Armed Virginia Sloop - continued

I've been steadily plugging away on this model, mostly on planking-related tasks. I decided to do a little bit of painting, somewhat for accent/contrast, and somewhat to cover areas that would look bad if not painted (inside the gunports).

Here you can see the insides of the railing things painted the appropriate red color. I discovered, once I had the sides built up and the railings installed, that the back deck sides on my model were a bit taller than they are supposed to be. This meant that the sides up there, on my model, were only as thick as the outside basswood planking and looked pretty weird. So I spent a bit of time adding a few layers of wood to give those back walls thickness. It seems to have turned out okay, and I'm hoping it won't cause any issues later on in the build.

Once that was complete, I moved on to installing some of the main thicker planks on the upper outside of the hull and then adding the thin walnut finish planking to the upper areas.



From that point it was just a matter of planking the rest of the lower hull. It took me a little while to get the hang of how things go, but this task isn't too tough. It does get a bit tedious though, since it is really just a great deal of measuring and trimming plank after plank. Below you can see some of the masking tape guidelines that I used in order to help me control the flow of the planks around the hull.

I found that once I masked off a new line (based off of plank width), I could then go back and eyeball rough divisions of the intermediate space. So, for example, if the space between the tape and the finished planks required five full-width planks to cover it at the widest spot, then I would then move along the length of the ship and make marks that divided the space into five sections. If I did this every two inches or so, I found that I could then simply lay down an uncut 4" plank, see where it needed to be width-wise and then trim as needed. Then it was just a simple matter of cutting, gluing and, in some cases, soaking and bending, all of the planks required to fill the space. To the right, you can see the hull, a bit further along, with the markings for the last section in place.

That said, I discovered today that I still managed to goof up the planking on one side of the hull. It's nothing too major, but my planking pattern is off on every third plank, so that instead of a nice even distribution of plank ends, they are a bit offset. Since I was already about two thirds of the way done on that side, I decided I could live with it :)

Finally, here is where I stand at the moment. One side of the hull is planked, and the other side is about two thirds of the way complete. Once I finish the other side, I'll sand it all smooth, and then hit it with some sanding sealer, and polyurethane. Once I am happy with the exterior finish, it'll be time to move on to constructing some of the deck structures. I will be quite happy to be able to take a break from planking at that point (I'll still have to plank the main deck later). Overall, I am very happy with how things are progressing, although it seems that, when I ordered this kit in the first place, I grossly underestimated the amount of time required to complete it. At this rate, I'll be lucky if I have completed the kit before a year has elapsed since the kit first came into my possession. But it is a fun project and definitely the challenge I was hoping for!

Armed Virginia Sloop, pt 6

Construction Continues.... The past few weeks have been super busy, and I've only just this weekend been able to devote some time to working on the ship.

Here you can see the ship all clamped up as I was gluing in the little basswood blocks where the sweep ports (oar-holes) go. Once that was all done, I found that I had to shim some of the ribs in order to get a uniform thickness everywhere. So, I spent some time shimming and trimming and sanding and cutting, and once satisfied, I was able to put the walnut planking on the inside.

AVS Update (finally)

So, at long last, I am finally updating the blog on the progress of the Armed Virginia Sloop.

I have been make slow but steady progress on the ship over the past two months, and more recently I've tried to increase my pace a little bit, as I was getting discouraged by the lack of visible progress. Currently, I have finished the first layer of exterior planking on the hull and am just beginning the walnut layer on both the inside of the rails and on the outside. Here are some images from the past two months and a little bit about them:

This first one shows the installation of the waterways, which I had been hung up on for a while. These were fairly thick, laser-cut, walnut parts that required a pretty big bevel along their length. Since I thought this was going to be tricky to get right, I had stalled for a while on it (plus I was pretty busy in outside life as well). But, once I got down to it, it turned out to not be that big a deal and I only cut myself a few times with the x-acto knife ;)

This next image shows the rear cabiny thing pretty much all done. This was actually a multi-step process, consisting of first planking in basswood. This first step was my introduction to planking with soaked wood (for added flexibility), which turned out to be quite handy. Once the area was planked with the basswood, it got a good sanding, and then the window frames were installed. I had some left over window plastic from the last boat I built (the Chris Craft at the bottom), so I cut some small squares from that and glued those to the backs of all the window frames with some Testors clear parts cement. Next, the area was given a final planking with the walnut layer, which required some delicate cutting and fitting around the frame areas. To finish it off, the surface was sanded smooth and given a light coat of polyurethane to seal it up a bit.

Here is another view of the cabin area. You can also see the first few planks going on the side. This mostly involved a process of roughly measuring the planks, then soaking them in water for a bit, then attaching them with super glue. Once the wood had dried out a bit, things are trimmed and sanded to fit nicely.

There is a bit of a trick to this whole stern area, as many of the bits sort of rely on one another for positioning. The course that I am following (see link in sidebar) does a good job of differing from the kits instructions in order to make these interrelationships obvious. As a result, it sort of skips back and forth for a bit, adding a few planks, then some trim pieces, then more planks, etc.


Here is an image of the walnut trim corner pieces in place. These interact with the installed walnut planking, as well as the side planks in the way that it fits together. This step also required a bit of muscle (delicately) to bend my top rear planks out a bit. They had ended up curling in a bit, so that when i installed the straight trim pieces, they did not line up properly. With a little bit of super glue, some delicate but firm pressure, and some patience, I managed to bend the rear surface out a bit to align with the trim. This looked much better and generally filled life with happiness ;)

Skipping ahead a few weeks, the planking is well underway. This mostly involved steps of pinning, drawing guide lines along the planks, unpinning, careful cutting, soaking and then finally gluing in place, with a bit of trimming at one end for a proper fit. Not too tough, really, but pretty slow going. I think I averaged two to four planks on evenings that I was able to work on the ship. The image to the left is probably three to four weeks of slow work. Once I got this far though, I got excited about being almost done this stage, and pushed ahead a bit quicker. As a result, I am now all done with the basswood planking!

As you can see, in this image, The planking is complete and I've spent a bit of time sanding the whole hull and filling in a few gaps with green putty. Overall, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out for being my first ship. There are a few areas that could be better (hence the need for the filler), but really nothing that is too bad. It was a bit tricky getting the planks to bend at the stern, as the planks were pretty wide (1/4") and the required bend was pretty extreme. But once all was sanded and filled, it seemed to work out just fine.

Next up is to begin the walnut planking on the interior of the railing. I believe this also involves a bit of cutting and fitting to a few pieces, but didn't look too complicated.

I'm hoping to be a little better about updates from here on, so keep an eye out for small posts as I progress!

Also, on a side note, be sure to go see Pixar's 'Up' this coming week, when it comes out! It's a great film!

Armed Virginia Sloop, pt4

I haven't had much time recently to work on the ship, but I have managed to get the rear structure built and the front filler pieces cut and fit and sanded. Both ends took a good deal of shaping and sanding, and therefore took a bit longer than I was expecting.

I highly recommend getting a Dustbuster for your work area, if you don't already have one. I have found that having a little vacuum like that around allows me to really keep the amount of sawdust and wood shavings to a minimum. I'm hoping, in the long run, that this will save me a good deal of cleaning later. When I built the little speedboat (lower on the page), I ended up with a coating of fine sawdust all over everything in the room, which was a real task to clean up.

Here are a few photos of where I currently am. I am also goofing around with the picture layout thing. It's a bit clumsy to use.

Mega Model Railway in Germany

I'm not really into the model railroad thing, but the shear scale of this one is impressive.

Miniatur Wunderland

Be sure to watch the video!

Armed Virginia Sloop, pt3

At long last I have an update for this build. I've managed to get most of the frame of the hull assembled. The actual assembly was pretty quick (it's easy to glue things together), but once things were assembled, there was a great deal of sanding and fitting to do to make life easier inlater steps. Apparently, this is called 'fairing' the hull. It mostly consists of taking a scrap strip of wood and laying it along the outside of the hull so that one can see which ribs stick up higher or are lower than the rest. Then one must sand down the high ribs or glue on strips of wood for the low ribs. Then there is more sanding, a bit of sneezing (turns out my nose doesn't like saw dust very much), then a bit more fitting and sanding. There is also a great deal of accidental breakage of tiny wood parts, followed by loud cursing and then some reglueing of those parts.

This is also where the course that I am following differs a bit from the instructions that come with the kit. The course had me attach the sub decking (just a thin sheet of basswood) before framing the rear cabin, in order to give strength to the whole ship. While the instructions suggested putting little support pieces between the ribs to give it strength, and doesn't have me put on the subdeck until after all the rest of the framing is done. I can appreciate that the course method saves me quite a bit of time that would have otherwise been spent cutting little blocks of wood, but I like to think I made up for it in time spent glueing pieces of that thin deck back on after I managed to break them off while working on a different part of the hull. ;-)

All in all, I think I've got the hull faired and am ready to move on to framing up the rear cabin of the ship. There is probably a better term for that part of a ship, but I can't remember it at the moment :)

Anyhoo, here are some photos of where I am now:

Armed Virginia Sloop, pt 2

I've gotten a little start on the ship. Mostly some cutting, sanding and fitting. I cut out the keel, and all the bulkheads, sanded their edges, and sanded the joints a bit until they all fit together. I've also received the practicum course mentioned below, and have been reading and following that.

I did some cutting and beveling on the center keel and have just started to actually attach some pieces together. You can see below, I've glued the walnut keel pieces to the edges of the basswood center keel. Next comes more cutting and carving and fitting, as I need to be sure that the groove into which all the planking will later fit is the proper size and angle before all the bulkheads get glued in place.



On a side note, today I received the pegboard that I order a few weeks ago. So, I spent some time this evening organizing and generally pegging things up on my board. Really, the goal was just to get many of my tools up off the desk, giving me more work space.

This past weekend, I also spent a few minutes making myself a little foamcore shelf sort of thing that I could put all the plank wood on, to keep it out of the way and to keep it from getting broken. In the below photo, you can see the little shelf below the left side of the pegboard.



Next post will hopefully have the bulkheads in place, and the shape of the ship will actually be a bit more visible.