Building a 1/700 Scale USS John F. Kennedy CV 67 Part 3

The model of the 1/700 Scale USS John F. Kennedy is now complete. Here are some photographs of the completed model.

Ed Chan

Building a 1/700 Scale USS John F. Kennedy CV 67 Part 2

Ed Chan

December 2013 Meeting

The December 2013 Meeting will be Next Tuesday, December 3, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. at the Nepean Museum, 16 Rowley Avenue.

Guy & Dave will be presenting on Plans and Hull construction.

Bring out any on-going projects, or anything else you have of interest for show-and-tell.

Building a 1/700 Scale USS John F. Kennedy CV 67 Part 1

Ed Chan

Mitchell Abraisives Products Useful for Ship Modelling

While looking through a recent copy of the Stewart MacDonald tool catalogue I noticed an item that would be useful for rigging, among other things. The item is abrasive round cord. For guitar makers this is useful for holes and slots for guitar strings. For ship modellers it would be useful for smoothing the inside of holes for rigging, as well as pulleys and so on.

These cords are available in a variety of sizes. You can get them from Stewart MacDonald and from amazon.com. There may be other sources.

Mitchell Abrasives also makes flat abrasive tape, which should also prove useful for ship modelling.

Their product line is very specialized but you may like to check out the company's web site to see what else they have available.
Mitchell Abrasives

Bill Williams

2013 October Meeting

The October meeting will be on Tuesday, October 1, 2013, 7:00 p.m. at the Nepean Museum, 16 Rowley Ave.

There will be a discussion on how to interpret and digitize ships' plans.

As always, members are encouraged to bring out their show and tell items, including their work in progress, finished models, favourite books or whatever else they have of interest.

Bill Williams for Jim Russell

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.