michael mott

Thanks Vaddoc. Michael

She is looking great Vaddoc, nice work on all the rigging fittings, i like the chocks, what type of wood did you use? Michael

Patrick She looks like you have got the superstructure pretty much solved. coming together nicely. Michael

Build part 7 A bit more work on the keel plate. I will need to add the supporting plates before I fix the keel to the frames. Michael

build part 6 A little more work shaping the stern post, I have a whole new appreciation for those members who cut and shape the hawse timbers and the rebates in the stern and deadwood of the larger ships of the line. This is a lot more difficult than it looks on all the other build logs I have looked at. These first fittings are an eye opener to the complexities of the shape of the keel and stern on these little boats. Michael

Hi Bob thanks, Nils yes the blue tape is very temporary the frames still need to be finally sanded and cut to their finished lengths. Also the keel needs to be fitted before any planking goes on. Thanks to all who pressed the like button. Michael

Thanks for the nice comments Pete and Patrick, Build part 5 The building bard is a piece of 1x10 clear pine, I wanted to keep this simple The support pieces are 3/4 x 3/4 and just glued with a couple of small spots of glue to hold them in place without a lot of fuss. I did position them so that the stations aft of midships are set to the aft side of the line and the forward ones forward of the line. this will help when fairing the frames. The transom is glued from three pieces of 3/16 x 1 5/16 mahogany I glued them the same way that I would a board for a cabinet. I planed the edge with a hand plane then rubbed the joints together with the glue and propped it up to dry. this method does not impart any stresses into the glued material. The plywood molds were not perfectly flat and are glued to the support blocks with a couple of spots and clamped. I will attach the transom to the stern-post once it is cut and shaped. Michael

Thanks Bob and All the members who added likes build part 4 I finished fretting out the molds this morning. I now have to sand the frames and fix the molds to a building board and add the transom, it will be mahogany. Michael

Matti, first Merry Christmas and welcome. Very nice work on the Clara May. Birch is a wonderful and very versatile wood for building with, it is obvious from the speed and skill with the materials that you will enjoy many hours with the ships and boats. Michael

Build part 3 I completed the first major task this morning all the frames are now laminated for the molds. the other frames will come after the planks are fixed. I will do the final sanding after the molds are fretted out. Michael

Hi Bob, Yes you are absolutely correct I did an overlay of the 12 1/2 original sail plan and you can see that it is forward and scaled up is not quite as large as the one I had put on. sail plan 3.pdf michael

Druxey, the reason i raised it a little was because in reviewing the photo once more that Dan had posted on his blog I noticed that the gaff was pretty much the same angle as the forestay, I could split the difference and see how that looks because I tend to agree with you. This is a better configuration I think Michael

Thanks Druxey, and thank you as well Mike for the tip about the CD cases, I shall have a look at that. Michael

Mark, I think that the hull looks great. I am not sure that boxwood would look as warm and mellow as what you have achieved. Michael

Hi Patrick, The other thing that I particularly like about the gaff rig is the lower Centre of effort of the rig. I have tweaked it just a little, by lowering the gaff jaws and raising the peak this moves the CE just a little forward as well without changing the sail area by any significant amount. sail plan 2.pdf Michael

Based on the comments in the wooden boat article by Dan O I have drawn the new sail plan thus. the jpg is 50% PDF full size for model sail plan.pdf Michael

Laurence thank you for your kind words and the link. Michael

Beautiful workmanship John. enjoy the holidays and merry Christmas. Michael

This is a great series of pictures on the construction of a full size hull and of pouring the lead keel which had an all to familiar ring to it. this relates to the boat in the previous post. Michael

Thanks Pete, I have been thinking about the sail plan and thought that this rig from DanO on the wooden boat forum is the one I would like to adopt, I read Dan's reason for the gaff rig and liked what he had to say. scroll to the bottom of the page to read the reason. Michael

Thanks for all the views and comments and likes. Build Part 2 The laminating of the frames continues, if you ever get the chance to pick up one of these for cheap or even free which is how I got mine grab it, they are amazing paper cutters. And as you can see they do a great job on thin aircraft ply as well. The laminating of the frames continues alongside other seasonal tasks I am waiting about 3 -4 hours before pulling the frames off the form then leaving a full 24 hours before doing any sanding. I have two more stations to go the one at 9' and the one at 6'. Once all the frames are laminated I will set up and fret out the centre sections, I will need to do this out in the shop where it will be a little easier than at the desk. The stations will then be set up on a board to receive the stern post keel, and stem elements.I will also carve a block once all the planking is done and fair it so as to make a mold for the lead keel. If I don't get a chance to wish everyone a great Christmas holiday and any other forms that are celebrated at this time of the year. Judy and Me wish you all Merry Christmas Michael

Thanks everyone for your well wishes for Judy. All is well now. I have to hunt through my scraps of thin lexan for the "glass" in the skylights, I did have some 1/16th cell-cast acrylic that was left over from some architectural models. The interesting thing about cell-cast is because of the nature of the manufacture it is not super consistently even as far as thickness goes varying about 25 thousands over the sheet in random ways. we used to call it thick or thin whatever the main denomination was. The reason I used the cell cast is because It cut much more cleanly without gumming or fracturing the way the extruded acrylic did. So I need to find a bit of thin 1/16th failing that I will buy some new 1.5mm lexan Michael

Pete watching your build is very inspiring, I can see how things are supposed to look. Michael

Amazing workmanship simply amazing. Michael

Disclaimer This is all Pete's fault. Because I already have too many builds on the go I thought why not another one. I know there are a few others here who merrily go about building a few boats/ships at the same time one of them shall remain nameless but we all know who it is. Pete has already done enough waxing eloquently about the merits of the Herreshoff lineage of boat designs so there is no need for me to go into any great details here except to say that I completely agree with him on the elegance of the Herreshoff lines no matter what size he designed. Build Part 1 Pete sent me a printed copy of the drawing he is using for his new boat it was already printed at 1 1/2 inch to the foot. (thanks Pete) I scanned it in order to trace it for developing some detailed model plans the lines plan is 50% and the body plans are 100% I spent a lot of time studying the various images of the 14 on the net and was particularly drawn to the Port Hadlock WA Boat school photo stream There are a lot of pictures of the 14 under construction and it is this version of the hull that I intend to model as far as the main structure of the hull. I have chosen this one because of the clarity of the construction methodology visible in the pictures. Unfortunately there are no pictures that I have yet found of the beginning of the Port Hadlock boat which would have confirmed a few things about how they prepared the frames and if they used a set of mold forms with ribands to prepare the bent frames, but I suspect that is the method that was used. I used corel draw this time instead of Autocad because I am more familiar with all the curve functions in corel. I used the line width function to shape the frames instead of drawing the outlines of them and this seems to be working well. This hull will be a test of my skill at doing a proper planking job, I have learned so much since the first post on the Pilot Cutter (still planning on sailing her next summer) where I basically did not have a clue about what I was getting into and built that hull as if it were a strip built canoe. I have chosen 3/4 inch thick planks for the hull (3/32 inch) and wondered a while about what wood to use. I want to have the planks varnished and not painted (visions of Chucks planking job on his cutter for the clarity and elegant execution) as a goal but with a more reddish colour. I remembered the redwood panels from the salvaged garage door and did a little re-sawing to get enough planks for the task. stripped up to 3/32 x 9/16 (3/4 x 4 1/2) Next I tried to bend some 5/32 square stock by all the different methods that I have read about on this forum and snapped most of them (what am I doing wrong?) I remembered that I had a 5 foot by 5 foot sheet of 1mm birch aircraft ply so I cut some 3/16 strips up on the paper cutter, it worked very well surprisingly. I also printed and traced out one of the more challenging mould forms to add the frames to. Next I used the wide throat jewelers saw to fret out the mould to use as a form for laminating the rib/frame the material is 1/4 inch Baltic birch ply. The mold form was pinned to some cork covered homasote (at least that is what I think it is) and the 4 layers were laminated together. In order to cancel out any discrepancy from side to side I laminated two of the same side, I will cut out the middle of the mold to help with the clamping of the planks. This will now continue for the rest of the frames that will fit over the molds Michael