Ranger type yacht by Mark Pearse - 1:12 - SMALL

[Rick310]

How did you make the raised panels?

Rick

[Mark Pearse]

Hi Rick

 

The panels have timber in 2 thicknesses, & using a sharp knife I cut strips from thicknesses timber to suit the pieces: centre panels & the rails in thicker (approx 2mm), the recessed pieces that surround the centre panels are about 1.25-1.5mm thick. Then just assembled & glued as I went. I made a small 45º angle tool, to get the corner mitres for the recessed strips fairly accurate. I have 2 more panels & will photograph some of the stages. 

 

I've been using a pencil, a regular pencil with timber etc. It's hard to keep them sharp enough to mark really accurately, so I'm thinking to go back to a 2mm granite clutch pencil with a rotating sharpener....getting a pin-sharp tip will be very helpful.

[druxey]

Clutch pencil and a hard lead - I use 4H - give happiness!

[Mark Pearse]

Thanks all,

 

Druxey, when I was still drafting manually, I used 5H on plastic film. Nice sharp lines & no smudging. 

 

Some progress with the same area, the vertical face of the raised deck. Some further detail, in response to Rick's question. Everyone has their own method, & I have done it this way:

 

The removable side panels that sit either side of the companionway hatch have a flat centre panel with a recessed surround frame, & then rails top bottom & sides, like a mini door. I didn't chamfer the surround frame strips, just recessed them. Nice sharp knife, careful measuring & careful gluing is my approach. Important is the opti-visor, being able to see is essential.

 

 

Then sanding on paper glued to acrylic pieces.

 

One sanded & one not...the effect of some careful sanding is nice to see. An important part of model making indeed.

 

Dry fitted, with the separating frames that will be fixed to the side rails of the hatch. There will be curved members that trim the back edge of the raised deck. The bottom edge is slightly raised as the cockpit seating is laid teak, I've allowed 2mm for that.

 

I've realised that this work can't go further until the hull is painted. So I'll put this aside for now, I'm changing tack & will make the toe rails, gunwales & sponsons. Then paint.

 

bye for now, 

 

 

Edited October 7 by Mark Pearse

[druxey]

Lovely panel work!

[KeithAug]

Mark, the panels look excellent, particularly given your reliance on basic hand tools.

[Mark Pearse]

I decided the next major job is to paint the hull, & before that I have to make & position the gunwales & sponsons. In particular, the sponson line is important to the hull's appearance, & must be just right. It's mainly about the tapering gap above the sponson, between it & the gunwale. Hence the need to do both. The gunwale position will be a constant distance below the deck line but the sponson is tricky. My plan is to use brass pegs as dowels to fix the final position, put them aside & install after the hull is painted.

 

On the actual yacht, the timberwork around the cockpit is teak, varnished or unfinished; & the hull timberwork is Spotted Gum - a tough hardwood that steam bends well. On the boat they have faded somewhat so I have used some Blackbutt that I have, a length of floorboard from a building site. I ripped some strips off on a table saw & then used a well sharpened plane to bring the timber sizes down further, & then to shape them. 

 

The strip on the left is a future gunwale, about 2.5 x 4mm.

 

 

And shaped, finely sanded & one coat of shellac wiped on. I'll do some more coats later.

 

Below are the future sponsons, about 4 x 5.5mm. 

[Mark Pearse]

A little more....

 

The sponsons are now shaped. Below is the method I use for holding the strips while shaping, & my tools of choice; which works for 1:12 but techniques that work at this scale obviously might be an issue for much smaller scales. The back of the sanding block is 240 grit, & I have some finer (the softness of fingers helps sand curves), also some fine steel wool.

 

Here's the strips: 2x 700mm lengths of sponson, 1x 1m of gunwale (a thin coat of shellac, hence the colour).

[Jim Lad]

A nicely completed profile, Mark.

 

John

[Rick310]

Thank you for your excellent explanation on how you made the raised panels!

I would never have thought of that and yours came out beautifully!

Rick

[Javelin]

I'm with Rick. Many thanks for that explanation about the panels (and sponsons). 

Great results on both. She'll look awesome.

[KeithAug]

On 10/14/2024 at 10:22 AM, Mark Pearse said:

The sponsons are now shaped. Below is the method I use

Mark. I might have tried creating a shaper by grinding the required shape into an old craft blade, however your method works rather well.

[Mark Pearse]

Hi Keith

 

I have done something similar for a picture frame. It never occurred to be to try that for shaping these. By 'craft blade', do you mean like a blade from an Olfa style knife? as below

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 16 by Mark Pearse

[KeithAug]

Mark - yes that is what I mean but old hacksaw blades are just as good. I use old blades and make sure that I have ruined the edge by rubbing on a stone. I then grind the shape into the edge opposite the blade.

[Mark Pearse]

The current progress is towards painting the hull. Concurrent with the work below, I am working on some test panels for a hull paint - but just a little on my thinking: black shows gloss more than other colours, & as a gloss object at scale will look more real if the gloss level on the model is less than the actual...I'm going to be a bit fussy on that. 

 

The sponsons need a bit of assistance to make the curve of the hull shape, & fortunately Blackbutt respond to some heat reasonably well. My method was to scribe the hull shape on the bench, adding a bit more curve to the shape. Set up some angle brackets, clamp the middle one & heat sections (with a hot air gun) away from the middle & progressively clamp them. I suspect this isn't as good as actually making a small steam box & then clamping, partly because you haven't got much of an idea what effect the heat is having on the timber. Anyway, it worked well.

 

I also gave one half of the gunwale the same treatment & then put them on the hull in a temporary way. That's partly so they have somewhere to stay while retaining the curve. Looks great. The last part of the sponson near the stern droops a bit, but that can be tweaked later.

 

 

 

One aspect I'm not sure about, & would certainly welcome opinions: whether to paint the hull then glue the sponsons / gunwales, or glue them & then paint the hull. Painting is easier in the first case, getting the timber strips accurately positioned is easier in the second. I am leaning ever so slightly towards the latter. It would be good to get whatever opinions I can, from you all.... I'll also do a post on the in the paint section of this forum...

 

thanks in advance,

 

[Bedford]

She's looking beautiful Mark

 

I prefer the glue first paint later approach as it's easier to get them positioned properly as you said and easier to glue them on. Masking tape works well and can even be placed on the later painted surface to protect it from fine detail sanding of any paint that bleeds under the tape onto the sponson

[Javelin]

I would also go for glue first, paint later. 

 

In case of first painting and then gluing: 

If the curve doesn't fully match with your hull, you'd have the risk of it coming loose since it would be glued to the paint instead of directly on the wood. 

 

You could of course paint first, with the position of the sponsons masked (and glue them on later), but that would be difficult with the risk of having to touch up on the paint later....

[Mark Pearse]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the advice. 

[KeithAug]

On 10/27/2024 at 10:01 AM, Bedford said:

prefer the glue first paint later approach as it's easier to get them positioned properly as you said and easier to glue them on.

Yes I agree.

 

The unpainted hull is looking beautiful. Pity to paint it really.

Edited November 3 by KeithAug

[Mark Pearse]

Onwards... I have glued both gunwales to the hull, & the port side sponson. The timber has about 4 coats of brown-orange shellac, finished with steel wool. I will give them another go before painting.

 

The plywood deck had a prominent change in colour of the veneers at the height the top edge needed to be, below the deck line.

 

For the gluing, I had swallowed my pride & decided on CA glue, as I didn't want to put any mechanical fixings through the timber as I couldn't see a good way to hide them, & using CA did allow just enough time to make sure the strips were accurately placed. The sponson-gunwale relationship is critical to the appearance, so errors were just not on. The port side sponson went on quite easily yesterday, & I had a go at the starboard side, which didn't go well... I was fighting some twist in the timber & was struggling to get a good bond with the load of that twist. I've learned that with CA, you need to get a good bond first time if you can, & the struggle had gone on too long. So, I pulled it off & set up the heat bending frame with an inbuilt twist....It's not much twist, but these native hardwoods have strong opinions & this one needed more encouragement.

 

You can see from the pencil line on the bench that the brackets were repositioned & the upper legs bent. So the sponson is in the same basic curve ....just with some twist. It's now clamped, heated (heat gun) & on the clamps for for a day. Tomorrow, I'll sand off the dried CA glue from both surfaces (vip in my experience) & try again. 

[Mark Pearse]

I have been working away, heading towards painting the hull. There's been quite a few small & exacting jobs, not ones that give a huge sense of achievement, but necessary for a good paint job - & some bits that just had to be completed.

 

Bowsprit /  stem resolution (& boot top lines):

 

Drain holes for the scuppers area around the cockpit:

 

Stern apertures - the square ones are the cockpit footwell drains, & the round one will be the exhaust outlet; visible also is some filler to the inside of the planking / transom joint (hood ends??). I used sanding epoxy filler for that, & a tiny tiling wedge as a spatula - the end is such a nice combination of sharp & flexible for a tricky filling job. Plus a bit more timber to the lower aft edge of the keel, also visible.

 

Also the lower gudgeon for the rudder, which required a careful setout.....the rudder blade setout is done very well & cleverly on this particular boat: you can see that the aft edge of the keel meeting face is concave & the rudder nests into it nicely - but they managed to also allow the rudder to have a full 90º swing. This is for picnicking, you take out the tiller & the freely swinging rudder doesn't knock against the hull all afternoon. The gudgeon is pretty simple but I had to sleeve tube into tube to suit the OD & ID, seen here with the piece that wraps around ready for soldering.

 

Then shaped & dry fitted:

 

& then glued in place & shaped, as it has been carefully faired on the actual boat

 

The pintle below, & the spacer was a piece sawn off the gudgeon tube:

 

And here's the rudder in it's home position, note the faired rudder to keel junction:

 

And at 90º:

 

And lastly, another build of these doughty yachts has been launched, Sunday 30th December, see below. Built by retired shipwright Ian Smith, & his freely available videos online, on boat building are really excellent. Well done Smithy & Trish!

[FlyingFish]

Just caught up with your build Mark - which I had neglected, 'my bad' as they say now. It's looking really good; so enjoying your skills.

[druxey]

Also enjoying catching up with your progress, Mark!

[Jim Lad]

I find all those little details (mostly almost invisible0 to be very satisfying to complete.

 

John

[Mark Pearse]

The hull painting is underway. I used a good quality household undercoat (Dulux oil based primer-sealer), as it sands nicely. As the boot top line is white & the hull topsides black, I painted the boot top first, in full gloss oil based enamel (Humbrol gloss white). Humbrol seem to have changed the recipe, but it went ok - but 4 coats were needed to get a really opaque layer. The flow was nice straight from the tin, but the density could be better. The underwater paint will be a matt acrylic of some sort, pale grey, or pale blue-grey; the topsides oil based enamel. After the photos I'll put some thoughts on gloss level at scale.

 

I left the masking tape on the timberwork as I'll start the black now. And thanks to Tim Moore of this forum for the recommendation to paint some clear coating on the masking tape joint to reduce likelihood of bleeding under the tape. I did a test to check compatibility - which might be an issue down the track but it seems ok for the short time since i did the test.

 

Undercoated, sanded & with the boot top done:

 

 

This one is included to show something that to me was an important detail: the way the stem resolves to the hull as a crease, which then softens to become a faired curve some distance behind the front of the keel. The shadows show it, & it's about right to the actual yacht. 

 

For the topsides paint, I am doing a mix of Humbrol gloss black, plus about 25% Humbrol satin black added, plus a bit of Penetrol for flow. I might have added too much Penetrol as it's looking a little thin, but I'll do one coat & then judge whether to change the balance. The white boot top was left full gloss, but black will really show the gloss & I think full gloss at scale should be backed off a wee bit. This might not be an issue for a pale colour, but black will really show the gloss level.

[FlyingFish]

..and that boat at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale. Nice job Mark.

Edited 14 hours ago by FlyingFish

[Jim Lad]

Painting under way - a big step forward, Mark.

 

John