Roman Quadrireme Galley by Ian_Grant - 1/32 Scale - RADIO

[rookie]

On 2/19/2024 at 9:13 PM, Ian_Grant said:

I'll have to read up on how to video with this camera. No manual was included; do they expect us to carry around 8.5"x11" printouts wherever we go?

A pet peeve of mine.

I think the manual is online so you can use your smartphone to look it up 

 

[rookie]

Colours look great!

you may have to store it in the garage or start doing push-ups

[Ian_Grant]

11 hours ago, rookie said:

Colours look great!

you may have to store it in the garage or start doing push-ups

Yeah.....storage.  I was looking at our laundry room sink recently because it's very slow to drain. I squatted down to remove the trap to clean it out only to find that some clown glued together the entire trap assembly. I'll need to cut the ABS and install a new one...which got me thinking I should replace the sink too since it's disgustingly discoloured...which got me thinking I should re-think the whole sink-countertop layout - which got me thinking I should add some wall cabinets for storage to free up the counter and some shelves - which got me thinking I could move my two 43" RC boats onto a now cleared shelf...which got me thinking I could store the galley where those two boats now sit beside each other (i.e. on a very wide shelf) with oars on and all.

 

To take it to the RC club meeting at the indoor pool today, I attached a piece of plywood and some braces to my two wheeled hand dolly. With the ram removed, the two aluminum dowels at the bow plug into two holes in a wood block attached to the ply, and the keel rests between the two braces. Add a strap at the stern, at the top of the dolly, and it wheels easily around. 🙃🤙👍 Though at 24" wide across the oar tips one must be careful in doorways.

 

 

Edited February 22 by Ian_Grant

[Keith Black]

Ian, am I wrong in thinking you haven't discussed these plans with your better half? 

[yancovitch]

🤣🤣🤣

[Ian_Grant]

3 hours ago, Keith Black said:

Ian, am I wrong in thinking you haven't discussed these plans with your better half? 

No, you're not wrong. 😏 Fortunately she's pretty chill when it comes to home improvements. 👍

[rookie]

Wow!

I had the same thing with a sink drain

the trap is all glued so I bought the threaded parts to replace it

 

have not gotten around to the replacement part yet ….

[Ian_Grant]

Here is a short video of the galley in the RC boat club indoor pool session. You can see my hastily-thrown-together transport dolly at the corner of the pool.

 

Embarrassingly, I forgot to put the main deck on at launch hence the return to "shore". No rudders installed as yet hence the pivoting to turn. After a pivot she seems to keep veering in that direction for a while when rowing "straight". Nothing the rudders won't cure.

 

Also note the 6V square lantern battery sticking up a little out of the stern deck. It's too tall to fit under the rear hatch. Still haven't bought the fancy 5-cell NiMH which will fit into the hull. Was planning to put it aft which is quite empty, but the only thing it connects to is my arduino daughter board in the bow. Here I used lamp cord running through the bilge for the connection. I'm not sure what current the giant sweep servos draw when rowing but I plan to insert n ammeter to find out, and to measure the 6V at the battery and at the bow to see if there's a substantial voltage drop. Lamp cord is a pretty big wire. If the drop is substantial the NiMH battery would be best in the bow, if I can fit it in this already crowded location (two sweep servos, Arduino, RC Rcvr, 12V battery). Or use something even bigger than lamp cord.

 

It does look a little odd with the clear sweep of the empty deck. Will be doing something about that shortly.

 

 

Edited February 24 by Ian_Grant

[Bedford]

Well done! She looks brilliant out there

[Glen McGuire]

That is EPIC! Congratulations, Ian.  Such a brilliant build!!!

[yancovitch]

congrats on the rowing movements...perfecto.....

[Louie da fly]

Absolutely amazing - and incredibly beautiful.

 

Steven

[gjdale]

Just WOW! Well done Ian.

[Ian_Grant]

Thank you all! Much appreciated. I very much enjoy the comments, suggestions, and bantering asides during this build. It will be nice to add the finishing touches to the model and finally reclaim my workshop from this long drawn out project. I have some new kitchen drawers to make.

 

Cheers, 

Ian

Edited February 24 by Ian_Grant

[Doreltomin]

Excellent model! As for the tendency to turn after you start going straight, probably the steering oars will help to correct that too.

[Ian_Grant]

It's been  while since I posted; I've been messing around with a few things.

 

I cut the holes in the deck for access ladders and ventilation gratings. Then it was back to the 3D printers.....

 

Here is a shot of the ladder assembly to "below decks", printed in 4 pieces, and matching hatch coaming. I printed two sets of these. One ladder is forward of the archery tower, the other is near the stern end of all the oars. Second shot shows "in place" (not glued, the printed coaming is a neat enough fit to hold it). I will be adding a strip of fake deck at the ladder bottom to represent a catwalk between the oarsmen. These ladders occupy the space between the moving oar mechanisms. I do need to move each lift servo 3" towards amidships to get them out of the way; I had planned to do so anyway to make the lift linkages more nearly equal in length.

I shamelessly copied Richard Braithwaite's mast tabernacle, in maple. It still needs the small flat square of wood to prevent backwards movement of the mast foot. Pardon the burn marks. It will be painted.

I attempted to make the fantail decoration by hand using 1/8 cherry and 1mm x 1mm Evergreen but I could not get perfect consistency along the fingers, so I bit the bullet and spent several hours painfully drawing it in TinkerCAD using the available shapes. It is a nightmare of elliptical tube segments and multitudes of "hole" shapes to erase parts I don't want. I drew it in two halves so I could get two clean faces out of the PLA printer but the halves were so thin that the library adviser recommended I print them elevated from the drawing plane, and with a tilt. This was to make it easier to separate the thin parts from the print bed. However, the tilt resulted in a stair-step pattern on the faces because the print layer depth is finite. Pic below shows my attempt (it probably would have been good enough) and one of the printed parts. You can see the pattern of lines across it, delineating the stair-steps. I will try again with 1/8" of support under the parts, and no tilt.

And what's a mast tabernacle without a mast to put into it? Instead of using dowel I decided to use a square blank and turn it, leaving a square cross section at the foot to lock into the tabernacle. For this I pulled out my Rockwell-Beaver lathe which I've had for about 30 years but HAVE NEVER USED! I was given a set of Marples lathe chisels many many Christmases ago; I pulled them out and honed the 3/4" gouge. After reading a bit of how-to about lathe tool use (haven't used a wood lathe since high school in the 70's) I practiced on a junk piece of spruce, then started on a 3/4" x 3/4" blank of clear pine for the real thing. Well, it just was not going to happen with pine. Two blanks snapped in two during rough turning down to 1/2" DIA. I switched to maple and was able to produce a mast fairly easily. I wanted the colour of pine; I guess I will stain the maple but maple doesn't seem to absorb stain so well. Maybe a dye would be better?

 

Here is my lathe. Many many years ago I mounted it on a long plank for clamping to the work bench, and mounted the motor beneath the bench where it hangs on a pivot to use its weight for belt tensioning. I even went to the trouble of installing an electrical box at the top of the bench's left leg with a switch and an outlet for the lathe motor! Then I slid the lathe on its board under the bench and never used it. 😐

Here is my mast. The square section up high will have the sheave for the yard halyard.

Deck shot; nothing is fixed in place as yet. Still need to print at least two more hatch gratings.

And an overall pic.

Thanks to all who follow!

Edited March 12 by Ian_Grant

[rookie]

Wow!

I had no idea you had a wood lathe

 

i have been toying with getting a mini one but have nowhere to put it. 
it would be handy , also a mini tilt table saw but also lack of space

 

the mast looks great

[Ian_Grant]

Yes, a nice mini lathe would be good to have for model making. The Rockwell-Beaver I picked up at a used tools place soon after I met Robin. It's pretty smooth even just clamped to my bench. I only have a dead centre for the tailstock (or maybe that's common for wood lathes?) and a faceplate but no chuck for the headstock. Not sure if I could find a chuck now for whatever taper this lathe has. Oddly enough it seems to lack the ability to set a tailstock offset for tapering, or perhaps that's just a metal lathe thing. Probably is.

 

The mast was turned between centres. I might try some bowls on the faceplate next, for fun. I got the faceplate at Lee Valley years ago; figured I should get one while still available.

[rookie]

what is a 'tailstock offset' ?

[Ian_Grant]

2 hours ago, rookie said:

what is a 'tailstock offset' ?

It's when the tailstock (undriven end) assembly can be moved across the lathe rails i.e. forward/backward so that the headstock and tailstock axes are no longer in line as seen from above. On a metal lathe the tool carriage moves along parallel to the rails, so if one wants to cut a taper one must offset the tailstock in order for the cutter to do so. Think way,way back to Mr. Brandt's machine shop class and making the hammer in grade 9......🙂

 

By the way, I have your grade 9 hammer for some reason. Keep forgetting to bring it to you. 🙄

[rookie]

You mean this grade 9 hammer?

[Ian_Grant]

That's the one....so I guess I did give it back to you.....and forgot again..... 🤔

[Kevin-the-lubber]

On 3/12/2024 at 4:00 PM, Ian_Grant said:

machine shop class and making the hammer in grade 9....

That’s hilarious - I also have one of those, somewhere. Made at about the same age, 14 or 15, in the metalwork class. For some reason what always stuck in my mind was the magic of knurling, and brazing the head to the handle. Looks like you made a nice job of yours!

[Ian_Grant]

5 hours ago, Kevin-the-lubber said:

That’s hilarious - I also have one of those, somewhere. Made at about the same age, 14 or 15, in the metalwork class. For some reason what always stuck in my mind was the magic of knurling, and brazing the head to the handle. Looks like you made a nice job of yours!

Yes, knurling was way cool.  That's actually my brother's hammer; can't find mine. But it was better 😏.

 

What stuck in my mind also was turning aluminum/aluminium. We had contests to see who could get the longest continuous shaving, with a chain of guys supporting it as it lengthened. Fond memories.

[rookie]

I would have no clue about knurlinf these days

looks like the handle on this one is not brazed, just passed through head and hammered down

 

Fun times 

 

[Ian_Grant]

For a while it's been bothering me that the circles at the peaks of the stem and stern are different thicknesses; the stern was padded out by the thick medallions I had 3D-printed but the stem had only the thin medallions I got from Etsy. Finally yesterday I pried the stem medallions off and added 1/8" thick wood discs cut by the laser while I was making parts for the boarding bridge. Only afterwards did I discover that now the port side medallion's rim would interfere with the artemon ("bowsprit").

 

I woke up this morning having decided in my sleep, apparently, that I would cut the bow bulwarks to a new curve, not only to fix this but because their height has also been bothering me for a while. No one on board could see ahead; I had considered lowering the bulwark but thought it would be too painful. Instead I was going to add a little raised platform at the bow. Well, now that idea is toast.

 

Here are progress shots on modifying the port side. It wasn't as bad as I thought, though I will need to redo all the decoration and painting. Adding new cap rails will be a problem as regards clamping them with the inner bulwark faces now present. Will have to devise some elastic something or other.

 

1) Level bulwarks extended much further forward.

2) Final curve to stem marked and getting cleaned up.

Oh, and here is the basic assembly for the boarding bridge; all laser cut and just glued up by yours truly.

 

Edited March 14 by Ian_Grant

[Kevin-the-lubber]

4 hours ago, rookie said:

looks like the handle on this one is not brazed, just passed through head and hammered down

Obviously I went to a better school 🤣.

 

5 hours ago, Ian_Grant said:

What stuck in my mind also was turning aluminum/aluminium. We had contests to see who could get the longest continuous shaving, with a chain of guys supporting it as it lengthened. Fond memories.

Gosh, I haven't thought about that for years, but yes, wasn't it amazing seeing the swarf coming off in a perfect spiral. Personally I loved (in later life) machining brass or bronze. The colour of freshly cut, un-oxidised brass is a little bit magical.

 

Anyway, back to the point; I know nothing about galleons but wouldn't there have been a chappie or two on a steering platform at the stern, who could by definition see past the prow?

[Ian_Grant]

On 3/11/2024 at 11:22 PM, Ian_Grant said:

Yes, a nice mini lathe would be good to have for model making. The Rockwell-Beaver I picked up at a used tools place soon after I met Robin. It's pretty smooth even just clamped to my bench. I only have a dead centre for the tailstock (or maybe that's common for wood lathes?) and a faceplate but no chuck for the headstock. Not sure if I could find a chuck now for whatever taper this lathe has. Oddly enough it seems to lack the ability to set a tailstock offset for tapering, or perhaps that's just a metal lathe thing. Probably is.

 

The mast was turned between centres. I might try some bowls on the faceplate next, for fun. I got the faceplate at Lee Valley years ago; figured I should get one while still available.

Turns out Lee Valley has a line of woodworking chucks, which accept any one of a bunch of different threaded inserts one of which fits this lathe's headstock thread and taper. Food for thought.

 

[Ian_Grant]

Renewed bow bulwarks cleaned up and repainted to the previous state, i.e. still no paint on cap rails. I like the new look much better, as does Marcus because he can now see forward and has a greater length of "fighting bulwark".

 

Unfortunately, I am now sorely tempted to change the stern as well. 🤔

 

Here are a couple of  images. I was forced to redo all the little panels below the cap rail because the original sweep of the bottom part did not suit the new cap rail sweep. I finally bethought myself of using evergreen strip for the curved bit instead of wood strip. How easy to form the bend!

 

Can't wait to see how she looks with yellow/gold paint on the brass trim strips!

This afternoon there is another RC boat club session at a local indoor pool. I'll see how the old stern bulwarks look on the water and decide whether to hacksaw them too. After this water session I will remove all the mechanics and electronics and really get going on finishing up this hull.

 

Thanks for following!

 

 

 

Edited March 20 by Ian_Grant

[Ian_Grant]

Some photos from the pool session. It was the first time I've seen RC submarines dive; very cool and fascinating to see their workings and have it all explained to you. One modeller told me not to get into submarines "unless you really enjoy constant tinkering and experimentation". They were FAST under water!!

 

The cruiser on the bottom right, with the nice wood deck, is RIDICULOUSLY fast; two seconds at full speed then reverse to avoid hitting the pool wall. Something about a water-cooled brushless motor.