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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic751)
The new gratings do not sit flat on the decks because the decks are arched. To fix that, the underside of the grating ends - fore and aft - must to be sanded. I rolled a piece of sandpaper around a small dowl to form a sanding tool.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic752)
Hand sanding the centre area of the bottom of each grating - fore and aft. Very little sanding is required so check the fit often so you don't sand too much material off.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic753)
The capstan was made using some of the kit parts. The slotted disk for the bars was used as supplied in the kit - but the two large upper plywood circles for the upper and lower head disk were replaced with thinner plywood ones made to the same size. One of the kit's head disks was hand sanded on a circular taper to form the cap (top of the capstan). The other supplied head disk was notched to form pawl slots and then placed between two more thin plywood circles to form a new capstan base. The spindle was made from a dowel sanded to form an octagon. The whelps were used from the kit but they were shortened to absorb the additional height of the new pawl base. An additional thin rectangular plywood piece was made to hold the rounded ends of the pawls. Unfortunately, the pictures taken during this capstan build were lost during an accident with the camera. Here, the almost finished capstan can be seen.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic754)
To finish-off the capstan, two small brass rings were hand made to fit around the upper and lower head disks. They were "blackened" using a 50/50 mix of "Blacken-it" and water. The rings were then attached to the capstan using extra thick cyanoacrylate glue.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic755)
Here, the completed capstan is glued to the main deck grating.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic756)
To make the quarterdeck stairway, I cut tongue depressors to form the sides and used very thin hobby plywood for the runners. Here, I am using tape to hold the two raw ladder sides to the plywood blank in order to measure how wide to cut the steps - so they will just fit inside the deck frame.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic757)
The plywood was then cut to width and then to depth to form the individual steps.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic758)
All the raw pieces ready to go.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic759)
A jig was built to make the ladder - one-step-at-a-time. First a sraight strip of wood was glued to the edge of a paint stir stick to form a sholder.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic760)
Next, the end of a paint stir stick was sanded to the angle of the planned ladder steps. The end was cut off and spot glued to a scrap stick for ease of handling and sanded to size.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic761)
The small piece of paint stir stick was separated from the handling stick and glued to the ladder jig base leaving a gap for the ladder side between it and the sholder.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic762)
Another longer piece of stir stick was then sanded with the same angle on its end. It was made just a bit narrower than the ladder steps.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic763)
The first step is glued to the two ladder sides and held in place between the small fixed stir stick block and the long stir stick piece being held in place by hand.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic764)
A view after several steps are glued in place.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic765)
I use long tweezers to add each new glued step to the jig.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic766)
The underside of the finished ladder with pegs added to the bottom for attaching to the ship.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic767)
The front view of the ladder. The steps are cut deep enough to stand "proud" of the ladder sides in the front and flush in the back.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic768)
The new quarterdeck stairway dry fitted in place.
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Mar 13, 2009
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Pic769)
Here the ladder has been painted to look aged.
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May 29, 2009
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Pic770)
The double staircase on the main deck was built from two identical single stairs - like the one on the quarterdeck. When the two stairs are joined together, the centre support is double the thickness of the two outside supports. To fix this, all measurements were made with the assumption that the two center supports would be sanded down to half their thickness before joining with glue - as shown here.
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May 29, 2009
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Pic771)
Here, the two stairs are glued together with the thinner sides in the centre.
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May 29, 2009
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Pic772)
A hole was hand drilled to accept a wooden peg which was attached to the bottom of the stairs.
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May 29, 2009
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Pic773)
Dry fitting the double stairs.
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May 29, 2009
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Pic774)
The double stairs were then painted with two shades of brown to age them. Here, the installation peg can be seen on the bottom of stairs.
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May 29, 2009
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Pic775)
A top view of the stairs.
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