Posted Mon, 02/21/2011 - 20:33 by Brian
Yesterday I finished painting Nassau so when I got back from a business trip tonight I quickly tossed the gun tray in to see how overweight the little ship was. I fully expected that the ship would already settle at or a little below the scale waterline - at least in the stern. As you can see in the picture I was very wrong! The ship still has several pounds of buoyancy before reaching the scale waterline. YAY!
Posted Sun, 02/20/2011 - 11:22 by Brian
This weekend I silkspanned and painted Nassau's hull. Sorry, but I am not going to take step by step pictures for these activities. Silkspaning is fast, wet work that I didn't want a camera around... and if you don't understand how to paint then you should probably not be building a ship! 
However, I did include a few tips (including low odor dope replacement) and some pictures of the hull after it is finished.
Posted Sun, 02/20/2011 - 10:49 by Brian
The ships I had owned or worked on previously were all treaty-era or WWII battleships which lacked casemates or other hull crenelations. Unfortunately they are a prominent feature on my 1908 battleship Nassau. However, I wanted them to register dents and seamlessly blend with the deck. So I need to skin them. The good news is that our rules don't require they be penetrable.The bad news is that their curves are too severe to simple bend if 1/32" balsa around them. This article shows how I solved the problem.
Posted Sun, 02/13/2011 - 12:09 by Brian
After covering the windows I cut in the fiberglass hull with a balsa skin the Admiral and chief financier of the build (my wife) reported that the hard basswood edging was too harsh looking. So in this post I will show how I blended the balsa siding in with the lines of the ship. In my case we decided that the bottom edge looked fine. So all I needed to do was blend the edges at the bow and stern. This step is optional but makes for a cleaner looking ship.
Posted Sat, 02/05/2011 - 19:02 by Brian
In this post I will briefly describe how to skin over a fiberglass hull with balsa. This process is very straightforward. It really could be summarized in one sentence: glue pieces of balsa to your hull which are small enough to bend and that will cover the windows you cut in the hull previously.
This is part of my series of posts on building SMS Nassau. However, this post really applies to any warship.
Posted Tue, 02/01/2011 - 19:23 by Brian
In keeping with the spirit of last weekend's business meeting I am going to start posting my progress again (and pestering others who do not!). I resumed work on Nassau last week after several months of being on the road. I use the term 'resumed' working somewhat loosely... I resumed constantly re-asking myself the same question again and again.
The question is basically this: Should I do the extra work to hide the edge of the balsa skinning and if so how should I.
Posted Wed, 08/04/2010 - 15:05 by Brian
Kyle and I have been going gangbusters on Nassau... but we have not been stopping to take pictures and post articles. I thought I would start correcting that a bit today and show some of our progress. The first part of the week we made removable cross braces for the hull - which also act as a cradle for the CO2 bottle. We also roughed out the two piece deck.
Posted Mon, 07/19/2010 - 17:56 by Charles
So, with the hull repaired, I am ready to declare Missouri refitted and ready for Sea Trials.
Gunnery trials is another story... when I get the CO2 parts (this weekend maybe?) I should be able to get the guns working quickly (hopefully). Meanwhile, some pictures of the refitted hull.
Posted Sun, 07/11/2010 - 19:03 by Charles
SMS Seydlitz has been sitting idle for a while, but in the last few weeks I have resumed the process of skinning her. The forward port-side is essentially done, with the aft remaining to be done, and the whole starboard side. Low-hanging fruit is the forward sections, so I skinned the forward starboard side late last week (while waiting for the batteries to charge on Missouri for propulsion testing) which was easy to do, as it is a virtually flat segment (no need to shape the balsa to the hull contour prior to gluing).
Posted Sun, 07/11/2010 - 18:26 by Charles
I finally was able to get the prop-shafts and new motors working properly, so it was time to move on to the patching of the hull.
I started by replacing a whole window panel which had been swiss-cheesed in the previous season
I then performed several patches according to the directions Brian listed here: http://mabg.org/node/127