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Gallery Profile for bobbollin
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AVS_09-26-08_Finis_001_Medium_
Hi Dave,
Yeah, there's not a lot of ratlines to tie on this one, which was OK since it was my first real attempt at tying the little buggers. A real learning experience! Thanks for the nice comment.
I determined the size of the display case by using the conventional wisdom that there ought to be about 2" of interior clearance all around between the model and the case. So I figured 2" from the tip of the boom at the stern, 2" from the tips of the widest yard, 2" from the tip of the bowsprit and 2" from the top of the mast. I then simply found a plastics fabrication outfit in Portland (by looking in the Yellow Pages and calling around) - www.appliedplasticsmachining.com - that would make the acrylic top for me. This they did - to my specifications - out of 1/8" clear acrylic at a cost of $148. "Yikes!", was my initial reaction, but then I figured that I had spent the past 1.5 years of my life building this thing and I wanted it to last a long time, so I said, "What the hell!" and did it. I figured (rightly, I'm sure) that they would do a much better job of fabricating acrylic than I could. They formed the top by heat-bending the two long corners and then gluing on the ends. Once the case was built and in my possession, I made the base for it. This way I could accurately measure the case top, which was unchangeable, and fit my base to it, rather than vice-versa. I cut the base from 3/4" birch plywood to the inside dimensions of the top and then added oak edging all around with a 1/8" rabbet on the inner edge for the top to nest into. I finished the wood with a couple of coats of satin spar varnish. I wanted the slightly darker color that the spar varnish would provide. I made a couple of vents, that you can see as dark spot at the rear of the case, by getting some brass "finger pulls" from the local Home Depot. They are the types of pulls that are (were) used in many sliding wood interior doors like were popular back in the 60's and 70's. I ground off the bottoms of the pulls so that what was left was a hollow cylinder with a flared lip at one end. Then I blackened it with the usual blackening liquid http://www.micromark.com/SearchResult.aspx?deptIdFilter=0&searchPhrase=blacken+it so that it would be less eye-catching and epoxied those in place, one at each end. It is my understanding - and it makes sense - that models are off-gassing for years after completion and that venting of a case is necessary to keep the various gases from dissolving things like the Brittania metals and the nylon rigging, etc. I added some fine netting (the type the blushing bride wears over her face at the wedding - if I remember correctly it is called "toule" at the fabric stores) to the inside of the vents to keep spiders from crawling up inside and spinning webs, which would be very annoying! I got a couple of laser-engraved nameplates made by this guy - http://www.laserservices.net/wood.html - one with the name of the ship and one with my name (can't help but sign my work!). They aren't really cheap either, but they are really nice.
Hope this helps. |
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