Armed Virginia Sloop by CiscoH - Model Shipways - 1:48

[CiscoH]

Thanks Thukydides.  I am trying to get over this brasswork hump which I feel has slowed my enthusiasm and progress more than I'd like. 

 

Probably because the pintles and gudgeons have taken way more work than I planned.  This weekend I spent a couple hours fine-tuning.  All the pieces fit mostly, but lots of slightly lengthening or widening mortises, slightly shortening and rounding off the ends of the strapwork, and chiseling holes to allow the rudder to be seated with the smallest gap possible.  Heres where I started; to me the gap was too wide and the top pintle a little too high.  Not much I can do about the high pintle at this point but I can work on the gap.

I also noticed all my handling and fitting of straps was getting the holly dirty.

 

After this final futzing I washed the brass in isopropyl alcohol for 20 minutes, then moved them with stainless steel tweezers to a aprox 1:8 brass black to water for 15 minutes.

Here they are drying, about 99% coverage.  1 spot on a gudgeon that will need paint.  I haven't handled them yet to make sure the blackening sticks but I am optimistic.

And finally I started with the hull's finish coat.  After sanding off any marks on the sternpost from fitting the brasswork  I applied the first coat of Polycrylic (water based polyurethane that doesn't yellow) with a qtip, the immediately wiped it down with a old cotton t-shirt.  Most of the finish comes off so its a thin coat, but the tshirt smooths quite nicely.  I'm guessing I'll do 3 or 4 coats.  I have to test some of my discarded blackened brasswork to see if it looks ok covered with this finish; if not I'll put hinges in after finishing.

 

Here's the hull after its first coat.  It looks almost identical to before I finished it, which is the point.

thats it for me.  Monday is fast approaching and its off to mentally prepare with some hot chocolate and a book before bed.

 

thanks for reading

 

cisco

Edited April 1 by CiscoH

[aliluke]

Almost wants to make me redo my AVS...but...no. Stunning work and incredible commitment to detail!

[Capt. Kelso]

Impressive build!

[KurtH]

Immaculate craftsmanship!!

[CiscoH]

Good Wednesday evening everyone.  Today's progress report is trying to finish the rudder.  Still.

 

Last report I had shaped and drilled holes in the pintles and gudgeons, then balckened them.  Next step was attachment.  I used 5 minute epoxy which it turns out is very messy.  I should have lined my parts with tape; that stuff gets everywhere including your fingers.  Below I am gluing on the rudder pintles.  I did the top and bottom first to make fitting easier.

Same for the hull; it is not easy getting the brass pre-shaped so it fits well but not too snug or it snowplows all the epoxy out of the rabbits.  I had to do some gentle scraping of the surrounding hull after everything dried to get the shiny epoxy off areas it managed to migrate to.

It was a Christmas Miracle!  The rudder could be slid into place with only a little adjusting on the first try.  I was honestly shocked.  The top pintle has a small gap that we are going to live with.  No way I am redoing the rudder at this point.

My blackening was starting to wear off from all my handling.  It too liked to get everywhere.  see previous statement - I should have taped around my hinges. 

 

Next up was adding the nails/bolts/whatever you call them.  I had given up trying to modify the brass nails I had from the kit and some smaller ones from my 18th Century Longboat kit.  They were simply too big.  So, once again using the hapless kit supplied walnut rudder, I tried the simpler method of inserting short lengths of 24g brass wire, dipped in epxoy, into each hole.  Once dried they were very solid and amenable to filing them down.  In the pic below the wire is drying in the holly rudder and I haven't filed it yet.

 

And this time I used plenty of blue tape to mask the parts.

The epoxy dried shiny but I plan to paint the boltheads and touch up any bare areas with black paint.

 

And finally here is the sternpost with its epoxied porcupine-like bolts drying.  And I have started making paper templates for my stands.

thats it for tonight.  Once the epoxy has dried, at least 24 hrs, I will flatten all the bolts down and paint.

 

thanks for reading

 

cisco

 

 

 

[CiscoH]

Good early afternoon all.  Its spring here in Delware, everything is growing, it won't stop raining, time for an update.

 

I finished the rudder.  After all my trials trying to blacken the brass strips I ended up painting.  Abbadon black, which covers very well.  Paint definitely obscures some detail but I'm going to live with it.

After all that work drilling holes, and as I suspected would happen, its hard to see the bolt heads.  I do think my stern/rudder gap is satisfyingly small, the rudder does swing side to side, and I will take it as a win and Finally Move On.  There will be a touch-up painting later on but for now I removed the rudder and stored it in a hopefully-safe-but-not-so-safe-that-I-can't-find-it-later location.

 

I had planned to build the ship's base and brackets next but hadn't been able to work up much enthusiasm.  So instead I built a work/storage cradle, a much simpler task.

It holds the ship quite securely (we have "hey lets knock this over" cats who don't respect anything or anyone) and I don't know why I didn't make one before. 

 

Next up per the Lauk Street Practicum is making the oar ports.  These are a nice feature that reminds you of the smaller size of this model and I like the diagonal placement.  Each port is located about 1/4" from a gunport.  I cut out a strip of cardboard, drew a 45 degree triangle and cut out a strip the correct length of the port.  Push the template up against the sheer strake and draw the line.  For the port side I flipped the template over.  Easy.

Then drill holes- smaller ones at each end and a bigger one in the middle.  I clamped a piece of backing wood to the inner bulwarks while drilling to minimize tearout, which mostly worked.  The small bits go right through the backing wood no problem so watch your fingers; I poked myself twice by holding too close to where I was drilling.  Then I used a combination of my smallest Veritas chisel, a new scalpel blade, my smallest round file, and cloth backed sandpaper I cut into very thin strips to further refine the holes.

 

Of some concern is the condition of the deck railing, which has been covered with blue tape for months.  It has some dents and some tape adhesive "grunge" to be dealt with.  I do NOT want to remake these so It'll be very light coats of alcohol to dissolve the glue residue followed by gentle water and my trusty mini-iron (usually used for plank bending) to see if I can swell out the dents.  I said it before; I should have waited to put the deck railings on.  Or at the very least not sanded them down to finished width until I was done handling the hull so much.  Next time...

 

I did pop a short, not well attached, piece of inner bulwark planking out while drilling, which I am gluing back into position below.

And thats where my AVS stands today. 

 

And finally, reading material.  I have been going 1 chapter a night for a while in Grant Walker's new book; it is amazing.  Heavily researched, lots of great close-up shots of the exterior and endoscopic shots of the interiors as well.  Can't recommend it enough.  And he talks about an upcoming 4th volume...

 

Ok thats it, have a peaceful evening.  thanks for reading

 

cisco

Edited May 13 by CiscoH

[CiscoH]

Happy Memorial Day all.  Here in Delaware it is, once again, raining.  A good excuse to plunge into my next project - the main deck hatch coaming. 

 

I haven't built anything like this before.  My Robert Hunt practicum shows 2 ways to make it- the default is with butt joints and looks straightforward.  Those with a bit more confidence could do mitered joints.  Hmmm...

 

But then I happened on a picture in Grant Walker's Volume 3 and it all went to heck.

Mitered half-lapped joints?   sweet.  The George Stockwell coamings above are lower, whereas the one I'm attempting to make are tall and tapering but I thought I could figure it out. 

 

Right from the outset I was having trouble visualizing what the joint pieces would look like.  My cartoons mostly confused me even more and looking at them now I realize I initially added an extra butt joint.  Even with revisions I was still not clearly visualizing the joints and especially how to make them.

The coaming is supposed to stick up 1/4" above the deck, and my deck planking will be 3/64" thick, so my wood stock will be 1/4" + 3/64" = whatever that adds up to.  I wanted some of the butt joint to be visible above the decking so I decided to extend it 7/64" high and start the taper a 64th above.  This was a lot of thinking and measuring with calipers and math.

 

Below is my first test pieces, made from the kit's limewood.  These were not measured and only served to help me visualize the shape of the joints.  I glued various pieces of stock wood together; there wasn't an exact match in the kit.  I also have the hand powered Ultimation Sander (which works very well) and I used it to make the 45 degree miters on the short pieces (left) below.  It can't be used for the long pieces (right) below as the butt joint part of the coaming stick out.

The practicum and the pictures in Grant Walker's book both show the endgrain of the butt joint being oriented fore-aft so thats what I did as well.

 

Miters are challenging at any scale; I needed to cheat, so I made some jigs.  The sections in David Anscherl's and Greg Herbert's various book about making lites was very helpful.  I am still making test pieces here and I didn't take pictures of every step but I will do a better job with the actual holly stock.

 

Below I glued 2 pieces of rectangular wood to my board and put 2 pieces of thin strip below the test stock to raise it up so exactly 7/64" stuck up out of the jig.  Some walnut wedges kept it from shifting.  I had used my smallest square and a scalpel previously to incise the edges of the butt joint; then I used the edge of my chisel held flat on the jig to incise a fine line on both sides which defined the rest of the butt joint.  Then I gradually chiseled out the waste.  This made a very square and flat joint.

As before these test pieces are made up of several glued up smaller pieces.

 

Below you can see my miter jig.  I clamped the long piece of coaming to the jig and holding a flat chisel against the jig used it to cut the miters.  I didn't take pics of this process but I will next time.

 

and here's another pic of the joint

All good so far.  I glued it together with yellow glue mixed with a little graphite, same as I have previously done on my scarf joints. 

And finally I drew some lines with my compass marking out the taper and first chiseled then refined the coaming's taper with sanding sticks.  The camera kept insisting my fingers were more interesting than the wood joint I was holding, sorry about that.

 

 

And there is my ever first mitered butt joint.  Next up is preparing my holly stock and doing it for real.

 

Thanks for reading

 

Cisco

 

Edited May 28 by CiscoH

[Gregory]

Your work looks very good, but who is George Stockwell?   I seem to recall seeing the mitered joints on a contemporary model or two, but for the most part they were the lap joints we see on a lot of models here and elsewhere.

I borrowed these from Chucks Cheerful.

Of course, the builders of the Virginia Sloops may have followed a different practice, of which I have no expertise.

 

 

[CiscoH]

Gregory- as per Rogers Collection of Dockyard Models V3 by Gran Walker, pg 322, George Stockwell was a ship modeler from Sheerness who was active 1750s-1800.  Apparently one of his hallmarks is the mitered half-lapped hatch coamings.  Its not clear if this was an accurate representation of hatch coamings (if so its seems like not many contemporary modelers fitted their models this way) or an affectation.  I don't know enough either way to have a weighty opinion; to me it simply looks cool.  And since the AVS is a made up ship I'm enjoying trying whatever strikes me. 

If I hadn't done the half lapped miters I would have done Chuck's Cheerful version as you posted above.  I already copied his hull planking plan in place of the kit's version.

[Gregory]

I hope my comments were not taken as being critical of your work.  To the contrary,  your planking and now, the mitered joints are an inspiration, and I think it great that you are adding a detail that sets your model apart from the crowd.

[shipmodel]

Hi Cisco - 

 

I really like the half-lapped miter joints.  I have always used simpler lap joints, but yours are beautiful, justifying the extra work.

 

If I have a suggestion, it is to make the gratings first, before the coamings.  

If a coaming is a little larger or smaller than the plans, no one can tell.

If the grating does not fit the coaming, everyone notices.

 

Looking forward to more.  Be well.

 

Dan

 

[CiscoH]

good evening fellow modelers.  Here in Delaware its been hot, humid, a/c killing weather for the last few days.  A thunderstorm went through and now its looking a little cooler.  Long overdue for an update.

 

Gregory no offense was taken or implied.  In hindsight I think the standard lap joins look better from the normal viewing distance than my mitered half-lap joints.  But its too late now I ainte redoing them.

 

Dan, I still have a single grating to do and I'm following your advice and making the grating first, then fitting the frame.  Thats next update.

 

Last few weeks I have been working on the coamings with hatches, of which the AVS has 2.  I made my test piece in my last post and it went well.  After thicknessing my holly stock so it matched the plans I made all 4 sides.  My updated miter guide worked well but it still took some fussing.  It is very challenging clamping pieces this small so they don't shift.  Here I am sneaking up on the 45 degree cut.

I glued various paired thicknesses of wood to my working board and used them as guides to mark the height of the lap joints (you can see one of these in the top of the above picture to the right).  It is impossible to photograph but I used a pencil to mark the lap first, then a scalpel blade held flat against my jig to incise the lap over the pencil mark, and then took progressive tiny shavings with my chisel until I could see the shiny "scribe" the scalpel left on each side.  When I tried using files I seemed to round the joints more than I wanted so this was mostly done with edged weapons. 

 

Below is the next step with all 4 sides finished.  Seemed ok.  For all you woodworkers out there you can see my penciled on triangle which was really helpful.  You can also see at some point I accidentally flipped the right side piece so the mark ended up on the bottom.

Then I glued it into 2 halves and let them dry.  I used my usual yellow gorilla glue with #2 pencil graphite mixed in.

If you look above you may notice some glue on the left non-attached sides.  This is because I glued the left side pieces together to the wrong ends.  Isopropyl alcohol to the rescue; luckily I noticed something was wrong with the halves when I tried to dry-fit them.

 

I made another mistake with the first coaming, this one not so easy to fix.  Once glued together I realized i had a trapezoid, not a rectangle.  I had glued the joints so the miters looked tight but hadn't checked for square.  I guess my perfect 45 degree miters weren't.  My buddy Jason (JLong) was here last weekend and said no one would ever notice it except me.

 

Next up was the smaller coaming, or the "scuttle" as the practicum calls it.  It made me miss working on the big one; it was a lot harder to hold stock this short.  This time I also glued the 2 halves first, making sure it was the correct sides this time, and made a 90 degree jig to increase the odds of ending up with a rectangle and not another trapezoid.  It went better.

And here are the 2 coamings.   The little one still has some pencil marks that will be removed and some final sanding but I call it not too bad.

And here they are on the deck.  The model shipways directions show both hatch planking oriented athwartships; the pacticum shows the smaller coaming hatch in a fore-aft position.  Dr Feldman shows his small coaming fore-aft so thats how I did it as well.  I also liked how the practicum added a presumably removable center divider for the large coaming, and I liked the recessed look.  I didn't do a divider for the small coaming.  And here they are in place on the deck.  The light is making the model appear much darker than it really is.

 

And thats it.  Next up is making the single small grating and the companionway.  Also the ring hardware.

 

Have a great evening all

 

Cisco

 

 

 

 

Edited August 6 by CiscoH

[Ronald-V]

Love it! Very precise work  

[CiscoH]

Thanks for the positive energy Ronald.  I greatly appreciate it.

 

Today, Friday night, my wife and daughter are away at a Taylor Swift concert, my son is visiting his cousins, so I am home alone with the dogs, cats, and fish.  We are all relaxing, except for the dogs, who don't like July 5th fireworks.

 

Today's update concerns making the AVS' (not sure how the possessive works there) single grating.  I don't have a mini-tablesaw and I didn't use the kit supplied basswood grating as I wanted mine to be made of holly.  There was a lot of thinking involved in this one...

 

I did a test run with a basswood version, which I won't show, that influenced the current version.  First I planed then sanded my holly stock to about 2/64s inch thick, matching the thickness of the slats on the kit plans.  Next I wanted to cut slots crosswise.  In my test piece I found it was easy to make the slots not straight, or to end up rounding one end when I tried to file them square, especially if the stack of strips i was cutting across was narrow.  To help with all these issues, and because all my clamping techniques didn't work well, I made a packet of strips, alternating holly and basswood, and glued them all together and to the baseboard, with white elmers glue.  Then I planed the tops flat.

 

Below is this step; the holly stock I started with and the kit basswood strip is to the left.

Next I needed to mark my slots.  I used my smallest square and a scalpel blade to make the first mark, then used pieces of 2/64 stock (the width of the slats) and pieces of 3/64 stock (the width of the holes) to mark each successive slat.  I found that the scalpel left a deep line that was relatively easy to cut to with a veritas mini-chisel, then I carefully cleaned out each slot with a tiny chisel and sometimes with a small file. 

Because a chisel is in essence a wedge that exerts pressure sideways, to keep the "teeth" from popping out I pressure fit a strip of basswood into each slot only (no glue) as I made each one.  This worked remarkably well and I didn't pop off a single tooth.

 

Below I have filled one slot and marked the next.

 

Here I have filled all the slots except the last one.  The empty big slot at the top was rejected and turned into a test run.

Then I soaked the whole thing in isopropyl alcohol and finally it reluctantly came apart.  I should have taken the cross fillers out before soaking, they immediately swelled up and stuck, so I had to leave the packet out for a day to dry so I could remove them, then re-soak for 24hrs.  Miraculously nothing broke.

 

Below I have taken the now free strips of holly, used small pieces of 3/64" basswood as spacers above and below where the grating will be (I didn't want to glue the spacers in), used my square to even all the pieces up, and used wedges to hold the strips in place.  I used pencil to highlight the joints.

Next I inserted a variety of holly strips crosswise (whatever scraps I had that would fit, this stage isn't pretty), and attached the strips with white elmers glue applied with a toothpick.  Way easy to get glue blobs that would be tough to remove so i went very sparing on the glue.

 

Here it is drying.

And after it dried I cut off the edges, did some sanding to bring the thickness down, and presto here is my grating:

It still has some dust on it but overall I am very happy both with the final product and that I am done making gratings.

 

Below I am attempting to make the coaming.  I made the port and starboard sides fine, then screwed up 3 different times in 3 different ways on the fore and aft sides (pieces at the bottom of the picture) so called it a night. 

Maybe time to consider a tablesaw?

 

thanks for reading

 

Cisco

 

Edited July 7 by CiscoH

[Ronald-V]

Are your wife and daughter here in Amsterdam? Because Swift is giving the last few days concerts here in Amsterdam. I'm not a fan  but it's all over the news.

 

Nice gratings btw!

Edited July 6 by Ronald-V

[Thukydides]

Good job on the gratings. That is some precise work you have done by hand there.

[CiscoH]

I wrote Moonbug but i meant Mugje or however you spelled it.  Yes they are in Amsterdam gawking at scenery and annoying cyclists.  i think today they are going to Brussels. 

 

thanks Thukydides.  i want to figure out how to do things by hand before i get power tools.  i do full scale woodworking as my other hobby and learned hand tools first and i think it was very helpful.

Edited July 6 by CiscoH

[rlb]

Hi John,

 

I haven't checked in in a while, great work on the coamings and the grating!  I haven't seen anyone do one of those by hand.  I'm sure someone has, but I haven't come across it.  Nice work!

 

Ron

[CiscoH]

thanks Ron.  I am able to truthfully report theres a good reason you don’t see anyone doing gratings by hand.

[tmj]

On 7/5/2024 at 8:45 PM, CiscoH said:

Maybe time to consider a tablesaw?

Howdy Cisco!

I once had an idea for making gratings without power tools but haven't yet had a need to try it.

This requires a vice, an aluminum angle and an aluminum flat bar. The grating jaws would screw securely to the jaws of the vice. Different sizes of grating would require a different set of jaws. A wooden block adjusts the depth of the cut. The cuts would be made via guitar fret saws, hack saw blades, hack saw blades laminated together, whatever type of blade setup is required to produce the proper width of cuts. Just place the strips of grating wood into the fixture, atop your depth block, tighten the vice and start sawing away.

 

 

[CiscoH]

Its Sunday afternoon.  Still hot and humid here but not as hot and humid as last week.  Time for an update.

 

tmj - I had considered a jig similar to your idea.  But to make it I would probably need a tablesaw to accurately cut the frets.  My understanding is some of the original modelers started with a square of wood and chiseled each grate hole out individually; this sounds even more crazy than my method.

 

A bit up the page here Dan (Shipmodel) had recommended making the grating first and then fitting the coaming which is what I ended up doing, good advice thank you Dan.

 

I started on the companionway coaming next.  I built it the same as the others with mitered half lap joints; to make the joint lines stand out I again used #2 pencil graphite mixed with gorilla glue.

I trimmed the horns and glue blobs next.  Here is a shot of the deck with all the coamings in place (nothing is glued yet).

I realized that somehow I had made my coamings taller than the plans show.  I think I made the first coaming extra tall so I could later trim it to the correct height.  And then forgot, and made all my future parts the same height as the first.  It was fairly straightforward to reduce the main and small hatchways.  I ended up leaving the grating hatchway its original excessive height.  If it were my ship I would prefer the deck furniture with holes in it to be as high as possible, and I figured it would make it easier to attach a canvas cover/batten.  As long as it doesn't interfere with the cannons.  

 

Now I'm working on the companionway proper.  I glued the panels for the sides up using holly strip and pencil to show joints.  Its hard to see but there is slight reveal between the framing and the vertical slats the thickness of 3 pieces of paper.  

Next up is making the companionway doors.  The instructions and the Bob Hunt practicum show them to be simple frame and flat panels; obviously this is too simple and I need to complicate things.  So I will be attempting raised panels in my next post.  David Anstcherl has directions to make raised panels in one of his books but despite reading it multiple times I can't figure out what he did (Fireship Comet pg 60).  In one of the Swan books Greg Herbert used sanding sticks.  We'll see what works for me.

 

Enjoy the rest of the weekend all, thanks for reading

 

Cisco

[CiscoH]

Good Thursday evening MSW folk.  Today's post is devoted to the Companionway which was a lot harder to make than I anticipated.

 

I built the coaming in my last post; this was the same as all the other coamings with mitered half-lap joints.  I wanted to build my companionway with annoyingly cool details that came back to haunt me.  Below is my cartoon explaining My Big Plan.  First off for visual interest I wanted all the panels to have a small setback from the corner posts; I didn't want them flush.  Thats demonstrated in the plan views at the top.  This adds subtle shadow lines which in theory better define details.

Then I had to figure out the hinges.  If the front doors are inset you can't use regular hinges because the doors will only open 90 degrees; but with offset hinges where the hinge part is outside the corner post the doors can open much wider- see the lower part of the cartoon for a better visual explanation.

In reality the offset hinge would have another bent part connecting to the door which my cartoon doesn't show well but I didn't feel like redrawing it.

 

The raised panels were straighforward.  I made the front door panels by gluing stiles and rails to a thin piece of wood that came with the kit.  Then I sanded the panels to fit and used chisels to cut the raised portions.  Next time I will be more careful marking but I feel these were good enough.  I drilled holes behind the panels so I could stick wire through to pop the panels out - they were a snug fit.

  Then I tried to make the hardware.  I had a mental image of a wire handles and a sliding latch-lock contraption.  I should have tested the latch idea on scrap first; it didn't work at all.  I couldn't get the hardware pieces small enough and this was the result:

You can also see my handles weren't well aligned.  So I carefully chiseled the middle 2 pieces out, glued up new ones (drying at the bottom of the below pic), sanded them until I got a snug fit and glued them in.  I call it a good repair; I couldn't tell I did it afterwards.

I re-drilled the handle holes being more careful to make them even and left the latch off.  I poked a hole under the handles with a nail and put a drop of black paint in to represent a keyhole.  Sometimes simpler is better and this looked a lot better to my eye.

 

Next up was making the offset hinges.  I silver soldered some brass rod to brass strip, filed the pieces flush, blackened them with Brass Black very diluted, and inserted them into their holes along the side of the doors.

Here's a shot of the interior of the companionway.   I found it easiest to drill holes all the way through the door for the handles, and filed small slots for the hinges.  This made it easier to adjust how much they stuck out.  Later I blobbed some epoxy on the inside so the hardware would stay put.

Next up I made the roof, fairly sraightforward.  I learned my lesson about glue splash and covered the panel entirely with Tamiya tape except where the hinges would go.  I used epoxy to hold the hinges in place, afterwards drilled holes for bolts and sanded them fairly flush.  And finally I painted them black.  Looking into my paint box I found I had purchased 3 separate bottles of black paint, go figure.

And finally I put it all together.

I think the pumps and binnacle are next.  And I still have some ring hardware for the other hatches to make.

 

thanks for reading

 

Cisco

Edited September 3 by CiscoH

[hamilton]

Wow - really nice work on the companionway and other deck features, Cisco! Clean and precise!

hamilton

[Ronald-V]

Yes stunning work!

[Blue Ensign]

Well done for your perseverance Cisco, silver soldering is a useful  skill to have.

I find that holding the pieces in the correct position for soldering is the trickiest part, sometimes you have to get quite inventive. I'll be getting my set out shortly to make Bowsprit support rings.

Your sloop is looking wonderful, just love that planking.

 

B.E.

[aliluke]

I've been off line for a very long time - a big trip to Northern Europe. This is looking fantastic Cisco. Very painstaking but worth every single effort.

 

Ali

[CiscoH]

Happy Labor Day to all you who celebrate it!  Weather here in Delaware was perfect for the pool, and my kids start back to school tomorrow, oh happy day for us parents.

 

Thank you guys for all the likes, I appreciate it.  Hamilton I'm following your build closely, Ronald as well, BE your longboat is beautiful, and Aliluke welcome back from vacation.  Trying to up my game to stay on pace with you guys is motivating.

 

Shorter post today covering how I made the ring hardware.  I've never done it before so this was all new to me.  Lots of people have posted their methods and I mostly copied appropriately.

 

First up I did a test ring on some scrap, instead of on my finished panels like last time.  I had read the ring was usually thicker than the staple holding it in place so I used a different brass wire for each.  Experience has taught me that drilling holes by eye usually ends up not working so I also wanted to make jig to standardize the staple holes.

 

Here's  my test ring, I think it looks good.

The above ring was silver soldered but I didn't solder any of the other rings.  The solder made one side look thicker and my files wouldn't easily fit inside to even it out. 

 

The below pic has all my parts.  At the top is a piece of scrap wood with 2 of the smallest brass nails I have inserted into 1 end and the heads clipped off.  I filed the ends a bit pointier and squeezed them together until their width looked good.  I used a 5/64" drill bit (the 3/32" was a little too wide) to form the rings from 22g wire, and made the staples from 24g wire.  The spools of brass wire are from Amazon.

I wound the brass wire around the drill bit and pulled the coils tight with my mini-pliers.

I cut the links with a pair of mini wire cutters.  I had read of others using a hack saw or small saw blade but I don't have anything that tiny.  The down side of the wire cutters is it left squished ends of wire that don't come together flat.  So my next step was holding each link in my mini pliers braced against my finger and using a dedicated file (I use for brass only) to flatten each side.

Then I re-formed each ring on the jewelers round nosed pliers which ensures the rings end up round.  As an aside I got all the tools at Micheals in the bead jewelry section.  It would have been impossible to do most of this work without these tools.

And here is the final result after blackening.  Manipulating the staples led to some of the blackening wearing off so I will touch up with some black paint before final installation.  The close-ups are merciless (i can see some imperfect ring joins but I'm going to live with it).  The staple's smaller gauge wire contrasts nicely against the thicker rings more than I thought it would; definitely don’t make them the same size wire.

Next up, instead of more deck furniture as I said last post, will be the stern windows.  I put off doing them in the past because I was worried about damage during future handling but now seems to be the right time.  I'll have to flip the hull about to measure and fit the windows and more and more breakable inventory will be added to the upper deck from here on out.

 

Thanks for reading

 

Cisco 

Edited September 3 by CiscoH

[Thukydides]

Those look really good. Thanks for detailing the process. I will have to remember to come back to this whenever I get to making rings in a few years.

[JLong]

Rings look pretty good to me. Those are not easy to close, even with the jewelry needle nose pliers. You could always hide the 'seam' under the staple if you want, but to me, seeing the handiwork, is kind of a testament to your skill.

 

Nice work!

[CiscoH]

Happy Saturday MSW!  Today I will document the start of my attempts to make Windows.

 

The AVS comes with laser cut windows in walnut which are actually pretty good.  I decided to start my window construction by copying one of them.  There are 4 windows spread in an arc across the stern, 2 on each side.  As I had suspected before the laser cut windows were made at 2 different angles; the inner windows are more angled than the outer:

 

Inner Window:

Outer window:

Each side is of course a mirror image of the other; thats 4 different windows that are similar enough there is no way I won't end up making some of them backwards, upside down, etc.

 

I followed David Antscherl's basic construction techniques from Swan?  or possibly Speedwell.  Anyway his method was my inspiration.

 

As usual I am making everything from holly, and since I don't have any milling machines its all by hand.  I decided to make it a little easier on myself and build an overscale window to practice first.  It is Really Challenging holding these tiny pieces of wood steady.  Almost as bad as the ring hardware.  So my first thought was build a practice version a bit bigger than the final to work out my technique.  I think it was a good plan, and overall I felt using the biggest piece of wood for each part I could helped holding and manipulating.  Then trim to size later.

 

To get my window angles I used one of the lasercut kit windows (an outer one) to guide my chisel.  A gentle score was all thats needed, then the chisel blade slips naturally into the score mark and is easy to deepen. 

 

I used half-lap joints to form the oversize window frame.  As per David I glued down 2 strips of wood that were 1/2 the thickness of the window frame parts and used my chisel to Gently pare the half laps to size.  The only way I could hold these little parts is with my fingers and I was cutting Towards said digits so I went very careful.  Sharp is essential and pares away little slivers of wood nicely.  Dull blades jump and and skip and go where you didn't plan.  This time there was no blood.

Once the frame was dry (and I had to recut one side as I made the original part the mirror image of what it should be) I tackled putting in the grill, clearly the trickiest part.  I lightly scored the frame with the same wide chisel used above and gently pared out the grill mortises using a combination of chisels, a very fine hobby saw, and some fine vallorbe files.  I fitted the rail first which took several episodes of thinning with the veritas miniplane.  The rail is 2/64" thick if anyone was wondering.

And then the really hard part, fitting the muntin.  This involved cutting a half lap joint in both the sash and the muntin so the grill parts end up level with each other.  Everything was done with the optivisor.  I put a thin piece of wood under the rail so it wouldn't deflect then scored Very Gently with my chisel and cut out the mortise.  And here is the muntin in place.

The grill is inset into the window frame which is what I wanted, and not flush with the outside of the frame.  I really feel that having some reveals looks more authentic even though it always means more exacting work.  

 

Since this is a practice round I will leave this window as is but if it had been a final version I would let the grill dry and then sand the frame down to its final width.  Heres the window laid on the AVS stern and while the frame is obviously too large I think the grill looks more in scale than the kit version.

Anyway I dont think I can make the grill any smaller so thats what I'm working with.  If I was Really Crazy I would try to scrape moldings onto the grill and inner window frames instead of leaving them as simple rectangles.  But at present I am Not That Crazy and I think holly is too soft for that kind of detail.

 

One thing I discovered is my 12 pack of Vallorbe Escapement files 4 cut (super fine) doesn't have a single rectangular file.  There are 2 rounds and 10 curved, half round, triangular, but no rectangular one that would have fit nicely into these tiny mortises so I am off to OttoFrei.com.  Legitimate (as in I actually need it) tool purchase ahead.

 

Next up is figuring how I am going to mount the windows.  As it is right now the window frames don't have anything to keep them from falling into the stern gallery so I am thinking about gluing some backing strips for the windows to push up against.  But first I have to figure out exactly how thick the windows will be, what about glass, what about an exterior frame, etc, so some deep thinking ahead.  Stay tuned.

 

thanks for reading

 

Cisco

Edited September 22 by CiscoH