HMY Fubbs Stern Section 1684

[MystRacing]

Don’t have a lot to show for the amount of work I did, but I did get a lot done on my model over the weekend. On Friday night I spent a couple hours sanding on the outside of the hull. I didn’t take a before picture but here it is after I glued the false deadwood pieces in place and trimmed them off. I actually messed up and put in a couple extras, but that won’t hurt anything and might not show anyway, more about that later. I also glued up frame 37 which is the first fully machined piece and the upper sections of 37A. The remaining frame pieces all fit around the inner stern post, so I left them off.

I spent some time with the detail sander and fitted the final deadwood piece in place.

I didn’t really feel like doing more sanding at this point so instead I got out the band saw, and table saw to make some other parts. I prefer the look of a little less contrast on the hull, so instead of using the walnut keel and sternpost I decided to make cherry ones. Then while at it decided to make a keelson as well. So here they are.

At this point I decided to cut the angles on the top of the keelson. So I got out what must be the most unused accessory you can have for the Byrnes table saw. So, I can finally say I actually used it at least once.

And here is the result. I got a little off as I pushed the final end through. The other end looks better I didn’t notice it was off on the end till I was editing the photos. I’ll use this end in the back, but at any rate it did cut a 45 on the keelson.

After all the fun with saws it was time to get back to sanding. The way I assembled the frames based on the design measurements left about every frame with a ledge to the next. When I did the beveling I just didn’t get the bevel to the point it needed to be at to make it easy. Here is the inside before I started sanding.

And here is a closer view of some of the mismatch. There are roughly 1mm to 2mm mismatches along the inside.

This left in a bit of a quandary on how to sand these down. Fortunately this is a big model so it’s easy to get inside but sanders don’t generally fit inside curves very well. After poking around a bit with a detail sander and a mouse sander I decided neither was going to work reasonably well. The detail sander would have been a good option if I had done it in sections but once it is all glued together it’ll only reach about 1/3 of the way through the hull.

So I decided to go for the nuclear option. I have done a lot of sanding and contouring with my Dremel flex shaft over the years. The problem here is it’s really easy to make everything really uneven this way. But I decided it was my best option at this point. I should also mention I have the really old Dremel flex shaft from around 1990, the one without the plastic. This makes it much easier to get into tighter places. The handle is actually smaller diameter than the sanding drum.

After a couple more hours on Saturday, and about 4 hours on Sunday here’s the results on the inside

Above I mentioned that the framing might not show. The reason is I’m thinking about just planking the whole thing being as the framing isn’t historically correct anyway. I could plank it without a lot more effort. Here is the overall shape of the outside.

Regardless of what I decide to do with the planking it’s great to have the rough sanding done. Next up will be fitting the rest of the 3d machined stern framing.

 

[Heinrich]

It's fascinating to watch your thought process being put into action, Jodie, You did a fine job with the Dremel - certainly a task that is not meant for the feint-hearted! What I always love about these "group" builds is how individual modelers give their own bent to what is essentially identical kits.

 

[Dematosdg]

Well done !!

 

[MystRacing]

Thanks guy I appreciate the likes and comments. Continuing on with my oddball style.

I moved on to getting the stern parts sorted out and ran into an issue. In the design process there was an extra line in the original design drawing. I used it to set the height of the inner stern post. Because the inner stern post was too tall the frame 38 pieces were also too tall. We didn’t get all of the changes incorporated into the kits like we had intended. What this means is shown below.

You can see with the fashion piece, the wing transom and the frame 38 pieces below lined up with the lower frame 37A the fashion piece is sitting to high to fit where it belongs. Specifically is 5.54mm too tall based on the design.

Here you can see it fits together pretty well if I just remove the wing transom. That obviously isn’t a reasonable fix but shows the issue. You can also see that the inner stern post is a little further back than the frames. There will be more about this later.

I used my table saw to cut the 5.54mm off the top of frame 38 as shown. I also cut 5.54mm off of my inner stern post. Cutting the stern post was a mistake as it came out too short, so I recommend waiting till later to cut your inner stern post so you’re sure where it needs to be cut.

That is all good but there is one other issue with these parts. I intended there to be a rabbet between the frame 38 and the stern post along the inner stern post. Unfortunately, I assumed the planking on the back to be 1/16” when I designed the frame. The kits come with, and the prototype has 1/4" planking. On the prototype there is no rabbet. You can build it any way you like but be aware that the design has a 1/16” rabbet. You can see it in the rendering below. As seen above it worked out like designed it isn't correct.

There are a couple different ways this can be dealt with. One is just use the 1/4" planking included in the kit and sand it to match the wing transom on the top. Against the sternpost you can just butt it up against it.

I decided I’m going to use 1/8” planking on the rear and modify the rabbet. So I glued the frames 37A and 38 around the inner stern post but didn’t glue the inner stern post. I left the inner stern post off so I could sand the flat part of frames 37A and 38 down to make room for the 1/8” planking. That way I didn’t have to work around it. The idea is too just sand the flat part of frame 37A and 38 down to 1/8" lower that the inner stern post.

It was time to go do some more shaping, so I thought I’d point out a few other things that needed work. First my frame 37 wasn’t profiled very well with the rest of the frames. You can kind of see it in this photo. The plank does not lay flat, there is a 1/8” or so gap around frame 35. With the shadow I had trouble getting a descent photo but there is a pretty sizable gap.

And finally you can see in the photo below that the bottom of frames 25 and 25A were not even and are overly wide. So I drew lines where the frames should touch the keel.

Here’s the front of frame 25 and 25A after shaping, and a color change . Actually, the picture above was taken with some reflection from my red cabinets and the one below without the reflection.

After about an hour of work, here is the rear with the plank now able to lay flat all the way back to the rear of the model. Not perfect but pretty close.

While I was at it, I also sanded the lower portion of the window flat while I still had good access to it.

And lastly flattened and lowered the rear frame for the inner stern post rabbet as discussed above.

Here you can see that now when I put the inner stern post back in there is a 1/8” recess for the planking. You can also see in this photo that the wing transom still has a rounded rabbet built into it. We did make a file for a new version of this, but it didn’t get into the kits.

It’s easy enough to fix, I took a thin straight edge and drew a line across the wing transom.

And the just trimmed it out with a razor blade. Being as I’m working with cherry, 5 or six times across is all it took. I trimmed it all the way across because the center portion will be covered by the stern post, so you won't be able to see it was trimmed out.

Finally, I glued all of these pieces together. I wanted to mention that I struggled quite a bit with figuring out a way to get the inner sternpost centered. I probably spent 2 hours on it and to be honest never really figured out a good way to do it. I don’t really have the right tools because of this thing being so big. I finally ended up just doing my best with about 3 different ways and finally went with it. In the end it was pretty close, but I was sure wishing I had a gantry or something for that one piece. However, for the stern window and fashion pieces it was pretty simple. In the photo below you can see I still have the bamboo skewers on frame 25 and 36. So I was able to just line those up and project it back to the center of the window piece with a straight edge.

And here is the starboard side.

And the on the port side I got too carried away with the beveling on 37A and added some filler.

I went out and spent about a half hour sanding to clean up the end of the wing transom and some of the filler. I then aligned the stern post and cut the notch that the stern post sets in in the center of the wing transom. Next was making room for the stern post. The wing transom has to be notched for the stern post to fit. Fortunately this is easier to line up. Here you can I used a string to line up the stern post.

And finally, here are a couple photos with the stern post in place. It isn’t glued being as I still have a lot of sanding to do.

 

[MystRacing]

I was going to stop here for the weekend, but I decided I’d like to get the counter knees in place so I can get that shaped and work on the finish sanding in the evenings after work this week. I originally designed this to just have 4 knees, like in the rendering below. Mike S. had put 8 knees in the prototype, and it was clear that was a really smart idea in as much as it puts a knee on each side by the fashion pieces. These knees make a great pattern for sanding the counter on the fashion pieces. I decided I was just going to do 6 as I think that is plenty.

I opened up this drawing in fusion to get dimensions for where to put the knees and noticed another issue. As you can see the counter knees poke up into the outer window frames. (For others building this, my counter knees are 12mm from center to the first and the 36mm to the second).

You can see here in this photo of the prototype that it’s nearly up blocking the lower window, after the inner counter planking is in place. This is one of Mike S's photos.

I think Mike widened the outer frame of the window a bit because the prototype frames were pretty fragile. That being said I don’t think there is any reason the knees need to sit that high so I sanded them down. Below you can see what I did. I did not measure this; I just free formed the first one and used it as a template to draw a line on the other 5. I actually sanded 7. The extra one I sanded is so if I need to make new sides for the bunch seat in the back. I can use the extra sanded one as a pattern.

Then I glued the 6 knees I’m using in place.

And here it is, kind of hard to see with cherry on cherry, but now the inner counter planks will be below the bottom of the window frames.

The 24mm distance between the inside knees is so the rudder can turn. The rudder is the same width as the stern post as you can see in the photo below. It’s going to be a tight fit on the upper end. I’m thinking I’ll need to make that upper portion of the rudder octagonal or round.

In this photo you can see how the outer knees make a nice pattern to shape the fashion pieces.

And the starboard side with the stern post in place. You can see the 1/8 inch rabbet along the stern post here.

Finally, here are a few pics of how it looks at this point in the build. I have not attached the Keel or the stern post yet. I feel like I’m at the point I really need to get the decision made on planking the bottom or not and get the final finish sanding done before I add more parts. I know pretty much every modeler has put themselves in the position where they wished they hadn’t put something on a model because now they have to work around it. I expect I’m at the point where if I add anything else I’ll end up wishing I hadn’t.

I need to do a lot of clean up if I don’t plank the lower portion of this. However, I’m leaning toward going that route now because I don’t think it would be any less work to plank the whole thing.

I should have mentioned in the beginning instead of now, but the reason I added so much detail thus far is I think some of this information can help others that are building this. Remember there are 5 others, not just the 5 on this site. From this point on I'll tone back the detail a bit and just show the progress and things I'm doing differently than what is typical of the kit in general. I had a lot of input on the design to this point in the build, the rest was mostly the Mike and Mike show until we get to the carvings.

 

[DocBlake]

Great work, Jodie!

 

[Heinrich]

Fantastic, Jodie! This is very good work - the stern section will be something to behold!

 

[DocBlake]

Hi Jodie!
On your model. both frame 25 and frame 25A sit flush on the keel. On Mike's prototype frame 25 is short of the keel, but 25A sits right on it, as do all the "A" frames through frame 31A. What was the thinking on the revision, and the different treatment of frame 25, compared to, say, frame 26?

 

[MystRacing]

Doc,

Some people thought it looked kind of strange from the front having the frame floating above the keel. I don't think we really analyzed it all that deeply. By making it bigger it gives each person the option to build it however they want. Now you have me wondering how I want it too look. I didn't think all that deeply about it myself. I could still chop the 4.8mm off the bottom of it. Here is how it looked on the prototype when it was floating.

I think it looks better from the side with it up like this photo, but better from the front going all the way to the keel.

 

[DocBlake]

I certainly see your point Jodie. In looking at both ways, I'm not sure which look I like better. I guess this question arose because this isn't a historically accurate framing scheme. "Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer choice".

 

[MystRacing]

Well I did a lot of modeling and ship model type stuff but not much on the Fubbs. This post is as much for entertainment as anything I think. On Friday night I decided to for a change of pace to do a little plastic work. Everyone that got one of these kits got a WTF Dude in 1/24 scale and a couple officer figures. So I decided to go ahead and work on painting those. In particular I'd like to show them in a lot of the build photos for a refrence to how small the Fubbs is. The real ship that is the model is massive.

So I cleaned up and primed the figures. This is a trick often used on armour, you spray a dark base coat and the white where you want it highlighted, or you can even do it in reverse if you don't like painting white over dark. When it's painted over it created subtle shading in the colors that look more realistic. I shot the white from the top like it was light from the sun. Then let them sit over night and went back over the next couple days and slowly painted different colors on them. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail as there are a lot of youtube videos on painting minitures and I'm not really very good at it. Just wanted to mention this technique because it's my favorite. I find it easier than doing a lot of washes etc. after the main colors are painted.

While I was working on the design and carvings etc for this project. I kept admiring Mike41's gantry he built. So I've been slowly acquiring parts but haven't done anything because the time to make the basic structure and the fact it meant a lot of big parts sawing made me wait. On Saturday morning I decided to go ahead and get the basic gantry built. This is totally unrelated to the fubbs at this point other than giving me somewhere to keep it while I'm working on it. This is made from T Track and type 75 Mitre Fences, along with some 3d printed parts. I'll be finishing it and adding other items like the keel clamp and centering scales etc as I need them. I'll start with the keel clamp so I can lock the Fubbs down in this in the next few weeks.

While I was working on other projects and neglecting the Fubbs the WTF guy showed up and was wondering why I haven't done anything on my scratch build bomb vessel in over a year.

So I told him about the Fubbs and he had to check it out. I spent about 2 more hours with the dremel and my mouse sander trying to get the floor to have a more even flow. There was a hump kind of in the middle so I needed to take it out to get the keelson to lay down on the frames and not have a hump in it. I finally have this cleaned up to my satisfaction. I'm currently working on bending a new keelson being as I got to aggressive and broke the first one, trying to bend the end of it. I'll definately have more about that later.

The officers showed up to check things out as well.

After another 3 hours of sanding on the outside of the ship, I decided it was finally good enough. At this point I went ahead and glued on the stern post and keel.

Like the others who have got this far with this kit, I also screwed the keel on so it will be able to hold this monster up.

Here's a closeup of the WTF dude paint job.

And lastly the officers had to observe the keel attachment and make sure everything was square. This is just sitting on the keel with nothing propping it up. It is slightly off because the keel isn't perfectly square.

Here's a photo with it propped to make the stern post perpendicular to the table. Notice it didn't hardly move the level bubble.

So next up I'm going to go ahead and do the keelson and the Limber strakes and covers, but I'm thinking about also switching gears and figuring out the rudder. Typically I leave that till last tand have trouble with it. I'm thinking I'd like to get it out of the way sooner instead of later.

 

[GrantTyler]

Well I did a lot of modeling and ship model type stuff but not much on the Fubbs. This post is as much for entertainment as anything I think. On Friday night I decided to for a change of pace to do a little plastic work. Everyone that got one of these kits got a WTF Dude in 1/24 scale and a couple officer figures. So I decided to go ahead and work on painting those. In particular I'd like to show them in a lot of the build photos for a refrence to how small the Fubbs is. The real ship that is the model is massive.

So I cleaned up and primed the figures. This is a trick often used on armour, you spray a dark base coat and the white where you want it highlighted, or you can even do it in reverse if you don't like painting white over dark. When it's painted over it created subtle shading in the colors that look more realistic. I shot the white from the top like it was light from the sun. Then let them sit over night and went back over the next couple days and slowly painted different colors on them. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail as there are a lot of youtube videos on painting minitures and I'm not really very good at it. Just wanted to mention this technique because it's my favorite. I find it easier than doing a lot of washes etc. after the main colors are painted.

While I was working on the design and carvings etc for this project. I kept admiring Mike41's gantry he built. So I've been slowly acquiring parts but haven't done anything because the time to make the basic structure and the fact it meant a lot of big parts sawing made me wait. On Saturday morning I decided to go ahead and get the basic gantry built. This is totally unrelated to the fubbs at this point other than giving me somewhere to keep it while I'm working on it. This is made from T Track and type 75 Mitre Fences, along with some 3d printer parts. I'll be finishing it and adding other items like the keel clamp and centering scales etc as I need them. I'll start with the keel clamp so I can lock the Fubbs down in this in the next few weeks.

While I was working on other projects and neglecting the Fubbs the WTF guy showed up and was wondering why I haven't done anything on my scratch build bomb vessel in over a year.

So I told him about the Fubbs and he had to check it out. I spent about 2 more hours with the dremel and my mouse sander trying to get the floor to have a more even flow. There was a hump kind of in the middle so I needed to take it out to get the keelson to lay down on the frames and not have a hump in it. I finally have this cleaned up to my satisfaction. I'm currently working on bending a new keelson being as I got to aggressive and broke the first one, trying to bend the end of it. I'll definately have more about that later.

The officers showed up to check things out as well.

After another 3 hours of sanding on the outside of the ship, and I decided it was finally good enough. At this point I went ahead and glued on the stern post and keel.

Like the others who have got this far with this kit I also screwed the keel on so it will be able to hold this monster up.

Here's a closeup of the WTF dude paint job.

And lastly the offices had to observe the keel attachment and make sure everything was square. This is just sitting on the keel with nothing propping it up. It is slightly off because the keel isn't perfectly square.

Here's a photo with it propped to make the sterm post perpendicular to the table. Notice it didn't hardly move the level bubble.

So next up I'm going to go ahead and do the keelson and the Limber strakes and covers, but I'm thinking about also switching gears and figuring out the rudder. Typically I leave that till last tand have trouble with it. I'm thinking I'd like to get it out of the way sooner instead of later.

Good morning. A wonderful post. Cheers Grant

 

[MystRacing]

I didn't have a lot of time to work on my Fubbs this last weekend but did get some work done on it. Had a trying time with a couple parts. First, I mentioned above that I broke the keelson. It wouldn't lay nicely in the arc along the bottom of the framing. It was one of those cases where the end of the board needed bent, and I tried to force it. Rookie mistake. Given that I made the keelson I could have made it long and cut it later, like I ended up doing after breaking the first one anyway.

What I mean is shown in the 2 photos below. This model is big, so this keelson is 10mm square in section. I made a paper template to show the curve I was trying to achieve. You can see in the first photo the end of the board really resists the bend. If I move the clamp, I'm bending the wood around closer to the end, it takes so much force to bend it, the clamp won't hold on the workbench.

In this photo you can see by moving the template back there is a place where the board has a nice bend that matches the template. By just making it long to start with, I can cut the straight part off and I'm good to go.

After getting this bent to my satisfaction, I installed it and drilled the top of the keelson for the nails. In my case the nails are just decorations as the keelson was already bent and glued in, the nails were included in the kit, I painted the nail heads black.

I then soaked and bent the boxwood limber strakes, and drilled holes for false treenails. I painted the area that would be open beside the keelson black as I expect it would have been sealed and dirty on the real ship. I cut some wood spacers to get the exact spacing I wanted between the keelson and the limber strakes. I had two large bar clamps, 11 spring clamps, and 8 spacers holding everything in place.

I did this in the evening and when I got up in the morning and removed the clamps, discovered the port side had shifted to where the covers just fell into the gap. After considering options to just cobble it together. I finally un-glued the limber strake and tried again. I'm a little puzzled at how I managed to so easily get the starboard on because the port one wanted to twist and move away from the keelson at the low point. I did it a second time and before it was completely dry, figured out it was still moving out and I removed it again. I cleaned it up and just kind of started playing with it and the big clamp. Somehow with just the big clamp and two of the spacers I managed to get it to sit, in a not quite perfect, but at least acceptable location. Here is the final attempt.

Laziness being the mother of intention; or something like that, I came up with this treenail method a long time ago. It's just another among a lot of options. In the photo above the holes in the limber strakes were drilled to fit 3/64" brass rod because that is what I had available. Below are the pieces I cut, I did them separate because I put them in the hole, but don't push them all the way in. Then I paint the tip of the brass black and push it the rest of the way in after the paint is dry. So, I have a black spot instead of a shiny brass one.

I cut short pieces of the rod with Xuron track cutters. I wanted to mention these because I use them periodically for a lot of different cutting tasks. They are a type of side cutter, look pretty much like normal side cutters, but make a nice clean cut on one side. They are marketed as track cutters for model railroad track, which is made of nickel silver, it is a soft metal similar to brass. In the photo below you can see how clean the cut is on the right. I did not do any cleanup on this, the cutters make that nice of a cut on one side and leave the mashed part on the other. They only work on softer metals trying it on steel wire will ruin the cutters. Here's a link if you're interested in them.

After all of that, I managed to get the strakes where I wanted them and the covers to set the way I wanted. I forgot to mention above that I cut the thickness of the Limber stakes down 1.5mm to make it lower relative to the keelson, that way the covers ride just below the chamfer on the keelson.

And here's a view from further back. I stopped placing covers at this point because I need to get the mast step in the correct location before I finish the covers.

Hopefully I won't have such a struggle moving forward. I considered just making it work with the limber strake in the wrong location, maybe add an edge that people wouldn't see under the covers, instead of ungluing it, but I know in the long run I'll be glad I took the time to get it right. Historically once I start accepting my mistakes it just gets worse and worse.

 

[Mike41]

Nice work Jodie, your new jig looks great! Have you found it useful?

Mike

 

[MystRacing]

Thanks Mike, I haven't had a chance to really use it for anything yet. I have to many projects going on right now. I still need to make some parts for it, my center scales just showed up yesterday. They have the 0 in the center. I have used it for measuring and aligning a few things because it's flat and square, but really need to get a couple other things printed and assemble some holders to put the ship on it correctly.

 

[MystRacing]

Well Mike the day after I posted that last reply I used the gantry to set the CG on my RC F14 so I have been finding uses for it even if not what it was intended for.

I have been continuing to work on the stern the last couple weeks. A little at a time with some other side projects. First I decided to build a keel clamp / holder to hold the stern section upright securely. I cut up a piece of walnut 4 inches wide and 24 inches long and made this.

Here is the stern on the workbench.

And in place on the gantry. Still need to secure the ends so it's centered, but that will come later.

I also did some work on the model. I cut and added a false keel made from walnut to match the existing keel. I like the multi colored wood look, but it can be a bit much at times so I did this to tone it down. Also note the light colored filler I used. This was definitely a mistake.

I took some sawdust from when I was sanding the cherry frames and regular wood glue and made some filler. It’s maybe a little dark but much better than the light colored stuff.

Next I planked the inner lower counter area. This is an interesting portion of the ship. I’ve been giving some thought to this and may go ahead and build a platform back here. It is shown on the original plans from the NMM. What is strange is keep in mind the figure is to scale so there is only 18 inches to 2 feet of space on the lower side of the deck here.

I also used a dremel tool with a sanding drum to sand the upper end of the stern post to below the inner counter level.

I got carried away on the planking beside the limber strakes. A couple years ago I used a jig I made from steel bars to taper planks for my bomb vessel. I found it to be both tedious and not particularly accurate. I gave it a lot of thought and looked up some videos on tapering wood on a full sized table saw. After that I decided to create a tapering jig for the Byrnes table saw.

The main problem I was concerned about was how to hold the material so as to not cut my fingers off. Here was my solution. I started with a 4” by 5/16” thick 18” long piece of yellow Cedar. Like the walnut for the holder above it was just because it was what I had in about the correct size. I then cut a strip of hard maple to just fit in the groove for the cross slide on the saw. Then glued the strip to the yellow cedar by placing some washers under the maple strip in the groove on the saw. Then setting the yellow cedar just past the blade opening. Here is a photo of it glued together.

I then ran it through the saw to cut the edge to match the blade location. This way the blade always passes the taper jig in the exact same place. I then glued short pieces of wood at the location of each of the joints where the planks will meet up along a line that causes the wood to hang over the correct amount. Here’s what it looks like.

You can see I the pic below by placing the plank I’m cutting at the line for whatever joint I want I can cut a plank from that point at the same taper.

I have wood stops and locations for every 3 inches. 0,3,6,9,and 12 inches. I just moved the little hold down blocks to wherever they needed to be for the plank I was Cutting.

And finally you can see how the planks hang over in the jig.

Once that was done it took about an hour and forty minutes to taper all 36 of these planks. And even better I didn't even come close to cutting a finger off.

These are tapered from 45mm at the front to 22mm at the back total width.

Then finally I glued them all in place.

After trimming the ends I decided to go ahead and apply polyurethane to the lower portion of the frame to protect it from glue drips etc as I go along. I realize I’ll have to do some touch up as time goes on but I think that will be easier than trying to keep it all clean.

I even thought maybe I waited to long, it was a bit of a challenge getting in between the frames.

Here is the inside afte the poly dried.

Here it is being officially inspected.

I had a heck of a time with the little nails in the thick strips. First I had about 10 nails with a different head. I put a couple of those in before I realized it and had to remove them. The bigger issue I had was getting the nails to go in the holes I drilled. I measured the nail diameter at 0.8mm and first drilled the holes with a .7mm bit. The first two I was able to push in but the third was too hard. There was quite a large variation in the hardness of the cherry frames.

So I though I’d just go ahead and drill each hole with a 0.8mm bit. I did that and it didn’t seem to help at all. After a little messing around I realized the drill bit I was using was still 0.7mm. As it turns out the set of bits I bought had 20 – 0.7mm bits and no 0.8mm bits. Instead of the advertised 10 of each. I then ended up drilling the holes at 0.9mm and gluing the nails in. For what It’s worth I did get it done.

Here is a photo from the outside with the model in the jig. I masked the top of the finish I applied at the location of the bottom of the wale according to the design plan. There is one plank below this line on the model, so everything not finished should be covered up, and now I have a line to attach the first wale.

 

[shota70]

beautiful work ! thanks for the information on the jig

 

[Uwek]

Good work - I like the final colour of the frames after surface treatment

 

[DocBlake]

Really nice, Jodie! I’m watching your log carefully.

 

[MystRacing]

Thanks for the likes etc. Dave, I might go off the rails at any time but it's nice to know somebody's watching.

I had one of those weekends where I spent a lot of time modeling, probably 12 hours, but don’t have much of anything exciting to look at so I decided to show what I was up too and give a bit of an explanation where I’ve decided to head with my build from here.

First thing I did was get the hull mounted up on the gantry so it was squared up and did some measuring for where the deck clamps and top of the rail etc. should be. Here in this photo, you can see my measuring setup. With the Ship sitting square I set the top of the cross bar 30mm above the highest point on the fashion pieces. I then used this height as a reference line in the drawing and measured down from that line to where the theoretical design would be and marked the side of the hull.

Here’s a close-up so you can see the marks.

I marked 10 locations on both sides of the ship and then attached a cherry plank I had laying round with clamps along the line. There is a slight curve along the top of the upper frame timbers.

And here is a photo of the resulting line. The top of the frames matches up even closer than I expected with the design location.

At his point is where I’m going to start to deviate a bit from the prototype model design. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about what I wanted to do in relation to the time frame of this model. Mostly meaning in regards to some of the items we don’t really know how they were done. I decided quite a while back that I wanted to adhere a little more to the contemporary model from around 1725. I should have thought about that when I titled the thread being as I had already decided to make at least one change to the later version.

At any rate what that means at this point is I decided to add some more features to the lower bilge area. Given that I don’t really have anything else to go on I decided to look more closely at the layout of the redlined plan from 1724 or there about. You can see the lower deck layout in this plan.

This plan shows a platform just behind the guest quarters, the deck the stairs go down too. The ceiling height is about 4 foot 10 inches. The rear most lower deck ceiling height is slightly over three feet. Initially I was thinking about adding both of these lower decks along with a piece of the guest quarters deck in the front. After a bunch of measuring the rear deck doesn’t really lend itself well to being built. Also given that it would be really hard to see after the model was finished, I decided to skip the rear most deck. However, I did decide to do the front and middle. This is a big part of why I was so concerned about the top being at the correct height. As low as the clearances are already, if the top of the frames were 1/2" short that would lower everything a scale foot.

In the photo below you can see I marked the bottom of the poop deck clamp, at the top. There is no space between the top rear point of the window and the clamp. Not sure what exactly to do about this. I have been going back and forth between building the clamp into the window frame and leaving a gap in the clamp. No reason I can't raise the rear of the poop deck a touch but I might want to get fancy here instead of doing it the easy way.

I also marked the quarterdeck, then made a couple marks for where the great cabin clamp should be. I then marked the two front frames 25 and 26 for the guest quarters, and finally the location of the lower deck. The marks for the lower deck are so small you have to know where to look to see them. The main point here is all of these locations are based on the plan above, and all are the clamp bottom locations.

At this point I did a little mockup of the locations to help visualize how it will look.

I decided the plan in my head has a high probability of working out, so I cut some wood for beams and stuck them in here. These will be cambered and raised to the correct height. There will be a staircase on the right side of the photo. with a partial door and bulkhead on the right as well. Where it goes down from the guest quarters deck to this lower deck. It's going to take quite a bit of fiddling around to get everything in position, so the mast step and pillars all fit in the proper locations. The staircase will be an interesting challenge as it needs to go down in a spiral manner along the side of the frames.

The wood for the back three beams in the picture above was so old and dry they actually all snapped in half really easily even after being soaked in water for 3 hours. I replaced them with some better wood and bent camber into all of the new beams. I made new quarterdeck beams, as I’m thinking I should make the quarterdeck and guest cabin framing from the same wood.

While I was working through this plan, I also took the time to cut cherry planks for the outside lower portion of the hull. I’m not sure I’ll use them all but being as I had the saw setup, I made enough to replace the maple planking in the kit. I also cut some planks for the lower stern and beveled the top of them. These just need the sides blackened and they’ll be ready to glue on the rear. I sanded a 15-degree angle on the top so they will butt up nicely against the wing transom. The random lines are because this is the side that will be glued to the back of the ship, and I needed a reference, so I didn't bevel the top of the planks the wrong direction.

After all of that the only change on the actual model over the weekend was some pencil lines, but it all needed to be done to move forward.