Tools so far

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

Dividing image into equal sizes in photoshop

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. We’ll 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 doesn’t 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 it’s 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

A visual cross-reference

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 4^th 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 photoshop’s 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 don’t 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 it’s 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 won’t 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

Scanning and Enhancing

For the last couple of days I’ve 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 don’t cut pieces for assembly and lose track of where they fit in the plans.

So it’s 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.

Tool List

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 model…”It’s 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 won’t. 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

The first tools

It’s 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… that’s probably where the real problem lies, but that’s 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! It’s 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 it’s 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 software’s 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 Photoshop’s “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 doesn’t 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, don’t 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 area’s 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 sureit’s the same.
21. Now we need to enlarge the image to 5 times it’s 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

Don’t 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 it’s black and white line drawings anyway. Making the image gray scale will decrease the size of the file, so it’s quicker to work with, and will also ensure that when you eventually print the image your printer will use it’s 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 image’s 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 photoshop’s 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 it’s 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, we’ll get to the nexts steps soon.

Where to begin

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. I’ll use Photoshop CS3.

Morné Louw

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 don’t 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 don’t think I put enough quality time into the previous effort. I wanted to see results too quickly.

The work I did back then isn’t too bad, but it’s not 100% perfect and it might catch up to me in the future… who’ll 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 don’t 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.