Thank you Gary, Aussie, and undersea. I appreciate it very much. I went ahead and made a video on how I am making the post.
Enjoy.
I hope you all like it.
For the front head railings, since they are multi-stepped railing, I chose to make a single post that will drive all the way through. In essence, it is a double post on a single cut dowel. First image is post alone. Next is tapping it into place. The last image shows that things are very even and equally spaced. A template was made out of scrap dowel and measured before cutting on lathe. In this case, the dowel had to be flipped around and cut from each opposing end due to flexture.
Hi Donnie, great instructional video, thanks!
My mini lathe, manufactured in the sixties, unfortunatley does not have digital readout, the only way I can get that is to computerize it and rely on the stepper motors for the measurements.
Once again, great video.
This image below is an alignment block to make sure I have all the rails at the same height spacings. The height is 7mm. The next image below show the cap rails. The box came with "half dowels". There are some brass figures that will be sitting on the half round dowels. Doesn't look right. It is interesting that the box art has the cap rails using plain walnut strips. Since none came with box to do this, I used a piece of walnut planking strips and cut it down the middle. Seems good to me. A continuation of showing cap rail installment, then installing some support block stanctions and the end railings. I do not have a good saw. The only one I have is just a hand saw with very fine teeth. Nothing wrong with it for rough cuts, but when I need a more precise right angle cut, the hand saw is not going to do it, even with the miter box. So, then I resorted to using the lathe - marked off the walnut block and chucked it up and used a parting tool. The lathe cut block off perfect right angle. (however, the railings are not quite 90 degrees, and a little shaping was required. This image just shows me installing another block stanction. It is hard to get the glue into the tight spot, so, I just treenailed the block into position. This didn't take long as I am already setup to do these things anyways. Then the next just shows that I trimmed the treenail off flush. The last set of images showing some final work on rails.
Officially started on the second layer of planking. I am chopping these planks (into scale lengths - well, I hope - at about 4 inches each) It is a lot easier to do this. I am also spacing these at thirds 1/3's. Walnut strips look darker because I wet them down with a paper towel to get an idea of what it would look like with Poly satin stain. The ship (according to manual and pictures is supposed to be painted white, but my gosh I hate to paint over this. Between the last strip (with Cannon ports) and the second layer of planking with be a 2 x 4 mm strip to visually separate these two sections.
Hi Donnie, is it my imagination or are those walnut strips thinner than three light colored strips above them? If so, how do you plan to blend them in?