Sandman interlude

Sanding isn't complete, but we're getting there

The last thing I did Sunday before bed was sit with a sanding block and rub away at the bow and stern, which a couple of days before I'd shored up with the kit's reinforcing blocks. These blocks help maintain spacing between the fore- and sternmost frames, and they'll also be a convenient spot for the (real; not-penciled-in) nails that hold the planks in place.

I'm nervous about planking the hull, i.e. taking long, sturdier pieces of wood (called strakes) and creating the curved, lower shell of the ship. There are two approaches I'm considering:

• Soak the planks in water overnight, making them pliant; line up on frames and nail home.
• The "electric plank bender," or converted soldering iron: dampen part of a plank, apply high heat, bend slightly, and repeat until plank is bent in right shape. A template/mold to assist with bending came with the tool.

I'd like to get to the latter, but I'm leaning toward the former for now: it seems more forgiving, less frantic, and potentially kinder to my desk and fingers. (Concern about kindness to the desk tells me, yes, one day it will be nice to have a work bench I can knick, burn, and spill paint on.)

There'll be a bit of a test run with some upper deck work, i.e. attaching the gunwales: there's enough give to follow the slight curvature at the stern, but I'll need to bend them to follow the sharper curvature of the bow.

What's a schooner, anyway?

Replica of the schooner America
By Greg Bishop via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Seriously: what is it?

It's a ship that has at least two masts, with the foremast being as tall as or shorter than the rear. In the 18th and 19th centuries, two-masted schooners were fast, good for privateering and interdiction, coastguarding and running blockades. The schooner America in 1851 won the race that became the eponymous America's Cup. Schooners have also been used more nefariously: for example, the slave ship La Amistad was a schooner. The Dutch developed the first schooners, but they really found cachet with the Americans.

There are a few schooners puttering around today. The Alma plies San Francisco Bay, as does The Bay Lady. This weekend, my wife and I spotted a replica of the aforementioned America on a sightseeing trip along the waterfront.

Sources:

• Alma at San Francisco Maritime (26 August)
• America's Cup at Wikipedia (23 August)
• The Bay Lady at Rendezvous Charters (26 August)
• Occre Albatros Schooner at Cornwall Model Boats (23 & 26 August)
• Schooner at Wikipedia (23 August)
• Why a schooner? at Schooner Jakatan (23 August)

Sticky knifeplay, plus 55 nails go in perfectly straight

Ship-building all-stars; not pictured:
a metal ruler
From Crocodile Dundee,
Glennz Tees, Thor and Paper Mate 

Albatros took steps toward ship-ish-ness yesterday: planking the main and poop decks, and attaching the former to the keel. This was a continuation of the work mentioned before, plus a matter of trimming excess wood, then drawing on the wood. It was not especially taxing, but it did require the precision that draws me to this sort of project.

It all went pretty well. I set one plank close to the center line slightly askew toward the stern, and the glue set firmly before I noticed. Made a few trims laying its neighbors to straighten things out, and that helped some -- but, really, just penciling in the faux plank separations made all the difference. (My initial understanding was correct: pencil marks go in both length- and width-wise; the actual plank separations are barely perceptible.) The drawn-in nails, thank goodness, all went in straight.

There were, alas, some glue mishaps. Nothing catastrophic, but damn, this stuff gets very serious very quickly. One sliver of plank separated from the boat on my fingertip; to an onlooker, it might've looked like I had a huge splinter.

Last night was a lesson in glue control -- a notion that pretty thoroughly escaped me during my earlier model-building days. That, or glue has moved way up the technology tree in the last 20 years. The main deck is a sturdy piece of wood, maybe half a centimeter thick, and the keel has the slightest curve; the deck resisted some of the fitting. However, a few drops of glue and some brief clamping was enough to keep it in place.

Anyhow, it's starting to look sharp. The main deck is attached to the keel, but there's a frame that needs sanding before I can comfortably attach the poop deck; that'll probably be my work some time in the next couple of days.

Can you find the rusty nail? More pictures at tumblr.

Mister Ed vs. Secretariat

The glue trials, EZ Instant Glue that came with the kit vs. some Model Master glue from Hobby Town, are over. I initially had a few paragraphs outlining conditions and observations, but skipping to the end: I'm going with the EZ and am keeping the other for potential future projects.

With a selection made, I sliced a strand of remin and glued the boards to the forward bulkhead below the poop deck. Just for good measure, I also secured the first couple of main deck planks. Full-length remin is not always straight, but it's also pliant enough -- and the glue quick-grabbing enough -- to overcome that.

The first deck plank is in place

I didn't get a good look at everything this morning, but my shadowed glimpse didn't reveal any shifted pieces/glue expansion or clouded-over excess. Assuming all's well, tonight I'll trim the excess remin from the poop deck bulkhead (i.e. the stuff jutting above the bulkhead and below where the planked main deck comes in). I'll also probably plank the poop deck itself.

I'm holding off, though, on completely planking the main deck. That's because the subsequent step calls for joining the main deck with the keel, and my test fits haven't been stellar. At a minimum, I need to file some of the grooves in the deck, and that needs to happen before it's planked.

The least interesting constellation

Skipping two steps tonight (more on this later, once I figure out the glue thing), I accelerated at breakneck speed to #4: draw a line that divides the upper deck in half. After brief flashbacks of vivisecting angles in Ms. Koven's geometry class, I set to.

A ridiculous ruler's ridiculous cross-section

I wrote earlier about lacking a decent ruler. What I have instead is a contraption that offers marks in 11 distinct units, including 16th-inch, three-eighths-inch, three-inch, and quarter-furlong. Somewhere among its marks hides a lesson in positional (i.e. numerical base) systems. When it lived in my classroom, students expressed a combination of confusion and mockery that I possessed such a weird implement.

Despite quirks and my frustrations, it was sufficient today. The marks aren't close enough to measure with tight precision any span save the absolute narrowest at the bow. And while Ms. Koven was reminding me that two accurate points even very close together are sufficient to define a line, I was wary of drift at the stern by the slightest alignment error at the bow. Roughly speaking, being just 1mm askew two inches from the bow would yield a ~6mm error at the stern.

Fortunately, there were several spots along the deck where the three-thirty-seconds-of-an-inch marks lined up with the deck's sloping outline. After taking a few measures and connecting the dots I got ... something that just looked slightly off-center. Fortunately, a second go-round on the other side felt and looked better. Measuring done!

Division accomplished

And why do all this? Starting with either side of this dividing line and working my way out, I'll lay down slender ramin to resemble deck planks. The ramin pieces are 0.6mm thick and 5mm wide. I posted earlier that the deck planking appearance comes solely from penciling things in, and that's not entirely accurate: the plank look along the long axis comes from the actual physical distinction between the pieces; along the short axis, though, I'll draw in the separations (and the nails). I imagine a more advanced builder would also cut the ramin into shorter pieces for real, distinct planks -- but, I'm not there yet.

About that kit

For anyone curious, here's what I'm working with -- and what I still need:

One of the files, with the rest of the toolkit behind

The Albatros kit was built by Ocio Creativo (OcCre) but bought, in a package with supporting gear, from Nature Coast Hobby Shop. As I mentioned, this shop included a few essentials to assist with building the kit:

• A "Deluxe Hobby and Craft Toolkit" that includes
• Medium- and light-duty knife handles with over a dozen various blades and four gouges
• A pin vise with six drills and an awl
• A sanding block and wedge
• A flush cutter
• A miter box with razor saw & blade
• Tweezers
• Two files (including the one I fell in love with last night)
• A pack of five paint brushes, primer, and four paints (brown, satin, black, and brass)
• Two monographs:
• "How to Build First-Rate Model Ships From Kits" by Ben Lankford (1999)
• "Planking the Built-Up Ship Model" by Jim Roberts (1987)
• An "electric plank bender," which looks to me basically like a soldering iron with a weird head, and a bending block/template
• Glue

I was initially surprised by the books' age, but that reaction quickly evaporated: as Lankford points out in 1999, ship model-making hadn't changed much in fundamentals in decades, and I doubt there's been a revolutionary swell in the 14 years since. On the feedback and research fronts, that might be different: sites like modelshipbuilder.com's forums are a tremendous resource for support, and the broader internet has troves of records and whatnot to help check the accuracy of models. (As an interesting aside, Amazon.com's links to those two books list them way more expensive than the Nature Coast entries -- I wonder how well Amazon and its vendors address such niche texts.)

Anyhow: a pretty thorough kit. Now, here's what I still need to do this well and comfortably:

• More glue: I need to research this a bit further, but the kit directions suggest using different glues for different tasks. The kit comes with EZ instant bond glue, but OcCre's directions recommend at times alternatively using white/carpenter's glue (for major wood/wood action) or cobbler's glue. I've never heard of cobbler's glue, so that's something to figure out. (Addendum: Wikipedia says "white glue" and "carpenter's glue" are different. Swell.)
• More light: The kitchen light is overhead, and the lamp to my left has a dark shade that just isn't meant to cast a lot of bright light broadly. 
• Better vision: I wear glasses for myopia. However, it was easier to focus on e.g. not cutting off my fingers last night when I took off the glasses. But then I had to plop them back on to peer at directions. And so on. To try to address this and the need for better light (and anticipating a need to peer closely at tiny blocks for rigging), my wife last night ordered me a magnifying desk lamp. I'll let you know how it goes.
• A great ruler, preferably metal, with imperial and metric units. For this ship, at least, the deck planking and nails are recreated with some precise pencil drawing. And I can imagine a dozen other uses for such an instrument; I'm surprised one wasn't included in the kit.

What the finished product should look like

From Ocio Creativo; more images available there

Building the schooner Albatros

A couple of hours ago, I started building a model of the schooner Albatros. I've started this blog to document and reflect on the process. Additionally, I enjoy writing and this is a nice way to do that, too.

This is my first foray into model ship building, and the first model -- other than a few LEGO kits -- I've built in at least 15 years. Even then, my previous model-building was with basic plastic-only kits, and my adolescent impatience meant skipped steps, shortcuts, and only accidental success. Hopefully, 33-year-old me will be more deliberative, especially around the bits requiring a knife.

My girlfriend bought me this kit for Christmas. While watching Battlestar Galactica, I mentioned to her my desire to build a wooden ship like William Adama does. She scoured the interwebs and found a package that seemed well-suited to the beginner: a straightforward kit with good directions, a pair of monographs about model ship-building, and a beginner's supply of paint and tools. I know: great girlfriend! Fortunately for me, she became my wife a few months later.

My work surface

A tight apartment and limited surface area precluded beginning the model right away. However, things have changed around a bit, and the final piece for building this model came just a few days ago: a wide desktop from Pottery Barn provides enough room to work and to keep other ancillary desktop items nearby. (And, because it's Pottery Barn, there's also plenty of cardboard to protect against knife-nicks -- we'll deal with paint later.) Let the novice shipwrighting begin!

Tonight's initial construction began with about an hour of reading the directions and reviewing the photo sheet. The directions are translated (well) from Spanish, and very clear diagrams and color photos accompany every step. I felt confident starting.

Step 1: cut the wooden pieces free. Okay, no problem. There are four flats of wood, with the pieces laser-cut out save for one or two nubbins connecting them to the frame (see picture below). Let me get my knife...

Ugh, is this thing sharp enough? I have nice kitchen knives that sleepily slice through the most stout resistance; not getting instant satisfaction in a cutting endeavor was new to me. Let me try a bigger knife...

Ugh, no: this isn't going to work for some of the tight spots, and it's not going any faster. The issue wasn't the blade's sharpness, but rather that the blade was being pinched between the frame and the piece, and not having enough space to comfortably move against the connecting nubbin. Okay, back to the small guy.

Cutting pieces

Small knife was the right choice. What I found worked was scoring both sides of the frame, and then giving a twist or just tilting back. With some more space between the piece and the frame, my knife could maneuver, either to cut back-and-forth or to simply act as a pry.

After about the second piece, I realized all these interior frames looked pretty similar; I did a quick consult with the piece inventory to very tinily write the part number on each wooden piece. After about the ninth, I realized all of these would be hidden inside the final product, and adjusted my numbering size accordingly.

Step two: insert the interior bulkheads into slots in the keel. The directions said something about test-fitting them and sanding as necessary, but 13-year-old me took charge and started putting them together. Then pushing them together. Then squeezing very hard for another smidge. Thirteen-year-old me is an idiot and lucky he didn't break anything.

Really, though, lesson learned: a few of these pieces did not want to go as far down as they should, sticking a few disastrous millimeters too high. I fretted about breaking the model just 90 minutes after starting, and how frustrated both my wife and I would be.

But, a few things went my way. For the aft ends, I whipped out a tiny file to do things right, and things went right! Pretty smooth movement and good fits. I think the first of my self-discovered ship-building rules is, If you're using force, you're doing it wrong. This might've been in one of the two monographs, but I read them a few months ago and some of the salient details might've escaped me.

The first 13 pieces

The other thing that happened is, over the span of about 30 minutes, I found that previously stubborn pieces began to slide a bit more freely. It was still a struggle, but eventually they all wound up as far down as they should have. I am curious as to whether being cut free from those sheets did anything to give the wood breathing room, or whether changes in ambient temperature had an impact (think hardwood flooring installation, and letting the slabs sit in their destination room overnight). I'll have to look it up.

After a couple of hours, I can comfortably say I have the beginnings of my first ship. Piece 1 (keel), 2-10 (bulkheads), 11 (some kind of subfloor-ish looking piece at the stern), and two 12s (some kind of boot/support for the masts, I think), all came together pretty smoothly. It's starting to look like a ship!