BN at the Mississippi River . . .

A

Alf in Iowa

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Sep 4, 2022
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And thus the official opening entry of my YQ BN Build Log.
My box from the ZHL axis of pirates (I learned that from over on everyone-knows-where) arrived today via DHL Express. The packing was superb, the kit box was first wrapped in very heavy kraft paper and the entire was then cocoon wrapped in a 2 inch wide yellow shipping tape. As expected all contents were in fine condition and I'm presuming, all there. I did not do a detailed inventory.

My first step was to get the dimensions of the layout fixture and take those over to my local industrial plastics dealer to have him cut me an 8 x 26 plate of 1/2 inch clear plexiglass. For some years I have liked using 1/2" clear plexi for all my modeling build fixtures. The stuff drills and taps beautifully for attaching whatever with various size machine screws. It is perfectly flat and never warps over time so I can leave a model project on the plate for months or years. I've built many things using white styrene and that stuff has zilch structural stiffness in small cross section and tends to draw toward weld joints as the solvent glue cures over several days or so. Being tightly screwed to the 1/2" plexi keeps things lined up during the cure time. My pic here of the plexi shows a few smaller plates I have on hand, my big one will be cut for me in the morning.

The set of drawing sheets from YQ I think are very impressive. To aid me with this build I felt it was worth buying the drawing set that Model Shipways sells separate from their 1/64 PoB kit. I primarily wanted to have additional info for the mast/spar work and block and tackle. The two sets of drawings nicely compliment each other; worth my investment.

I bought two glues, TITEBOND Original Wood and GORILLA Wood but was unable to currently find my long-time goto, ELMERS Carpenter, the brown one. I'll test these two while keeping my eyes out for a resupply of the ELMERS.

I'm not sure how proliffic a contributor I will be; geeze all of you who've gone ahead of me have really covered the subjects pretty well. Afterall, my rib work is hardly going to differ from what's already been shown. What I do promise for the benefit of folks who may yet begin their own, is that if I do something differently or use different tooling or whatever I will photo document those.

So tomorrow we'll begin punching wood and gluing assemblies; tonight we study paper
Thanks for your attention,
alf
71C6D84C-5B80-44D2-818D-B2BBA56BD287.jpeg5E4C9372-9913-4DBD-B569-0D18C6ED5C38.jpegD1D2C675-D5EB-4690-A664-F95F8D6E3CC7.jpeg
 
Alf in Iowa said:
And thus the official opening entry of my YQ BN Build Log.
My box from the ZHL axis of pirates (I learned that from over on everyone-knows-where) arrived today via DHL Express. The packing was superb, the kit box was first wrapped in very heavy kraft paper and the entire was then cocoon wrapped in a 2 inch wide yellow shipping tape. As expected all contents were in fine condition and I'm presuming, all there. I did not do a detailed inventory.

My first step was to get the dimensions of the layout fixture and take those over to my local industrial plastics dealer to have him cut me an 8 x 26 plate of 1/2 inch clear plexiglass. For some years I have liked using 1/2" clear plexi for all my modeling build fixtures. The stuff drills and taps beautifully for attaching whatever with various size machine screws. It is perfectly flat and never warps over time so I can leave a model project on the plate for months or years. I've built many things using white styrene and that stuff has zilch structural stiffness in small cross section and tends to draw toward weld joints as the solvent glue cures over several days or so. Being tightly screwed to the 1/2" plexi keeps things lined up during the cure time. My pic here of the plexi shows a few smaller plates I have on hand, my big one will be cut for me in the morning.

The set of drawing sheets from YQ I think are very impressive. To aid me with this build I felt it was worth buying the drawing set that Model Shipways sells separate from their 1/64 PoB kit. I primarily wanted to have additional info for the mast/spar work and block and tackle. The two sets of drawings nicely compliment each other; worth my investment.

I bought two glues, TITEBOND Original Wood and GORILLA Wood but was unable to currently find my long-time goto, ELMERS Carpenter, the brown one. I'll test these two while keeping my eyes out for a resupply of the ELMERS.

I'm not sure how proliffic a contributor I will be; geeze all of you who've gone ahead of me have really covered the subjects pretty well. Afterall, my rib work is hardly going to differ from what's already been shown. What I do promise for the benefit of folks who may yet begin their own, is that if I do something differently or use different tooling or whatever I will photo document those.

So tomorrow we'll begin punching wood and gluing assemblies; tonight we study paper
Thanks for your attention,
alf
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Click to expand...
Hi Alf. Nice to read your BN has arrived and to see you have started your build-log. And a ‘BN at the Mississippi River’ gives it for me a extra dimension. Next weekend, my BN wil stand besides my Robt. E. Lee on the Dutch Exhibition.
Although the basic of the build is for everyone the same, we can see by every BN build some differences. And we like ‘differences’! The use of the thick plexiglass is the first. :)
I will ad the link of your log to the BN-list. Looking forward to your next post.
Regards, Peter
 
Peter Voogt said:
Hi Alf. Nice to read your BN has arrived and to see you have started your build-log. And a ‘BN at the Mississippi River’ gives it for me a extra dimension. Next weekend, my BN wil stand besides my Robt. E. Lee on the Dutch Exhibition.
Although the basic of the build is for everyone the same, we can see by every BN build some differences. And we like ‘differences’! The use of the thick plexiglass is the first. :)
I will ad the link of your log to the BN-list. Looking forward to your next post.
Regards, Peter
Click to expand...
Thank you Peter for your kind words. By the way, the young Lieutenant Lee not long graduated from West Point and as a Corps of Engineers officer, was sent here to map the Rock Island Rapids of the Mississippi River. Right here we sit on a limestone shelf (I've simplified that for brevity) that for some dozen or so miles caused the only unnavigable section of The River and Lee mapped it for the earliest study toward making it navigable. A century later when the lock and dam system was built, the entire Upper River system from St Louis to St Paul was designed around the water lever required to make this one stretch navigable.
 
An aside here to show the versatility of the clear plexi for assembly jigs. Here are ten that are in various stages of building O scale railroad car underframes and centersills. The vertical "bars" welded to the bottom surfaces are for holding in the vise while working. 4606CC9D-918F-4BF4-92C8-E6760D5309AC.jpeg33B80A3D-EC81-44B1-941B-6E9CA9FEB3FC.jpegE29E4166-B96D-4BE3-A298-692279F9AB22.jpegB5B6877D-8FFF-4ABB-AA86-4471592D26AA.jpeg
 
Here now I celebrate the First Actual Cutting of Wood, a short strip cut from the waste of the sheet containing the keelson parts. These will become the alignment plugs for gluing up each rib assembly. Perhaps a small glass of Moscato might be in order?
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Pertaining to the laser-charred edges, among the builds that have gone before me some folks have seemingly chosen to sand or file off all the char before gluing up their frames. Others have done less like just sanding/filing or just "polishing off" even, the tiny attach nibs and moving on to the frame work.

With two frames (6 and 20 chosen randomly) now under my belt I believe that I am going to carefully level the attach nibs and only lightly "file polish" off the char surface - merely enough to just remove the almost dust-like surface charcoal residue. Over the course of the two frames I tried a variety of my files for that charcoal cleaning job and seem to have settled on a jewelers half-round mini, a six-incher and the coarsest one of my four of that style.

It's been many a year since I last used PVA glue (I think I remember it being called that) but I see I havent forgotten the techniques I learned over 50 years ago in aircraft mechanics school: spread lightly to both surfaces, touch together then pull apart, allow a short time to tack, push together with some pressure and hold (hand or clamp whatever) allowing and ignoring the squeeze-out, and let cure. Do not wet wipe off the squeeze out. Leave it alone. After curing (that's CURING hard, not just drying gummy!) then scrape off the crunchy hard glue squeeze out.

I suppose I'll do a frame a day, maybe two sometimes, so I'll be doing frames till sometime in November. I also began prepping the keel core parts today. I imagine that's a precedent for how I'll be working; Start a frame in the morning then while the first gluing sets up work on some other sub assembly component. Later finish the assembling of that morning's frame.

Meanwhile, I changed out the jaw pads of my Panavise, installing the black plastic ones in anticipation of frame edge taper filing. For now I plan to keep my Dremels locked up out of temptation's way because at least for the delicate work of fairing the frame edges I want better control than I can get with a power tool. We shall see tho, my patience might get tested . . .
 
To my delight last evening, I figured out that the 1/2" clear plexi base for the hull assembly fixture can do double duty. Flipped upside-down it became a perfectly flat surface for laying out and assembling the BN keel.

Looking at the photo and in my mind setting aside the obvious layout of keel parts, green masking tape, 1-2-3 blocks, and brass bar straight edge, I wonder if some viewer might be confused by an apparent optical illusion. I ought explain the image.

The surface there is a 1/2" thick plate of clear plexiglass and it is raised about an inch or so above the green cutting mat by the (now) upside down hull framework assembly fixture. That laser cut wood fixture and the clear plexi plate are attached together by ten 6-32 threaded brass machine screws. Five of those screws threaded into the plexi from the top surface can be seen in the clear plate near the left end and across the front edge.

The filmy-white that you see is a sheet of my wife's white baking paper from the kitchen. I set that baker's paper between the assembly fixture and the plexi as the "glue catcher" for any glue that inevitably will find its way down around the frame slots in the fixture. The paper will prevent the fixture from becoming glued to the fixture base. You can readily see the fixture silhouette through the white paper.

Now to the matter at hand, that being the keel work. Other than saving Part 8 till the last, you can see that my fitting and assembly sequence is likely pretty much plain vanilla straight forward. The pic does show what has been glued so far using the brass bar as the keel-bottom straight edge. Each part of the deadwood has required gluing-edge filling (what the heck, we _are_ afterall, fitting together six different wedges) and for part 11, my next step, I will need to shorten the aft edge a several thou. Part 12 will also need a few thou taken from the aft edge as well. I am using a loose Part 18 as a guide to the fit of these deadwood wedges so when all is together everything will average out (hopefully).

alf,
Sent from my iPad1A9A106A-DDEF-4FCC-9F6A-BFF857BFD296.jpeg
 
Above in #16 I mentioned that I'll be shaving a couple few thou of the aft ends of Parts, 11, 12, and 13 in order to get the stern post to fit snug against the deadwood wedges. Well, a couple few thou removed straight and square from a 1/4" edge is a tall order to do with any precision so I set up my favorite hand vise for the job.

I own several hand vises and from time to time most any one of them might get called upon, however my favorite is the Jewelers Miter Hand Vise. I get my most precise parts fittings when it's been possible to use this tool. I'll run the file across the tiny nub of wood standing proud of the ground and hardened faces of the tool as you can see in two of the photos.680216A3-9ABA-449E-8440-2A66E2A5B32E.jpeg44E245AB-ADFA-4C70-B646-C3513C0E46D2.jpeg14BE30E6-7FDC-40F2-A8E3-4F801AFD177A.jpeg
 
My first regret.
Were I to do this over, I would have left the fwd half of the keel, Part 7 I believe, away in the box untill I had completed all the work on the aft half. All the fitting of the deadwood wedges, the precise beveling and fitting of all the the both-side upper and lower keel doublers, along with the stern post doublers could go much more efficiently without the added 7 or so inch length of that Part 7 waving around out there just begging to be hooked on and broken off by the worklight or end of the bench.

Part 7 is not needed for any alignment of any of the aft half parts. EC4F1054-4F30-4C8E-B00C-B126782939BB.jpeg
 
Alf in Iowa said:
Above in #16 I mentioned that I'll be shaving a couple few thou of the aft ends of Parts, 11, 12, and 13 in order to get the stern post to fit snug against the deadwood wedges. Well, a couple few thou removed straight and square from a 1/4" edge is a tall order to do with any precision so I set up my favorite hand vise for the job.

I own several hand vises and from time to time most any one of them might get called upon, however my favorite is the Jewelers Miter Hand Vise. I get my most precise parts fittings when it's been possible to use this tool. I'll run the file across the tiny nub of wood standing proud of the ground and hardened faces of the tool as you can see in two of the photos.View attachment 328946View attachment 328947View attachment 328948
Click to expand...
A good solid start of the build of the keel, Alf. With the vises you make some nice sharp fitting of the parts.
Regards, Peter
 
WHOAHH . . .
Well that went bad quickly. Taking a side trip to build up a spar I began with the smallest one, the jumbo jib boom. Using .125" thick white styrene I built up a simple tapering jig which incidentally did the job exactly as intended. The boom came out perfectly tapered from the center out to each end.

Next came the band for the traveler horse and that was made out of a segment of white styrene tube slightly bored out to fit the boom end. Then for the sheet bail band I got brave and went to the brass stash. Using .010x.060 flat strip a very passable double-eared band was bent up around the wood dowel boom part. I would solder each ear and then drill the bail holes and finally file shape the two ears.

Mistakenly I reasoned that I would be able to control the heat enough to not char the wood, the resistance soldering tweezer I use is very versatile that way. Well every modeler knows all about how those 'best laid plans' sometimes turn out.

I'll be cutting me a length of 1/8" birch dowel and starting another jumbo jib boom. Good thing I didn't throw away the tapering jig.A3EC048D-F853-4580-8A00-94C7D63D080A.jpeg17A02ABE-FBEB-488F-9989-AE3B39568EAF.jpeg752A95D5-53E3-43DC-A2C6-A674C0F1A85D.jpeg

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