Tools so far

September 5, 2009 by mornelouw

Handheld router
Soldering iron
Marking Gauge
Vernier Caliper
Coping saw
T-ruler
Mini Side cutter
Files
Bench-vice with ball head and drill clamp

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Dividing image into equal sizes in photoshop

September 5, 2009 by mornelouw

Adding a Measurements Layer Hull Profile

Add a new transparent layer to you photoshop file

Add the two extremity guides to get the widest ranges of the hulls width

Now we need to add guides exactly between the current guides to divide each space in half.
Well use a photoshop trick!

Make sure snap to guides are on/checked (View->Snap to->Guides)

Select the rectangular selection tool, and make sure it is set to New Selection (see image
below)
 From HMS Vicory

Drag a rectangular selection from the one extremity guide to the other the width of the
selection doesnt matter as we are only interested in the distance between the two guides.

From HMS Vicory

While the selection stays selected (marching ants are visible to indicate the selection), start
adding a new guide, dragging it over the selection, when you estimate that you are near the
mid-point of the selection start dragging slower and carefully watch as the guide you are
adding will at some point snap to the mid-point when you get within its snap range.
Now you know the new guide is exactly centred between the two extremity guides.

You can repeat this process and divide the sections in half again and again until you have
enough guides that divide the image into the exact same sized sections

Posted in Preparations | Tagged centering, photoshop, photoshop guides | Leave a Comment

A visual cross-reference
August 16, 2009 by mornelouw

In his book (The 100-gun ship Victory) John Mckay provided these amazing set of cross
section drawings that show valuable detail of everything that happens at that slice of the ship.

He also provided detailed drawing from the side and top showing clearly the framing of the
Victory.

I decided the best place to begin work on the ship would be from the Keel up, working on the
framing until I reached the height of the Orlop deck. I will the do as much work as possible to
the details in side the Hold before I add the deck. The switch back to the framing and repeat
the process with the next deck and so on until the entire Hull is completed.

A lot of preparation will be required, because not all the frames are perpendicular to the Keel,
as the Hull Construction Drawing show. Not every Frame has a matching drawing either, only
every 4th frame (approx) has a detailed cross section plan/drawing.

So it quickly became clear that I will need to cross reference the section drawings with the
Hull Construction (Framing) drawings. This would mean plenty of paging back and forth
through the book, which will soon wear this wonderful book out and that would just not do.

This is where my scanner and photoshops layer come in.

I scanned the framing drawings, sized them and stitched the two half together so I have my
full Framing plans on scale 1:1 to my model in photoshop. (that was a 620MB file)

Now all that needed to be done was highlight the frames that are referenced in the cross
section drawings.

See image below

 From HMS Vicory

The cool thing is that because the highlighted parts are in a separate layer, I can show and
hide the layer as I please, never having to touch the actual drawings.

I did this with the pencil tool of photoshop. You click on the corner of a frame then hold
down the SHIFT key while you click a bit further down on the edge of a frame. Photoshop
will then draw a 100% straight line between the tow spots that you clicked.

When you get to the curved parts your clicks will need to be closer together.

Make sure you leave no gaps anywhere on the lines of the frame, because you want to use the
bucket-fill tool to fill the frames with a pattern to complete the highlighted effect.

Adding the writing is very basic, you obviously use the text tool, but you will soon notice that
when you add text to an image, photoshop add a new layer to your file. A Text layer is a
special layer for text, which means you can come back at any time to change the text if you
need to.

We dont want to crowd our photoshop layer section with so many text layers, so we have two
options. Add all the text to a layer group, so you can change it again at a later stage, you
Merge them with the layer that has you highlighted frames on.

I decided to merge my text layers for three reasons:

1. Less layers to manage

2. The text used to identify the highlighted frames will never change.
 3. If it all is on 1 layer, you can view or hide all of this in one click because its all on 1
layer.

Before you can merge text with another layer, you first need to Rasterize the text layer.

Right-click on the text layer, in your layers section and click Rasterize. Now the text is
not text anymore, so you wont be able to change it. (unless you delete it and add new
text)
Make sure your text is directly above your highlights layer before you merge. Drag it
there if you need to.
Right click the text layer and select the Merge Down option.
Do this every time you add the text for the highlights, then you will keep your layers
section tidy.

You end up with the image below.

From HMS Vicory

Posted in Preparations | Tagged HMS Victory, John Mckay, photoshop, Ship Modelling |
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Scanning and Enhancing

August 12, 2009 by mornelouw

For the last couple of days Ive been scanning and enchancing the plans from the book.

It will be a long process, but seeing that patience is the big key to a project like this I will not
attempt to rush anything about this process.

The scanning envolves scanning some of the plans more than once to get the best quality and
stitcting the parts together to form a single big version of it. I also need to add some detail in
some of the drawings that has become a bit feint when the book was printed.

The biggest job is to document each small part of each plan/drawing in such a way that when
I eventually cut the parts out to glue them onto the wood, I should be able to refer back to the
plans using the reference numbers I am adding. This will ensure that I dont cut pieces for
assembly and lose track of where they fit in the plans.

So its a lengthy process and I guess it will take me at least 3 months to prepare the plans
properly before I can even start thinking of building anything.

Posted in Preparations | Tagged HMS Victory, photoshop, Scanning, Ship Modelling | Leave
a Comment

Tool List
August 7, 2009 by mornelouw

This is the list of tools I use.

This list will keep growing as I acquire more tools. The trick is to only buy a new tool if you
really need it, not just because you think it will be nice to have.

When you are thinking about buying the more expensive hardware it should be a considered
choice, never rushed. In fact that should be the motto of building a detailed modelIts your
hobby, never rush it!

For the smaller tools you can probably just go ahead and buy it, but do some research before
you for out the bucks. Tools are there to make you life easier, not your toolbox heavier or to
impress others. If you can see the clear benefits of how a tool will help you achieve your goal
better, then it starts making sense.

I am very much in the beginning stages of this project and it will probably be weeks before I
even touch on the actual building of the model, so even though I am extremely tempted to
rush out and buy a Dremel tool, I wont. I actually drove to the hardware store today for the
second time in a week to buy it, then stopped en left empty handed, why? I know I will need
one in the future, but I have other things I need more now, less glamorous tools, but still very
needed.

The Preparations stage tools:

My Computer (fortunately I already had that, being a programmer and all)

Printer/Scanner combo (bought that this week as mentioned in a previous post.
Plenty of paper to print on
Photoshop/Gimp, to enlarge and enhance the plans/drawings
A pair of sharp-pointed scissors to cut out the plans more accurately
Proper technical ruler that have the markings actually touch a surface you are
measuring, to avoid inaccuracy

WishList:

Small wood files, flat, square, rounded, half rounded Smooth to bastards
Bench vice
Wood Carving set
Dremel tool (Rotary Tool)
 Figure saw
Belt sander
Disk sander
Tailor made work bench
Tweezers
Narrow tip pliers

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The first tools

August 4, 2009 by mornelouw

Its been a bit of a bumpy two days trying to get myself a printer and scanner combination
that will work with my computer setup.

I first tried the Canon MP190, but it seems that Canon should rather stick to making Digital
Cameras, as this one was not compatible with Windows XP thats probably where the real
problem lies, but thats not the point.

I exchanged it today (Thank you Incredible Connection for the fuss-less exchange) and got
the Lexmark X4650, which work 1st time! Its even got a wireless connection.

So I just jumped right in and scanned my first plans to figure out a repeatable process to
effectively scan, organsize and enlarge the plans, and it turns out that its not too difficult to
do.

Steps:

1. Create a workspace on your computer to organize your scans. I use D:\victorty\scans

2. Scan the page in as a Jpeg image.
3. Crop the image while you scan it to get the best quality scan. This means use the
scanning softwares crop tool to isolate just the plan you are currently interrested in
and scan only that part for now.
4. Give it a name that will make it easy to recognize exacly what it is, just by looking at
the name. All the plans in the book are coded, for example the scan I just did was of
plan C1, so I called the scan C1.jpg easy enough so far.
5. Now you can open the image in photoshop.
6. Use Edit->Preferences->Units & rulers, so set the units of your photoshop to
millimeters.
7. Double check that the size of the image is exactly the same size (in millimeters) as the
one in the book. You can use Photoshops guides for this.
8. Make sure the Guides are set to visible (View->Show->Guides)
9. Also make sure the grid is visible (View->Show>Grid)
10. Before you add Guides to the image you should make sure the image is nicely aligned
with the grid, you can just estimate this by eye, it doesnt need to be 100% we just
want to determine if the image is the same size as the plan in the book.
11. To rorate the image, use Image->Rotate Canvas->Arbitrary
 12. Decide if it need to be rotated Counter Clock Wise (CCW) or Clock Wise (CW), you
will have to use trial and error here, and remember you can use half degrees too. (0.5
or 1.5 etc)
13. When your image is aligned you can add some guides.
14. You can add vertical guides by clicking on the left ruler and dragging onto the image,
dont let go until you have the guide nicely positioned exaclty on the left most edge of
the drawing, add a guide for the right-most edge too.
15. The horizontal guides work exactly the same but you need to start at the top ruler and
drag down.
16. You can re-position any guides by dragging them again.
17. Nowmake sure your Snap to Guides is on (View->Snap to->Guides) Remove the
check next to Snap to Grid if it is checked, just in case.
18. Now you can measure your image size, by using the Rectangular Marquee Tool (pres
M to activate it)
19. Drag from the top left corner to the bottom right, if you drag close enough to the
guides photoshop will now automatically snap to them.
20. Make sure your Info window is open as this is where you will see the size you
selected. (Press F8 to open the Info window) The selected areas size will be displayed
next to the W and H (for width and height). This should now be in millimeters.
Measure the image in the book and make sureits the same.
21. Now we need to enlarge the image to 5 times its size
22. Use Image->Image Size to determine the current size of the image in millimeters. Just
take either the width or the height and caluculate what 5 times that would be.
23. Type this new size over the old one, if you increased the height, then the width will
adjust automatically and vice versa.
24. Click OK and save you image. It is now enlarged

Dont worry most of the setting in photoshop is now set so many of the above steps can be
skipped from now on.

Enhancing the image.

Firstly lets set the image to a Grayscale image, seeing that its black and white line drawings
anyway. Making the image gray scale will decrease the size of the file, so its quicker to work
with, and will also ensure that when you eventually print the image your printer will use its
cheaper Black and White cartrigde instead of your colour cartridge automatically.

Setting the image to Grayscale: use Image->Mode->Grayscale

I suggest you also play a bit with the images Brightness and Contrast until the final image is
nice and sharp. (be sure to make a note of these settings, as you will need them later when we
set up a photoshop action that will do these steps automatically.

Setting up a photoshop macro (called an Action)

If you have written down your brightness and contrast settings then lets undo everything back
to just after the step where you resized the image, you do this using photoshops History
window (Window->History)

Click on the step where you resized the image, just before you used the Grayscale setting.
Nw we are going to set up a photoshop Action to do the Grayscale and Contrast setting so that
you can simply run this macro in the future to get these exact setting on all your scans.

Press Alt+F8 to ensure you have the Actions window open.

On the Actions window in the top-right corner, just below the cross that will close the Actions
window is a small icon, click on it and select New Action from the pop-up menu.

Give it a name like victory scan enhance and save it.

You will now notice there is a red dot at the bottom of the Actions window, this means
photoshop is now recording all the steps you take into this macro.

1. Click Mode->Grayscale, press OK

2. Click Image->Adjustments->Brightness & Contrast
3. Enter the values you notes earlier, press OK
4. Click the small square next to the red dot on the Actions Window

Now those steps are recorded into that macro and can be re-used on all your future scans,
directly after you sized your image. You use the tiny rectangle next to the red dot to apply the
steps of a macro to an image.

So by now the plan is enlarged and enhanced. It should look pretty good now.

Next we need to document each section on the plan in detail, so that we always know exactly
where each part fits in.

The reason for enlarging the plans is to eventually cut each section out and glue it to the wood
so that we can make accurate cut-outs of the wood to make up the actual parts of our
modelship. When these parts are cut out, we could easily get them mixed up and it would be
almost impossible to know where they go when we have hundreds of them in the mix-up.

So we need to mark each seperate part with an identifying/descriptive code so its easier to
know where it goes shoudl disaster strike.

This is done by adding text onto your scanned plan, still using photoshop. You do this using
the text tool.

I used the following settings: Font=Rockwell and size = 5mm.

Play around and see what works the best for you, but keep in mind the text might look large
on screen, but when you print it it may be very tiny, try to stick to thin fonts and make the
size as large as possible, without abostructing any of the line.

You make have to rotate text to make it fit better and you can do that as follows:

1. Zoom in to the area wher you want to add your text

2. Add the text press and hold the Ctrl key now you can rotate the text if you need to
3. Rotate the text by clicking and dragging near the corners of the block that appeared
around the text. Becareful here, make sure the pointer indicates rotate arrows and
 not resize arrows. The resize arrow is seen when your cursor is directly over a
corner block. Move away from the corner and you will see the rotate arrows, now you
can click and rotate the text. Click the check box on the toolbar just below the menu
bar to apply the text.

Mark all the sections on the plan, well get to the nexts steps soon.

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Where to begin
August 1, 2009 by mornelouw

At this point all I have is some general woodworking tool and a book called The 100-gun
ship Victory.

Inside this book are more than 100 scaled drawings, in amazing details showing exactly how
the Victory is contructed.

I used to have all the plans copied and enlarged from this book, but in the years since a made
these copies I lost all of them, so that takes me right back to square one, as they would say.

I guess the first thing I need to do is workout what size I want this modelship to be. The larger
it is the more materials and space I will nee, but the benefit is that I get to work on a larger
scale, making more detail possible. On the other hand I can go smaller and that would require
some really detailed and finicky work.

I think I will stay with my original plans and make the model big enough to make working on
it easier but still small enough to fit through a normal door, should I nee to move it around.

This means I will be taking the plans, which is mostly 1/192 scale and enlarging them to 5
times this size meaning the model will be at scale 1/38.4 of the actual ship

This will make the dimensions of the hull ship as follows:

Width: 625mm

Height:

Length:

To get the plans sized to this scale I will need a scanner, printer and a graphics manipulation
package. Ill use Photoshop CS3.

Posted in Preparations | Tagged HMS Victory, photoshop, Preparations, Ship Modelling |

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Older Posts
Morn Louw
August 1, 2009 by mornelouw

I have been playing with the idea to build a model of the HMS Victory for a couple of years
now. I actually even started at one point about 7 years ago, but did not get very far, as you
will see from the photos. I never really had enough space to tackle such a project, and I dont
really have enough now, but should be able to manage.

As I sit here I am not sure if I should continue from where I left of or just start from scratch
again. I have a feeling that I will probably start from scratch again, because I dont think I put
enough quality time into the previous effort. I wanted to see results too quickly.

The work I did back then isnt too bad, but its not 100% perfect and it might catch up to me
in the future wholl know.

So my dream is to build this model ship, but not from a kit! I want to build it from scratch, no
matter how long it takes or how difficult it may be.

Keep in mind I have never built a modelship, I dont even know what tools I need, so this is
really going to be a learning experience and I hope also lots of fun, for years to come.