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

[hamilton]

Juts catching up here - the decking looks great!

hamilton

[CiscoH]

Page 8!  At my rate of building speed thats remarkable.  Slow and steady.

 

First up progress on the AVS.  My shipmodel friend Jason and I drove the 4 hours to Connecticut on Friday night for the 42nd Annual Joint Clubs show.  Nothing in the world compares to the joy of 95N narrowing down into the George Washington bridge.  We almost ran out of things to talk about.

Anyway I wanted to display her at the Conference if I could get the main cabin planking finished so I had a Deadline.  

 

After dividing the front of the cabin into aprox 1/8" wide divisions I got 20? I think planks.  After gluing the the most starboard and then the central planks into position I made another 9 planks and glued them in 3 at a time.  

The top of the cabin curves upwards so if you put too much pressure on the planks they would suddenly flip outwards.  Inventive clamping became necessary.

Once starboard was done I did the same for port.  The penciled on triangles helped keep track of the planks order.  Its not as apparent as I had hoped but the planks narrow as they get towards the center.  

 

Looks a little rough in this picture and it was 2 days to go.  I scraped and sanded (180, then 220) the planks down close to level.

Next up was cutting the planks flush and inserting a curved molding over the cabin doors.  I traced the rounded profile I wanted and assumed there would be some springback so made my jig a little more curved.  Holly , even thick stuff, bends well with some heat and a touch of water.  I was thinking about complicated laminations but turned out to not be necessary.

I trimmed it to fit, had to bend it again a little more in 1 location and unbend it in another.  The molding fit into a rabbit that was irregular and wasn't a good "bed" so I used epoxy instead of yellow glue.  Its easy to get epoxy everywhere you don't want it so (like dripping over/into the doors) but I got lucky in this go around.

 

Final sanding was in the hotel the morning of the Conference and then she was good to go.

I think up next is making more deck fixtures and cleats and bollards.  Also some pumps so my AVS doesn't sink.  And on the horizon is Cannons!

 

I took some pics at the Conference which I will post next.

 

thanks for reading

Cisco

Edited April 27, 2025 by CiscoH

[Tim Murphy]

Dear Sir, I was at the North East Show on Saturday. I was also one of the Judges.

I thought your model was absolutely beautiful. Your woodwork was impressive and clean.

I wish your model was finished so we could have judged it for the Jim Roberts

Award.

Can’t wait to see the completed model next year.

Thank You

Tim Murphy 

 

 

[CiscoH]

Thank you very much Tim!  I appreciate the kind words.  It may be longer than a year though...

 

Some Conference pics.  It was raining hard when we got there and I managed to step into the river flowing through the parking lot so wet feet for a while.

 

Heres a pic of this case which I really liked; and I notice I accidentally caught Dave and Greg talking in the background.  They gave the lecture after lunch about their current project, a 1:48 behemoth frigate? thats so big there are concerns it may not fit through Greg's doorways when he's done rigging her.  Along with some other attendees I worked on them both to restart the Admiralty Workshops and its sounding hopeful.  If either of them are reading this I still vote for a short cross- section of a ship.  They did Echo years ago which I have downloaded but maybe a different ship, same idea.

 

There were 30 minute mini-talk/demos running all morning; every one I attended was worthwhile.  I will always be a more traditional-minded builder but it was interesting learning about printers.  Maybe when I am deciding on which cannons to use.  Dan Pariser's talk on building an Admiralty style hull was fascinating and in my opinion his was the best model there.   Here's a side-on pic.  If i remember correctly shes a sister ship to Fubbs, but named after another of the king's mistresses, of which he apparently had a veritable fleet of. 

I found another mini AVS in 1:100 scale which was very well done.  I liked the case too.

Most cases are made in dark wood, not sure why unless its tradition.  Heres a great 1:96 admiralty style ship in a light coloured case which I also liked a lot.  Notice the large cutout venting in the case bottom.

And finally the raffle.  I have never bought tickets for a raffle before.  But.  The prizes were a tablesaw, which I was sorta interested in (although I hear Byrnes is making saws again), and several of Chuck's new limited edition Speedwell Battle Station kits, which is what I really wanted. 

 

One of my tickets was the first called so I got my Chuck kit, the next guy got the saw, and then I got called again so my modeling buddy Jason got a kit too.

 

Heres the kit unpacked.  An amazing amount of stuff in it, all Syren quality wood, rope, blocks, and a flawless cannon.  And a sailor and his cat. 

It seems to me this would be a high demand kit - high quality but small so not the commitment of the other bigger kits he carries.  And it has well thought out directions, especially for rigging the cannon, which is essential in my book.

 

And after this triumph we drove back to Delaware and I got to loathe 95S and the George Washington bridge all over again.

 

Have a great weekend folks

 

Cisco

Edited April 27, 2025 by CiscoH

[Ryland Craze]

Hey Cisco, I saw your AVS at the show.  Pictures just do not do your model justice.  It is an absolute beauty of a model and I look forward to seeing it completed.  Glad you won one of Chuck's kits.  I bought many raffle tickets for it, but no luck on winning one.  It was a great show and I look forward to next year's event.

[Ronald-V]

Your deck is looking great Cisco! Nice pictures also of the conference.  

[Tim Murphy]

Cisco, glad you enjoyed the Lecture. Few people know that the Constitution and her 5 other

sisters ships have the 1778 Frigate South Carolina as their design base.

Should be interesting to see the model.

Tim

[shipmodel]

Cisco - 

 

It was great seeing you and your AVS at the show.  Your pics here are excellent, but she is even better in person.

Very nice work.

Thanks also for the compliments.  Glad you found that my talk was a bit entertaining and informative.

If you decide to do an Admiralty-style hull, feel free to pick my brain.  

See you in New London next year.

 

Dan

[palmerit]

I thought I had seen that some of those "battle station" kits might be available some time some place - I can't remember if it was on the NRG web site or Syren. But the kit says "limited edition" of 25 so maybe not.

[Gregory]

1 hour ago, palmerit said:

I thought I had seen that some of those "battle station" kits might be available some time some place -

I think a set of plans would be a good 2nd choice.

[Stubby]

Very impressive build! Marking this for later reference...

[SkiBee]

On 3/4/2023 at 5:55 PM, CiscoH said:

Good evening fellow shipbuilders!  I have been at an impasse for several weeks- paralysis by analysis- over the size and placement of the garboard strake in my second planking.  But first I had to divide the hull into 3 planking zones of aprox equal size, as per the plans.  I have seen many different iterations of marking the hull; string, pencil, various tapes, or simply winging it.  I settled on using a thin strip of bluetape.  I cut it as in the following pic, using my fingers as a fence, which if you use the factory outside of the strip as your line works well.  The cut side of the strip was too wavy no matter how careful I was.

The bluetape sticks pretty well and is easy to see.  This was the first time I'd tried fairing a planking line; It was cool how a straight line from the side had a lot of points and bumps looking at it from the stem.  In the below pic I am using the top of the tape as my edge, not the bottom.

Adjustment was easy; I slid a scalpel blade underneath the tape and gently edged it up or down.  It took a few tweaks to look good from all angles; its also pretty easy to overthink it and keep adjusting.  After a while I had to force myself to stop fixing it.

And then the dreaded garboard strake.  According to the Model Shipway's directions the lower belt is divided into 3 planks.  The garboard is supposed to be wider than the rest of the hull planks, but then I got confused.  Some of what I've read (yellow cover planking booklet by Model Shipways) say the bottom 2 planks are significantly wider than the rest.  Somewhere else I read only the garboard is wider.  Some sources have the garboard shaped fishlike, the plans make it look the same width the length of the ship, I was getting deluged by too much information.

 

So in the end I made it one long plank, narrowing at the stem so the tip doesn't push upwards, and about 1.25 "standard" planking widths wide the rest of the ship.  I want to put in separate planks in each row but figuring out a planking arrangement became too much so I did one long plank.  I will probably score horizontal lines to simulate separate planks. 

 

In hindsight 2 layers of planking is more of a pain than I thought it'd be.  You lose the convenient bulwarks to clamp to, and since I use yellow glue not superglue I had to figure out a clamp strategy.  The first layer had filled the convenient keel rabbit, so I tried cutting a new rabbit into the keel/underplanking junction with mixed results.  Won't do that again; easier to butt joint the second layer to the keel.  As I've done in the past I used brass pins and wedges to keep the garboard tight to the keel.  The holes will be covered by the next row.

 

I prebent the garboard by soaking the end and clamping the tip diagonally around a dowel.  This formed a nice curve that was mostly trimmed away, but the tip fit perfect.  Aggressive clamping to push the tip into the stem in the past led to dents in the wood so this worked a lot better.  The second twist about 2/3 back was easier; wet the plank and clamp it in place without glue for the night.

 

And here is the garboard in its final test clamp, no glue yet.  Of course once I added glue the clothespins completely changed their character and started slipping off and I couldn't find all the wedges and I decided maybe try this other clamp, but where? did I put it, etc, and it didn't go quite as smooth as I planned, but thats usually what happens.

Thats it for tonite.  I hope this first plank is the worst and rest go a little easier. 

 

thanks for reading and have a great evening

 

cisco

I would strongly recommend that anyone that builds the AVS to follow CISCO's method of laying out the second level of planking of the hull.  I just started by following the Luck Street practicum, I could have avoided many errors if I would have gone to the detail that CISCO did.