School for Shipmodel Building School for model ship building

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

The cardboard pattern is the starting point and it has soft edges which you may cut into or undercut. Rather than chance a wrong cut i glued scrap pieces from the stanchions in the slots giving me a sharp hard edge to follow.



now i can cut with a new sharp blade along the edges

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

When you're making a piece such as this any wrong cut or loose-fitting joinery there is no fixing it short of starting over. This can be frustrating after scrapping hours of work and starting again even worse at the third time. This is only four slots some cap rails may run the length of the ship with 20 slots now that is scarry having messed up number 14 and starting again. It is the mind set here are you trying to teach yourself fine woodworking or just trying to get the model done. You need to stop and plan your approach to the job at hand trying to minimize errors.

I have the slots marked with a knife cut and once again i start in the middle and make an angle cut to the edge cut



What i am doing here is making sure the cut from the razor saw follows the edge and does not wonder.With the V cut it guided the saw.



You will get a clean perfect cut along your original knife cut.



i have tried cutting the slots with just a knife by making angle cuts to the edge. Then cut the edge a little deeper and keep doing it until all the material is removed



the finished piece

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

The first concern was getting the stanchions fitting into the slots. Now i do not know if you can make a loose fit and fill between the stanchions and the slot in the cap rail with caulking. A very small detail which would go unnoticed ever by the experts. I have a tight fit



This may of been a little over kill in size and you could make the width of the cap rail a bit closer to the final size. As was done at the bow i used the side of the hull for the shape of the cap rail.



However here where stanchions come through the cap rail to support a railing the edge of the cap rail does not follow the outer hull the cap rail stops at the edges of the stanchions.



A molding finishes the outer edge of the cap rail

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

As my colleagues here in the school will let me and everyone else know what i build may or may not apply to what you're building. As Roger pointed out not all decks used black caulking some used lead.
I read at some point somewhere about the battle of Lake Erie the Lawrence was disabled and the Niagara lagged behind. Perry accrued the Niagara of laying back out of the battle. Captain of the Niagara in his defense the Niagara was caulked with lead and much heavier and unable to keep up with the rest if the fleet. True or not i really do not know. but interesting.

When i build i will research methods used in real ship building if it applied to the model i am building is iffy we can never know as the ship is long gone. But it does show a building method was in fact used in ship building. so why did i do the cap rail and stanchions the way i did?

you can see the molding along the outer edge nailed to the molding below it



and in this fuzzy image you can see a nail pounded into the cap rail

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

That's all for today in school this week i have to do it all over again for the other side cap rail. At least i did it once so maybe it will be a little quicker a second time.

Next class it will be a step harder than the cap rail it is time for railings which are very delicate and to be quite realistic about it i do not know how i will approach it. This is the fun of building models is the holy crap how am i going to do that?

Do not fear the lack of kit instructions use your imagination and logic it will come together. As you progress in the hobby toss out the instructions and rely on your own skills and knowledge and Ships of Scale for information. A step to building it your way.