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Broken Part to be replaced???

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  • Member since
    November 2005
Broken Part to be replaced???
Posted by Anonymous on Friday, October 7, 2005 6:59 PM
http://www.iboats.com/mall/index.cgi?prod_id=2030&cart_id=709390173

Ok, well, hopefully this will be esay for you guys to help me with. The model shown in the link above is sitting in my living room. My wife gave it to me as a wedding present.

The week we moved into our current house our three labrador retrievers decided to personalize the bow sprit.

I am wondering what my options are. I have had trouble finding the company that produced the model since it has been 5 years since we bought it.

I would love to get a replacement and the string used below it.

I would be willing to make a new one (my neighbor has skills). In other words, what type of wood are these models made out of usually?

Does anyone have any suggestions for how I should proceed?

Thank you in advance.

Bill
  • Member since
    November 2005
Posted by Anonymous on Friday, October 7, 2005 7:13 PM
I would try those cheap-o wooden dowels you can find in any arts and crafts store.
You may find that a variety pack of dowels has the size you need enclosed within.
Sand the ends to make the appearance similar to the broken one ( hope you held onto the broken piece?....) and paint or stain it to match.
Hope this helps ya !! ~ Craig
  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: Greenville, NC
Posted by jtilley on Friday, October 7, 2005 11:32 PM
I obviously haven't seen the model in its damaged state, but I may be able to offer some suggestions - based on a fair amount of experience in restoring old ship models.

Do you have all the pieces of the broken bowsprit? If so, it's advisable to fix it rather than replace it, if possible. And it probably (not necessarily) is possible. Remember that modern adhesives are considerably stronger than wood.

A good, inconspicuous trick is to drill a pair of holes in the adjoining ends of the broken pieces, insert a piece of wire (cut to the appropriate length) into the holes, and glue the pieces back together. Franklin Titebond or Elmer's Carpenter's Glue are excellent adhesives for such purposes. If a few splinters are missing, or for some other reason the joint isn't quite smooth, a little wood filler and sanding should make things right. (My favorite wood filler is Famowood brand.) If all the fragments have survived and you line them up carefully, this technique will produce a bowsprit that's stronger than it ever was before.

If the Labradors absconded with part of the bowsprit, you have two options: splice a new piece onto the remains of the old one, or extract the remains from the model and make a new bowsprit. In either case, it's desirable to use the same kind of wood that was used for the original. I can't tell from the photos, but if the model is fairly recent (built within, say, the last fifty years or so) there's a good chance that the spars were made from birch dowels. The dowels stocked nowadays by hobby shops and lumber yards generally are made of either birch, oak, or some East Asian species that I can't identify. Try to match the original.

I can't tell from the photos just how the bowsprit is shaped. If it's round throughout its length, and tapered, you probably can reproduce it pretty easily by chucking a piece of dowel into an electric drill and holding a piece of sandpaper against it. That technique takes a little while to learn (buy some extra dowel for practice), but my guess is that in an hour or two you'll be able to turn out a nice-looking bowsprit.

The trickiest part of the project may be matching the color of the original. (That's one reason why it's preferable to keep the original if at all possible.) I gather the original is finished with wood stain. A good way to deal with that problem is to buy some of the felt-tipped "touch up stain pens," which are made by Olympic and Minwax. (They're sold in paint stores, and places like Lowe's and Home Depot.) These pens contain genuine, solvent-based wood stain, and come in quite a few colors. You can mix colors to get a close match for your original. Finish it with a couple of coats of varnish or shellac (whichever matches the original most closely), replace the damaged rigging (easier said than done, but the rigging of a J-boat isn't very complicated), and you're done.

That's about all I can offer without seeing the damage close up. Hope this helps a little. Good luck.

Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.

  • Member since
    April 2005
  • From: Switzerland
Posted by Imperator-Rex on Saturday, October 8, 2005 7:53 AM
You could also try to contact the manufacturer (Authentic Models), explain the situation, and ask for a replacement bow sprit. If that's not possible, you could at least try to get the dimensions and wood kind of the boken piece... For a model of that price, I'm sure the folks of Authentic Models will be happy to help.

Their website: http://www.authenticmodels.com/
Rigging instructions for your model (pdf): http://prosheets.authenticmodels.com/data/instructions/AS075-075A.pdf
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