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The February meeting was host by Tijs at his home in St. Catharines. The theme of the meeting was "my favourite tools, gadgets, jigs or fixtures". and all in attendance had brought in an item.
Hugh showed us his fixture used to build patterns for the various Holland Boats, the first submarines ever built. The patterns were made of solid styrene disks, rotated and shaped in situ. The pattern brought into the meeting was of the Holland III at a scale of 1:72. Originally Mr. Holland was commissioned by the US Navy to design the boat but they determined it to be not practical, so the project was then funded by the Fenian Brothers for the purpose of sinking Royal Navy Ships. The first, the Fenian Ram, was launched in 1881. Holland I – A prototype (small unarmed submersible) on display at the Paterson Museum in Paterson, NJ, USA. Holland II (named Fenian Ram) – Built for Irish revolutionaries; now on display at the Paterson Museum in Paterson, NJ, USA. Holland III – Scaled down version of Fenian Ram used for navigation tests. Holland IV (known as the Zalinski Boat) – experimental submarine financed by US Army Lieutenant Edmund Zalinski. Holland V (named Plunger) – Prototype used to demonstrate potential of submarines for naval warfare. She was launched in 1897, used as an experimental submarine by the US Navy and then returned to the Holland Company in 1903 to be scrapped in 1917. The model Hugh showed us was of the 3rd boat (Holland III). John brought in his PRB (Patrol Boat River from the Vietnam War era) kit to show us his progress. He had just finished the base coat of paint. He described how this would look realistically battered and worn when the painting process is completed. Lawry brought in photos of his HMS Victory kit build. The actual build is too large for him to transport. He also had some photos of his HMS Unicorn build to share (see above) He also brought in a model of his present modelling passion, a scratch build locomotive at "O" scale (7mm = 1 foot) made from nickel, silver and brass. He estimates it took 80 hours including painting. One reason he likes building these is that he gets quicker results scratch building locomotives. Ships take forever! Yes the locomotive was off topic as it is not very nautical... but everyone had their nose up to it! Phil brought in his home built band saw fence. It is a simple construct of right angle pieces of wood with a very strong magnet. This magnet can be powered OFF to adjust the position easily and then powered ON with the simple turn of a switch to lock it securely in place. He finds this simple device a valuable addition to his shop. He also described the problem he has cleaning saw dust and scrapings out of the hold of his ship model and so had devised a method of inserting a small round tube/hose into a vacuum crevice tool to reach in between the deck beams. Lately he has been laying wax paper down inside the hull to catch the debris that falls inside. He folds the paper accordion style and slips it in between the beam into the hold and unfolds it with tweezers. Phil also brought in his home made screw clamp device that he uses as a vise to hold items on his drill press. Quite a simple and very useful device with two hard wood blocks, carriage bolts, flat washers and wing nuts. The heads of the carriage bolts seemed to be epoxied to the blocks to keep them from pulling out.
Alan also brought in his HMS Bellerophon build to show the progress making and installing the aft cant frames... two fell off in transport! These will all be chocked at the heads (top) of the frames and treenailed (pinned) at the foot of the lowest futtock to the deadwood within the next week. This will stiffen them considerably for fairing (sanding). He will then start on the forward cant frames. That ends another successful monthly meeting. Hope to see both old and some new faces in March!
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At our 13 January meeting Ray announced that Canada's Largest Shipwreck Show would be held on Saturday, 13 April 2019 from 9AM to 5PM at Centennial Secondary School, 240 Thorold Road, Welland, Ontario, Canada. Lunch is included in the cost of admission.
Tickets are $CDN49 ($USD43) from now to the 8th of March and $54 ($USD48) after March 8th. Speakers and Presentations include but are not limited to: Jonathan Moore - The White North Has Thy Bones: The Wrecks of HMS Erebus and Terror Scarlett Janusas - The AVRO Arrow Model Search and Recovery in Lake Ontario Mike and Georgann Wachter - Romancing the Lake: 40 yrs of Lake Erie Shipwreck Discovery and Exploration To learn more go to: http://niagaradivers.com/shipwrecks/sw2019/sw2019index.html To buy tickets go to: http://niagaradivers.com/shipwrecks/sw2019/reg2019.html This months meeting was held at Lee Valley Tools in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. The theme of the meeting was "Blackening Metals" and the presentation was made by Ray. Ray discussed a few different product, such as BLACKEN IT and JAX BLACK. These two liquid products will blacken yellow metals (brass, bronze, and copper). Ray usually dilutes them 50% in water. He says using them at 100% concentration can result in a sooty chemical reaction that will wipe off. First the item(s) must be clean, meaning no grease, grime or finger oil caused by handling. He does this by dropping them in a container of Rubbing Alcohol and swishing them about to assure a good wash. They are removed with tweezers and drop onto a clean paper towel and dried by folding the paper over top of them and patting down. DO NOT touch them with your fingers or they will be contaminated The items are then dropped into a 50% concentration (cut with water) of blackening agent. The container is swished about to assure the underside of the items float about and get completely surrounded by the mixture (if sitting stationary on the floor of the container the underside of the items will not blacken properly). Once seen to be dark they are removed with tweezers and dropped into clean water to stop the chemical oxidation reaction. They are then dropped in a second container of clean water and swished about for a final rinse. They are picked out with tweezers and drop onto a clean paper towel and dried by folding the paper over top of them and patting down. Ray explained that silver solder will blacken but regular soft solder will not. If you've made a mistake and used the wrong solder it can be blackened with a permanent black coloured marker. DO NOT try to blacken your brass or copper with a marker because it will be too shiny or glossy and will not look natural. Ray also showed us a product called JAX GREEN PATINA to give the copper or brass that aged look. Below are the results of blackening and the green patina. The meeting was kicked off by Tijs giving away slats of Pecan wood from his fruit tree for members to use up on a project in their shops. It is a very dense and hard wood but he says it steams up and bends very well! Alan brought in his completed scratch build of a 9 Pound Naval Cannon. The final barrel used was 3D printed by the Welland Library in two halves that were epoxied together. Since then Alan has found a printer that has the capability to do the barrel in one piece and this item is shown in the picture outside of the case. John explained to Alan how it might be painted to added more realism to it. John brought in his scratch build 10 inch and 13 inch mortars to show his progress since our last meeting. He brought in samples of tubing and explained again how he purchased the tubing of various sizes that slid inside each other snugly to create the basic shape. The insignia on the 13 inch mortar was created with Weldbond Adhesive applied in droplets with a tooth pick to build up the desired shape. He had about 5 minutes working time before what he was working with started to harden. You can see this image in the lower mortar in the photo below. John recommends you play with it a bit to get a feel for the setup time and workability. It works well on porous material (wood) but will also work on metal. It goes on like white glue but dries transparent. John will be giving a demonstration at our meeting on 14 April 2019 Bob passed around a copy of the book "A Young Sea Officer's Sheet Anchor" that he picked up out east in Halifax. It was chock full of rope work, rigging and ship handling diagrams. David explained that the book is printed/sold by Lee Valley Tools. Ray showed members his progress on a Half Hull build of a C&C 35X for a client. He made station profiles from the body plan, using styrene sheet for durability. The hull is built up from 3/16" thick basswood layers called "lifts". Each lift is the thickness to the next waterline shape on the build drawing. The lifts are all marked on the centerline edge with stations and dead flat. The lifts will be drilled and pinned with dowels in two locations to assure proper registration after shaping. They will be hand carved and sanded to shape to match the station profiles. This month's meeting was hosted by Alan at his home in Welland. The theme of the meeting was Tracing Ship's Lines in CAD. He presented a demonstration using the free software DraftSight. Rather than tracing ships plans he traced a Naval Anchor from a JPEG of scaled plans and then explained how to print to scale. The first rule is to always draw full size and use a scale of print paper to your build scale. As there was considerable detail a downloadable PDF of his presentation is available here...
Alan also demonstrated using a limited free PDF to AutoCAD Drawing conversion software to create a drawing file. He showed how it didn't create a clean drawing from photos of old plans but explained how it worked well with PDFs of clean CAD Plans. If you should happen to aquire CAD drawings as a PDF, you could easily convert them into a DWG file you could work on to add to or modify. A downloadable PDF of this presentation is available here...
Alan also presented the 3D cannon and cannon balls that are to mount on his scratch built carriage. The items were printed FREE at the local library in PLA plastic. The two piece horizontally split halves of the cannon were not yet cleaned up or solvent welded together. They have a slight warp to them and the printed layers are quite distinguishable, looking like wood grain when viewing too closely. He will be meeting with the library to discuss printing again, but vertically this time, to hopefully eliminate warpage and reduce the visability of the layers. David brought in his copy of the NMM build plans for HMS Canada, a 74 gun 3rd Rate ship of the line (1761). He had created plans of 14 station bulwark outlines onto paper for a client to build from. A photo of these can be seen below... Ray brought in DVD copies of photos he acquired of the Cutty Sark, HMS Victory and HMS Warrior that he gave out to all the attendees. Thank you Ray! The meeting ended with a tour of Alan's workshop and an oppourtunity for people to see his extremely slow progress of his 1:64 scale build of HMS Bellerophon. Two steps forward and one step back, eh? This month we had a joint meeting with the Sir Isaac Brock Chapter of the International Plastic Modellers Society (St. Catharines and Niagara).
John brought in the two Mortar Gun Barrels he is presently working on for his 1:64 scale scratch build of HM Bomb Vessel Granado (1742). One is the 13" calibre forward gun and the other is the 10" calibre aft gun. This ship had only two masts. The fore mast does not exist on this ship as it interfered with the mortar gun. John says that the lack of a foremast and sails made her difficult to handle. John has built up the shape of the mortar barrels with various diameter tubing pieces slipped over each other and CA (cyanoacrylate) glued together. Presently the pieces are primer painted and still affixed to handling sticks stuck into the muzzles. He intends to complete the detail adornments, such as the King's crest, by applying layers of weld bond with a paint brush. He will complete the shaping of the crest by carving away any waste to reveal the details.
The base frame was routered in poplar and fitted with a sliding information tray. Both information plates are laser engraved aluminium. The clear acrylic case was made by a local company. It is secured to the base by two ornamental pins made from halves of a cupboard hinge pin. This holds the cover to the base if the display should be lifted incorrectly (by the case). The 9 pound cannon is presently a mockup 2D print but the final version will be 3D printed at a local library. Alan has already created the 3D model and requiste .stl file that the printing machine will work from. He hopes to have this for the next meeting in December.
This month's meeting was hosted by Ray at his home in Oakville. The theme was Making Display Cases. Ray showed us various display cases he had made, describing the multi-piece base construction, slide out information cards, and cutting / adhering / fitting the acrylic covers. Ray even showed how to install pins through the acrylic and into the base so if people attempt to move the display, the cover doesn't pop off and damage the model. As this topic was so detailed a downloadable PDF is provided below.... >
The great thing about alternating meetings at members homes is that we get to see where they do their builds. Ray took us down to his basement.... and tucked away in a corner was where the magic happens! On his work bench we saw that he is presently working on a refit of a 40 year old ship model. The running rigging was damaged and needs to be replaced. He then showed us the progress on his scratch build of HMS Ontario and the J-class yacht Shamrock. Upstairs in a back bay window was his model of the gaff rigged schooner Anitra. Ray showed us his model of the Shikara completed with a floral display. In the hallway is a beautiful model of the S.S. Glenageary passing through the Grand Canal Locks of Ringsend, Dublin, Ireland. One of the final displays was a built-in shelf unit with earlier models he had made... on the bottom shelf is HMS Victory. The meeting was held at Lee Valley Tools in Niagara Falls, Ontario. The Theme of the meeting was Adhesives (as they relate to model building) and was prepared and presented by Ron. Ron discussed all types of adhesives in some detail and recommended the website www.thistothat.com to discover what type adhesive you might consider for your project. A downloadable PDF of Ron's presentation is available HERE...
Brandon brought in his 1:48 Admiralty scale scratch build model of HMS Euryalus. She was a 36 gun frigate launched in 1803. At the Battle of Trafalgar she was captained by Henry Blackwood, and became Collingwood's flagship after the death of Nelson. She was broken up in Gibraltar in 1860. Brandon has completed the keel and stem post assembly, installed transom pieces and the first aft cant frame. Forward of midships he has dry fitted a few frame assemblies, and towards the stem or bow he has begun the installation of the bow cant frames. Very impressive work for his first major build and with only hand tools at his disposal! Tijs discussed his next build, the Algonquin Alligator amphibious logging paddle wheel boat as depicted in the image above. Pat discussed his 1:96 scale plastic model build of the battleship USS North Carolina and his plans to build the US Brig Niagara from the war of 1812. David brought in his half hull model of the unique cruising catboat Nonsuch 30 (30 feet) as originally built by George Hinterhoeller in 1978 for Canadian yachtsman Gordon Fisher and his yacht designer Mark Ellis. Alan had started his figurehead carving of his interpretation of the first figurehead installed on the first HMS Bellerophon (74 gun 3rd Rate Man of War) as per recorded verbal descriptions. The original figurehead was lost due to a collision at sea in rough weather. It was replaced with a simpler less costly carving. Above the rough carving image to the left is the plasticine maquette created by Alan for reference. This carving (below the maquette) is displayed on a portion of the bow as part of the carving. It is 3X larger than the final version to be made for his scratch build model. Three members (Ray, David and Alan) travelled to Fairport, NY, USA for a presentation by Carlos Montalvo of Portugal on Museum Standard Requirements for Ship Models. It was based on his build of the Sultanah (Al-Sultanah) for the National Museum of Oman. The seminar was hosted by the Model Shipwright Guild of NY. Carlos discussed his method of research and construction, making a half model, slicing it with a band saw to trace the profile, building, planking and copper sheathing the hull. He spoke briefly about making ropes and rigging. There were many questions and detailed answers. Following a most interesting and somewhat passionate presentation by Carlos.... Ray followed this with a presentation of how he transferred the profile of his half modelled hull of HMS Ontario to cardboard stock using a unique 2D mechanism he had built. This allowed him to make frames for his model that followed the established contour of his half model. At this point Ray introduced his friend Jim Kennard who had (along with his search partner Dan Scoville) after many years searching every inch of Lake Ontario, discovered the resting place of the HMS Ontario in 2008. She was a 22 gun, 80 foot, Brig-Snow rigged warship from 1780. She had gone down in a very bad storm and had been lost for 230 years. Jim gave a very interesting presentation of his discovery. More can be read at: http://www.shipwreckworld.com/articles/shipwreck-explorers-discover-1780-british-warship-in-lake-ontario This was followed by Ray presenting his model of HMS Ontario. Ray's scratch build needed some re-work after the discovery of the shipwreck had shown the builders had not followed the plans! He is presently working on the rigging and hopes to finish it soon. There were a number of other models brought by attendees on display . Photos follow.... Our June Meeting was held at Ron's home in Niagara Falls. The theme was to be on Adhesives as used in ship model building but the content has expanded and Ron requires more time to prepare so the presentation/demo will be in September. Phil brought in his ongoing build of the Spanish Whaling Galleon San Juan (1565). He had introduced it to us via a photo, at our last meeting in May. She had sunk off the coast of Labrador and there had been an extensive archaeological study conducted on the wreckage from which Phil has been doing his research. He had planned a trip to Red Bay, Labrador to visit the site this summer but the trip has had to be postponed. Phil showed us how he uses his build templates affixed to foam core to check his build. Following our May meeting where our visitors from Rochester, New York, mentioned a PBR (Patrol Boat River from the Vietnam War era), John was inspired to purchase a plastic model which he intends to unleash his expert painting and weathering talents on! Ray brought his Shamrock V back to show the progress with laying the deck planks. He pointed out that at a scale of 1 inch = 6 Feet his deck planks are less than 1/8" wide and the odd thing is they do not run straight from stem to stern as might be expected, but follow the hull profile and nib into a central king plank. He has some scrapping to do to finish the topside of the decking. His scrapers are made from old hacksaw blades. He heats them red hot to temper (soften) them, allows them to air cool and then files them to shape leaving a small burr on one side to do the actual scraping. Our meeting was held in the Seminar Room at Lee Valley Tools in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. We were visited by members of the Model Shipwright Guild of WNY (Rochester New York, USA). Michael, Bill, Lacy and Joe. Joe made a short presentation to introduce their club. He also invited us to come out to their free seminar on Museum Standards for Model Ships. Those interested need to register in advance on their club website (https://www.modelshipwrightguildwny.org/events). It is an all day event being held on Saturday, 28 July 2018. The theme of the meeting was Part 2 - Weathering (Painting) by John. He again discussed how oils will not attack acrylics. He brought in his plastic WWI Tank Model to show how weathering can improve the display of a model, showing scrapes, rust, mud, etc. Plastics need a rinse with light dish washing detergent to remove any residual production casting oils or grime from handling prior to painting. The clean model should be allowed to air dry before a primer coat is applied. The "Dull" coat requires 24 hours to cure.
David brought in the "proofs" of the framing pattern drawings he made for his new book of the Hayling Hoy (1759-60) model he made that will be going to print soon. Phil discussed the research he was well into of the Spanish Whaling Galleon San Juan (1565) that sank off Red Bay, Labrador, Canada with the hold filled with barrels of whale oil. He has been researching this ship for two years now in preparation of his model build. Tijs brought in his completed Chris Craft Barrel Back R/C model he plans to have out on the lake at the cottage this summer. Tijs also brought in his English Pinnace model for members to view. He had recently began working on it and it is well underway. Ray has been working on his model of the Shamrock V originally designed/built by Thomas Lipton to race in the American Cup (1930). The model's hull was made in lifts (layers) with Swiss Pear below (darker wood) and Oak above. |
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