Two side projects

"Side project" #1, illustrated at right, has kept me occupied of late. Her arrival is imminent!

Honestly, a combination of things I have and haven't decided to do have also hindered progress on the ship. I haven't cleared off a large-enough space to do some next-step work, e.g. soaking, heating, and bending a few strakes that run the length of the ship. Also, some of the false keel pieces and upper deck pieces would really benefit from a good wood stain, and again I don't have/haven't made an appropriate work space to do these. It's a dicey proposition to do this work at my desk: when I started Albatros, I had a laptop that easily moved out of the way. It's now an iMac, which is a pain to move. Appropriating the kitchen table is a dicey proposition, but perhaps a bug will get me to knock out some of these steps in the near future.

I'm feeling pretty frustrated that I've not made much progress on the ship over the last six months. Really, planking and lining the hull was tedious and sapped a lot of my energy for the project.

I think what this enterprise has taught me is that I miss model-building, but the wood-ship avenue (at least plank-on-frame) is not my cup of tea. With baby coming soon and wanting to knock out some kind of building project, I went way back to basics on side project #2:

That's right: plastic, snap-together, and even pre-painted! If you've seen the little Star Trek and Star Wars miniatures in the background shots of Albatros, or just know me for more than 10 minutes, this choice shouldn't come as much of a surprise.

First impression opening the box went from good to amazed: the handful of painted details were sharp, and the mold itself was well-detailed. I was also stunned by the plastic's thickness. This may very well be indicative of the "level 1" nature of the kit (Revel has tiers for model difficulty), this being something of a starter model and meant to serve double-duty as occasional play-thing (note "8+" age range). But I made quite a few snap-together Star Wars Revel models -- in fact, I made a snap-together X-wing -- when I was closer to 8, and their plastic was not nearly as thick, the model not as detailed. Out of the box, this seems a superior product than what I'd assembled in my childhood.

Naturally, I managed to get step 1 wrong: the four wings are really just two pieces that, through a central dowel, rotate around each other to open and close. I swapped left from right for one piece and a few widgets didn't line up correctly. I figured out my mistake not too far into the process. But, geeze.

Assembly went pretty quickly: with a couple of distractions around the home, and distracted to watch a couple of scenes in Star Wars (which naturally was playing on my computer), it all came together in about an hour. One of the engine cowl's paint came scratched up, but no big deal: this would be a great model to weather, and scrapes like that one just add character.

The kit included miniature R2-D2 and Luke Skywalker figures. Artoo is well detailed, although Luke looks jaundiced. The tiny pilot figure, including its posture, reminds me of the die-cast figure that came with an X-wing toy I had as a kid.

The finished project looks and feels pretty good. I made a snap-together Revel X-wing years ago, and the build quality of this one is remarkably superior. Hopefully, in a few years I'll return to this or a similar model kit with aforementioned "side project" #1.

Costa Concordialbatros is upright!

In the background, you'll see not only some small models of the Enterprise
and Excelsior, but some photos of another building project in progress.

Today saw the attachment of the false keel: "false" because it isn't the actual load-bearing foundation for the ship. The false keel could take damage -- e.g. from running ashore -- without immediately endangering the ship's structural integrity.

Added bonus: the display stand has notches for the false keel; the ship now sits upright on the desk.

Conveniently "below the water line," there's still a hefty amount of functional and cosmetic work. I'll need some wood filler to take care of some seams, and the rudder needs to be attached. I'm in particular looking forward to the latter, since it involves working with the brass strips and pins that came with the kit.

I'm not dead yet

With the lining mostly done (just a few narrow patches remain), the next step is attaching the false keel. I'd written before that I planned to carve out a channel from the hull lining at the bow and inset the false keel there.

The beginnings of the channel for the false keel along the bow. Needs a
few small tweaks to provide for a firm fit.

I made some headway at that, but then decided it might just be better to sand down the 4 millimeters I need and rest the keel upon it. Seemed a bit less labor intensive and quicker to be done.

But, after working at that for a bit, I've gone back to the original plan: I'm removing some of the bow planks, and the 4mm-wide false keel at the bow will rest in there. At the bottom of the ship, the keel will sit directly on unlined planks. I'll need to sand a bit at where the curved bow meets that straight bottom pieces, but that's no biggy.

This is a digression from the directions, and maybe not how actual ships were made. But, it'll make (I hope) for a better-looking ship on display. I hope.

Other projects abound: moving (my work space now has a windowed view, and it's in a separate room), work, etc. Summer in California has been nice, as have trips to the Outer Banks and Portland. I hope to pick this up a bit more over the last month; there's much time to make up.

Log-a-rhythms

At the blog I maintain about playing Eve Online, I just posted about character skill training: specifically, about the ever-increasing time to progress the higher up you go. It's roughly a logarithmic scale; the simplest skill takes about a day to train up to the penultimate level, but another three-and-a-half days for the final step. Hmm: more time to wrap things up the closer you get to the goal?

After a few hours Saturday, there is now only one bow-to-stern length that is unlined on Albatros, and the others are small patches. But it'll still another afternoon or two to knock those out. Probably will finalize things this evening and tomorrow or Thursday.

But, I got far enough along this weekend that I test-fitted the (false) keel pieces. The bottom of the ship should be just fine. At the bow and stern, though, I'll need to carve and sand away some of the lining strakes I've so carefully put down. I think, though, this will yield a better-looking ship, since the linings will terminate at the keel pieces such that the keel looks embedded in their structure, rather than just attached on top.

The stern, I know already, will be difficult: I did a poor job planking the hull in those portions, and I whipped out the large knife Saturday to whittle things down. That'll be ongoing. But, that's okay. I ended my Eve post on this same note: there is no deadline.

Not April Fools: Almost done lining, finally

Had a marathon session one afternoon my wife was out of town and got a bunch of the hinky pieces done. There are now maybe three full-length strakes to lay, plus a bunch of smaller filler pieces. I hope to have the lining done this weekend.

Next step will be to smooth out a 4mm-wide channel from prow to stern on which to adhere the keel. Rudder comes after, and that involves my first manipulation of the brass brackets that hold it into place.

Still going!

Some stretches are straight and simple...

Crikey, it's been a while since anything's gone up. I admit, work on the boat has slowed: lining the hull has been the most difficult work so far. About a third of these lining strakes have been pretty straight forward (literally-ish), but the fore and aft tapering coupled with the hull's overall curvature make many of the pieces between the easy ones a real bear. It's a small but palpable victory when one goes down, with glue, knife blades, trimmers, sanders, and lots of test-fitting coming into play. When I carve out time to work on Albatros these days, it's usually only enough time to do one or two strakes at a time.

...while others involve cutting some precise angles and lots of test fits.

Delays aside, though, lining is progressing, maybe 60% done -- a coverage hard to discern in the picture below, since it's mostly curved up the sides of the ship. (The wood above appears darker thanks to a Google+ Photos HDR filter, which helps make the dark separations between lining pieces more visible.) I have a notion, too, of how to plan out the remaining tough spots, i.e. the bow and stern.

And last little update: as I've mentioned before, when I procrastinate working on the boat, I occasionally turn toward video games. I recently found one, Eve Online, that has me hooked. There are some similarities between that game and building this ship -- including, in fact, the notion of building a ship. I've started writing about Eve. One of the nice things about Eve is, at this point, I can set the game to a task and then perch by the monitor, keep an eye on things, and work on the boat; photo evidence below.

On the monitor: my miner harvesting minerals to sell; I'll use these funds
to buy a bigger, better ship to let me undertake more challenging tasks. In
the foreground: Albatros before an afternoon's work.

Lining the hull, part 2

Lining Albatros' hull continued today. The glue was more cooperative, although that might've stemmed from me being more liberal in applying it. I also started putting it on the back of the lining rather than on the hull, where I suspect too much was being absorbed either by the planks or drawn away by capillary action in the gaps between them. Unfortunately, I did have one major snag, literally.

The middle dark lining broke. I trimmed it back, along
with its neighbors, then ran another liner along a
different arc to make things reconnect. You can also
see a gap I'll fill later with some leftover trimmings.

I'd left the linings at the bow longer than they'll ultimately be. The idea was they'd eventually be trimmed and filed down to make room for a few pieces that get piled on top of them; I left the excess figuring it'd be better to trim down once I reach that step. Unfortunately, while reorienting the ship, one of those excess lengths caught my leg and snapped a large chunk of lining off. Damn!

I wasn't very interested in doing a patch similar to the one I'd done for the gunwale. For one thing, the bow is extremely curved, and I'm uncertain about how easily I could manipulate a small sliver to follow the contour. So, instead, I trimmed back the broken lining and an adjacent one, and swooped up another piece of lining to intersect and reach the bow. I'll mirror on the other side, then work up and down from there. (Chances are I'll create another lower "master" line about halfway from the current low point and the keel, just to help keep things looking symmetric.)