Plank Factory

Just a quick update today to show my progress on the deck planking.

Since the planks are staggered the first plank in each run will be a different length (either 50mm, 100mm or a full 150mm plank.) So to start with I had to cut and sand some 50mm and 100mm planks and then I began glueing and fitting them. I started out using the same method as before to clamp them down while drying..however as I got to outer planks this doesn;'t really work as the clamping planks bend in the middle, making them a bit useless when glueing multiple planks at once. I haven't come up with a catch all solution to this, but I have just used clamps directly where I can, or simply get a block of wood and put "something" (see photo below for some amusing examples) on it to hold the plank down. Rough and ready I know, but it gets the job done!
Some photos below showing the progress.

24 planks with clamping;

39 planks fitted:


The current position. Don't worry, the tea that was in the mini eggs mug is now safely in my belly! No chance of a terrifying spillage!
I think I'm going to spend a good chunk of this evening making a big batch of planks. I'm going to aim for a 5:1 planks to mugs of tea ratio.....going to have to find another mug though!

Jonny.

WAIT A MINUTE!! I can't believe I nearly forgot, but the fourth installment arrived this morning!! Not quite as exciting as before I suppose because I'm no where near being able to start on it!

Anyway here's what you get:

Not much in terms of parts, but plenty in terms of potential work time! The bag contains about a billion more pins and the bundle of wood is all 2x5 strips of basewood. This wood will be used to plank the hull.....new word coming here....freeboard. A bit of research tells me that the freeboard is the part of the hull which is above the waterline. All the hull below the water will be planked with a differed wood.

So once I have finished planking the false deck I will be facing the daunting task of embarking on the hull planking. More on that later when I can pluck up the courage to admit that I'm going to have to do it!

Jonny.

One plank down...one or two to go!

Hello again!

Starting to get into the swing of this build now as it's all I can think about when I'm work. I have fallen asleep on numerous occasions with visions of planks and clamps running through my head. All very exciting (if slightly disturbing).

Without further ado, here's a picture, because it shows the first planking run!



Planks, planks and more planks

As I said in the previous post I've got to cut around 150 planks from the basewood provided by AL. The method I've used to do this is fairly straightforward. I carefully measured one plank so that it was exactly 150mm. I then use this plank to measure the length of a second plank. I use a mitre block and small hacksaw to make the first cut into the plank, so that I know it will be straight. I then finish cutting the plank using a "bone saw." I then hold this plank against the test plank and carefully sand the edge until their edges are flush. And that's it! Rinse and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and.......One thing I am trying to be careful not to do is to sand the guide plank (I've actually written on my guide plank "Guide plank - do not sand!") If I slightly sand the plank each time my planks would become progressively shorter. To try and stop this I've just been checking the measurement of the guide plank every so often. As soon as I see it get shorter and start using a new one. At some point I might try and post some pictures of this process in case anyone is interested.

Caulking
Caulking is another example of a word that I saw thrown around a lot when I first started looking into model ship building, which I had no clue about! However, it seems to be a widely discussed topic so it didn't take too long to get an idea of what it was about. Basically, when a real ship was built the gaps between planks on the deck would have been filled (caulked) to make them water tight. This gives the gaps between planks a dark colour. There are a few ways of simulating this effect on a model ship, but the most common (and easiest) I have seen is simply the run a HB (or #2 for our American friends) pencil around all the edges. This is the technique I have used, so for every plank I have made I have used the side of a HB pencil to "colour in" the edge.
Laying those planks

Now comes the fun part! Time to lay the planks. I originally thought that I would lay the first plank with it's edge along the middle line of the deck, which would help me keep it straight. However, looking at the instructions, and other build logs, I decided to lay the first plank right in the middle of the deck. So it runs over the middle line of the deck.
I applied some glue to the back of the first plank and carefully lined it up, starting from the bow. To hold it in place while the glue dried I lay some other planks across it and clamped these to the deck like so:


I then simply repeated the process making sure the planks were in line and butted tightly against each other. I had to cut and measure a smaller piece to finish off the first run.

And voila! My first plank run.


To speed things up from here I will start planking smaller sections of the deck so that I can clamp down a few planks at once, rather than doing one run at a time. Hopefully the first plank run will make sure everything lines up!

So, from here I will be doing lots of the same thing, getting all the planks cut and layed, so updates may come slowly, but I will try and post the occasional photo to show how I am progressing!

Happy building!

Jonny.

False Gun Deck

Well, there's been another nice long break between posts thanks to a lovely holiday in Spain and Morrocco. We flew back into Bristol at around midnight on Wednesday night, just hours before all planes were grounded throughout the UK due to the volcano dustcloud from Iceland!

Anyway, back to the Surprise, and some slight progress has been made. I've glued and pinned all the parts of the false gun deck. This didn't prove too difficult with my trusty "pin pusher." Anyone starting out in model ship building who isn't aware of these should definately get one. When I started the small Victory model I had problems hammering pins into the deck as I couldn't get them 'started', as it were. The pin pusher means you can accurately place the pin where you want it, push it some of the way in, and then use a small tap hammer to finish the job.

The only other thing to say about the deck was that I marked two lines where the edges of the bulkheads are so that I was hammering pins through both the deck and the bulkhead. I did this by simply holding a ruler against the edge of the bulkhead and drew a line athwartship on either side (look at me using the nautical terminology already! Athwartship is the direction running across the width of the ship, from port to starboard)
Some pictures, because I am waffling:

Next step is to plank the false gun deck. The instructions tell me to just lay full planks along the deck and then mark the "butts" (where the ends of two planks meet each other) with a pencil. I don't really like this idea as I think it will look a bit fake and weird, especially since one of the planks provided in the kit won't cover the whole length of the ship so there will be some real butts and some false ones. For these reasons, and because I want some practice at doing 'proper' planks I have decided to cut and lay individual planks even for this false gun deck which will mostly be covered.

I asked some questions about this on Model Ship world and the general consensus was to go for it if I wanted to. Having done some research into ways of doing it I have decided to try a "3 butt shift." I have no idea if this is even close to being historically or practically accurate, but I like the sound of it...which is good enough for me! It also involves som calculating and measuring, which appeals to the mathematician in me.

3 Butt Shift

So here's what I'm going to do next. Thanks to a post on MSW I am told that planks would usually have been around 24' long (or somewhere between 20 and 25 feet.) At the scale I am working at (1:48) this will mean planks of around 150mm. For the maths fans out there this is best understood and calculated by saying that the scale basically tells us that 1 foot on the model is the same as 48 feet on the real thing. 1 foot is equal to around 308mm. So to find the size of one foot on the model we devide 308 by 48 (around 6.4). So to find the scaled length of 24 feet we simply multiply 6.4 by 24. This gives a number somewhere around 150mm.

To do a 3 butt shift I take one plank and lay it on the deck. For the next athwartship (there I go again!) plank I offset the start of the plank so that it won't line up with the first. I do this again with the third plank. The start of the fourth plank will then line up with the end of the first plank. Since a plank is 150mm long, then "shifts" must be 50mm for this to work. So the first plank is at 0. The second plank is offset by 50mm, the third by 100mm and then the fourth plank will be offset 150mm, the full length of one plank.

Something tells me that pictures are going to be able to explain all that a lot clearer than I ever could!

Anyway, onward and upward. Decks to plank.

Jonny.

Winding Frame Assembly (and surprise surprise parts!)

Winding Frame Assembly

So work in the shipyard is back up and running! I had some fun cutting new parts and began constructing the winding frame. This was a simple enough process. There are 8 winding frames which I sanded the edges of and then glued dirctly onto the first bulkhead at the bow. The only thing I had to be careful about was making sure that the top of each frame lined up with the top edge of the bulkhead. One of the winding frames was slightly loose so I had be a bit careful when glueing that one to make sure it was square. All the others were so well cut that I couldn't really go far wrong. Below are some photos of the process:

Next Steps

Having had a quick dry fit of all the bulkheads I have now taken them all off to sand then all down ready for fitting. The instructions tell me not to glue the bulkheads until the decks have been fitted. A post on Model Ship World suggested that glueing at this stage would not be a problem, but neither would glueing after fitting the deck. However, from what I have read the important points are to make sure that all the bulkheads are perpendicular to the keel and remain square but also to ensure the deck is level and fits flush against the bulkheads. I'm not 100% decided yet but I feel that it will be easier for me to get the bulkheads square now and glue then straight. I might then have some trouble fitting the deck, but I think this is an easier problem to solve that if I glue and pin the deck and then realise some of the bulkheads aren't square. So to cut a long story short my next step (I think) is to sand the edges of all the bulkheads so that they are smooth and then glue all the bulkheads square to the false keel.

New Parts (yes, already!!)

After so long without parts I'm really happy to be able to say that Model Space (Deagostino) have come to my rescue! Rather than having to wait another month for the third set of parts they kindly offered to send the third set of parts immediately and then send the fourth set in a months time. The new parts arrived yesterday, only 2 days after I had picked up the second set of parts! Below is a picture of what came with the third installment:


The parts include:

- The full first deck (that I have seen referred to as the false gun deck)
- The lower side base of the stern transom (!!) I have no idea what they are, but I will be sure to investigate and report back
- Embelisments on the lower coamings of the bowsprit. I don't know what a 'lower coaming' is (or a coaming for that matter!) but I believe the bowsprit is the long timber that sticks out at the front of the ship.
- A bag of pins (that one I can just about figure out!)
- a rather satisfyingly chunky bundle of wood!

Since I'm one of these slightly autistic types I like to label everything I receive off against the parts list to make sure I know what everything is and make sure I've got everything I should. So one thing I have started doing it going through the bundle of wood and measuring each bit to group all the same bits together and then double check them against the parts list. This looks to be a fairly long job, but I'll get there eventually and can post exactly which bits of wood came with this installment.

Speaking of which, I think it's time to start measuring and sorting strips of wood! Who could ask for a more exciting Friday night!

Happy Modelling,

Jonny.

New parts!!!

The first post in over a month! It really doesn't seem that long ago that I last posted, but there you are!

Partly this is due to being very busy with buying a house but mostly it is to do with Model Space having troubles with their stock and not shipping my second installment until now! Although this was pretty frustrating, they have been very good at responding to queries and have done everything they can to make up for the problem, which is nice! So hopefully from here on out updates will come much more regularly.
Not much to report at this stage, other than to say that the second installment contains the next two cut sheets pictured below:

These cut sheets contain the following parts:

- 11 Bulkheads (referred to as Frames on the parts list) meaning that I now have all the bulkheads
- 2 Stern Knightheads (not sure what these are, I'm sure I'll find out soon enough!)
- Two Stern strengtheners in vertical keel (These sound pretty self explanatory. The stern refers to the rear part of the ship)
- The first bulkhead at the bow. (The bow is the front of the ship. The first bulkhead looks like it will be an important one as it is situated at the point where the hull planks will do the most dramatic bending)

Looking at the next set of instructions my first step will be to construct the "winding frame." I'm not really sure why it is referred as a winding frame, but from what I can see it is basically the structure which forms the shape of the bow. There are 6 "winding frames" which are glued perpendicular to the first frame at the bow. This gives a solid surface to lay the planks around the bow to stop them from buckling. I think I will need to add additional supports between the winding frame so that this section is as solid as possible to make the hull planking as easy as possible.

I will then need to fit all the remaining frames into the vertical keel. At this stage I'm still unsure about whether I should be glueing them square or waiting until I have the deck. I'll put my thought in more detail in the next post when I come to fit them.

Finally the stern collars and knightheads need to be fitted to the stern of the ship.

Hopefully the next post will be soon with some actual work done on the ship!

Happy building,

Jonny.

Getting Jiggy!

Between thinking up terrible puns for blog post titles I've been making a jig to hold the ship while I'm working on the deck initially and then doing the hull planking.

I shamelessly stole the design from James' blog linked in a previous post. It is a very simple design, but does just what I need it to do and was very simple to construct for someone as inexperienced as me!

I took a trip to local hardware shop recently and picked up some very cheap cuts of wood and a hacksaw! I also went a bit mad buying clamps of varying sizes, which I am sure will come up more and more in future blogs!

First up I had a quick look at James' design, took some measurements of the keel and drew up a very rough plan of what I needed. It is simply four blocks of wood attached to a chipboard sheet which allows the keel to slot in the middle. I measured the widest part of the keel (where the strengtheners are) and this gave me the required distance between the two sets of blocks. I then measured the distance between the two closest bulkheads which gave me the distance that the two blocks in each set needed to be apart. The plan looks like this:



I transfered these marking with the exact measurements directly onto the chipboard sheet so that I would have a guide when sticking the blocks on:



I then measured and cut the blocks of wood using the following setup:



I wasn't too concerned about how clean or straight the cuts were as I don't think the jig needs to be too precise. As long as it keeps the ship steady then I will be happy.

Once I had the four pieces I simply glued then onto the plywood sheet using standard wood glue and am now waiting for the glue to dry:



I did make a pretty big mistake when buying the wood. The jig as it stands now will be fine for fitting the deck etc, but the blocks are not high enough to hold the keel while I am hull planking. I'm going to be a bit slack in solving this problem I'm afraid, I think I will just cut another 4 blocks and glue them directly on top of the others! This won't be as sturdy as I'd like but I think for the job it needs to do it will be OK. Of course if it turns out to be a disaster I will probably look to build another one.

As I'm sure you can see my basic woodworking skills are pretty poor and my tool kit is only juststarting to grow. I'm sure this jig could have been made much better, but for now I am happy with something very rough and ready as I know I will only be using it up until the point that I finish the hull planking.

Slow progress as usual as I am still waiting for the next installment of parts, but hopefully once they arrive I will have plenty to be getting on with. In the meantime I continuing to work on the plastic cutty sark model and having fun with shrouds so I may post some pictures of that if I get the chance.

Happy sailing!

Jonny.

Dry fitting the first 5 bulkheads

I've now checked the first 5 buikheads as I described in the previous post. As I expected they are all as close to perfect as I could ever have hoped! Given how well this has gone, I'm not sure that I will check the rest of the bulkheads. It will depend on time I think, and how much work needs to be done with the next installment of parts.
I've had a go at dry fitting the first 5 bulkheads that I have. I had to do a bit of work with a file to get the slot on bulkhead 19 wide enough as it didn't intially fit, but this was the only work I had to do. I've removed the clamps from the keel and left the first 5 bulkheads fitted. Now just to wait for the next parts to come through!