Mike's 17th Century Battle Station

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After 6 months of collaboration, development, prototyping, fabrication and mailing parts... I took the pile of what was left over and hopefully will be able to assemble my battle station from it. Notice I said "assemble". Although this is a scratch built wooden model, the way we fabricated most of the parts results in a delightful assembly activity more akin to building a plastic model than a wooden kit. The combination of various types of hardwood with laser etched details should allow for a beautiful model without the need for any paints or stains. I plan to build my example straight forward out of the box so to speak. I'm sure Doc and Don will add some customization to their own examples down the road. I am excited to get this model finished and hope it to be a quick build. So, let's begin....

I started by selecting a 12" x 12" x 1" piece of sapele to use as a build board/base for the model. I gave it a quick coat of satin wipe on poly and let it dry. I have a tradition on all my wooden models of using a marker to sign and number bottom of all my bases. For this model I laser etched the credits on the bottom of the base.. this will be my 14th wooden build. I also attached felt pad sliders to the bottom of the base.

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The next thing I did was clean up all the lower deck beams, lower clamp, lower support and hull frame parts. All of these are in cherry. It is a shame that most of this structure will not be visible in the final model but at least we know it is in there!!! Spent a lot of time making sure all the parts were properly square and that the fit would be proper. Then I glued down the lower clamp and supports. There was a very, very slight taper required on the forward edge of the lower clamp that I manually sanded with my block sander. Some of the shaping of the parts is very subtle and best sanded to fit at time of assembly.

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Very nice, Mike! The transition from prototype to actual model is going to be more stunning than I imagined. It is a shame that all that beautiful cherry in large part will be covered over. The good news is that #1 common cherry is cheap here, so making all the frames of cherry was easiest, even though all but 2 of them and the gun port sides will be invisible! Both the cherry and the maple were cut offs lying around my shop!

BTW: The sapele is beautiful!
 
If Doc and / or Don are not able, or do not want to build this model anymore ..... send it to me!
I will push my La Salamandre on the side and would do the job
 
Happy holidays for those of you in the States. Thanks for the views, likes and comments as we continue with the assembly of our 17th century battle station.

I used a very sharp blade to carve away the excess material around the gunport sills and then a block sander to bring everything flush. This needs to be done both inside and out.IMG_0986.JPGIMG_0987.JPG

Then it came time to actually glue in the hull frames. I started by gluing the two outside frames first.
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I used a metal fence to hold the frames steady against the lower clamp while the glue dried. Clamp the tops of the frames to ensure everything stays nice and square. The frames should be spaced evenly apart, about 5/32" on my model.
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When viewed on edge we can see that all 8 frames are lined up evenly and square. This is critical for the lay of the pre-fabricated planks later.
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We can further verify the fairness of the frames by laying a straight rule across them. The rule should easily lie flat with no interruptions.
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You guys are funny.... Meanwhile.. moving right along...

Next, we installed the partial frames below the three gunports.
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We also began gluing in the lower deck beams along with the lower knees.
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The plans call for tapering and installing the upper clamp along with the remaining upper frame parts next. But, I think I will start planking the lower deck first.
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