Once the ribs were filled in as much as I could with scrap wood, I switched to epoxy putty, Aves Apoxie Sculpt to be precise.  I used this at the extreme bow where shaping is crucial.  Apoxie Sculpt sands a lot like resin once set up, but a little more dense.  It sands well, takes an edge like crazy (I’m convinced you could make a knife blade with this stuff and get it razor sharp), and is great for shaping and detailing.  Once that was done, it was on to the wood putty.

I took delivery of styrene over the weekend, all the way down to .005″.  Not much thicker than paper.  It’s going to be fun figuring out what type of adhesive to attach this stuff with!

One of the more interesting and enjoyable, and often frustrating, parts of trying something new is figuring out exactly how to do it.  Since I’ve got Chickasaw framed up, Dean and I have discussed it and I realized that I do not need to sheet the open structures.  The model was designed to have the voids filled and then detailed.  This is possibly a hold-over strategy from when we were going to have this cut out of styrene (neither of us can remember at this point!) and it would have worked well with that approach, but for plywood it doesn’t.  I need a layer of styrene to work with for scribing, detailing, etc.  Therefore, I’m going ahead with filling the open structures and I have ordered some .005 and .010 thick styrene from Evergreen to use for sheeting; that’s as thin as they make it.

So I need to test how to best fill the openings.  My initial thoughts were expanding foam.  A quick Google search of R/C and other modeling sites returned phrases like “exploded the rib assembly” and “still expanding after two weeks!” and talked me out of that real quick.  Below are some of my test pieces that I built from scrap to do some experiments:

I’ve all the framing done and the major sheeting applied.  I have had issues with wood warping, as annotated below, but I’ve mostly been able to work around it.  This is still going together very well, and even though this is the first wood model I’ve built… well, ever… it’s enjoyable.

The final photos show the mockup with the 3D printed turrets.  I’m still deciding if I want to use these as-is for this build, or if I want to try my hand at casting them in resin.

I’ve been sidetracked on another project (that I’ll post about next week) and Chickasaw has languished on the shelf.  I freed up some bench space, though, and here we go…

This is a 1/200 scale scratch build.  I am cheating a lot on this one, though, as the bulk of the framing was done in a 3D CAD program by Dean Horvath.  He broke the 3D model down into kit components and we had it laser cut from thin plywood for me to assemble.  The process of the 3D design can be found on the Modelwarships.com website HERE.

At 1/200 scale the hull will be right at 14″ long.  We split the hull into upper and lower parts, so that it can be built full hull or waterline.  I still haven’t decided yet if I’ll just build this as-is, or seal it up and cast resin hulls for the actual detail and finishing portion.  I’m leaning towards the latter.

For this first post, Continue Reading »

In a state-of-the-art museum and conservation lab in Newport News, Virginia, sit large tanks of fresh water that hold large rusting chunks of iron that are over 150 years old.  150 years isn’t a long time for some museum artifacts; in Manhattan one can visit the Metropolitan Museum and see Buddhist statues over 500 years old, then walk several yards down the hall and see mummies thousands of years old.  But the significance of the rusted iron from USS Monitor that rests in The Mariner’s Museum in Virginia isn’t in its age; it’s in the revolution that it brought.

The battle between USS Monitor and CSS Virginia 150 years ago today is one of the few naval battles, Continue Reading »

I’d never really thought about wedding rings much before.  But, after getting engaged, it dawned on me that I might need one.  Tradition and all that.  I’ve had friends that had custom made items that look like the One Ring from “The Lord of the Rings” books, friends who wear family heirlooms, and others who have bought antique jewelry to suit their purposes.  I came to realize fairly quickly that I wanted something historical to wear, something with some time behind it.  I’ve always been interested in what once-was, and at the time of my shopping for a ring, I was well into my research period for a Civil War novel.  I’d been spending a lot of time in Gettysburg.

148 years ago this past Saturday, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address to officially dedicate the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg, PA, four months after the famous battle of 1863.  The speech is noteworthy both for its historical significance, as well as its literary importance; very rarely have so few words said so much.

Edward Everett was the first to speak at the dedication and spoke for nearly two hours, and so, when Lincoln then stood to deliver his address, the photographers were prepared for another long presentation.  They were caught off guard when Lincoln delivered his under-three hundred work piece in mere minutes.  As such, there is only one known photo of Lincoln during the ceremony, shown below.  Lincoln is highlighted in the very center, just sitting down after speaking.

My interest in the photo and the speech, for this post, though, is not on Lincoln.  See the small tree in the background of the photo?  That tree still stands in the cemetery in Gettysburg.  In 2008 a storm brought down a large portion of it (it still survives, though, and is even showing new growth), and I was able to acquire part of it (Thanks, Bill!).  Through a friend’s recommendation, I found Minter & Richter Designs on Etsy.  A few emails were exchanged, I sent them the wood sample, and after various discussions and a few weeks time, they delivered my bronze-sheathed ring, with an inlay of wood from that tree that watched Lincoln speak 148 years.

The ring has developed a nice patina since the above photo was taken, and the bronze blends very well with the wood inlay.  I’ve since moved on to other projects and and haven’t had the time to visit Gettysburg for the past two years, but it is nice to carry with me a piece of such a momentous historical event.  Oh, and it’s nice to be married, too.

I’ve started my first scratch-build model project.  The subject is USS Carondelet, a City Class gunboat of the American Civil War.  You can see my progress so far HERE.

Apologies if the Blog and parts of the website appear wonky over the next few weeks.  I’m finally in the process of updating my site, and it is very much a work in progress. I REALLY need to find a new theme for this Blog, as the formatting has gone haywire and I can’t seem to fix it!

Oh well, the price of technology.

Besides visiting the NASM while in D.C. this past weekend, I also spent more than my fair share of time out at the Manassas National Battlefield Park.  It’s a beautiful woodland area now smack dab in the middle of urban sprawl.  I have to admit to not knowing a lot about most of the first battle of Bull Run, and I have only studied about one aspect of the Second Battle.

My area of interest is Brawner’s Farm, where the Iron Brigade first saw combat as a unit on August 28th, 1862.  The farm remained in private hands after the war and up until the late 20th century.  It’s still a relatively unknown part of the park, as the National Parks Service is still restoring the site and mentions it only in passing in the park literature.  It took me a while to find the place amidst terrific thunderstorms that moved through the Washington area on May 29th, but find it I did, at last, and during a 15 minute break in the weather I was able to walk the field completely alone.

The photos are random shots from the Henry Hill area of the First Bull Run area of the battlefield, and the shots of the white two-story house are the Brawner farmhouse.

Here’s a quick little project I completed late last week.  I needed something to put on the table at our yearly MosquitoCon model show, so that I didn’t feel like a total loser.  I put this together in about two weeks of semi-intense work (intense model work for me means that I spend more than an hour a day at it).  I’m pleased with how she came out.  Photos and build article are HERE.