Bomb Vessel Granado 1742 by gjdale - FINISHED - 1/48 - Cross-Section

[Canute]

Excellent work. Keep on truckin' with your fine work.

[ASAT]

Looking great Grant, making me think I need to put the Yamato away for awhile and get back to my frames....

 

Lou

[mtaylor]

Grant,

 

I'm with the others.. what repairs?   She's looking grand!

[Rustyj]

Hi Grant.

 

Looking really nice! I would not sand any finer inboard for now. I had to do a little more sanding later when it came time to place the deck clamps and shot locker. Once you know those will fit sand to the finish that makes you happy.

[scratch]

Sweet work Grant  as has been said , very clean.

 

 

David

[Jack Panzeca]

Hi Grant,

 

It looks great. The "repairs" disappear. I have read the posts twice to try to push them into long term memory. No doubt I wiil revisit later. It does make perfect sense to wait to cut out the ports.

 

Keep up the beautiful work and especially the pictures. I need the guidance.

[mobbsie]

Hi Grant, great bit of work there mate but I do have a question, well it's more an observation really. It may just be the camera angle.

 

In your last post, the set of pictures, picture 3, it would appear that Gunport 3 on frame 11 the sill is slightly lower than the others, as I say it may be just the camera angle and I just know I'm going to end with egg on my face for asking.

 

I do like what you've done though mate.

 

Just a snippet, all my Floor Riders were removed successfully and a different approach is now being taken.

 

Be Good

 

mobbsie

[gjdale]

Thanks everyone for the kind words and "likes".

 

Rusty - thanks for the tip re sanding.

 

Mobbsie - thanks for keeping a weather eye on things mate, but I'm pretty sure that's an optical illusion. There are so many curves in play, that it's almost impossible to tell where straight lines start and finish. I did check it all with a straight edge though and am satisfied that all is in order. Glad to hear your floor riders came out successfully - I look forward to the amended version.

[gjdale]

Mortar Pit Deck Clamps

 

The next task was the construction of the Mortar Pit Deck Clamps (upper strake).  This is a relatively straight forward job and the Sherline mill made short work of cutting out the required notches. A bevel was required on the lower inboard edge, where this clamp butts up against the lower strake, which is a thinner dimension timber. This was marked out using a compass, and then a miniature plane was used to cut the bevel.  I picked this tool up at a woodwork show a year or two ago, and it is just wonderful to use. 

 

 

The outboard faces of the clamps also needed to be shaped to allow for the curve of the frames.  For this I used one of my foam sanding blocks (the red one on the left of the picture).

 

 

These come in a pack of six different shapes and use a self adhesive sandpaper (samples included in the pack).  I picked up the tip on these from somebody’s log here at MSW a long time ago, but I can’t actually remember whose log it was.  Anyway, they are terrific - I used these for fairing the inside of the frames as well.

 

 

Keelson

 

The Keelson was also fairly straight forward.  It was simply planed and sanded to impart the necessary bevels, and then drilled for copper bolts at each frame.  Locator holes for the pillars to be installed at a later stage were also drilled before fitting.  After glueing in place, the copper bolts were added, being glued in place with epoxy, and then blackened.  I hope I don’t have to remove it now! It was then marked out for the locations of the Floor Riders. 

 

 

Floor and Futtock Riders

 

The Floor and Futtock Riders were a real bear to make.  At first, I thought I would be clever and cut all the Floor Riders together. Good in theory, but they all need to be finessed for their particular position to account for the inevitable small errors in previous steps.  Similarly, the Futtock Riders were cut from the template and of course did not fit the curvature of my frames - accumulation of errors again.  Net result was that I had to remake all components, ensuring that each individual piece was carefully adjusted to fit in its designated location.  It took me the entire weekend to remake these parts, but they are now ready for fitting.

 

 

[mobbsie]

There's a lot of work goes into those Floor and Futtock Riders mate, they look great.

 

Glad you've got your fixing order sorted out, should work out fine.

 

Be Good

 

mobbsie

[augie]

I could make those riders a career.  Nice work!

[Jack Panzeca]

Hey Grant,

 

The new work looks great!    The floor and futtock riders took the weekend, I am going to set aside a lot longer than that (maybe a month).  

Anyway, she looks terrific. 

[scratch]

Beautiful work Grant  . I like the look of those sander pads . Did you pick them up here or overseas.

 

David

[gjdale]

Thanks Mobbsie, Augie, Jack and David.

 

David - I ordered those sanding blocks on line. Can't remember where/who from, but that's why I posted the pic of the packaging. The one thing I do recall is that they were not at all expensive.

[rtropp]

if you enter "soft sander" in the amazon search window you will find a number of them from different sources including Grizzly.

 

Richard

[gjdale]

Well, laziness got the better of me and I paid the price!       

 

I had decided that the next step was to permanently install the Mortar Pit Deck Clamps.  To do this, I needed to clamp the Clamps properly to the frames.  However, as “regular” clamps could not fit around the frames/jig, I decided to use a push method to hold them in place. This is where I got lazy.  I thought I would just use some scrap timber cut slightly over length and then wedge this between the opposing sides to give a pushing force on the clamps. Unfortunately, all I succeeded in doing was marking the face of the Clamps to the extent that they needed to be totally re-made.                  

 

Time to re-think clamping.  I decided to do what I should have done in the first place, and make up some spales.  These are really simple to make and require only some brass or aluminium tube, some threaded rod, nuts to suit, some scrap wood and some felt.  A quick trip to the hardware store got me all the supplies I needed and in next to no time I had some spales ready to use:

 

 

 

I made these to a size to suit this specific job.  While I was at it, I made up some smaller ones that I figured would come in handy when fixing the riders in place.

 

 

Just for comparison, here’s the two sizes side by side:

 

 

With these made up, and it was a simple job to re-cut the Mortar Pit Deck Clamps and then glue them in place using the spales to hold them tightly:

 

 

Once the Clamps were in place, I could then install the Riders.  The mini-spales came in real handy for this job:

 

 

Here is a couple of pics of the Riders in place. The joinery is not as tight as I would have liked, but I’m hoping that most of the flaws won’t be terribly visible later on.

 

 

 

Limber Boards and Footwaling

 

With the Riders in place, it was time to install the Limber boards and Footwaling.  This was a fairly straight forward job – and it was the first introduction of a different “colour” of timber - Boxwood.       

 

The “L”-shaped rabbet in the Limber Strake was cut using the Byrnes saw, and the angle faces on the Limber board were achieved using the Byrnes disc sander.  Temporary spacers were cut to aid in placing everything at the right distances.  Here’s the result:

 

 

 

 

Still tossing up whether to add tree-nails to the planking here.  The correct scale size would be a #78 drill  bit.  If I do these, I may use the drill and fill method, rather than trying to draw proper treenails to that size.  Will give this some further consideration during the week. Observations / suggestions welcome.  

 

[mobbsie]

Hi Grant,

 

Well done on those Spales mate, nice innovation and application and they can be used in so many ways in the future.

 

It's a real bummer you had to redo the Pit Clamps but you made a good job on the replacements.       :)  

 

You've made excellent progress mate so I shall now get my Cross Section out of the bag and continue, that is of course after the big clean-up.        

 

As far as tree nailing is concerned on the planking I'm not going to do that, I think in some cases "Less is more". I will however be doing the external planking.

 

Great talking this morning mate, got a good bit sorted out.

 

Be Good

 

mobbsie

[Canute]

Spales, eh. Great idea; I'll have to make a few. Can't have too many clamps.

Edited March 1, 2015 by Canute

[cog]

Looking good Grant. I would go for tree nailing, even filling holes would  give a  realistic look.

[Jack Panzeca]

Hey Grant,

 

Great idea on the spales.  Also, there is no end to the uses of the Byrnes tools, they are the best modeling investment I have made.  To treenail or not to treenail?  I had so much fun making the ebony bolts that I will probably treenail the inside as well.   

 

Really nice work Grant.  Talk to you soon.

[augie]

Nice work on the spales.  I'll confess I do use the 'wedge it in' method sometimes but always use soft wood (eg:balsa) for the wedges.

 

As for treenails, #78 is pretty small but the 'drill and fill' works pretty well at that scale.  Just play with the color of your filler to get what you like before you commit.

 

EDIT-  boxwood looks great and she's really shaping up beautifully.

Edited March 1, 2015 by Augie

[mtaylor]

Well done, Grant.   I like the spales so much, I'll have to make some for myself. 

[Trussben]

Nice Grant,

 

I need to make spales too when I start work on Pegasus interior, thanks for the reminder.

 

Ben

[rafine]

It's coming along great Grant. I'm with Augie about the drill and fill treenails.

 

Bob

[scratch]

Very nice work Grant    Great idea with the push clamping .

 

 

David

[gjdale]

Thanks everyone for the nice comments and all the likes. There have been so many comments on the spales, that I think it only right that I should acknowledge the source of this idea, that being my Warrior Practicum books by William Romero. Wouldn't want y'all thinkin' I was capable of original thought now!

[keelhauled]

Awesome as usual!  I am in awe.

[gjdale]

Hi all,

 

Trying hard to keep up with Mobbsie, but this working for a living thing puts me at a distinct disadvantage!

 

Have been doing some treenail tests using the "drill and fill" method and would appreciate some input as to what looks better.  I won't say at this stage what the various concoctions used were as I'd like this to be a truly "blind taste test".  Here's a couple of pics of the results. The only difference between the two is the placement of the test pieces in case camera angle made a difference. 

 

 

 

Voting lines are now open..........

[mobbsie]

Hi Mate,

 

Very subtle differences but my preference is torn between 4 or 5. discernible yet unobtrusive.  

 

 I'll try and slow down even more mate but we Brits aren't used to a snails pace.         

 

Be Good

 

mobbsie

[augie]

I'll go for 6 as, like myself, it's subtle but definitive.