St Roch by Lecrenb - 1:48 scale - RCMP Schooner rigged as schooner c. 1930/35

[Lecrenb]

On 12/9/2024 at 6:21 PM, wmherbert said:

Nice job.

Your plates and rivets came out great.

What is a NWSL riveter tool?  even Mr. Google couldn't help me. 

Bill

Hi Bill, and sorry about the delayed reply!

NWSL is NorthWest Short Line, a hobby tool company geared towards model railroaders but their tools will of course work on any genre. Their riveter tool is a calibrated table, part number 51-4, that attaches to their small arbor press, part number 50-4. You tape your work to the table allowing it to advance a precise amount, per the pitch of your 'rivets'.

With some practice you can draw pencil lines on your work and manually advance it to each 'rivet' location... this goes a lot faster than using the calibrated screw. I used this method for my Flower class corvette where I had over 10,000 rivets to emboss!

The dies come in assorted sizes and you operate the press every time you want to emboss a rivet. My understanding is that NWSL has had patent issues and so this and other products in their tool line have been knocked off, so if to can no longer find it at NWSL try Micro Mark or others, and I have seen it come up on ebay.

Edited December 20, 2024 by Lecrenb

[Lecrenb]

G'day everyone, and thanks in advance for following along. Since my last update I have been working on the cap rails, starting with the main deck. These rails follow the curve of the bulwarks at each end where they sweep up to the fo'c's'le and poop decks.

No matter how much heat and hot water I applied the rails always splintered and buckled when I tried to bend them. I ended up wrapping the ends of each rail with thread as seen in the picture; this prevented the wood from splintering when bent. I also rolled the ends around a Tamiya paint jar which was close to the desired curve, this support prevented the wood from buckling when it came out of the hot water.

I made a jig from scrap pine, to hold the rails in the correct shape as they dried.

The first picture shows my setup; with a small slow cooker for the hot water, one rail set in place after drying, and the other drying in the jig with the wrapping at each end.

The rails were painted Tamiya X-18 semi-gloss black off the ship so I wouldn't have to deal with masking and touching up.

The second picture shows the painted rails installed on the ship as the glue dries.

Edited December 20, 2024 by Lecrenb

[AON]

I was told to laminate tight bends with multiple thin strips.

Make the pieces wider because they will wander. Steam and bend them as an assembly without glue. Allow for spring back. When dry, glue them together and clamp. When cured, sand the edges to proper width then assemble on the model.

[druxey]

As Alan said, tight bends require lamination, or they can be cut to shape from a solid piece of wood.

[Lecrenb]

Thanks Alan and Druxey... I appreciate your comments and advice.

I would have preferred using thin laminated strips but neither I nor the LHS had what I needed and the postal strike was looming when I made the rails. I had a good supply of correctly dimensioned scale lumber on hand, so at the end of the day I used the method that I did, with eventual success after some frustration... The string wrapping is similar to a pipe bending trick to keep a pipe from collapsing when bending, and it did work on my rails. 

I did use shapes cut from basswood sheet to plank the hull around my stern section, and this method matches the plans of the original ship! I presume the shipwrights also had problems making sharp bends in Douglas Fir and Ironbark!

As you will see in my next post, when faced with bending the rails across their width to follow the curves of the upper decks, I used the saw kerf method with success, and more basswood sheet shapes to work around the stern rail. 

Merry Christmas!

[Lecrenb]

Good morning all... 

Moving right along to the fo'c's'le rails, I sawed kerfs about 2/3 the way across the width of my lumber. After a bath in the hot water it then easily conformed to the shape of the bow. I clamped it in place to dry and it held the shape.

I then painted the sides and exposed edges of the rail bottom off the ship so I would not need to worry about masking and touching up.

After gluing in place I applied a smear of filler to hide the kerfs, then sanded and painted.

The upper wales are basswood strips and did not need to be sawn. Once steamed and clamped for shape they were also painted off the ship then glued.

I used a spacer to set a constant distance of the wale below the rail.

Cutting the kerfs, so the wide lumber will bend along the bow.

clamping the rail in place to dry after hot water treating. The kerfs are visible near the bow.

Bow rails competed and the fo'c's'le wale being glued in place. The next photo shows the spacer I made to set the distance below the rail.

Edited December 23, 2024 by Lecrenb

[Lecrenb]

Good morning, and I hope everyone on the forum and in the Guild had a very Merry Christmas! 

In my last post I told a bit of a fib... I did need to saw kerfs into the poop deck wale where is made the sharp turn around the stern...

The picture below is the wale being installed on the port side, where I used the same jig to set the spacing below the rail.

The next picture shows the cuts being made into the stern section of the wale. Even though the Zona saw kerfs are narrow the give me sufficient flexibility to bend the wale around the stern after soaking it in hot water. 

The last picture is the wale drying in place on the ship, after which it will be gap filled, sanded, painted, and glued onto the ship.

 

Edited December 27, 2024 by Lecrenb

[Lecrenb]

I am now at the point where I can drill holes into the hull... besides the various pump and engine discharges I need openings for the fairleads, hawse and portholes.

Following that and while waiting for my order from Cornwall Model Boats (the postal strike is over, at least for the time being!) I will be installing various fittings around the outside edges of the decks, and building the rudders (two of them, St. Roch carried a spare on deck).

 

The main wale, also referred to as the rub rail, can't be installed until the portholes and chain plates are on since the rail overlaps parts of them. Bottom line is it may be a while before my next update, so I will leave you with some pictures of St. Roch as she is today.

 

Thanks everyone for looking in and for your comments and critiques!

 

[FriedClams]

Very nice progress - she's looking great!

 

Gary

[Lecrenb]

23 hours ago, FriedClams said:

Very nice progress - she's looking great!

 

Gary

Thanks very much Gary... working on the rudders now!

[KeithAug]

On 12/21/2024 at 3:57 AM, Lecrenb said:

The string wrapping is similar to a pipe bending trick to keep a pipe from collapsing when bending, and it did work on my rails.

More than one way to skin a cat. I usually follow the thin lamination method and your method had never crossed my mind but I will log it for possible future use.  Thank you.

[Lecrenb]

20 hours ago, KeithAug said:

More than one way to skin a cat. I usually follow the thin lamination method and your method had never crossed my mind but I will log it for possible future use.  Thank you.

Thanks Keith... 

[Lecrenb]

Happy New Year, and it is -30 here this morning... a good day to hunker down and start making rudders...

This is the original plan, drawn in 1":1'. I checked actual dimensions on the plan to verify it is accurately scaled, and it is, therefore it was a simple job to divide by 4 to convert to my 1:48 scale dimensions...

The blanks for the two rudders are three basswood sheet laminations, which in turn are laminated using 3M double sided tape. Then I sanded one edge flat as my reference and drew the rudder onto the face of the wood.

Off to the bandsaw, then a first sanding to ensure both rudders are the same shape before separating the two blanks and rough sanding the profiles...

Next is a test fit on the ship... everything seems to line up! The second rudder is a spare that was carried on deck...

Edited Thursday at 06:38 PM by Lecrenb

[Gabek]

Excellent work, Bruce! 

Sharp tools and clear skies,

Gabe