USS Constitution by usedtosail - FINISHED - Model Shipways - scale 1/76

[robnbill]

Mine were coated so without heating they did not react with the blacening solution. I dont remember any of mine rusting. I did dry them by rolling them between two paper towels.

[Guest Tim I.]

Well I looked at the ball bearings I have and they are too large. Looking on Model Expo's website they have some cannonballs for order. I might order some to see how they are. I suspect they are like the ones that came in the kit.

 

- Tim

Edited September 20, 2014 by Tim I.

[robnbill]

I thought the model expo cannon balls were plastic. Hiwever it has been a long time sice i looked at them. I could be wrong.

[Guest Tim I.]

Bill,

 

You are right they are plastic, unfortunately. The search goes on!

 

- Tim

[robnbill]

I found on Amazon there were. Number of vendors that sold small enough balls for my 1:93 version of the Connie. They have very fine balls out there.

[robnbill]

The vendor i bought mine from thriugh Amazon was vxb. They have bearings down to 1mm in size and up incrementally from there.

 

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_89_1?rh=n%3A16310091%2Cn%3A%2116310161%2Cn%3A16310181%2Cn%3A16410991%2Cn%3A16411231%2Cp_89%3AVXB&bbn=16411231&ie=UTF8&qid=1411224040&rnid=2528832011

[usedtosail]

Amazon is where I bought these ball bearings. They are 2mm

[Starboard III]

Hello Tom,

I am following your log and I am very impressed with your skills and creativity. I am new to modeling and have bitten off more than I can chew with the Constitution I think. I have built the Phantom by Model Shipways and the Ranger by Corel. Both have turned out pretty good in my opinion. I have a quick question if you don't mind. I have used the Practicum by Tom Hunt up to the free chapter 1, online and I am at the end of the bow and stern filler blocks section. Things are going good so far. I am at the point after the purchase of tools and the kit, etc, where I am close to the end of my budget for this build.  My question is, will I be able to continue by watching your log and that of the many contributors on this great site, or should I wait until I have the money to purchase the rest of the Practicum? In other words, is it necessary to buy the Practicum to expect true quality results, or will following along with the masters do the same thing? Thanks in advance for your advise, 

Warren

[usedtosail]

Hi Warren. Thanks for looking in. As to your question, I also used the first free chapter when I started this build and found it helpful. I have built six ships before this one, starting with the Phantom as you did and working my way up to this one. This is only the third plank on bulkhead model, though. I wanted some planking practice with smaller ships before tackling this one, and I could probably have used more practice. The first two models I built had very good practicums and I was very nervous to build the third without one. But, I found that the steps are very similar for most models, and I managed to do it. The fourth was a more complicated model that had mostly Italian instructions and I was able to build that one (Beagle) with the help of the Anatomy of Ship Beagle book. I have not seen the other chapters of the Hunt practicum for the Constitution and I am sure they are very good, but I think if you take your time and follow along with the builds that have been done and the ones going on now you should be OK. A build log is the best way to get help as folks here can see your progress and offer suggestions to avoid too many mistakes, but as you can see from my log, I make a lot of mistakes, but so far they have been easily correctable. That said, I am still only on the planking for the Connie, so I have no idea what sorts of problems may await me down the road, but I have yet to find one that is insurmountable with just doing something over until I am satisfied with it. One thing I do is to make a list of the steps to be performed, using the instructions and plans, so I have a very good idea of the order to do things in. I try to work out all the possible steps that can be done before others to make the job easier. For instance, when I built the Phantom I did not paint the hull black until after I put the copper plates on. If I had done it the other way around I would have had a much better line between the tape and the copper. Of course, this list is not complete at first but I add to it and change it as I go and I have found that this has mostly eliminated forgetting to do something before it was too late or too hard to do. So I would say press on and good luck, and don't be afraid to ask questions.

[Starboard III]

Thank you Tom. I will make many mistakes on this long journey, but guys like you have inspired me to work it all out. I truly enjoy correcting things until they are right and will probably take some unorthodox means to that end, but thats the fun. Thanks again for the advice. I will continue to watch your build and follow your lead. Carry on mate...... 

[usedtosail]

First of all, thanks for all the likes. It sure makes this hobby more fun to have folks like you looking in on the progress and the encouragement. Criticism and suggestions are more than welcome too.

 

I finished up the starboard side wale last night. Here are the wale planks before sanding:

 

 

 

This side came out much better than the port side before sanding. I guess I took my time more the second time since I knew how much work it was to get it to look good on the other side. Here it is after sanding, with no filler added:

 

 

 

 

I did end up adding a little filler along the stem and near the stern, but that was it. I will try to be more patient with the rest of the planking to cut down on the sanding and filling.

 

I have been working to clean up some of the metal fittings that came with the kit. I drilled out the bores of the dummy cannon barrels that came with the kit and the "real" cannon barrels that came with the extra cannons that I bought. I used a drill press to clean up the initial hole in the barrels, which were too small and not very circular. I then used a slightly larger drill bit in a pin vise to make the final hole. These are just a tad bit over 2mm in size. I then used a small file to clean up the rest of the outside of the barrels, mostly removing lines from the casting process. I want to drill the holes for the berth deck air ports and the scuppers now, so in case I mess any of them up I can replace that section of wale if I need to. I was not sure about the supplied metal fittings for these, but after I examined them I was pleasantly surprised how detailed they are. Now I just need to be able to paint them without hiding that detail. I am going to paint these black unless some one knows better what color they should be. I had to remove a little flash on some of these, but mostly they were in good shape. I used some scrap planking to test the drill bit sizes for these and found that the posts on the back of the scuppers are oblong, not round, so the hole was not hidden completely by the scupper. I fixed this by filing each of the posts down on them to make them rounder and thinner.

 

 

 

OK, here is a question for you historians out there. Were the berth deck air ports just a hole through the hull or was there some sort of glass inside them? I found on the Constitution CD a drawing of a cover that went on the inside of these, which leads me to believe that they were just open in the 1812 era, but if anyone has any other information please let me know.

 

I have made up some templates to help locate and drill the holes for these, which I will show in the next instalment.

 

 

[GLakie]

Nice job on the planking Tom. She's looking sweet. I've got a quick question about MS's cast cannon. Will their "Blacken It" solution work on britannia castings?

 

Cheers

George

[usedtosail]

Thanks George. I have never tried Blacken It on britannia castings but I think others on this site have with some success. I do use it on copper and brass and like the finish very much. I might have to try some experiments to see how it works on the white metal, as I have a few dummy barrels that I won't be using on the model.

[usedtosail]

George, take a look at this topic if you haven't seen it already:

 

http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/6977-the-blacken-it-trials/?p=231549

[GLakie]

Thanks for the info Tom. After reading those posts I bored around the site a little more and found this page and the possible answer I needed. But, as they say, the proof is in the pudding, so until I try it, just won't know for sure. This was the page:

 

http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/6514-blackening-britannia-metal/

 

Cheers

George

[usedtosail]

Thanks for the link George. I happen to have a bottle of the Casey Gun Black, too, so I may try both methods now. Good luck with your tests too.

[usedtosail]

I haven't had a chance to test blackening the britannia metal yet, but I have been working on the hull. As I mentioned last time, I wanted to drill all the holes in the wales for the air ports and scupper covers now, just in case I messed them up. So, to start, I scanned the side view from the plans into the computer and used an image processing program to align the three page size pieces. I had to scan the plans in pieces as I only have a letter size scanner. To check the alignment, I exported the full image to a vector graphics program and drew a straight line on top of the reference line along the bottom of the plans. I would them go back and rotate the pieces again, then check the reference line. It took about three iterations to get the three pieces aligned nicely.

 

One thing that bothered me from the plans was that the scuppers, which are on the bottom of the gun deck, and the air ports, which are in the top of the berth deck, looked too much in line. When looking at images of the Constitution, like this one:

 

 

it looks like the air ports are a little lower than shown on the plans. So, since I had the plans now in the graphics program, I made up little symbols to help drill the holes and positioned them just a little lower at each air port location. I then printed the plans out with the symbols as three sheets, like this one:

 

 

I was going to cut and tape these piece together to make one long template, but found that I could use them separately and tape them to the hull as separate templates. I cut them out so that I had the locations of the gun ports for horizontal alignment, as well as the top of the wales for vertical alignment. I taped all three templates to the hull and lined them up where they overlapped:

 

 

 

 

I then drilled pilot holes through the templates, which you might be able to see on this image:

 

 

Then enlarged the holes using very sharp bits in a pin vice and this drill bit holder that I found somewhere online:

 

 

To clean up the holes after drilling, I first sanded them flat, then used the back of the drill bit to clean out the hole:

 

 

I used the air port and scupper cover fittings to check the holes and here are the results:

 

 

 

There sure are a lot of holes in the wales now, but they came out nicely without any tearing around them, which is what I was mostly afraid was going to happen. While testing the scupper covers to figure out what drill bit size to use for them, I found that the posts on the back of them were oblong, not round, so I filed them a little smaller and round so I could use a smaller drill size. Even so, the top of the hole can still be seen when a few of these are in place, but I can use a bit of filler later to hide them.

[usedtosail]

I turned the hull around and used the same technique on the starboard side:

 

 

 

 

One nice thing about having the plans scanned into the computer was that was able to flip the image in the computer and print out the three pages for this side, so I didn't have to work through the back of the plans.

 

Now that this little task is complete, I will be focusing my attention to planking the transom and counter, then finish the rest of the hull planking.

 

[Guest Tim I.]

Always the moment I dread, drilling holes in a pristine hull. As for your digital copies. Did you scan them? If so into what program?

 

Thanks,

 

Tim

[usedtosail]

I know Tim. And these are the small holes. I thought about drilling the hawse holes now too, but those can wait.

 

I have a cheapo Canon Printer/Scanner that came with a scanning application that saves the scans as jpegs or pdfs. I saved them as jpegs then imported them into a free image processing program called GIMP 2. I then exported the joined images as a jpeg and imported it into a free vector graphics program called Inkscape. I printed the templates from Inkscape although that took a little fiddling to get the images to print out at the right scale. Mostly trial and error.

[Guest Tim I.]

Interesting. I will have to remember this when I get to this step.

 

Thanks,

 

Tim

[usedtosail]

Oh, I should say first that I had the plans copied at Staples when I started the build and have been cutting up the copies as I need them. I cut the side view from plan sheet 3 (I think), then just scanned that piece into the computer.

[GLakie]

It's interesting you mention making copies of the plans because I've got the same intention and called what used to be Kinko's (now Fed Ex I believe) and found out they'll do it for around $55.00. Maybe I'll call Staples and find out how much they want before I do that.

 

 

George

Edited October 3, 2014 by GLakie

[usedtosail]

I know it was less than that, but I also did not copy all the sheets, like the first one that had all the bulkheads on it or the last one with the rigging plan (I think).

[Starboard III]

I found that Staples will scan and download the plans onto a zip drive for $2 a sheet. You can then upload, and print each sheet from your computer and printer at home in 16 page 8.5 X 11 per, and print as many as you need. Of course you have to tape them together at joining images, but you can do only the pages you need and as many times as you want without home scanning. Just sayin. 16 bucks for the whole package. I find it works well.

[Starboard III]

Sorry, zip drive is old school. I ment a usb flash drive.

[Guest Tim I.]

My printer has a copier function. I normally copy the areas I need, re-print them and then piece them together with tape. However, often I wish I had a full copy of a sheet.

 

- Tim

[usedtosail]

That sounds good Starboard III. Saves the trouble of scanning the large sheets by folding or cutting them.

 

Tim, I also use the copy function on my printer when I need a copy of a section. Luckily it prints at exactly 1:1 so the scale stays the same. My old printer didn't and that was a pain.

 

Thanks for all the likes guys.

[usedtosail]

Over the weekend, I was finally able to experiment a bit with blackening the britannia metal, using two of the extra dummy cannon barrels that came with the kit. I first soaked the two barrels in white vinegar to clean them, rinsed them, them put one in a cup of Blacken-It solution (left) and one in a cup of Casey Brass Black (right), both at full strength. As you can see, the Blacken-It went to town and after a few seconds was all brown and cloudy. The Casey solution just sat there, doing nothing.

 

 

After 10 minutes in the solutions, I pulled them out and rinsed them off again. Here are the results:

 

 

The Casey's did almost nothing and as an aside I then threw a few copper eyebolts into it and they turned black almost instantly, so it works well on copper, just not on white metal. The Blacken It did make the barrel darker, but it was uneven and not very black, and it seemed to deplete a lot of solution for this one barrel. To do all the barrels would take quite a bit of the solution, I think.

 

So, I am going to stick with my usual approach for white metal - clean in white vinegar, prime with Bulls Eye primer, and paint with Floquil engine black paint. Here are the dummy barrels after that procedure:

 

 

I may spray these with some Matte Finish to protect them when they are dry.

[Guest Tim I.]

I also have not had much luck with Blacken-it for white metal. Pretty much the same results. On my Glad tidings I have resigned myself to having to paint all my white metal.

 

- Tim