The wood is basswood. I found a bag of basswood blocks in the local Michael's Craft store. The bow will get fiber glassed the same time as the hull bottom for durability. Just finished putting on the lower turret parts and test fitted the rear cannons. Also closed the rear step between he upper deck and the stern deck. The ship is nearly ready for the bottom to be put into it!
Very nice wood work. Keep up the great build. Which reminds me I have to get some photos of mine to update my build.
Someone suggested I add a short series of photos showing how I put in the bottom hull of the ship. Ok. I start by cutting a piece of 1/4" thick wood to fit in between the two ribs. I cut the piece slightly wider and angle sand the ends to fit between the ribs. A line is drawn on the piece parallel to the keel. Some minor sanding might be needed to get the joints tight before glueing in the piece. Trim the wood slightly wider than the outside edge of the hull where the piece of wood sticks out. Use a block sander to shape the wood across the ribs. Notice on the third set that a small piece of wood was added to the window area. That was done to "curve" the wood around the hull. More on that during the next few photos.
Along the middle sections of the hull, an additional side piece of 1/4" thick balsa is added to "curve" the wood around the hull bottom up to the bottom of the penetratable window. Same technique as the bottom pieces; cut a piece of wood to fit between the ribs, trim the end to butt up against the bottom sheeting, then glue into place. I tend to leave the side pieces a little longer than necessary so I can go back later and trim the penetrable windows even across the ship. Starting to rough shape the hull with 60 grit sandpaper. Sand across the two ribs of each section. By the way, this step makes LOTS of balsa dust! All sanded to shape! This was as far it got before I ran out of glue. Heh. Notice the little cut like gaps in in the curved area of the hull. That is from not getting a perfect fit between the bottom and side pieces of wood. Not a problem though! I'll fill in with wood filler and sand to shape. The hull is getting a layer of fiberglass later which will prevent any leaks. The side is marked and trimmed 1" below the estimated waterline. It is hard to tell where the waterline will end up when building a prototype model like this. After the ship is sheeted, loaded up with weight, and floated to find the actual waterline, I'll go back and add or remove wood to the side pieces to get the correct penetratable window size. More pictures will be coming in the next week after the hull bottom is finished and glassed.
Richelieu, how does the interior finish come out when you use this method? I've always planked my hulls in the past, but I may try this method if the interior looks just as good. Also, about how thick (on average) are the balsa blocks once you're done sanding?
The interior looks great in my opinion! Got to love the look of a wooden floor! Of course, I appreciate and admire a well planked ship hull too. I just don't have the patience to put that many planks together. At it's thickest in the center next to the water channel, the wood is 1/4" thick. Out near the bottom curve of the hull, the wood thins out some. In some places, like the joints between the bottom and side pieces, the wood is very thin indeed. I don't worry about it. The hull bottom is going to get glassed for strength. Additionally, the inside of the hull is going to get a layer of self leveling concrete sealer for weight and to help form the water channel (same thing that the Bearn got). Yup, I'm covering up that gorgeous wooden floor with gray goop! Heh. But, if someone wanted the wooden construction to be seen and admired, a clear epoxy or polyurethane will work just as well. Hmm ... now you have me thinking of using a clear epoxy instead of the gray sealer stuff. The Richelieu got a clear coating on the hull floor. I'll post pictures of the interior late tonight. Also, the Bearn build thread has pictures of the hull inside before and after using the self leveling sealer.
Inside look at the sheeted hull. The ribs and water channel sides are taller than the sheeting itself. Everything outside the water channel will get filled with either PL Self Leveling sealer or a clear epoxy polyurathane filler. The outer prop shafts are installed in scale locations. They are non-powered. The shaft struts and brass tubing for the scale outer shaft tube will be added after fiberglassing the hull bottom. The fiberglass job is on hold until the weather warms to a forcasted high 60s this coming Sunday. I couldn't resist putting the props on just to see how it looked!
Mike Another absolutely fantastic build thread. And another interesting ship too. I can't wait to see this nifty little ship on the water. Mikey
The little Verite got fiberglassed tonight! There was a pause in building due to loosing my can of figerglass hardener during the last move. It took a few days to get a new can. Fiberglassing is easy! This ship used 1 oz cloth and less than 2 oz of resin. It only took 30 minutes from the time I started mixing the resin to taking these pictures. I love how the hull looks during this step. The fiberglass resin really brings out the wood. It will be cured enough by tomorrow to trim the extra fiberglass off. After that, the entire hull will get a waterproof treatment before putting finishing off the waterchanneling.
Hi Mike, It looks like you had more success with your 1 oz cloth than I had with 2 oz. The stuff wouldn't drape correctly and I wound up having to sand off a lot of glass at the bow and stern. Will you end up with just one layer of 1 oz cloth? I have some 3/4 oz fabric left over from another project. Maybe I'll try recoating the ends with that. Ron
1 layer is enough. The Richelieu was glassed with the same weight and it's still holding up exceptionally well. A thin cloth is a must to get it to drape around those complex hull curves. There is two key points to a good fiberglass job. First, the resin must saturate the cloth. I do not try to spread out the resin. I practically slab the resin on to make sure the cloth is saturated with the stuff. Second, I use an old plastic card (like a credit card) to squeegee the excess resin off and press the cloth against the wood. It saves weight, makes sure the cloth is sticking to the wood, and makes it easier to finish paint the hull
Looks really nice, I hope some day I can make wood hulls that look that nice. You may want to blur out your VISA btw.
Ack! A mistake! Though it isn't a mistake that is going to cost anything other than a sense of shame for not predicting it or marring the nice wooden floor of the Verite. Seeing I had an excess of cheap Elmer's resin available, I decided to waterproof the ship with it. It worked well enough. It worked so well, I decided to use even more of the resin to fill in the hull bottom instead of using a polyurethane filler. So I mixed up a few batches and poured it in place. Now, those that have used resin before already know what is going to happen. Large quantities of mixed resin tends to get hot. Very hot. Hot enough to burn. And that is exactly what happened. The picture below shows the darkened wood where the epoxy actually burned it. Worse part of it is, I knew what happens when you mix large batches of resin. I just forgot about it. So, although it did not hurt the ship, it did marr the pretty wood build I was hoping to show off. The stern cannons are test fitted. The barrels are actually at scale width apart. They are also looonng. I can get away with these barrels in MWC, but going to have to check Treaty rules to see if they are too long. The outboard shafts get dressed up and braced. The cotter pins worked very well, are relatively scale, and exceptionally sturdy. So far, everything about the prop shafts, rudder, and placement are nearly exact scale. Even the props are within 3/16" dia of scale size!
oh no! I completely forgot about that. I made that mistake once, in 2004. Fortunately the wood didn't darken, but the epoxy did crack from the heat. Since then I've always done it in two or more steps. Since I started using water channels, it takes three steps: one base layer, about 3/16" to 1/4" thick, one angled layer on the port side, and one angled layer on the starboard side. Look on the bright side: now that you've made your mistake, you don't have to make any more to prove you're human
Very nice, Mike. I see that you contoured the deck and sub-deck to match the shape of the ribs. In earlier photos, I think you also contoured some of the ribs to match the shape of the outer hull. How did you manage this contouring without losing some of the rib's or deck's profile?
Sharp eye. The subdeck/deck was cut to plan size which left it too narrow to contour to the ribs. To fix that, 1/16" strips of wood was added to the subdeck/deck sides and stern between the ribs, then sanded to contour to the ribs. After the sanding, the wood strips was soaked with thin CA for hardening. If I were to build this ship again, I would make the subdeck/deck an 1/8" wider and sand it to shape. For the ribs, I used a sanding block across multiple ribs to sand an angle in each to match the hull curve. The stern was easy. The bow area was a little tougher because of the complex curves that area has. In the bow, I used a round sanding drum and hand sanded the ribs to shape. It didn't take much to get the angles and one edge of the rib stayed at the original rib profile.
More progress today. I'm hoping to get a lot done over the three day holiday this weekend. Internal armor and front cannon are installed. The bottom of the deck got routed out and varnished in an attempt to save just a little bit more weight from the top of the ship. It also gave an extra 1/8" internal height needed to clear the pump motor wires on top of the pump motor. The plan is to have the ship ready for a sea trial by Monday ... even if the "sea" is our bathtub. It's cold outside!
