Armed Virginia Sloop by GuntherMT - FINISHED - Model Shipways - scale 1:48

[GuntherMT]

Thanks Alistair.  I may combine your suggestion for the tape and process along with making up a small jig for marking so that they are all exactly the same.

 

I'm off to do some family stuff today, and attend a memorial service so unlikely to get anything accomplished today.  I have gotten one of the garboard strakes in, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out.  Hopefully I calculated the number of strakes left correctly so that the butts of the garboard are in the right place!

[aliluke]

Hi Brian

I used a jig of sorts. A small triangular piece of cardboard that could rest on the wale. It was cut to the angle I wanted and marked for the three holes. That way I had a guide to keep them all the same.

Edited December 20, 2014 by aliluke

[GuntherMT]

Off topic, post-Christmas update. 

Not much has changed on the AVS, as I have spent very little time on it during the holidays so far, been crazy busy with lots of other stuff.  One of the big 'other stuff' is the progress on a dedicated ship-building room. 

 

The status of the room as of yesterday:

 

And the status of the room as of a few minutes ago:

 

 

Now I've got to assemble a new workbench, and unload and move my existing workbench, and I can start figuring out the long-term arrangements!

[grayarea]

Nice planking job

[jwvolz]

Are you going to treenail the floor Brian?  

 

Looks great. 

[Mahuna]

Looking good Brian.  I'm sure the little parts that get dropped will be bouncing all over.  And lots of room for new tools.  

 

Frank

[GuntherMT]

Still a lot of stuff to move, and will take a while to figure out where I want to put everything, but I'm up and running for doing work again!

Of course, no computer, no stereo, but all in due time I suppose.

[Mahuna]

Looking real good Brian. I can see you hosting some of our meetings soon.

 

Now it's time to go to Ikea and get some storage cabinets to organize the small stuff.

 

Frank

[GuntherMT]

Now it's time to go to Ikea and get some storage cabinets to organize the small stuff.

 

Frank

 

Went and looked at various furniture Friday, and they definitely have some stuff that I'll probably use.  Big issue is transport, the shelf unit I'd like won't fit in my car!  I'll have to bug a friend and borrow a truck one of these days when I'm ready to grab some of it.

 

Oh look - a ship building update!

 

I finished the lower band of planking on the port side of the AVS.

 

I'm pretty annoyed at that last stealer.  When I placed it the fitment was absolutely perfect, and the piece would just barely fit into the spot for it, yet after letting it dry and removing the clamp..  there is a big ol' gap there (not terribly apparent in 'life', but the macro shot sure shows it up ugly as can be).

 

Ah well..  I'll do some sanding/white glue fill and hopefully it will cover it up pretty well.

[russ]

Brian:

The planking looks good so far.

 

As for the stealer, some filler made from sawdust and glue should take care of it. If you are going to paint the underbody, it will not really matter.

 

Russ

[GuntherMT]

Brian:

The planking looks good so far.

 

As for the stealer, some filler made from sawdust and glue should take care of it. If you are going to paint the underbody, it will not really matter.

 

Russ

 

Russ - that's what I meant by 'sanding/white glue' fill.  If everything turns out well, I plan to leave it natural below the wales.

[Dimitris71]

Hello Brian, excellent work on your hull planking.

 

Kind regards

Dimitris

[dgbot]

The bad thing about a macro lens is that it will show every rough spot and joint that is there.

David B

[captain_hook]

Looking good so far.

[GuntherMT]

In a strange turn of events, I actually worked on the AVS for a few hours today, and got stuff done!

 

Started working on the lower band of planking on the starboard side, got the garboard strake plus the next one in...

 

And worked on the final band of planking on the port side...

 

Last plank on the port side!

 

And the final plank glued in place...

 

And then cleaned it up with a damp cloth for a few photo's.

 

I made a number of mistakes on the planking, and I'm sure the eagle eyed amongst you can spot at least a couple of them, but outside of the ship-building community, I doubt anyone will notice, and the overall effect is quite nice, and I think it will really look nice after some final sanding and coating with poly.

 

Tomorrow I'm off to the track to play with my new car, so the other side probably won't get touched until Monday, but hopefully I can finish up the planking and get a coat of poly on it by next weekend, then I can finally move on to other stuff (and re-mask and paint the black that I damaged while planking before I covered it with tape).

 

Cheers!

[russ]

The planking looks very neat. Nice work.

 

Russ

[rafine]

Despite your claim of "mistakes", the planking looks very good. Nice work.

 

Bob

[KenW]

I agree with the other comments - I think the planking looks great.  I like the wood color as well.

Great job.

Cheers and Happy New Year.

[DocBlake]

Nice job on the planking.  If there are errors, only you will see them!  That's the curse that comes with building anything.

 

Dave

[GuntherMT]

Thanks for the kind comments all.  If you look close, one of the errors is actually sort of obvious - I managed to miscalculate when I started from the bottom with the garboard strake, and the 4th plank up and the 5th plank up have the butt joints at the same spot.  Woops!

 

I've finished the bottom band on the starboard side now, and have begun work on the final band.  I'm trying something with this final band that might come out pretty neat, but I'm not going to reveal it until I'm done, because I'm a jerk that way. 

[BareHook]

Nice planking, I really like the color variations in the walnut, it really shows the craftsmanship of the planking. On mine the walnut shades are so close you cannot see the individual planks and joints. 

 

Ken

[GuntherMT]

So I said I was going to try something with the final band, and while it didn't come out perfectly, some people might find it interesting.  I made a time-lapse of the planking.

 

First attempt at any sort of time-lapse stuff, and I didn't get the positioning exact between shots, and I'm far too lazy to properly crop this and do positioning in post.

It has music just for fill, you won't miss anything if you mute it.

 

[KenW]

Realy like the video.  Did you spile the planks?  I always have trouble getting the planks to be shaped just right.

Cheers.

[GuntherMT]

Thanks Ken,

 

The video was kind of fun, but I don't think I'll do more of that, as stopping to get the photo between every little step is sort of annoying, and the result really isn't as cool as I was hoping for since even though I had the tripod location marked on the floor, and the hull location taped off on the bench, there was still quite a bit of movement between shots.  I'm sure that could be adjusted in post by careful cropping, but I'm not a post-processing guru by any stretch, and the time and effort to learn how to do that wasn't something I was willing to do for this.

 

As far a spiling, I guess it depends on how you define that word.  The planks aren't truly spiled, in the sense that they are not individually cut from wider stock in a curved shape like true spiling.  I used the kit .030 supplied planks strips.  I'll see if I can describe my system.

 

First, the hull was done in 4 'bands' which are approximately 4 planks wide at the widest point (not counting the stern).  After masking off the band with tape, I used card stock (manila folders) cut into narrow strips and used the cards to transfer tick-marks from a planking fan to give myself a bunch of reference points for the plank widths needed at various spots along the hull.

 

Here is a zoomed in image which corresponds to the first image in the video showing part of the middle section of the final band marked off.

 

You can see the tick marks that I've transferred to the first layer of planking.  You can also see some lines marked 1 through 4, which are where I planned the locations for the butt-ends to fall for this band.  I plotted them on this band because I shifted them from the previous band so that they would not end up with the same issue I had on the other side where I had a pair of rows where the butts were in the same spot.

 

Except for the stem and stern planks, I use pre-cut 4" plank lengths that I cut in a little jig I made up.  As I got towards the end I ran out of pre-cut pieces, and would just cut another 4" plank length as I went.  Starting with the 4" x 3/16" plank piece, I would lay it on the hull and mark both ends with the nearest tick-mark to get the required taper.  I then trimmed the plank using a straight edge and razor knife and laid it back onto the hull to see how it fit.  If it was reasonably close I would then bevel the trimmed edge to fit up tight against the existing planks using a sanding block with 320 grit sandpaper.  I would sand as needed until the plank edge matched up with all the tick marks along the edge, and then glue it in place.

 

In the middle I had a few planks that needed to be wider somewhere in the middle than on the ends.  For those I marked the wide spot, and then marked the tick marks at each end.  I would trim with the razor knife from the tick mark to the edge of the plank at the middle mark, from both ends, giving me a plank that was wider in the middle at the mark, and then repeat the beveling/sanding process until it fit nicely to the existing planks, and matched up with the tick marks fairly close.

 

Hopefully that's understandable.  I didn't really photo-document that process very well, since it's mostly lifted from planking tutorials here, or practicums like Bob Hunts that give various methods of doing this.  I think my personal system is something of a hybrid between all the stuff I've read, but it seemed to mostly work out fairly well for me.

 

Yesterday I sanded down the final planking until I was reasonably happy with the final finish, and applied a coat of wipe-on poly and let it dry for about 6 hours.  I then buffed that and applied a 2nd coat to let it dry overnight.  This morning I buffed that coat, and after looking at the new photo's, I'll need to re-sand with a very fine paper to remove the light scratches left from using the wrong buffing material, and refinish, but that can be done down the road.

 

For now, here is what it looks like with the 2 coats of poly and a buffing (or scratching in some photos!).

 

As you can see, I failed at the symmetry at the stern, which I'm not terribly happy about, but the rest looks pretty good to me, and I am not going to cover it with paint as I really like the way the different colors of walnut came out.  I'm also happy that I mis-read an instruction and used 4" planks instead of 5", as even though they are fairly short in scale (16'), I think they make the hull look quite nice.  I also used a 4-butt shift pattern for the planking, which came out quite well except for the aforementioned mistake when I laid the garboard strake at the wrong shift point.

 

I've now got it all re-masked for touching up the black paint, and am about to start working on marking the locations for the sweep ports, and making a jig for drilling them.

 

[bear]

Hi

What are the round parts  on the "T" pins that you clamp down your fiish planks with? And where can I buy some?

 

Thanks Keith

 

Your Planking looks great on your Armed Virginia Sloop. Here's a photo if mine.

[GuntherMT]

Nice looking ship Keith.

 

The round parts are called 'pin collars' and I got these at Micro-Mark:

 

http://www.micromark.com/pin-collar-set,9549.html

 

I'm sure they (or something like them) could be found elsewhere, but even with the price I don't regret getting these, as I use them more than almost anything else for clamping of the planking.

[GuntherMT]

I think I may have a new criteria for kit buying.  Does it have odd shaped sweep ports (i.e. not square)?  If yes, run away!

 

The entire time I'm working on these I'm deathly afraid of slipping and making a mistake that will wreck hours or days of work.  I'm halfway home, and managed to get them ok looking, if not great, but also managed to mess up all three colors of paint so more touch-up will be coming down the road.  Shocker!

 

Will finish up the starboard side ports tomorrow.  Here are the port side sweep ports, obviously not painted yet.

 

 

I did these by first transferring the center point for each port by making a direct tracing of the plans, and just taping that tracing to the bulkhead and using a sharp point punch to mark.  I did this while the bulkheads were masked, inside and out with masking tape for doing the black paint touch-up.

 

I then made a small brass jig with the center and end holes in it, and then positioning the jig over the center punch marks and drilling the three holes with a 3/64" drill (actually 1.2mm, but that's only 0.01mm off).  I then came back and drilled the center hole with a 3/32" drill.  I connected the holes with a small X-acto saw while it was still masked.

 

After finishing the touch-up work on the black paint, I removed all the masking, and enlarged the connecting line between the holes with a #10 X-acto blade, working very slowly and shaving a tiny bit off at a time, doing first the outside, then the inside, and then working to open up the middle to connect them evenly.

 

The port farthest aft is pretty lopsided, but the rest came out decent.

 

[Jimz66]

Looking good Brian. Looking really good. 

[UpstateNY]

Catching up on your log Brian.  I like your planking pattern choices very much and the finish looks great.

 

Like the method you used to do the ports as well and they look really good.  Looking forward to seeing the starboard side!

 

Nigel.

Edited January 19, 2015 by UpstateNY

[grayarea]

Your build continues to look great - including the sweep ports. Nicely done.