipe-on Poly to seal the deck about 10 years ago.  It has maintained the wood color since then.  If that is the look you are going for, I can recommend it.

 

Interesting choice on not darkening the edges of the nibbing planks - if I'd been thinking clearly at the time I might have done the same.

 

Bob

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your comment. I wish the nibbing had come out better. It adds an interesting detail to the model. Perhaps my skills will increase going forward and I'll have nibs worth showing. I figure bad nibbing is worse than no nibbing. On the other hand, if I don't practice I'll never be able to do nice nibbing. Modeling is a journey. The last nibs were better than the first nibs. It didn't turn out awful, but it was irregular enough to spoil the overall look of the model.  By not penciling the nibs I ended up with the suggestion of nibbing which is a compromise.

John

[JohnU]

The stern hawse pipe is installed. The supplied metal piece was so bad I decided to make my own. The inside flange was made from shim stock and the outside pipe was made from 3/32 brass tubing. Both were blackened.