Hannah by ccoyle - Ship Model Okumoto - 1/70 - Colonial Schooner - on indefinite hold

[ccoyle]

Hi, gang. 

 

So, while I'm still waiting for some materials to finish up USS England, I've decided to start up a new project. This is the 1/70 scale Hannah kit from Ship Model Okumoto. I won't do an unboxing here, since James Hatch already wrote up an excellent review of this kit, which you can read here. Mr. Okumoto's kits are basically POF, but without the 'P' part -- just the framing. I may decide to add some planking later to make Hannah more of a conventional POF model. As you will note in James' review, the instructions for this kit are entirely in Japanese -- I am only able to begin work on it now because I was recently forced to replace my dying cell phone with a new one that includes Google Lens, which has a built-in translation capability. I can attest that Lens does a more than adequate job of translating the kanji characters.

 

 

As James also noted, the laser cutting on this kit is very good, but, interestingly, there are no laser-engraved numbers on the parts. The instructions say that the first step is to write the numbers on the parts in pencil, using the kit's printed part sheet templates as guides. Not knowing in advance how much of those numbers will eventually remain visible, if any, I have gone ahead and written them adjacent to the parts, just to be safe.

 

James mentioned removing the char, but I intend to do a test bond on some pieces of scrap to see whether it is really needed. What little char remains on the parts is not loose or sooty, and its medium brown color actually pairs well with the tone of the wood used in the kit. If I can get away without having to do all of the scraping and sanding, it will save a huge amount of work. We'll see how it goes.

 

Cheers!

[VTHokiEE]

I’m very excited to follow your build. Ever since I saw James’s review I thought these kits would be and interesting way to do a POF but the website has been “sold out” any time I ever checked. How did you manage to find a kit? Good luck with the build!

[Dr PR]

This is an interesting model of an interesting vessel.

 

Harold Hahn's book "The Colonial Schooner 1763-1775" (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1981, 176 pages) contains an extensive history of Hannah, six large two-page (8 1/2" x 11" pages) drawings and dozens of photos and detail drawings of the model. It is a "reconstruction" based upon plans of contemporary schooners and shipping records for the Hannah. At the time the book was written no actual plans of the Hannah were known.

 

The book also discusses other colonial period schooners, including drawings and photos of a model of the Halifax and several other schooners.

 

It is available on Amazon for US$12 to US$44. It would make a ice Christmas present if you don't already have it (drop a hint).

[ccoyle]

14 hours ago, VTHokiEE said:

How did you manage to find a kit?

 

Re-homed from another MSW member.

[VTHokiEE]

Nice! If you run into another kit looking to be placed into a forever home I know a good place 😉.

[ccoyle]

Okay, so here are the parts for the keel. In the center are the two bits of scrap that I test glued and let dry over night. I couldn't get them apart with finger pressure, not even while twisting them, so the char does not appear to be a problem for gluing.

 

 

Here's a close-up showing a laser-cut edge. Like I said earlier, the char is medium-brown in color, not black, and personally I kind of like the bit of contrast. But what do you think?

 

 

Fly's name plate arrived in the mail today, but I will wait until the "big reveal" to show what it looks like with the model.

[druxey]

That is interesting. I wonder what makes for a cleaner char line? Presumably lower temperature, but does that imply a slower cutting speed? If so, it would severely affect production speed. And yes, the color looks very acceptable.

[ccoyle]

12 minutes ago, druxey said:

If so, it would severely affect production speed.

 

Which may also explain why Mr. Okumoto-san is sold out of this kit!

[ccoyle]

Okay, hit my first big snag already!

 

This instruction basically says "build the cant frames." Sounds easy enough.

 

 

Except I can't for the life of me figure out how to interpret the 1:1 scale drawings for the cant frames. The image on the left I was able to solve, as it simply shows the overlapping frame pieces (four in total). It's the drawing on the right that I can't figure out.

 

 

As you can see in the image that comes later in the construction manual, the cant frames need beveling (duh), but they don't appear to be bent in any way -- seen from the side, they appear to be straight up-and-down.

 

 

So what am I reading wrong in the drawing?? 🤔

[GrandpaPhil]

The drawing on the right is the side-on drawing of the first cant frames.

 

They appear to take the shape of the curvature of the keel when set at an angle.

 

 

[Gregory]

On 12/12/2022 at 6:11 PM, druxey said:

I wonder what makes for a cleaner char line?

In my experience it is how sharp the focus is, and the type of  wood/material. It also depends on an what's called ' air assist ' , which is a stream of air directed at the cut focal point.

Chuck could probably elaborate on this.

 

I would say the biggest factor is the type of wood, and may have a lot to do with how much moisture is in the wood.

I get a lot of char with plywood, which probably has to do with the glue more than anything.

I get less char with AYC than I do with bass, which surprises me, because I would be thinking the AYC is more resinous..

[VTHokiEE]

47 minutes ago, ccoyle said:

So what am I reading wrong in the drawing??

I agree with @GrandpaPhil the drawings (to me) look like a cross section staring straight down the keel and then a cross section if I started perpendicular to the keel (if that makes sense).

[ccoyle]

25 minutes ago, VTHokiEE said:

if that makes sense

 

I'm not pickin' up what yer layin' down. The right-hand drawing makes the frame appear to be bent, or curved, which is impossible to do with the 3 mm thick pieces.

[druxey]

It's a projection drawing, showing what it looks like from the side once it's in place on its correct angle and faired.

[ccoyle]

37 minutes ago, druxey said:

showing what it looks like from the side once it's in place on its correct angle and faired

 

Now my brain hurts.

[druxey]

But does that make sense?

[catopower]

🙂 My turn! The right hand image shows the frame looking at it directly from the side, but the frame is rotated as it would appear in position on the model. So, it's viewed at an oblique. But it's only showing the outer edge of the frame, and not the whole frame itself.

 

Might help if they had drawn in the rest of the piece, kind of like my very poorly drawn outline here:

 

 

[ccoyle]

Here's a quick update. Each cant frame is made of four pieces. The laser-cut parts have no tabs and literally drop right out of their frets, which is why the manufacturer has taped the back side of each fret. It would obviously be foolhardy to remove the tape all at one go; instead, I remove only as much as is needed to release each part. There are 31 frame stations along the hull, so as I complete each frame, I use some leftover tape to label it with its station number and, for cant frames, which side it goes on.

 

This process worked well until I got to cant frames #4 and discovered that two of the futtocks for these frames are missing (the same part for each side). I checked all of the frets three times and then checked the parts sheet drawings as well. Yep -- that part # somehow did not get included. I'm going to have to make replacement parts from some scrap material. I think that Mr. Dremel Tool and I will be able to make short work of this task, but it is mildly annoying when one discovers that a kit is missing some parts.

 

[ccoyle]

The construction of this kit is proving less straightforward than one might have hoped, as seen in the following set of images.

 

Frame 5 is the first full-width frame. Parts A5-1 and A5-2 (forgive me for forgetting to add the '5' part to all of the labels on the photos!) were easy enough to find on their sheets and assemble, but then we ran into a mystery with parts F5-1 and F5-2. First of all, there are four parts labeled as F5-2 on the parts sheets, but only two are needed, and, as you can see, the pairs of F5-2 parts are not all the same length.

 

 

No problem, I figured -- one of the two pairs must be F5-1. The shorter F5-2s matched the dimensions on the frame diagram, so I deduced that the longer pair must be F5-1.

 

Except the F5-1s did not match the frame diagram contours at all. After some head-scratching and additional fret searching, I found the real F5-1. It all made sense now.

 

 

Except . . . now it appears that I have a surplus pair of futtocks (F5-1)?? Mysteries and more mysteries!

 

Back to head-scratching!

[ccoyle]

So, to wrap up today's little adventure, here is the finished frame.

 

 

There are 26 more frames to build up, and they all look more or less like this one, so in the absence of much in the way of variety, I may not post much in the near future (and will be out-of-town for ten days, too).

 

Cheers!

[ccoyle]

I have a nice little collection of frames going.

 

 

Like most repetitive tasks, I'm discovering some techniques that make the assembly process go a bit quicker.

 

One thing for potential builders to look out for is that between frames 9 and 10, the transverse beam shifts from spanning the short pair of futtocks to the longer pair. This is due to the positioning of the gun ports.

 

 

Back to work!

 

 

[Dave_E]

On board! You actually build wooden models? 😀 Looking good! 👍

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Dave_E said:

On board! You actually build wooden models? 😀 Looking good! 👍

 

Longer than I've been doing card models, actually. 😉

[Cathead]

Confusing instructions are such a bane of the model world. As a freelance editor experienced in working with global clients, a few years ago I contacted various kit makers to propose having me review their instructions for both English language accuracy and general clarity. All refused, insisting that their instructions were fine. Sigh.

 

[ccoyle]

Bunches of frames made. I got all of what the instructions call "orthogonal frames" made (I don't normally build POF, so I might get the jargon wrong). There are still some stern cant frames to build (#27 in the photo is one such frame), but at this point the instructions say to mount the orthogonal frames to the keel. The instructions don't say anything about beveling the inboard sides of these frames, but it seems logical to do at least a preliminary sanding to these before mounting them; afterwards, they will be difficult to access. Thoughts?

 

[dvm27]

I would do a rough sanding of the bevels before installing but would wait until they are glued in place before final fairing. There are many variations that may cause errors in precisely mounting frames and, if beveled to their final lines, these are impossible to correct once in place without affecting the shape of the hull.

[Beef Wellington]

I think the specific problem though is that the beams really hinder the ability to fair the interior face.  Is it possible to mount and fair as you go, e.g starting midships and adding a couple of frames immediately fore and aft and fair these, then add a few more.  The access will diminish, but there would theoretically be less and less to fine at each step.

[ccoyle]

I have all of the frames completed at this point, and I looked up Mr. Okumoto-san's videos on YouTube. Unfortunately, he did not provide any instruction on fairing the frames; he might have mentioned fairing, but of course the narration is in Japanese, so I had no way of knowing. Interestingly, though, the frames in the video did look like they had been faired, so I'm leaning toward doing the interior fairing before mounting the frames, because as Jason has noted, it will be near impossible to do the job once the frames are glued to the keel.

[yvesvidal]

Interesting project and interesting approach in designing the kit. I suppose each culture/country has its own way of doing things.

We do not see Japanese wood kits very often, and this one seems like a puzzle to put together.

 

Yves

[ccoyle]

7 minutes ago, yvesvidal said:

I suppose each culture/country has its own way of doing things.

We do not see Japanese wood kits very often, and this one seems like a puzzle to put together.

 

I think this is an individual thing rather than one of cultural difference. Woody Joe kits, for example, are pretty standard POB affairs, and I have seen many scratch builds done by Japanese builders that are done using the usual POF methods. The Okumoto lineup is designed to make POF style models more accessible to average modelers (like me). They are indeed more like putting a puzzle together than doing a true POF model, but that's fine for me -- I like putting puzzles together and have neither the tools, space, nor skills for doing standard POF builds.

 

If all goes well moving forward, I plan to add a few "personal touches" to this model to make it a small step up from an out-of-the-box build. Stay tuned!