Flying Fish by Jared - Model Shipways - 1:96

[Jared]

All postings from today going forward will show the current status of my model.  This week I have been working on the various ship's ladders and had a go at building several from scratch, using the method summarized in the second image below.  For the ladder side rails, I cut 68 degree notches into a wide piece of basewood stripping  using a mini table saw.  The basswood strips were slightly thicker than desired thickness of the ladder side rails.  The strips were then ripped to the size (side of side rails).  The steps were cut on a chopper, then were glued into the notches on one of a matching pair side rails, after which the matching side rail was affixed.     I found it difficult to make ladders that were longer than about 5 or 6 rungs, because as the ladder grew longer distortions caused by the tiniest of errors resulted in visible distorted (twisted and bent) structures.  No doubt with more practice I could get better at this.  In the end I used scratch built ladders at the aft sides of the poop deck and forward deck houses, and the Britannia castings elsewhere shown in the photos below.  The hand rail on the steps leading to the forcastle will be constructed later.

Edited December 29, 2021 by Jared
Typo

[Jared]

Finishing up the year with completion of the 2 gangways and scratch built portable ladders.  Happy New Year to you all!

 

Edited December 31, 2021 by Jared
Minor edit

[ClipperFan]

7 hours ago, Jared said:

Finishing up the year with completion of the 2 gangways and scratch built portable ladders.  Happy New Year to you all!

 

Jared, those gangway ladders really show how tall the "Flying Fish" bulwarks really were. Happy New Year to your entire family!

[Jared]

With the new year comes a few completed deck structures.  The Britannia cast water tank looked good so only I only needed to give it some primer and paint.  The cast binnacle cabinet was not cast anywhere as nicely.  Sanding its top surface smooth considerably improved it.   This was then primed and painted, and the bell mounted on top via a small diameter brass rod I bent to shaped.  This was glued into 2 small holes I drilled into the top of the binnacle. 

 

The aft storeroom hatch / skylight was scratch built (about 4 hours work).  Due to the frail nature of the outer walls, I built the structure around a small solid wooden block.  The walls were made from a thin sheet of basswood, with the window openings cut with an X-acto knife.  The latches on top of the structure were made using  a pair of finely etched metal castings I had.  I chose not to bother putting bars on the skylight openings, given the scale.  

 

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by Jared
Typo

[ClipperFan]

Jared, really nice work and great detailed description of your process to create these beautifully realized deck structures.

[Jared]

This week I scratch-built the 2 water closets on the Flying Fish.  Their construction required a lot more hours of work than I had anticipated.  As with the other deck structures I have discussed above, I elected to build the 2 water closets on top of solid wood blocks I shaped on a drum sander.  Carving the lower back end to fit into the bulwarks etc. was the most challenging part.  Thin sheets of solid basswood were then glued onto the front, top and sides of each, then I added wood strips for the various moldings.  The water closets doors were made with some etched basswood I had on hand.   The Capstan bars were made from a bamboo kebob skewer, using sand paper and then a draw plate to bring the diameter down to the desired size.  The same size wood strips used for the deck were used to fabricate the roof's.  After gluing they were sanded and  finished with tung oil.  The various other parts were painted after different steps in the construction.

 

 

[Jared]

The build this week focused on the wheel box and steering wheel (photos attached).  The wheel box was fairly easy.  I build the unit around a small scrap block of balsa wood in a manner like what I described in my previous build entry for the water closets.  The Britannia steering wheel casting was one of the better castings in this kit.  I primed then painted it before assembly on the wheel box.  I then glued a rudder extension  onto the bottom of the wheel box, then glued the completed assembly onto the aft deck.

 

According to the plans, there are 2 grates on the deck adjacent to the wheel box.  I had a go trying to hand build these following the simplified grating procedure described in the manual.  As I expected, at this small scale, it is near impossible to hand build a realistic-looking grate.  The basswood I used was too weak and splintered easily under the drill and needle file.  The square smallest holes I could make were about 3/64 in. square and spaced about 1/8 in. apart.  While I am sure better grates could be made this way using other types of woods or materials, I think the way I will go is to purchase one of the the precut gratings that are available from Model Expo.

 

[Jared]

Following up on the suggestion by Roger Pellett, I had a go at trying to use the vacuum forming technique he described in the tips section of this website to make my the ship's boats in place of the  thick metal Britannia boat castings supplied in the kit. 

 

FIGURE 1 below shows the setup I built.  I used the Britannia castings as the basis for the mold.  I stapled individual sheets styrene (Evergreen Scale Models; 0.02 and 0.015" thicknesses) onto my wooden frame (Fig. 1) and heated them at 350 F for 3-3.5 min in a small oven at which time the plastic was sagging in the frame.   I quickly removed the frame from the oven and placed it on my vaccum box under suction created with a  shop vac..  In  each case, the softened plastic quickly pulled down onto the Britannia molds and solidified.  My results I obtained with the 0.015" sheet is shown in FIGURE 2.

 

I encountered two problems:  1) In some spots the plastic did not pull down evenly over the mold, leaving folds.  You can see this in Fig. 2 at the ends of the boats.  The problem was worse with the forms I made with the thicker plastic; as 2) the plastic did not pull down well enough at the level of the frame.  I suspect that more vacuum may be necessary to overcome these problems.

 

So whole I enjoyed this learning experiment, I probably will be using the Britannia castings supplied, which I will try to enhance in other ways.    

 

 

 

Edited February 4, 2022 by Jared

[Jared]

After my not so successful attempt at using vacuum forming to make my ship's boats, I spent a lot of thought on how I could make the hull appearance of the Britannia boat castings look more realistic, without adding to the thickness of the boats.  I decided to try using an Exacto knife to scribe shallow line on the outside hull surface, to try to create the appearance of a planked hull.  Here is my first go.   I used a proportional divider (with some difficulty) to lay out the plank lines.  The actual scoring of the metal with the knife requires a very steady hand, which I hope to improve upon in my subsequent attempts. 

Edited February 23, 2022 by Jared

[ClipperFan]

4 hours ago, Jared said:

After my not so successful attempt at using vacuum forming to make my ship's boats, I spent a lot of thought on how I could make the hull appearance of the Britannia boat castings look more realistic, without adding to the thickness of the boats.  I decided to try using an Exacto knife to scribe shallow line on the outside hull surface, to try to create the appearance of a planked hull.  Here is my first go.   I used a proportional divider (with some difficulty) to lay out the plank lines.  The actual scoring of the metal with the knife requires a very steady hand, which I hope to improve upon in my subsequent attempts. 

Jared, I applaud your initial efforts. The attempt to scribe lines does give an impression of a clinker built craft. To aid in your attempts, attached is an image of a similar lifeboat from a Cutty Sark model. Notice how each plank conforms to the general shape of the boat. You might want to try scribing your boats with a light pencil first to capture this look.

[Jared]

Thanks Clipperfan.  Very helpful

[ClipperFan]

7 hours ago, Jared said:

Thanks Clipperfan.  Very helpful

Jared, you're quite welcome! Anytime I can contribute and be of assistance it will be my honor to do so. I just don't ever want to be intrusive.

[Grey]

Following this...I love the lines of this ship. Always been appealing to me, and happy to see you come back to ship modeling. I had quite a long break myself, but have never built anything this complicated, or with as much skill.

 

Your attention to detail on the coppering hooked me. Holy smokes...what was once a kit to develop skills for--now seems like a fever dream. 🤣

 

Look forward to seeing her come together! Thanks for sharing!

 

[Jared]

Thanks for your positive feedback Grey.  

 

Following up on ClipperFan's helpful feedback on my scribed ship's boats, two of which I had before already scribed incorrectly, I went into damage control mode to see if I could improve upon what I have done.  Using model puddy I filled incorrect lines where I could and then did my best to scribe new lines that conformed better to general shape of the 2  boats.  I think they are new better than they were, but not perfect.  Scribing the lines on such a small curved surface isn't at all easy!  

 

Fortunately the human eye does not have the resolution to pick up all of the small imperfections that the closeup camera does below 😃

 

Edited February 26, 2022 by Jared

[ClipperFan]

8 minutes ago, Jared said:

Thanks for your positive feedback Grey.  

 

Following up on ClipperFan's helpful feedback on my scribed ship's boats, two of which I had before already scribed incorrectly, I went into damage control mode to see if I could improve upon what I have done.  Using model puddy I filled incorrect lines where I could and then did my best to scribe new lines that conformed better to general shape of the 2  boats.  I think they are new better than they were, but not perfect.  Scribing the lines on such a small curved surface isn't at all easy!  

 

Fortunately the human eye does not have the resolution to pick up all of the small imperfections that the closeup camera does below 😃

 

Jared, that's 100% better! They actually look like they're made of wood now. Not knowing the actual size of these lovely, authentic looking craft, my only other suggestion would to be to paint the top trim a contrasting dark color, possibly dark green or blue to offset the white. That's how they appear on "Cutty Sark". 

[Jared]

Thanks.  I had intended to paint the top trim.  They were black before I rescinded the boats. 

[Jared]

I have finished scribing and painting the outside hulls of the 5 ships boats and have mounted 3 of them on top of the mid-deck cabin (see photo).  The problem remains on how they should be tied down to the support racks.   In the kits instructions, they seem to suggest securing them with ropes whose  ends are  both eye-spliced around eye bolts (see top right photo), but this begs the question of how the boats could be untied when needed.   I found a more plausible design in zu Mondfeld's book  (bottom right photo).  Any thoughts?  Thanks.

 

Although hard to tell from my image because of the photographic angle, the top trim of the ships boats have been painted light blue, to match the trim on my model.

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by Jared

[ClipperFan]

Jared

This contemporary photo of Glory's lifeboats actually shows a type of quick release tie down securing the craft to the ship's mounting rail. Either mounted face up or face down, it makes sense that lifeboats, due to anticipated expediency for their use, would be secured with quick release lines either way.

[Jared]

Thanks ClipperFan. Love this photo. As an expert model maker I know told me, mounting the heavy ships boats upside down on the cabin roof makes for a lot more work to launch them.  Although the boats are mounted upside down in Butterworth’s painting, I am wondering  if this was really correct. 

[ClipperFan]

17 hours ago, Jared said:

Thanks ClipperFan. Love this photo. As an expert model maker I know told me, mounting the heavy ships boats upside down on the cabin roof makes for a lot more work to launch them.  Although the boats are mounted upside down in Butterworth’s painting, I am wondering  if this was really correct. 

Jared I reviewed the Butterworth piece and see that in the stern area, where lifeboats are on davits, they're both stored face up while covered with canvas tarps. Meanwhile the ship's launch on the large house abaft the foremast is stored face down. This also appears to have been the practice on "Glory of the Seas." There are also photos which verify this procedure.

[gak1965]

On 3/11/2022 at 1:40 PM, ClipperFan said:

Jared I reviewed the Butterworth piece and see that in the stern area, where lifeboats are on davits, they're both stored face up while covered with canvas tarps. Meanwhile the ship's launch on the large house abaft the foremast is stored face down. This also appears to have been the practice on "Glory of the Seas." There are also photos which verify this procedure.

I don't know that I would call these boats "lifeboats". While they certainly would behave as such in an emergency, they are more properly "Ship's boats", used for all sorts of workaday functions. According to the plans, the three boats on the deckhouse are a longboat, the captain's gig, and a cutter. I imagine that for many tasks the crew would go to the long boats on the davits first, but, these were working boats, they must have been pulled off periodically or (to quote Long Jack from Captains Courageous) "they would be overboard". Given the small crews and passenger loads on vessels of these types, I'm guessing that you could get everyone into the two 24' longboats on the davits in an emergency in any case, without worrying about difficult launches of the other boats.

 

As to the rig design in the plans, I'm going to speculate that it was considered too difficult to replicate the rig, and a simplified 'line over the boat was substituted so that something was there.

 

Regards,

George

Edited March 13, 2022 by gak1965

[Jared]

Thanks George.  I have decided to orient the boats as per the plans and Butterworth’s painting.    As to how I will tie the 3 on the cabin down, I will probably deviate slightly from the plan, depending on my skills. 

[Jared]

I picked up on my model again after an almost 8 month "rest" due to some travelling, etc.  This week I completed and mounted several poop deck structures:  bucket and racks,  stack vent for stove, knee for aft cabin,  and the metal railings on the Poop Cabin Roof and on the ladder to the forecastle deck.  The stack vent had to be scratch built, as the metal part was missing from my kit.  The metal railing on the Poop cabin roof was made by cutting pieces of brass rod (0.02") then soldering them together, using a handy Kotto Helping Hands soldering tool to hold the parts while I soldered.  The railing was then bent to shape and mounted and glued into holes I drilled into the top of the poop house roof overhang.  The railings on the ladder to the forecastle deck was also made from the brass rod, bent to shape.

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2022 by Jared
Added info. & photos

[Jared]

Today I completed one of the more challenging elements of model so far - the wood gratings that lie on the aft deck adjacent to the ship's wheel.  At the scale of the kit, I thought the two suggested build techniques illustrated in the manual to be near impossible to actually do.  In doing a search for possible alternative methods, I came across an interesting technique described in ModelShipBuilder  (www.modelshipbuilder.com/page.php?128) which I decided to give a try.  The photo below shows the finished  result and two images of some of the intermediary steps I followed.  It was pretty challenging as the cut parts were exceedingly small to handle and were very fragile to cut and shape.   

 

 

 

 

[Jared]

After a long absence due to travel and other distractions that get into the way of model building, I have picked up my model again and have been working on the construction of the masts and yards and bowsprit.  For the fabrication of the fished fore and main masts I followed the method George (gak1965) so nicely described.  I think the carving method suggested in Fig. 65 of the manual is very difficult and would have turned out terribly had I tried that.  After gluing together the wood pieces making up the structure, I turned the wood on a Taig Micro Lathe II which a friend from my local shipbuilding club generously lent to me.   The first photo below shows the construction of the Fore mast.  The second shows the turned mizzen, main and fore masts.  I have not yet started adding the metal bands or anything else on these.

[Rick310]

Well done!!  Your mast came out great!!

Rick

[Jared]

I have completed the turning of all of the wider diameter masts, yards, bowsprit etc.  For these I measured from the drawings their diameters at various locations and marked these to tick strips.  The pieces were then turned on the Taig micro lathe.  At diameters below about 0.12", the pieces had to be sanded down to their final sizes otherwise they would break.

 

[Jared]

Just a quick update.  I have completed much of the lower fire and main masts, as shown in the attached photo.  I elected to construct the iron bands for these masts using my wife's business card, which had the perfect thickness (0.016"), was easily cut into 1/16" wide strips, and was smoothly bendable around the masts.   They were glued to the mast using CAA gel superglue then painted over.

 

The wooden cheeks were the shaped and mounted.m

[Rick310]

Coming along nicely!

Rick

[gak1965]

Nice. Two things I learned for when you put the tops on. Drill any holes you need in the lower mast now, and maybe open the lubbers hole a bit more than is on the plans/laser cut pieces. As is, the lubbers hole is pretty crowded.

 

George