niwotwill

Had a productive day working on my die for the press and making plates for the starboard side. Took time to make some test pieces on installation of the plates trying to develop my skills. I might say the first were very rough but the placement pattern improved as I progressed. While examining my test piece I realized that my punch pattern was wrong, I had placed nails on the forward edge so when I placed the plates overlapping as the should it made too many nails on the forward edge It was an easy fix as I just snipped off the offending nails and the pattern now allows overlapping without the extra nails. I modified the press as I described in the previous post with the results I'd hoped for. I took a scrap 5/16" mast dowel cut it to 1" long and put it in the lathe. The end for the ram was turned to 3/16" to fit into the hole on the end of the ram. Reversed the dowel and turned the opposite end to 1/8" by 1/4" long. Drilled a 1/8" hole in the die and covered the 1/8" stub of the dowel with CA glue and pressed it into the die. Really happy with the results and the way it works. Spending tomorrow making port, starboard, and finish plates and then onto putting them on Syren. A couple of photos Stay Well and Safe Will

Well I've finally got the 3 stamps made and started testing. Did I say tricky. I tried to use a hammer method but a small hammer didn't have sufficient force and regular carpenters hammer was very unwieldy so I started using my little press with much better results. Now that I'm using the press I can shorten the punch to make it less unwieldy. The other thing I need to do is mount the press on the table top and attach the rod to the punch to lift the punch while advancing the tape. I plan to drill a hole in the top of the punch placing a metal rod in the hole and attached to the ram on the press so I can press down to imprint and lift to advance tape. I let you know in the next post after I make some plates and attach them to test panels. Thats all folks Stay Well and Safe Will

I have finally made a keel, stem and stern post correctly. Yesterday I glued them together making the assemblies that match the drawing. I forgot to mention the copies of sheets 1 thru 10 were not to scale. Dumb me I never measured them. The total length of the keel was .135 shorter than the original and you can guess what happened. Note to self always measure and measure again always. So I measured the scale on the original and it is within 1/64" of the dimensions noted. I took the original to an engineering copy center (Mesa Blueprint, Mesa, AZ great people and made 3 copies while I waited) and had perfect copies made so I could work from. More wood to the hungry scrap box. Finished it up and Saturday I assembled the pieces after checking the fit with dry fitting. Glued the stem and stern pieces together and set aside to dry. I decided to add copper bolts to the keel scarf joints after doing the the stems bolts that looked so nice. So I drilled a pattern of .018 diameter holes thru the keel in the scarfs and pushed .019 diameter copper wire into the holes after dipping the wire in CA glue. I then snipped off the wire with side cutters and filed them flush to the keel surface. I then used a razor blade to scrape the CA residue and will blacken the copper with liver of sulfur after everything dries. You see the small clamp on vice that I modifies by filing the top of the jaws flat and parallel to use in paring scarf joints or any flat surface. I put tape on the jaw faces so parts won't get damaged. With all this done it was time to drill the holes for the .093 brass rod to locate the keel assembly to the building board. I have been obsessing about drilling the hole in both the keel and building board since I don't have a drill press the would handle items as large as a building board. But with a little ingenuity and measuring measuring and more measuring it got done and low and behold the keel fits. So this is where I stopped next on the frames. I have to rip some wood and mill it to .125 for the frames, not very exciting but must be done. Stay Safe and Well Will

I've come up with a pattern for the copper plates and devised a method of how to hold the nails into the stamp while pressing the copper tape. This is the starboard pattern The pattern in the upper left corner is the final one the others are earlier attempts. The port side will be the same but reversed and the waterline belt line will have the holes on the top as the others have on the lower edges. This is the test pattern with the brass nails inserted. The nails are a .024 dia so then at scale (1.5" dia) they are a little to large but no so large to become obtrusive. Now to my question how far has everyone left the nails protrude beyond the surface of the stamp? I'd like all the help I can get here. I'm going to make the jig and the stamp this afternoon and will post more when they are complete. But I have another question, how do you accurately cut the tape into 11/16" lengths without damaging the tape edges? Stay well and safe Will

These are some great tips of how to trim strake planks, I'm going to keep them in mind the next time I've got planking. Patrick as too have spaces and gaps in you planking a thing I came across while reading about copper plating was from Gahms log about how he used filler extensively on the entire hull until he had a smooth surface to apply finish and then the copper plates. His Syren is beautiful and read how he obtained the fantastic copper plating and don't be so hard on yourself. GREAT JOB Stay well and safe Will

The head rails and cheeks are first class. You did I magnificent job for the first time. I can imagine how fustratating dry fitting those timber must have been but it is really a great job. 🙌🙌 I'm not looking forward to that part of my build, but I'll look to your log for inspiration. Stay safe and Well Will

Well the deck is planked, drilled, tree nailed and sanded. I left the deck unstained with just wipe on poly. Deck planked and sanded ready for some filler to take care of large openings Completed deck I've been studying logs to see what others have done for copper planking. While doing this I came across logs using syringes, nails, copper wire, steel wire for the pattern jigs. Sometimes too much information leads to being frozen with indecision and that is where I presently reside. I'll start making jigs and punches tomorrow so maybe I can get unstuck from indecision. In reading the logs I've come up with an idea how to use nails so that the nail heads will be restrained between two layers of wood. I'm going to use my press-it as Gahm used his sensipress instead of the hammer method. I hope it all works. 😅 Check the next post to see. Thats all for nmow Stay Well and Safe Will

Just catching up with your log and see you've taken some time off, just a supportive note your work is great and your great work will follow though with the planking. Keep in mind that sometimes it is best to remove an unacceptable piece and start a new piece. Don't be disappointed it will come together and be great. Keep it up. Stay safe and well Will

Looking really good. I throughly enjoyed you description of the rails and hawes holes and the head rails construction is giving me hope that I can achieve similar results. It is looking fantastic great building and the results show. Will

Patrick you are not alone with the planking problems we've all been there and done that and I still have the same feelings each time I plank another boat. Search the msw logs and find ones the appeal to you and see what they've done. There are many tutorials on the subject and you'll find them on the msw logs and web searches. Chuck Passaro has written about lining off the frames and planking from there, I used that system on my Syren and was very happy with the results. Chuck also has videos of how he planked the group project HMS Winchelsea Google "youtube Chuck Passaro" and you will see all for videos about 30 minutes total. Hope this helps Stay Well and Safe Will

Thanks Mike my scrap bin is getting quite full and will be getting more contributions as I go on. Need some opinions on deck stain color. On the photo below I have two samples of boxwood planking the same as the deck planking. The sample on the top is boxwood with NO stain just a quick coat of wipe on poly, the sample on the bottom is boxwood stained with minwax golden oak and a quick coat of wipe on poly. Question which do you like? I'm leaning towards no stain as the stain really darkened the treenails. I like to hear from you on your opinion. Thanks everyone Stay Well and Safe Will

Well oops!!!! while dry fitting part #8 to the keel I discovered that i'd made an error with the keel and had to make another keel. Actually I made two errors one I cut the stem scarf end incorrectly and the other was I cut the rabbit as a 45 degree "V". some photos of my boo-boo's This one shows how I missed cutting the first frame relief This one shows an end view of the rabbit (Kind of blurry but you get the idea) Now to making new parts a keel and stem #7 & #8 I made the keel in three pieces as per the monograph and cut the rabbit on each section before making the scarfs. I made the scarf by cutting the rabbit and keel shapes on the back edge of an old backsaw blade. scrapping the rabbit before scraping the rabbit shape I checked it against the drawing trying to prevent more boo-boo's. So when the pattern was correct a lightly scraped the keel piece to the required depth. When all three pieces had rabbits it was time to make scarfs to join them together. (wonder of wonders the rabbits aligned) Now on to setting up the mill to cut the frame reliefs, always a tedious error procedure. To keep the reliefs correctly in place I made a spreadsheet that incremented .406 (1/4" frame width and 9/64" space to create the room and space) Next I cut the stem and stern post parts. No excitement here. When dry fitting the stem parts I realized that #7 and #8 scarf was not correct, so on the alcohol to get them apart. I spent 3 hours filing the joints until they align with drawing. I'm going to let it set aside for awhile and then check that I've actually got the scarf correct. Scarf joints on curved parts is the most challenging joint i've made to date. Note to self and all very small adjustments make a substantial difference. Thanks to all for the likes and comments it helps to keep me motivated. Thats it for the post Stay well and safe Will

Patrick your fixed blocks look great and as to installing them I found it easier to cut the double that the single blocks and you can see on the plans that the double is larger than 1 plank width. I found it best to install my blocks prior to the internal bulwark planking. With the blocks in place I could trim the planks to fit as needed. Just a note about fixed blocks: These blocks were designed and installed with the need to replace worn/broken blocks while at sea, so they should be somewhat loosely fitted. (don't remember where I read about replacing fixed blocks at sea but I think it was in one of Ed Tosti's logs) Stay Well Will

Patrick your fixed blocks with the sheaves came out really nice. kudos for a job well done. I never thought of using sculpey for my sheaves instead of turning them from wood. Many Congrats Will

The paint you used on the casting for the transom looks fantastic. Your comments on channels being fragile makes me want to look in the box at mine, tomorrow I'll check them out. Your work is amazing at how fast you can get things done. Takes me forever but it always gets done. Will

Thanks all for the looks and likes it keeps me going. Thanks to all of you Well I finally got the deck planked using a modified 4 butt shift pattern based on 20' planks and it worked pretty well. Making my own strips out of boxwood was the way to go for me as the color and grain pattern are so even that they don't appear to be out of scale at 1:64. Only problem with using boxwood is cutting the nibs into the margin plank. Boxwood dulls #11 blade very quickly. A friend turned me onto so extra life #11 blades and gave me some to try. I must say they do hold an edge longer than the standard blades. Package of 100 for $33 on amazon with free shipping. You can see the boxwood strips i'm using for testing stains and the treenails. This panel has been sanded and no finish applied. Another problem with making my own strips is they are so straight that the seams become hard to see after you sand them and the butt joints were impossible to see with out magnification. I had to use gift wrapping tape that you can write on to mark all the butt joints. I took a picture of the deck so you can see how I used the tape to marks the joint locations. Next I'll take an awl used as a center punch to mark all the hole locations. I decided to use one treenail on each side of a butt rather than two as would be correct. At the 1:64 scale the treenails should be around .015 or 1" real size and I'm using .028 diameter treenails so I think it would cause problems and look to crowed. Tomorrow I'll mark and drill the holes. That's about all the progress for now Stay Well Will

I took time out from the Syren to cut and mill new keel timber so I think I'll start cutting the scarfs tomorrow. Also cut out the patterns for the stem and stern deadwood pieces. Cut the shapes and sanded them down to the lines. Cut the scarfs in the cut water and stem. Glued the part 10 & 11 and 7 & 8 together. Felt really good to actually be assembling something. YeeHaw Stern pieces ready to sand Stem pieces ready to sand Sanding curves on drum sander (finger is not as close as it appears) f Thats all for today, maybe more tomorrow. Stay Well Will

Thanks Mike I was leaning towards bolts and copper wire is easy to straighten and I had planned to use liver of sulfur to blacken the bolts. Will

Good Morning Patrick I've never heard the statement about the garboard strake as being no upswing, I can see how that is true after planking and watching the stem get crowded. Good thing to remember. I used Chuck's method of marking off the frames and using that to determine individual plank widths at each frame and I still had to make adjustments at the stem. Your doing great work here and I look forward to your posts. Will

It's looking brilliant. I love the straight clean paint lines with the black. I had to read the monograph about the sweep ports to realize what you meant with your scrap wood comment it is really nice. Will

Thanks Patrick and all others who liked my post. Had a couple of productive days on the Syren. Margin planks installed it was difficult to cut the scarfs on the margin planks as they were bending with the shape of the bulwarks so when I had a good scarf fit on the bench the dry fit with the slight bends opened up the scarf joint. What I did was to glue the forward piece in place and then carefully shape the after pierce to fit the scarf. I got them close to the bench fit but I'm hoping that the carronade sleds will cover up a lot of the margin plank. I then figured a way to make the waterway strips. It turned out to be fairly easy in the end. What I did was take a piece of timber and mill it down to 1/16" thick (I'm using boxwood on the margin planks, waterways, and deck planking) I then used the Byrnes table saw tilting table set at 45 degrees and ripped off two 1/16" strips. I used my plank bending jig to shape the waterways to fit the bulwarks. It worked liked a gem and even left the 1/16" below the gun ports as Chuck stated. With the margins and waterways completed I built the frame for the companionway ladder without any drama involved. That being done I looked at Dubz's planking plan and saw that I could use full length planks down the middle of the deck as all the deck fixtures would make it unnecessary to use individual 20' planks. So I then placed 8 planks down the middle and relieved the mast holes and the companionway opening. Next will be the 20' planks in the 4 butt shift layout with the nibbing on the margin plank. Some photos of the work Margin planks installed Companionway frame Tilting table on the Byrnes table saw End view close-up of the finished waterway End of the day. Margin planks, waterways, companion framing and deck planking Thanks everyone for looking and likes Stay well Will

Thanks Mike and Michael for the comments. Hope you stay with me as I think is going to be fantastic learning experience for me. And thanks Jeff for moving my log to scratch builders. On further review of the frame plan view and section view of Stem parts I realized that I'd cut the rabbit incorrectly so I'll make another keel. (Good think I've got plenty of wood) I started cutting out the stem parts and now need to sand them to shape of the plans pattern. Just a question though! The plans do not indicate treenails in the scarf joints of the keel or pieces of the Stem and Stern deadwood, trying to be correct would the shipwrights of a 1776 Galley made in months taken the time to treenail or just nail the joints? Any help would be appreciated. I'll make another post when I finish the new keel and stem. Again thanks for the likes and comments Stay well Will

I have made model ships with kits and found that the kits take modeling liberties in their design. I build the Charles W. Morgan by Artesania Latina and liberties became evident when I looked at kit by Model Shipways and more so when I visited the Morgan at Mystic Seaport. While at Mystic Seaport I bought the original plans for Morgan’s deck furniture. i.e. hurricane house, rendering oven, crews head, boat shelter, rendering oven shelter and windless. I spent the next year whetting my apatite scratch building everything from deck up. To continue learning I decided to build the NRG’s plans for the 1776 Washington Row Galley last year. After studying, dreaming and planning I’ve finally started the build. So here if the first post or many to come. This project will be a long time to completion as I have not and will not make any project timeline. Last Christmas my daughters bought me the Model Shipways kit Syren. I’m working on this and it will be in conjunction with the Washington. This first thing I did was to build the model board and a couple of jigs. One for the bow support and another for frame setting. I’ll build more as needed with the build. I'm going to build the skeleton structure out of boxwood and have not decided if I'm going to use other woods for color, but I have a lot of time before that decision. I bought 4X4X36 boxwood blanks for Cooks Woods to use for the model. They have a great website and excellent service. I resaved the blanks to 1" X 4" to make them more usable. I then ripped off sheets of 5/32" and 7/32" to mill down to 1/8" and 3/16" and said to myself "here we go" Started with the keel as in the downloaded monograph My first scarf joint many to come hopefully I'll get better and quicker as I learn. I used Ed Tosti's method of coloring the glue to simulate the joint tar. It really makes an nice joint. Thanks Ed Basic keel structure with 3 scarf joints completed now is the time to cut the rabbit. I used a scratch tool as described in Ed Tosti's " The Naiad Frigate" page 45. I used the back side of an old hacksaw blade to make my pattern. Light strokes of the scraper making the rabbit cut deeper with each stroke until it was 1/16" deep as per the plans. That done on both sided of the keel it was time to cut the frame floor recess. Measuring the plans it appeared to the be a basic room and space pattern with the frames being 1/4" and a 1/8" space so I planned on using the mill to cut the recesses, except during the planning process I realized it is not a standard room and space pattern. But instead a 1/4" recess with a 9/64" space making a pattern nearly impossible on the mill. I first thought I could cut the recesses using a staggered pattern meaning 9/16" equals .1406 so on the mill I could cut .140 on one and then .141 on another but on a trial piece the spaces still kept growing and with 41 recesses it could become out up to 3/32" an unacceptable amount. So I made a spread sheet with each dimension from the baseline (first recess). I lot of work but the result is the last recess is only .002 from the baseline after making the cuts from the baseline. This completed the basic keel with the ends needing to be cut to size and shape and the false keel added. The mounting holes need to be drilled to align with building board. That brings this up to date. On to the Syren for awhile. Stay well Will Washington first post.docx

Ok so tomorrow was a week away and I finished the cap rails. Had somewhat of a difficult time getting the top surface between the cap rail and the 1/16" trim even and smooth. Sanding tended to radius the top of the cap rail so I removed the 1/16" trim and made a new one. I made sure the new trim was above the cap rail about 1/64" so I could fill any gaps with putty and then sand the top flat and smooth without seeing a seam. Painted and sanded until it looks like one piece. The cap rail being completed it was time to attack the margin plank. As others had seen and noted the laser cut pieces don't align with the inside of the bulwarks. I was going to use them as patterns to cut pieces out of cedar, so reading others on using the print of the deck as a starting point off I went making my own. A little digression. Ive found that while making the Morgan I really enjoy scratch building as others have said so I started the NRGs 1776 Washington Row Galley and it is quite a challenge. Ok back to Syren. I had some boxwood from the Washington so I decided to use it for the deck planking and made my bow planks from it. Ripped some 3/16" X 1/16" strips for the margin. I have to cut the scarf joints for the planks. Ive decided to make the length of the pieces to scale and since the construction used wood usually no longer the 24' to 26' I going to make the margin at 25'. I went ahead and milled more lumber to 1/16" and ripped enough 1/16" X 1/8" strips for the decking material. Now its on to the margin planks scarfs and installation. I've read several method to make the 1/16" X 1/16" X 45 degree waterway and am not sure how i'd like to proceed so any ideas would be appreciated. All the pieces for the margin planks and deck planks along with Dubz layout for the planking. Stay well Until the margin planks Will

Very nice Patrick. Thanks for sharing the cutting discs that'll make cutting the scraping shape much easier. I've been filing them, just ordered some discs and can't wait to try them. I know this will be quicker and make better scrape patterns.This is what the club is about sharing and helping all of us get better. Will