2013 September Meeting

Our first meeting of the season will be on Tuesday, September 3, 2013 at the Nepean Museum, 16 Rowley Ave.

This year we are looking for presenters for the following topics:

How to read a lines plan.
Digitizing plans
Hull Building techniques

Deck Layout

Masting & Rigging

As usual, members are encouraged to bring out their show and tell items.

Bill Williams for Jim Russell

Cunard White Star Liner Queen Elizabeth On War Service

This picture shows RMS Queen Elizabeth circa mid 1940s in World War II camouflage loaded with troops bound for New York. From what I have been told the men you see on deck spent the entire voyage stationed where they are in the picture. There was a kitchen crew on board that spent eight hours a day without a break bringing food to the men where they were stationed on the ship.

On the original picture from which this was scanned there was a square in the upper right hand corner where a person could write their name and the date. I have done my best to use photo editing software to remove that square and blend the sky so that it would not take attention off the ship.

Bill Williams

Sailboats in Antwerp ca 1940

These were scanned from souvenir photo packs purchased in Belgium in 1944.

Bill Williams

A Couple of New York Pictures from the Thirties

I found a package of souvenir photographs of New York City from the late thirties or early forties. In it there were two pictures that might be of interest to ship modellers. They should be self explanatory. Here they are.

Bill Williams

Why Did I Add Revlon Beauty Tools to the Tool Manufacturers Links?

I just added Revlon to the Tool Manufacturers links. Why would I add a link with beauty tools to a blog for model ship builders. If you were to click the link and look at the tools on that site you will find several items that you would probably find very useful with your ship model building. There are a variety of sanders, scissors, cutters and tweezers available among those tools. Think you might be able to benefit from using some of those things? I thought so, too.

This is a diamond grip tweezer with a slant tip. It has maximum gripping power for fine hairs. You could very likely use this to great effect with your rigging tasks.

 

 

These are compact emery boards. You can call them detail sanders. They have a fine grit cutting surface and they can get into hard to reach spots.

Keep your eyes open. You never know where you will find tools you can use with your model making.

Bill Wiliams

New Links Category: Tool Manufacturers

I have added a new category to this site's links. The category is 'Tool Manufacturers.' I think the title is self explanatory. I have started of with a few such manufacturers and will add links as other brands come to mind or as CMMG members inform me of their favourite brands.

I thought that a set of such links would be helpful. Often suppliers cherry pick what manufacturers make. They will often special order things that they don't normally stock, or you can go looking for a supplier that does stock an item you're looking for.

Bill Williams

Scrapers from Stewart-MacDonald

At two meetings now it has been suggested that in many cases it is preferable to scrape a surface smooth rather than sand it. These two scraping tools from Stewart-MacDonald might be of interest for the job.

These scrapers have been designed for finishing guitars, but I see no reason why they could not be used for ship modelling.

You will find more on them by clicking here.

Bill Williams

A Note on the Links

There are many links that may be of interest to you as a ship modeller. On May 7, 2013 I tested each of the links. In many cases the site addresses have changed and in a few cases there was no longer a web site or the address is now being used for something else. As of the stated date the links have been fixed or in some cases deleted.

As of this writing the links have been categorized as follow and the categories are in this order:

Model Ship Clubs
Suppliers
Museums
Ships
General Interest

Probably the category most useful to ship modellers is Suppliers. You will find the choice of links for suppliers biased geographically to Ottawa. If you live in some other part of the world you may find some of the supplier links useful because many of the suppliers do mail order, or have locations in a number of different communities.

I hope you find the links useful.

Bill Williams

Finding Ships' Plans

The scope of this piece is not definitive but hopefully it will be somewhat helpful.

At the CMMG meeting on Tuesday, February 5, 2013 the question came up of where to find plans for a specific ship or class of ship. In this case the specific class of ship was the Canadian Pacific Empress class ships.

Well that was daunting but those who were at the meeting were determined to be helpful. So we asked questions. Where was the ship built? That's a good place to start. In this case the ship was built in the United Kingdom. With some further discussion the best suggestion that could be made was that the national archives in the United Kingdom should be consulted.

Generally speaking, the national archives of the country where a ship was built, is often the place where ships' plans eventually get stored. So it's a good starting point to search for plans. If any particular ship of interest has been involved in a war and captured then it's a good bet that the country that captured it documented it as fully as possible and their archives would be worth checking.

Most countries that have archives have web sites dedicated to them. Here are three with links to their home pages.

Library and Archives Canada
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/index-e.html

The National Archives
for the United Kingdom
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

National Archives
for the United States of America
http://www.archives.gov/

Other archives can be found by searching with Google.

Keep in mind that should you find that the plans you seek are indeed stored in archives that getting copies of them may be expensive. Most archive facilities will have the means to make copies but doing so could be costly as can shipping.

Most archives have either catalogued their collections on line or are in the process of doing that. Digitizing the items in storage is another matter.

When you are looking for something in the way of plans or other information on a ship, be prepared to spend some time and work on getting what you want and be prepared to be disappointed. Good luck with your efforts and may you be rewarded for your efforts.

Bill Williams

A Consumers Reports Recommended Masking Tape

We were discussing masking tape at the last CMMG meeting.

In the latest issue of Consumer Reports (March, 2013) the tape that produced superior results over all others was FrogTape. This is now available in Canada. You should be able to get it at Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Walmart.

"FrogTape Delicate Surface tape was the clear winner. It left a very sharp line, was easy to remove, and didn't damage any surface no matter how long the paint had dried or the paint was left on."

The only drawback I can see with this product is that it only comes in the one width. At least that's what the implication is on the company's web site. http://www.frogtape.com/

Bill Williams

Tools for Building and Repairing Stringed Instruments May Be Useful for Model Ship Building

I received a catalogue from Stewart-MacDonald, a company that is a source of tools, parts, and pretty much anything one could want for building and repairing guitars, mandolins, banjos, etc. I got the catalogue because I purchased some parts to restore my first guitar.

So what has that got to do with ship modelling?

The catalogue has about 25 pages of tools, specifically chosen and developed to accomplish tasks with wood involving cutting, filing, shaping and reaching difficult to reach places. It seems to me ship model building involves those types of activities. So there may be tools available from Stewart-MacDonald that just might be the very thing a ship modeller would like to have.

The company has a web site where you can look at everything they supply on line.
http://www.stewmac.com/
Go have a look and check it out.

Bill Williams

I Published my Novel as an E-Book

At the last CMMG meeting, January 15, 2013, I announced that I had published my novel, The Seven Second Kiss, on line as an e-book. I was told that I could post about that on this blog site.

Here's the link to it's listing on Smashwords. It's also available on iBooks.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/264634

Until March 1, 2013 use this coupon code for a 40% discount: FK94V

Royal Clipper sail-away

These two images are from a series taken during a photo safari at sea circling Star Clippers' flagship ROYAL CLIPPER off Basse-Terre St. Kitts on Boxing Day, 26 December 2012. There are five masts carrying 42 sails with 5000m2 of sail area. Photos by John Clearwater.

Fair Jeannie - Fall 2011

Bill Williams

Please, Sign Your Posts

Since we have opened up the CMMG's blog site to authorship by any member I think it would be a good idea for those who do post content on the blog site to put their name on what they post. Please, either start your post with a byline after the title or your name at the end. Doing that will be helpful for everyone involved. Thanks.

If you wish to remain anonymous to the internet at large an option for you is to adopt a nick name or user name instead of your own. If you do that, please, inform a site administrator that you are doing that so at least the administrator will know who you are.

Bill Williams

Observation of Sails on USS Constitution

This is USS Constitution, still afloat after Hurricane Sandy. The reason I'm putting it here is for reference to its sails. Sails on model ships have bothered me and part of it may have been the way they were coloured.

Observe in this picture that the sails are darker near the top and fade to almost white at the bottom, or they are darker where attached and fade to a lighter colour at the edges furthest from where they are attached.

Arranging sails on a model the way they are set in this picture might be an attractive option, since a ship with a complete set of sails tends to hide much of the detail and work done with relation to the rigging.

Bill Williams

2012 - 2013 CMMG Season

Greetings. The blog as the Capital Marine Modelers Guild website is once again active.

The CMMG meet on the first Tuesday of each month.

The location of the meeting is:
Nepean Museum
16 Rowley Avenue at David Drive
Ottawa (Nepean), ON

Meetings begin at 19:00 and run until members stop talking at about 21:00

The CMMG is open to anyone who can pay the annual fee to become a member. The fee is still $20 per year. The public is invited to observe a meeting for free.

For the 2012-2013 season the meeting dates are as follows:
02 October 2012
04 December 2012
09 January 2013
05 February 2013
05 March 2013
02 April 2013
07 May 2013.

Russian Submarine Models

At a recent meeting we were given a presentation about a project involving the dismantling of Russian nuclear submarines. Some very good models of Russian submarines were shown.
The first one here is a model of a Russian Typhoon Class submarine. These are the largest submarines that have been built to date.

The second one is a Victor III Class submarine. The information on the submarine is shown in close up here.

Model Ships and Boats on Facebook

We started a group of Facebook called Model Ships and Boats. We went looking for a group like that and couldn't find it, so we started it.

The group is open to anyone to join. The hope is that this group will become a forum that will benefit any ship or boat modeller who joins it.

Strip Cutter

This is a tool for cutting planking and other thin strips of wood, plastic, bamboo, or any other material. The cutter has been built square so that material being cut will be cut square. A stopper can be attached at a given length. This will allow repetitive cuts that will always be square and always the same length.
A tool like this can be built from almost any material to hand. The blade can be a knife blade, double edge razor blade or single edge razor blade. The bed can be any length needed. This tool can be customized to fit the user's needs.

HMS Bellona in the Early Stages

One of our members brought in his model of HMS Bellona, which is in the early stages of construction.The builder has doubled the number of frames that were on the plans he had. The number of frames in the model is half of the number of frames in the actual ship. This building method involves cutting out a hole in a board that allows the indexing of frames that have been made extra long at the top end. This lets the builder align the frames and keep them rigid as the building of the model proceeds. Later on the frames will be cut away from the board and construction will go on from there.
With this model the builder has added abutments at the end of the board that allow him to work on the model while it is in a right-side-up position. Here can be seen the installation of one of the lower decks. The planking is in place and detailing is proceeding from there.
The black surfaced object here is a piece of wood that has had one surface painted black. It will then be cut into strips that will be used for planking the decks. The black edge gives the appearance of caulking. An alternative to this is to have a number of planks stacked together and held fast at the ends with some glue. The edges are then covered with black paint. The result will be similar. Another method I have seen used is to glue strips of black paper to the edges of the planks.
Part of the detailing that is added to the decks is a large number of grates. One of these can be seen under construction here. The builder of this model built a jig that is used with a small table saw. Building a jig is a very common practice to produce these grates.
This is another view of the model under construction. This building method has definite advantages and it is used by many modellers.

Mare Nostrum Work in Progress

This is a model of a fishing trawler in 1:35 scale. This is the builder's second wooden model. He built the Boston Whitehall Tender shown earlier.
Artesania Latina produce this model kit, which comes with plans, wood stock for planking and many fittings. The instructions for this kit are fairly good. The bulk heads and other parts have been precut with a laser. In this kit the manufacturer has done a very good job with this as the precut parts did not need any further adjustment.

Tool for Digitizing Text and Plans

The rig shown here was built from scraps of aluminum angle material along with some machined bolts and wing nuts. On the cross bar at the top a threaded rod holds a digital camera in place.
With adequate lighting in place to minimize glare from the flash unit on the camera, text, plans and other such things can be placed on the table below. Material being photographed in this way is always square to the lens and a fixed distance away.

This makes it very easy and quick to photograph text and plans for digitization using optical character recognition (OCR) software or graphical tracing software.

Windows for HMS Bounty

Shown here are some of the windows being made for the model of HMS Bounty. As we now have two models of Bounty residing on this site, the Bounty these windows are for is the one shown in the post titled, 'Earlier pictures of HMS Bounty.'

Boston Whitehall Tender

This is the first wooden boat model that this modeller has built. The kit is by Midwest and the model is 1:14 scale or 7/8" to the foot. The history of the boat on the box top reads, "The Whitehall originated about 1820, around the New York waterfront, and takes its name from the nearby Whitehall Street. Commonly built in Boston boat shops of that era, Whitehalls were originally used by runners who would row out to incoming deep water vessels to accost the crews, pitching the local brothels, ship chandlers, and the like. Because of their grace and beauty, there has been a renewed interest in the Whitehall boats within the last fifty years."
The plans shown here, included in the kit, are drawn to the full size of the finished model and provide the builder with all the information needed to build the boat. The forms on the far right are used to make the shape of the hull while the planking is being done. Later on in the construction they are removed.
The transom and some of the interior detail near the stern can be seen here. The interior has been painted with a buff colour.
The oarlocks, visible in this picture, are metal castings included in the kit. The seats and other detail can also be seen. As well as the purpose described on the box top of the kit, these boats were also used to carry cargo to and from the ships anchored in the harbour.
The bottom of the hull is shown here with the oars and written instructions that come with the kit. The oars are made from two pieces.
This is an excellent model for a beginner or an old hand who wants to build something quickly. A model of this size and relative simplicity can be completed in a fairly short time, gives the builder practice at working with wood and plans and solidly builds the modeller's confidence in his skills.

Nonesuch Restarted

The pictures of the model of Nonsuch that were posted here earlier and the ebony parts from it are all that remain of that model. The builder decided he didn't like it, and said that he put it on the floor and crushed it under his boot.

The intent to make a black and white ship model was thwarted. When the ebony parts were put in place and sanded to their finished size, the black dust from the sanding got into the pores of the holly where it was then impossible to remove it.

There is a silver lining in this cloud. We get to see the construction method in better detail.
Here you can see the hull of the ship taking shape on the plug that has been carved to the inside dimension of the frames. The frames above the bilge line have had filler added between them, to strengthen them when it comes time to cut out the holes for the gun ports and scuppers. This filler will be covered up when the hull is planked.
In this top view you can see the plug as it has been cut into five sections. The centre part on the top is held in place with spacers on either side. The plug's extension well above the gunwale allows the plug and hull assembly to be held in a vise, which makes working on the hull much easier. The dowels extending from the sides are used to index the parts of the plug.

When the centre part is removed, the middle fore and aft parts can then move away from the bow and stern. When they are removed the two side pieces can then be removed.
This is the keel part, which is held in place temporarily with pins. In the final assembly the various parts will be glued permanently. The hull above the keel is pinned and comes apart in two halves. In the final assembly they will be glued as well.
In the final picture you can see that the tops of the frames are uneven. They will be evened out later. When the holly parts have been finished and before the next step of working with the ebony parts, the hull will get a thin coating of a clear flat varnish to seal the pores.