Glueing wooden model pieces

[Bill97]

I am curious what other builders of wooden model ships do. I am build a wooden model ship kit. The vast majority of precut pieces or pieces I will make myself from the ship supplies are wood. The instructions directly me to coat the deck pieces with varnish after I apply the planks. My years of experience doing wood work tells me that once the deck has varnish on it I will not get good glue adhesion to the deck for other wood pieces. Do I switch to a CA glue instead of wood glue?

[Baker]

I do indeed first give the deck a few layers of varnish (danish oil).
On the places where something has to be glued later I scratch this layer away. And then glue the object there with normal wood glue.

[Bill97]

Thanks Baker. That seems to work OK for you. I guess if I was to scratch away to much varnish I can always touch up around the edge of whatever I glued in place. Looking at your Finished list I can see you have experience to know the answer. Very nice completion list!

[barkeater]

If you are talking about furniture (steering wheel, ships bell, catheads etc.), I pin these with one of the brass-colored nails they include in kits. For glue I use cyanoacrylate on the nail shank and a small bit of wood glue on the wood parts where applicable (areas free of varnish).

Rich

[Gregory]

I can’t think of any situation where I would glue anything directly to the deck.

There would be some kind of pinning process that penetrated the deck, so that the finnish of the deck is not a factor.

[Bill97]

Gregory in the case of the Amerigo Vespucci there are several “houses” that are to be built and glued in position on the deck. The photos are the type of items I will be gluing to the finished deck. 

[Gregory]

I’m sure a lot of instructions call for that kind of construction, but it’s fairly easy to do something like glue a small diameter dowel to the inside corners and place holes where needed in the deck.

 

In the end, it’s what works best for you.

 

For free standing parts like fife rails and such it’s a matter of coming up with a pinning solution.

I’d be happy to provide an example If you would like.

Edited Wednesday at 05:51 PM by Gregory

[Bill97]

Thanks again Gregory. I have used pinning solutions for fife rails and similar things. Small  diameter dowels is an excellent idea.  Yes please provide other examples you use. Always interested in adding new ideas to my notebook. 

[Snug Harbor Johnny]

  A solid hull isn't needed to drill into for secure fastening of fife rails, etc. - as long as there is a reasonably thick sub-deck below deck planking.  Where the sub-deck provided is on the thin side, additional material (say, basswood sheet cut to fit) can be glued between bulkheads flush with their tops to create a sub sub-deck to glue the sub-deck to.  There are few things to spoil your day after a model is finished (other than dropping it or breaking the bowsprit) than for a fife rail to break loose (one that was merely glued to the deck planks).

[wefalck]

As a side-comments (an perhaps in the case of a kit one cannot do much about this), deckshouse do not sit on the planking. Rather, they are anchored into the structure of the ship through the coamings and the deck-planks are running up to them.

[Bill97]

So true Johnny. It has always been a practice of mine to anchor the fife rails and any other feature that will have pressure on it. The Amerigo Vespucci I am building, and asked about, is my second wood model. Before this one I built the OcCre Endeavour. So I am fine tuning my wood building techniques. 
 

Wefakck what you say is very true and something I had not thought of.  That is how the instructions should have been. I suspect they did not think the average builder could nicely fit the planks around the structures. The three deck sections are to be planked, varnished, glued in place, and then start building and adding features. I may consider carefully removing the planking under the structures. 
Thanks guys for your excellent comments. 

[wefalck]

BTW, decks should not be 'varnished', decks were always left bare wood on the prototype. If you use varnish or sanding filler, you should rub down the deck with very fine steelwool, so that no visible varnish layer is left on the surface.

 

[Kenchington]

7 hours ago, wefalck said:

deckshouse do not sit on the planking

It is not only deckhouses. Hatchway coamings and head-ledges should be upward extensions of the deck's substructure, with the planking added around them later. Yet kits almost never present them that way, nor are model builders warned to make things look like the above-deck structures extend below (even if, in a model, they do not).

 

It's always a bit of a sore point with me: So many beautiful models, made with great skill and endless, patient hours, yet the deckhouses, hatchways etc. look so very unrealistic. Still, I'm sure that Bill is right:

2 hours ago, Bill97 said:

I suspect they did not think the average builder could nicely fit the planks around the structures.

 

Trevor

 

P.S.: While I agree with Wefalck that deckhouses do not sit on the planking, some vessels have had houses of a sort perched on top. I think the big American multi-masted schooners had their galleys in "cabooses" arranged that way, though I may be muddling memories. In a sense, the galley became a sacrificial add-on. Of the vessel was swept by a wave, the structure could go overside, leaving a watertight deck behind. If a proper deckhouse was fitted, it had to be strong enough to never be torn away, lest its removal left a gaping hole.

 

Maybe it also facilitated carrying deck-loads of lumber, as the "caboose" could be lifted up and strapped on top of the load.

[wefalck]

You are absolutely right, the 'caboose' as a temporary deck fixture was very common between the early decades of the 19th and about the last quarter of it. They were usually lashed down onto the deck with one or more iron (or wooden) bars over their into which iron rods were hooked or screwed. When they were hooked, the rod had ring at the lower end and a lanyard between this ring and an eye-bolt was used to lash it down. The other option was to hook the rod into the eye-bolt on deck and tighten the threaded rod down with a nut at the upper end.

 

Below is an example from a German museum model:

One also see this kind of arrangements on early photographs of sailing ships from both sides of the Big Pond.

 

Caps and companionways as such where not necessarily permantly fixed to their coamings, but may have been removable to be stowed away under deck, e.g. when really severe weather was expected. In this case the opening would be closed with a simple lid that was less prone to be washed away and thus give water access to the interior of the ship.