San Francisco 2 by DesertWolf - Artesania Latina

[Ferit]

You are right Randy, scratch is the scratch... is the gusto...

And Wolf, yours deserves all praises...

Edited July 21, 2013 by ashiponthehorizon

[augie]

Beautiful.  The recess is the crowning touch.

[hamilton]

Beautiful work on the doors - I wish I had pursued this technique when I built this model! I'm now learning (in agreement with Ferit) that scratch building wins out every time. Anyway, great technique!

hamilton

[NAZGÛL]

Very very nice work!

 

 

/Matti

[DesertWolf]

The Admiral and I moved to a new shipyard, causing progress to halt for a while.

 

I started with the side rails.  At the waist deck the planks must bent laterally to fit the curve of the bulwarks.  I didn’t think it would be possible, but it turns out the 2x5mm planks can actually be curved that far laterally.  I select a piece with a long, open grain, soak it for 20 min in water and then bend it in a jig.  Success seems directly equivalent to the amount of beer consumed while trying the stunt.

 

 

In the end it fits the top curve of the bulwarks nicely.

 

 

I did not use the other metal doors that came with the kit, so I made a door and two windows for the stern gallery as well.

 

 

I finished the pieces for the stern gallery.  In the picture below it is dry fitted.  I still turn my SFII on her side a lot when I work and I’m worried that I will break the stern gallery in the process.  I will glue it in place later.  I must also make a tiller for the rudder.

 

 

Next up (together with the side rails) is the head rails.

 

[lamarvalley]

Good to see you're back Wolf! Your SF is so pristine and crisp and to me the nicest version of all of us… I forgot how nice she is in the absence. Love the stern windows and the door.

 

Looking forward to seeing what's next.  

 

[augie]

VERY NICE!

 

Never sell wood short before you try it

[Shazmira]

Awesome job! your wood bending skills are the best! Glad to see you back as well, I wondered what had happened to you.

[hamilton]

Nice job edge-bending the hand rails. I cut mine out of wider stock, not having thought of the approach you took - looks very nice. 

hamilton

[NAZGÛL]

Thats really nice, I like the color very much!

 

 

/Matti

[DesertWolf]

Thanks Randy, Augie, Robbyn, Hamilton and Lawrence.  Your kind words when you drop in certainly gives me more confidence to scratch build more parts.  I have so many build logs to catch up on!

 

Cheers to you too Matti!  I’ve been taking sneak peeks of your Wasa progress – she’s in league of her own!

 

I decided to make my own head rails from off-cut hull planks.  I’m running out of mahogany veneer and I still need some to use as deck planking when I build the ship’s launch boat, so I couldn’t simply line the precut pieces with veneer.  I also wanted the head rails to tie in better with the “look” of the rest of the hull – and I hoped original hull planks would do just that.

 

 

From the photos in the instructions it seems as if the head rails are glued to the side of the bowsprit bulkheads, with the riders covering the discrete step.  That doesn’t seem right to me and I decided to glue the head rails in place so that there is a smooth transition from the side of the hull to the head rail.

 

 

There is still a small gap at the joint, but it will be nicely covered by the riders later on.  The head rail ends up looking like a natural extension of the hull, rather than a separate piece.

 

 

I continued working on the limber boards as well.  There is one long piece that runs the length of the turquoise line between the bottom and top side rails.  I can’t recall anyone else having this problem, but I will have to bend this piece laterally as well to conform to the shape of the bulwarks.  If I use a straight plank, it will form a ‘top’ plank for the bottom side rail that does not fit snuggly across the stanchions.

 

 

 

[Shazmira]

Yes, Wolf, the limber boards present their own challenges. The lateral bending takes a bit of skill and patience, the best advice I can give you is to select a strip with long lengthwise grain , that will help prevent the breakage that is common otherwise. Good luck, I have no doubt you will master the the lateral bend just fine. If you are in need of some of the mahogany, I have some left, you can pm and I will happily mail you some if it will help.

[themadchemist]

Hello Wolf

How you've mounted the head rails is more similar to the SF1 kit design. If I'm remembering correctly the SF1's bulwark wrap to form the head rails and they changed that for the SF2 design. That was one of the reasons I decided to go with the older SF1 kit as I think it is much nicer with the smooth transition. 

 

Just for example purposes heres Vulcanbombers SF1 and Garwards SF2 for comparison

 

 

SF1

 

 

SF2

 

 

chainplates placement is also different between the 2 kits.

 

Nice job on your San Francisco. I my opinion the scratch made gunports make your build. They are so much better looking then those attrocious molded port doors. Keep up the excellent work.

 

 

[DesertWolf]

Thanks Keith.  The SF1 head rails just look more natural (and isn't Caroline's model just superb!).  This is certainly one area where the SF1 kit is clearly better.

[themadchemist]

Actually Lawrence its not really a builders personal touch, but rather changes made between the First SF kit and the second. My kit is still in the box on the shelf (it is a SF1) and the two pictured are from other builders off of MSW. Wolf's change is kind of a step between the 2, I guess one could always fabricate the one piece upper bulwark as is used in the SF1 if they didn't want the break in the flow into the head.

 

If I'm remembering correctly I've read some where that the one piece bulwark that wrapped to the head was a problem for people to build, so they redesigned the kit with two pieces. The other really big kit difference is the SF1 is double planked and the SF2 is single planked. There are also many other subtle changes.

 

I think its interesting how the 2 kits compare and how builders improve on the kits. The one issue both kits have are those metal gunports and Wolf has really made that not just go away but made really awesome scratch port doors. I had plans to do that and it's always nice to see someone clear the path. In my opinion the custom gunport doors make a HUGE difference on this build. 

[DesertWolf]

I started working on the ship’s boat in-between working on the side rails.  Somewhere in a friend’s family an unopened AL Bounty is gathering dust in a cupboard and I was lucky enough to get my hands on a trace of the launch boat’s laser cut frames.

 

 

I scaled the drawing down to the right size in photocopier (the length overall of the SFII boat is about 10cm).  I used 1.5mm plywood for the frames.

 

(AL metal boat vs scratch build)

 

I have no instructions, so I’m just improvising as I go along.  I made the floorboards from mahogany veneer, using some of my spare deck planking veneer as a backing. 

 

 

I ended up cutting the 5mm mahogany strips in half, else the width of the floorboards seemed out of scale.  My first attempt did not look nice, since it is difficult to see individual planks at this scale.  The floorboards ended up looking like one solid piece.  To make the edges of the floorboards more pronounced, I used one of the methods to simulate caulking – running a black marker along the edges of the strips before gluing them into place.

 

 

I have no idea how I’m going to get this boat planked.  This 4’’ thing is flimsy.  I’m also not sure if I should paint the hull white on the outside once it is planked.  I’ve always liked the look of the white launch boats seen so often on later period models, but I’m not sure if it was done in the early 17^th century.  If you can paint the hull, your planking does not have to be 110%.

 

[augie]

Good to hear from you, Wolf.  Great start on the launch ..... she'll be head and shoulders above the cast metal version.  I've had ship's boats in both natural and white.  They both look good.  So I guess it's 'Capn's choice' ---- and you're the Captain!

[Ferit]

Hi Wolf,

Scratch is always five steps ahead...

Good choice, good start...

[NAZGÛL]

Nice work on the boat!

 

/Matti

[DesertWolf]

The progress over the last week –

 

Glued rails on top of the frames (to make the whole assembly sturdier before planking) and chamfered all the frames as required.  I’m going to leave the inside of the boat’s hull unpainted, so I decided to stain all the plywood frames black to make it less obvious that it is plywood.

 

 

Added filler blocks at the stem and planked the hull with 0.6mm veneers.

 

 

The veneers are just too thin to sand smooth and I realized early on that a perfect finish won’t be possible.  To make things worse, it is very difficult to glue the thin edges of the veneer planks together, so the hull planks are essentially only glued to the frames and not to one another.  I’ll spend hours determining the correct width of the hull planks, spiling them etc… just to see the thin veneer warp out of shape as the glue dries.

 

Planking finished

 

After planking I added the false keel and stem (one piece cut from plywood).  I decided to cover the whole exterior with wood filler and to sand it smooth to get a prefect shape for the hull.

 

 

I turned out better than I expected.

 

 

Next up – painting the exterior of the hull white and adding the whales, thwarts, oarlocks and rudder.

[augie]

REALLY  nice work on the planking.  She's going to be a little gem.

[Shazmira]

Wolf, very nice work on the ship's boat...she will make a fine addition to the deck!

[Moonbug]

Hey Wolf - I'm telling you right now that although I'll need to alter the shape a bit to fit my Santa Maria's time frame - I'm totally stealing your techniques for my second life boat.  Nice work!

 

- Bug

[NAZGÛL]

Looking forward to see how the little guy will look painted.

 

 

/Matti

[DesertWolf]

Hey Robbyn, thanks for dropping in.  I still want to sit down and read your whole Syren log.  The last time I had some spare time on my hands I got so caught up in Augie's tool endorsements... uhh, I mean uhh... Confederacy log... that I didn't have time to read anything else.

 

Thanks for the kind words Moonbug.  Much appreciated!

 

Hey Matti, I like the new avatar!  Always nice to see you stopping by.

 

I finally got time to make some progress on the boat.  I fitted the thwarts and thwart knees.

 

 

I sprayed the exterior hull white.  I decided not to sand the hull absolutely smooth before spaying it.  I wanted the final product to have a more natural, coarse look – and a number of test runs gave me the impression that a super smooth sprayed hull will look more like a fiberglass boat than like a wooden boat painted white.  In hindsight I’d say the verdict is still out on that one, but I’m not too unhappy about the result.

 

 

Next I’ll add the rudder and whales.

 

 

[DesertWolf]

I also started with the gratings at the bowsprit deck.  The quality of AL certainly deteriorated over the years.  On the left is a grating made from the strips that came with my kit.  The grooves are cut so poorly and unevenly that it is nearly impossible to form a grid.   I certainly wasn’t going to put that on my ship!  After a lot of trouble I managed to buy grating strips of an AL kit that was manufactured many years ago.  That grating is on the right.  They are as different as chalk and cheese…

 

 

To make the bowsprit grating, I first determined the shape of the grating by cutting a piece of paper until it fitted in the grating’s place.

 

 

I transferred the shape to a piece of spare wood and made a jig that formed a mold of some sorts.

 

 

 

From here it was easier to cut and assemble the grating.

 

 

Dry-fitted grating – I still need to do some serious sanding and varnish the whole assembly.

[Vivian Galad]

Nice work, wolf. I´ll be following, since the SF2 is just waiting to be build on my shelf. And I agree with doing fittings from scratch, at least gun ports, doors and windows, for the AL metal cast is very, very poor.

[augie]

Nice grating Wolf.  And I also like your decision on not finishing the ship's boat to look like gelcoat.  I know some will disagree but in my mind if it's made of wood, it should look so....albeit neatly done!

 

I heard of this great buy on an edge sander.......... 

[DesertWolf]

Hi Vivian, thanks for dropping in.  I've always liked the AL Red Dragon and I'll be following closely.

 

Thanks Augie.  Don't get me started on tools!  I've been drooling over Proxxon's circular saw and milling machine.  But I can't find any suppliers in South Africa.  That gives me time to work on my presentation for the Admiral, titled "500 things you can do with a milling machine that you cannot do with a dining room carpet"   

 

I finished the launch boat today.  You know how you sometimes spend a number of days making a piece, only to mess it up in the final stages.  You know you have to start over, but you already spent so many hours on the piece that you just can’t bring yourself to starting over.  Then you waste another day trying to cover up the mess… only to give up and start over anyway. 

 

That’s how it went with my boat’s rudder.  When I glued the pintles in place on Saturday the glue dissolved the paint, messing it up completely.  Naturally, I immediately downed two beers to calm the nerves (afterall, at 45 degrees (113F) in my work room you need to replenish your fluids frequently).  But no amount of beer helped and I finally had to start over.

 

The 2^nd try came out better anyway.  The pintles and gudgeons are made from black paper.  I coat the paper with some diluted varnish because I have a baseless believe that it will stop the paper from fading over time.

 

 

I added the whales to the boat (also made from black paper).  The planking above the whales should have allowed for oar locks, but I realised that too late.  I tried to make some that fits on the top rail, but it didn’t look right, so I decided to let things be.

 

 

Below is a comparison with the AL cast metal boat that came with my kit.  In all fairness, the kit allows for whales and top rails to be added to the metal piece – making it look semi decent in the instruction manual.   The boat on the far left was my first attempt to scratch build the launch. 

 

[DesertWolf]

Work went slow the last number of months.

 

I finished the sides of the main gratings with some off-cut planking strips.  I first sanded the planks to same height as the gratings.

 

 

I did not follow the instructions for the cat davits precisely.  I did not like the idea of tying the rope that is used to hoist the anchors to an eyebolt on the deck, so I replaced that eyebolt with a cleat that I filed from some scrap wood.  The other eyebolt was blackened and varnished first.

 

 

The plywood roof of the helmsman’s cabin needed some pre bending.  I traced the curves of the fore and aft walls onto some scrap wood, made a ‘negative’ cut out and used it as I jig to clamp and shape the roof.

 

 

I sanded all the sides, but the joints between the walls and the roof wasn’t perfect.  I covered all the walls with wood filler and sanded all the sides again to get a perfect finish.

 

 

Finally, I lined all the sides with the mahogany laminate strips.   I first cut the lining strips into thinner strips that had variation in their width.  It makes the 'planks' look more natural to me.

 

 

The admiral bought me some presents with my credit card.  I’m looking forward to practising my lathe work before I start with the masts and yards.

 

 

My San Fran as she lays in the dock now.