HMS Alert [1777] 1:48 POF by serikoff. (Two hulls: skeleton and fully rigged)

Chapter 1. Frames​

1.1. Cleaning​

To minimize constant mess, I tackled the dirtiest part of the work first. (In fact, I did this even before documenting the kit.)
The router left a lot of sawdust on the blanks, most of which I removed using a special vacuum nozzle.

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However, not all sawdust was easy to remove. Some blanks had smooth cuts, where dust could be easily brushed off and vacuumed. But a few sheets had rougher cuts with fibers that trapped sawdust tightly, requiring me to pick it out with a needle.

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The most difficult parts were those that hadn’t been milled all the way through. Fortunately, there were very few of these in this kit.

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As a result, after cleaning, some parts will be easier to work with (only requiring the tabs to be cut), while others will need additional sanding to remove the fibers—but thankfully, not too many.

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Now, handling the blanks will be much more pleasant without dust constantly falling off. Next, I will move on to numbering all parts—starting with the frames and keel—so I don’t have to waste time searching for the right pieces later.

Ship-1
 
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Which program do you use to prepare the parts? After finishing my deadwood I will start to prepare the frames for my Fly. The challenge is that I have to mill a lot of frames from both sides.
 
AnobiumPunctatum said:
Which program do you use to prepare the parts? After finishing my deadwood I will start to prepare the frames for my Fly. The challenge is that I have to mill a lot of frames from both sides.
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If I understood your question correctly, you assumed that I made these dies myself. But this is not actually a ready-made set from Trident Model. At the beginning of this thread I review this kit.
 
1.2. Numbering.

Not a very difficult stage, but very important. In order to bring everything to maximum automation and conveyor, you need to prepare everything correctly.

I have already bought 100 zip-bags, in which I will group all the parts for each frame. But first, I need to pick out all these parts from the dies, and there are quite a few of them...

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So far I have only signed the frame parts and will work only with them until I get them half-ready. Then I can work on the keel parts and only after that I will assemble the slipway. But I think I have already talked about this))

Ship-1
 
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Another small update.

I printed out the numbers of all the frame pairs on colored paper. There are 77 of them + half-parts, and in total there are 85 zip bags. Now when I take the parts out of the buns, I will put them in the corresponding bags and then work with them: sand, glue and contour. And all this time they will be dry, tidy and in their place. That's how pedantic nerd I am ROTFROTF

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1.3. Sorting – Extracting and organizing.

I am shocked myself, but today I completely extracted all the parts of all 85 pairs of frames and sorted them into prepared zip-bags.

Luckily, all the parts are available (there was even one spare) plus 14 additional pentagonal connecting parts.

I extracted them using a scalpel of this shape. By simply pressing along the grain, the holders were cut off. The only thing where there were very large holders, I had to cut them with a jigsaw.

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In the end, this is what we got. Well, the next stage is cutting the holders and gluing the frame parts together in special templates.

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1.4. Trimming.

After removing the parts from the molds, you must first remove all the holders so that the parts can be correctly inserted into the gluing templates.

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Some parts (as shown above) were held on a half-millimeter circular holder along the entire plane. I cut them out with a scalpel and then used nippers to cut off the excess along the perimeter and sanded the correct profile.

But mostly the parts were held on 4-6 holders. They needed to be ground down to the correct geometry, as shown below.

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I did this with a circular sander. I sanded the outside in the usual way.

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Since I don't have an oscillator machine, and the angle grinder didn't allow grinding concave parts (the part rested against the rim around the disk), I improved it a little. I cut a recess in the rim (in the table, in fact), and now the part didn't rest against this place.

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And now I could insert the part into this recess and grind the concave parts.

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In this way, I prepared 50 sets of frames out of 85 today! So, one more approach and I will glue them in templates (naturally, before this, each part will be slightly adjusted to this template and to each other, so that all fragments of the frame are without gaps in the glue seam.

By the way, the frames in the set consist not only of two parts, but also of 4, 6 and even 7!

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It's still a bit of a worry for me, but it's going much faster than I thought, and I really like that. ;)

Ship-1
 
Your photos and explanations are great. I know I am way behind the times some days and, I am probably on a trip to Wonderland this morning, but after reading through your post again the more I am convinced it would be easier for some folks if the kits just gave sheets of stick on (label) paper with the parts drawn on them and sheets of appropriately thicknessed wood so you could cut out your own parts as needed and not have to dig and scrape carbon residue off the wood which could easily get over done as discussed in other builds here at SoS. Something like the below. I totally get the laser cutting concept, but maybe there could be choices.
Allan
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Tobias said:
Good morning Sergej,
absolutely fantastic research, planning, and preparation. Your plans are fantastic, and I'm glad you've made them available to everyone. It will be an outstanding build.
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Hi)) Thank you for the high praise. Yes, sometimes I get carried away in pedantry, but it greatly simplifies the whole process for me)) I will try to make a very detailed review in detail to simplify the task for those who will assemble this model with me.

AllanKP69 said:
Your photos and explanations are great. I know I am way behind the times some days and, I am probably on a trip to Wonderland this morning, but after reading through your post again the more I am convinced it would be easier for some folks if the kits just gave sheets of stick on (label) paper with the parts drawn on them and sheets of appropriately thicknessed wood so you could cut out your own parts as needed and not have to dig and scrape carbon residue off the wood which could easily get over done as discussed in other builds here at SoS. Something like the below. I totally get the laser cutting concept, but maybe there could be choices.
Allan
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Thank you for your assessment, it's very nice. Well, regarding your version, there is a moment. The process of creating blanks is very labor-intensive and takes a lot of time, so it is better to have all the parts ready and only prepare them for gluing. I completely prepared all the frames in 3 days, otherwise I would have had to cut them out for more than one week. But someone enjoys it))) I feel sorry for the time))
 
Continuing with the already mentioned types of frames (type 1 is one fragment on each side, i.e. two halves; type 2 is exactly like the one in the photo below, made of 4 fragments, two on each side...

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... type 3 - I showed above, it is from 3 fragments on each side, i.e. 6 parts; and type 4 and 5, I also indicated in the previous post, 7 parts in a frame, different configurations). But there is another type, we can say type 6 - this is a frame that consists of 8 parts, as shown below in the photo.

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So, it turns out that there are as many as 6 types of frames in the set and this is great!

So, we continue to prepare all 6 types of frames for gluing.

From the features, or rather from the flaws in the set! I thought that there were none, but still there were a couple, but it's good that they are not serious.

1. I thought that I had one extra part AL-61-3 (a fragment of a frame), but it turned out that AL-53-1 was also duplicated, BUT! No, what's worse, it turned out to be part AL-55-1. But, fortunately, it is completely the same as the extra AL-53-1, only shorter in the straight section, so I shortened it and replaced the number.

2. The second point is that these are different parts that should be the same. But, here too, I was lucky, because you can always make a smaller one from a larger one)))

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3. But the third point is a little worse. Parts AL-67-1 and AL-69-1 have different contours after milling. I don't know how critical this will be, I will try to place the defective parts where the frame profiling will take place, and maybe these parts will be ground off. Or I will have to add a little material where there will be a depression, but I think everything will be fine.

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Let's continue. The half frames were turned in a different way. And after removing them from the die, it was necessary to remove the circular holder.

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And after I had prepared all 85 sets of frames, I began to prepare them for gluing. And for this, it was necessary to create sharp corners for joining the parts. After the milling cutter, slightly rounded corners remained and I created a sharp angle with a file and corrected the plane, as shown in the photo below.

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Without these manipulations, the parts cannot fit together as accurately as in the photo below.

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In order to put it all back together correctly later, I put dots in certain places to mark where and what is connected.

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Well, those cracks that you see will be filled with glue and after sanding everything will look great.

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Now all this needs to be taken out and put into the template film and glued in it, but this is in the next post...

Ship-1
 
1.5. Gluing – Assembling frame parts using dedicated jigs.

(1.6. Sanding - removing glue and polishing the surface).

To prevent the frames from sticking to the templates, you need to use cling film for insulation.

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I didn't notice how I ran out of good PVA glue and had to glue with office glue (white), which dries for a long time, and therefore I glued the first 10 sets with it. Then I bought Titebond II premium and will glue the rest with it. I checked on samples, the glue seam is the same for both glues, although the second is much more yellow than the office glue. But I will write about the samples in the next post, and there I will also show the results of opening with tung oil and imitation of bolts.

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To avoid unevenness, I placed dumbbell weights on the blanks to hold them.

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And after the glue dried, I polished the planes of the frames directly in this template with sandpaper, abrasiveness 240 (I don’t see the point in polishing with a lower abrasive, since then the oil lays down worse than after 240).

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Then I pulled out the frames...

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... and polished it on the other side.

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BUT!!! Then I realized that it is better to do it differently. It is better to immediately pull out all the blanks, take out the film, put them back and polish the first side, and then just turn the template over and push all the frames so that they protrude as an untreated surface. And then polish the second side. This is easier, because it is more difficult to insert the frames from the back side, since their surface jams in some places in the templates and you have to grind it down. But if you insert them as they were and push them deeper, this can be avoided. If the explanation was complicated, I will show later how I did it. Well, after grinding, the 4 mm blank became 3.85 mm. This did not affect the appearance of the dimensions, but made the frame even and smooth.

And here is the result:

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... I also removed some of the remaining glue and smoothed out the uneven edges... and the frames are ready for the next process.

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The locks look good, all the seams are more or less the same... and where there are errors, I will use those sides for contouring, and these errors will be sanded down.

Ship-1
 
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