Roger Pellett

Does anybody know what the little bulge at the back end of the Xacto and the Stanley Bullnose plane is for?

I also used to get into my father’s tools causing periodic banishing from his shop. I now enjoy using many of his hand tools.  Although he died 35 years ago the tools remain as a connection to him.

My 10in table saw cuts acrylic beautifully.  It is not variable speed.  I seldom use styrene and when I have I used a knife.

The first tool that I remember was a vibrating jig saw.  You could actually touch the blade while the saw was operating without getting cut.   It did cut wood.

Roger

Terry,

I remember back in the late ‘80’s there was a scandal when Toshiba sold multi axis milling  machines developed to produce these propellers to the Russians.

Roger

I can’t imagine why anyone would need a variable speed table saw.

I suggest going back to the above pinned thread about Byrnes saws.  On it you will find a post from a guy who used his Byrnes saw to produce wood strips for sale.  Instead of using featherboards to keep the wood pushed against the fence he found that it worked better to use a block of wood.  I tried this and it worked.

I also second Charles Green’s post to check fence alignment.  You will find Jim Byrnes instructions for doing this in the thread that I mentioned.  As a precision tool using metal cutting blades fence misalignment in the thousands of an inch matters.  I also agree with Dave’s post above.  I checked the fence misalignment for my 10in Delta Contractor’s Saw.  It has a non-linear bow of .03in.  Despite this it has the power to chew its way through about anything.  These small table saws lack that power.  Once the wood passing through the saw slows down resin begins to build up on cutting surfaces causing binding and kickback.

Thoroughly clean your blades.  After scraping off deposits with a razor blade I followed someone else’s advice and bought a spray can of oven cleaner.  It worked great.  I was about to scrap several blades but once I cleaned them and touched them up with a triangular sharpening stone they are ready to go again.

Roger

That is what we call a Decorator Model.  It does not resemble a real ship, is not built to scale, and was probably mass produced.  If you like it, enjoy it.  Financially it has no value.

Roger

The Byrnes saw, is a professional quality machine.  If you decide to buy one, I suggest that you discuss spindle sizes with him.  Mine came fitted to use a blade with a 1/2in arbor hole.  Living in Europe, you will want to be able to buy replacement blades locally that will have metric sized arbor holes.  If he does not automatically fit his saws sent to Europe to accept metric sized blades you should ask him to make you an adaptor.  This is easy and inexpensive for him to do.

I have recently been studying Seventeenth Century (1600’s) ship design techniques.  Those guys developed interesting methods for graphically plotting the large radius circles and the ellipses necessary to draw the hull forms of this time.  All were based on first drawing a smaller diameter circle and “stretching it out.” 

As Jaager points out, commercial veneer is rotary cut.  The miniature model maker Lloyd McCaferty wrote in one of his books that these veneers were unsuitable for his use as the veneer manufacturing process produced many tiny cracks radiating from the cut surface that caused failure when cut into the small pieces that he required.

Harvey,

Paint does that.  It makes us ship model builders humble!

Roger

Your description of the falling weight test tank setup are interesting.  Thanks for posting them. 

I believe that results from these these tests were useful because with the thin waterline shapes used, they were actually measuring frictional resistance that is a linear function of area.  Furthermore, at the slow speeds involved for merchant vessels of the times wave making resistance was much less of a factor.

These falling weight test tanks were used here in the USA well into the 1900’s by several of the smaller institutions.  The two large tanks in the US are the 400+ft tank at the University of Michigan and the 1300? Ft David Taylor Model Basin at Carderock, MD.  

The model testing facility in the Netherlands is highly regarded.

Roger

As far as I am concerned, Michael’s model is timeless.

Henry,

I don’t know if your book is supposed to portray actual practice but it clearly shows the butt end of the bowsprit fastened to the pinrail just forward of the windlass.  It is mounted in a pair of trunnions to allow it to be pivoted up to clear obstacles in close quarters.

Michael,

Your upcoming decision about the boat’s cook stove jogged me to check out L. Francis Herreshoff’s opinion on the subject.  When it came to cruising sailboats he had an opinion about everything and he argued that simple is better.  He even refused to include toilets on dome of his designs arguing that a good cedar bucket was sufficient.  In fact on one of his designs, he located the cedar bucket with a guy sitting on it.

Anyhow, I dug out my copy of The Writings of L. Francis Herreshoff and sure enough there is a chapter discussing the cabin plan for a small cruising sailboat.  He recommends the Wilcox Crittenden’s Sea Cook Jr. stove.  They also made a two burner Sea Cook stove.  If you Google Sea Cook Stove, you’ll find a lot of pictures of these.  They ran on pressurized alcohol.

Roger

Tank test results were either meaningless or misleading until Froude figured out in the 1870’s that frictional and wave making resistance acted differently in determining the resistance of a floating object moving through a fluid.

Once he understood this he was able to develop the tank testing procedures used to this day where frictional and wave making resistance are separated for the model and then scaled up differently before being added back together for the full sized ship.

Stability calculations are based in integral calculus a subject probably not understood by most practical shipbuilders.  Even with electric- mechanical calculators (1960’s era) the calculations were tedious. The calculation also requires knowledge of the vessel’s displacement and although shipbuilders in the 1600’s knew how to approximate the submerged volume of a ship’s hull, estimating the weight in various loaded conditions and accounting of the weights that went into building a ship was difficult.   

Computers of course have revolutionized ship design with the ability to produce full hydrostatic calculations directly from a CAD generated lines drawing.

Roger

Prior to the Late Nineteenth Century there was no useful theoretical body of knowledge regarding hydrodynamic performance of ships.  Even after that (up to the 1970’s) it was empirical; make a model, tow it in a tank and see  how it performed.  Ship and boat boat designers worked largely by intuition and experience.  

There was, therefore, no reason for shipbuilders, Dutch or otherwise to worry about whether there was a chine at the vessel’s bilge.  They were concerned with structural integrity, seaworthiness, tonnage requirements, and as always, ease and cost of construction.

The hull forms developed by the Seventeenth Dutch shipbuilders also provided some Naval Architecture advantages.  The more or less rectangular midship sections would have provided excellent initial stability, would have maximized usable hull volume relative to tonnage accessed by various authorities and the chine possibly reduced rolling by acting like the much later developed bilge keel.

All of this allowed Dutch shipbuilders to provide low cost, efficient, tonnage to support the Nation’s commercial expansion.  It also allowed them to expand their fleet faster than their enemies in wartime.

Roger

Does Chuck still wood sheets?

A number of years ago I bought a Mincraft miniature pistol grip power drill.  It runs off a mincraft power supply similar to the one sold by Proxxon.  Since then I have bought a Proxxon pen sander and a Proxxon rotary engraver.  Instead of buying a Proxxon power supply I found an adapter; just a short piece of cord that the Proxxon tool plugs into.  The other end has the correct plug to connect to the Mincraft power supply.  The Proxxon tools run fine with this setup.

Roger

Several years ago I toyed with the idea of buying a. Foredom knockoff; MicroMark, Harbor Freight, etc.  After all what could be difficult, all it has to do is spin.  Then I started to read reviews.  It seems that users of the knockoffs had problems with the flexible shafts seizing up.

As a. Result, no Foredom, no knockoff.

Henry,

i’m not sure exactly what your question is but on a real vessel the two metal straps would not adequately support the bowsprit.  

A more logical arrangement would be for the butt of the bowsprit to be secured to the knight head structure just forward of the windlass or through the deck planking to one of the deck beams via an iron strap.  The bowsprit would pass by the side of the stem, further secured by another iron strap as shown on the museum model pictured above.  This second iron strap should be secured to the stem, not the much weaker head structure as it presently is on your model.

Roger

Not to wish anybody bad luck, BUT:  two times when I have visited the Emergency Room, a table saw accident for me (I still have all 10 fingers) and once when my wife cut her finger, the doctor asked if I was a fly fisherman.  When I responded that I built ship models he gave me the tweezers and forceps that he had used.  He said, “we just throw them out.”

Ok, tracked it down.  These appear to be made (or sold) by The Carving Glove Guy in Saline, Michigan.  He calls them Dockyard.  The dull red handles are cherry.  They are stamped Made in USA in large letters.

Roger

Kurt,

I can’t tell.  The two postings that I looked at were different.  The first said that they were located in Rochester, MN.  These tools had dull red handles.

The other was located in Florida and showed the Traditional packaging with the note, “Appearance may vary.”  The blurb claimed that Dockyard chisels are being made again in the USA.

Roger