HMS Enterprise by Patrick Haw - CAF - 1:48

[Patrick Haw]

Hello,

 

It's bee a long while since I have posted anything in the forums but I have been closely following others build logs of the CAF 1:48 HMS Enterprise. I have always wished I could build an Admiralty-style plank on frame model but I have neither the skills or the tools to even contemplate scratch building, so the CAF kit has always looked very tempting. 

 

My Caldercraft HMS Victory is about 85% finished and I was down to doing the rigging - a job that I found I hate doing! I get no pleasure from it and it just became a grind. So I set it aside for now.

 

Sadly, my darling wife of 38 years passed away earlier this year and I've found that staying incredibly busy and having projects to focus on and complete is the best way to deal with my loss and keep my sanity! So I ordered the Enterprise from CAF in China at the end of April. Tom at CAF is wonderful to deal with and kept me up to date on the status of the shipment. I put out the extra money and ordered the "B" version of the kit. Basically the "B" version has less variance in wood color and I think should look beautiful. My kit was in production so there was a two-week delay in shipping, but once done and shipped it only took about 8 days to reach me.

 

Others have shown the packaging and opening of the six boxes the kit comes in, so I won't repeat what they have already done. I will say that I am very impressed with the quality of the materials and the precision laser cutting. The keel, frames, etc, are high quality cherry wood.

 

After staring at the boxes for a week or so and trying to figure out the Chinese instructions I got to work yesterday on assembling the parts for the keel. It's actually a lot easier than I had imagined it would be...so far. 

 

 

Edited June 4 by Patrick Haw
corrected log title

[Patrick Haw]

After one day of quite easy work, I have nearly all the keel parts cut out and assembled. Each part of the keel is made up of two mirror-image parts that simply need to be glued and clamped together. As I said, the instruction manual is in Chinese, but with the full-size plans and illustrations are pretty easy to follow.

 

Please note that I have done no sanding or char removal yet, just assembled each individual piece. Other than the mirror-image parts, nothing else is glued together yet, there's a ton of sanding to be done! I have ordered a combination belt and disc benchtop sander which will be here tomorrow, along with a lot of Dremel sanding drums. So far, the individual pieces all seem a little large, but with sanding and char removal I think they will fit together very well.

 

Patrick 

Edited June 4 by Patrick Haw

[wvdhee]

So sorry to hear about your wife 😥 wishing you all the best.

[Patrick Haw]

Thank you Walter.

 

[Kevin]

sorry for yr loss, and i look forward to see you put my  attempt to shame, 

[Knocklouder]

My condolences for your loss, very sorry for your loss. 

 Your ship looks like your off to a great start,,checking in from time to time to see it all come together, Good luck on your journey.     

Bob M.

[Patrick Haw]

Thank you Kevin and Bob. All I can say is I was blessed to have the time I did with her.

 

Kevin, as it was with your Victory, your Enterprise was one of my inspirations to go ahead and take the leap into this kit. I have studied your build log of her in detail and can only hope I can come close to what you're producing with her. Of course I have an advantage...I can learn from your mistakes and how to fix them when I make the same ones...which I surely will!

[Ronald-V]

My condolences for your loss...

 

Wish you all the best with this new build. It looks magnificent, and will be interesting to follow  

[yvesvidal]

Another brave modeler, willing to build a CAF kit. You will enjoy it, once you overcome the lack of instructions.

 

Yves

[Patrick Haw]

Thank you Yves. I have to say that the lack of English instructions intimidated me at first, but as I'm working my way through things, if you can follow illustrations and plans and take your time and think things through, it starts to make sense. Admittedly, it's early days yet and I'm sure I'll be left scratching my head a few times! I had to laugh at one illustration in the manual with the English instruction "Get out!"  I started to leave, then thought "Wait a minute! This is my house!", and finally understood that the instruction actually meant "Remove"!

 

Cheers!

 

Patrick

Edited June 5 by Patrick Haw

[Patrick Haw]

I'm told that somewhere in these piles of plywood lives the building cradle for this model! I love the idea of the building cradle, I just need to give some thought to how to put it together.

 

Patrick

Edited June 6 by Patrick Haw

[Patrick Haw]

It actually looks fairly straightforward. The base of the cradle is in two layers of plywood. Here it is loosely mounted on the base board the cradle will be built on. The cradle will be screwed to the board with ten #6 3/4" wood screws. (The base board does not come with the kit. I got a sturdy piece of 3/4" x 12" x 36" board at Lowes for about $9)

 

Patrick

Edited June 6 by Patrick Haw

[Patrick Haw]

New additions to the shipyard arrived! I'll obviously need to get some much finer grit sanding belts and discs for the sander...it came with 80 grit!! The 90 degree attachment for the Dremel will come in very useful and I bought a bunch of sanding drums for it with grits from 80 to 600. (500 sanding sleeves, 24 drum mandrels, collets, etc. for $20 on Amazon.) There's a LOT of sanding to do!

 

Patrick

 

 

Edited June 6 by Patrick Haw

[Ronald-V]

Lovely! I wouldn't want to be without my disc sander ever again...so handy, and fast!

[Kevin]

it took a while to set the baseboard up, as i found it did not align properly

[Patrick Haw]

Kevin,

I was concerned about about the baseboard pieces seemingly not lining up, so as I put them together I put in some of the vertical supports and that seemed to pull everything into alignment.

 

After some head scratching, bad words, more head scratching, and more bad words I began to understand how this cradle goes together. Some of the slots on the base are marked with which vertical supports fit in them, others are just slots and you're left guessing! After a bit of sleuthing around with other parts I finally figured it out. But why mark some of the slots and leave the others blank? Beats me!

 

Anyway, I think I've got a start on the building cradle and it's firmly screwed down to the board.  There is no glue used anywhere on the cradle, everything slots together. The slots are very, very tight and fitting parts into them needs a little gentle help from Mr. Mallet, but they do fit.  I'm enjoying this very much. It's like a giant, very complicated 3-D jigsaw puzzle and it's a challenge!

 

Patrick

 

[Kevin]

but the frames does work well

[Kevin]

hows the build going @Patrick Haw?