jpalmer1970

Welcome to MSW !!

Hi folks, Apologies for the delay since my last update but I have had a couple of weeks away from the bench after having a minor operation. I am now back on the build and have spent the last couple of weeks working on the fashion pieces. This was fairly tricky delicate work for me so I thought it best to wait until I had everything in place before making this update. I spent a lot of time making sure I had the wing transom square and level and even as any mistakes here would affect much of the rest of the build. I also undertook a fair amount of work on the fashion pieces before I glued the wing transom in place. On the underneath of the port side of the wing transom two scores need to made into which the uprights of the timber port will later sit and of course these scores need to be made before the wing transom is glued to the sternpost. According to David's instructions, the fashion pieces are 9" thick but are actually formed out of two layers of wood. This first layer is 6" thick and sits flush with the aft side of the wing transom. Later in the build a 3" thick section will be added to the rear of the fashion pieces and this will help form the rabbets for the transom and hull planking. I read the instructions several times but for some reason I still managed to make my initial shapes for the two fashion pieces out of 9" thick wood! Luckily it was easy to thin these down to the correct thickness when I realised my mistake. Shaping and beveled each fashion piece to sit flush with the underneath of the wing transom and slot into the notches on the sternpost was quite a job for me but I took everything very slowly and only removed the smallest pieces of material each time until I was satisfied with the fit. Using a variety of squares and levels and clamps I was able to place the wing transom correctly and this was glued and pinned in place. The starboard fashion piece was then glued to the sternpost and wing transom. I really couldn't figure out a good way to clamp these odd shaped pieces together so I had to resort to just holding it in place for a minute or two whilst the pva set. The two uprights which form the vertical sides of the timber port were then cut from 6'' square stock. The top of each upright was then beveled to match the angle of the underside of the wing transom. The port fashion piece is made up from two sections of material, the main piece itself and then a triangular piece with forms the horizontal lower sill of the timber port. Two scores were also cut in this lower sill for the the bases of the two uprights. The port fashion piece was then glued to the sternpost and the wing transom and then the two uprights for the timber port were slotted and glued into place. I tried very hard to get my cuts and joins as clean and neat as possible but I did find that there were one or two very small areas where I had the tiniest gaps - as you can see with the bottom of the timber port uprights above. I will mix up some dilute pva and sawdust and fill these in and hopefully they will blend away when I give the fashion pieces a quick sand in the next day or two. I am trying to be as clean and accurate as I can with my work but at the same time I am aware of a delicate balancing act between ambition and skill - I'd like everything to be perfect but I also have to appreciate my limitations and sometimes you just simply know that your attempt is as good as it is going to get! I left plenty of excess wood on the outer edges of the fashion pieces to give me lots of room for fairing in the correct lines when the hull is eventually faired.

Great work Daniel. This is a very impressive document constructed from an interesting and wide range of sources!

Further work has been undertaken with the wing transom. Firstly, two holes were drilled in the wing transom so that it could be pinned to the sternpost and held in a fixed position whilst I worked out where the ends of the piece needed to be. The wing transom was also held square and level with some set up blocks and then the correct positions of the end points were marked on it by measuring against some squares on the plan. The ends of the wing transom were then cut to length and shaped correctly. the next step was yo cut the notched in the top of the wing transom where the counter timbers sit. I firstly tried to do this with the mill but I struggled to find a good way to hold the piece securely in the correct orientation and rather than risk messing it up at this stage I decided it was easier to mark out the notches with chisels and remove the required depth of wood that way. The four notched for the counter timbers and the other notches either end of the wing transom were made in this way. Here is the wing transom in place. It has not yet been fixed to the sternpost as I want to get a little further ahead with the making of the fashion pieces first as they slot into the sides of the sternpost and I feel it will be easier to make those joints without the wing transom in situ. So far I have thicknesses a section of wood from which the two fashion pieces are to be made. The outlines of these were then traced and roughly cut out with the scroll saw. Shaping these will be the next stage of work.

Hello and welcome 👋

Hi Belco, I sent you a private message. I hope it helps.

I think the video is of the new kit but to be honest if it shows how to do the rigging then that would be the best way to find out what is required - the plans for the older kit don't really give a great deal of guidance. I have the plans for the old kit so I will see if I can get any photos for you.

I have been working on the wing transom for the past couple of weeks. This is a complex shaped piece that is 15" deep fore to aft and 10" in height. However, the ends of the piece are set 4.5" below the centre point and so I started off with a blank piece 18" square and slightly longer than the transom in length. The fore face of the transom is also slightly lower than the aft side and neither of them are perpendicular to the keel and and so it was firstly necessary to shape my rectangular bank into a sort of parallelogram shape (there is probably a better geometric term for this but it is a long time since my schooldays 😃). I shaped the angle on the top and bottom faces of the piece with the disk sander which left me with the image below. The line on the end face shown above represents where the top edge of end of the wing transom will be once a convex curve is sanded into the top face. Sanding the convex curve on the top face and a matching concave curve on the bottom face of the wing transom provided to be a tricky exercise. I initially attempted to do this with the spindle sander holding the piece freehand and whilst this worked for the convex face I made a mess of shaping the concave face as I simply couldn't maintain the same angle across the whole of the piece. I spent some time wondering how to achieve this before I realised that the answer lay in the helpful build log by @Stuntflyer. In his log Mike showed that he fixed the wing transom to a block before sanding this curve - when I first read this many months ago I simply presumed that this was to make holding the thin piece of wood easier but then a lightbulb went on and I realised that by gluing the wing transom to the block so that the face of the piece was vertical, it was then possible to sand a straight and consistency face as either a convex or concave curve. Using a second blank for another attempt (I had made four blanks when cutting the 18" square pieces as I knew I wouldn't get it right first time!) I again sanded in the angle on the top and bottom faces and then glued the piece to a small waste block with PVA so that I could sand in the convex curve on the top of the wing transom. After shaping the convex curve on top of the piece I wet the glue joint to dissolve the PVA, flipped the wing transom around and re-glued it so that I could then sand the concave curve into the bottom face. I then needed to thin the fore and aft thickness of the wing transom by 3'' and set the angle of those two faces. This was done on the disk sander and brought me to this stage below. I think the next step will be to temporarily drill and pin the wing transom to the sternpost so that I can establish that it is square and level. I can then determine where the outer ends of the wing transom need to be so that it can be cut to length.

I also agree that trying some sort of mock up is a great idea before you commit. With my board the dimensions mostly relate to the size of the squares I made to use in the t tracks. I wanted the squares to be able to reach the centreline so they could hold the sternpost etc. The t tracks also then needed to be far enough away from the outside of the hull for the squares to be used outside the hull also. Eventually I will make a gantry with uprights the same thickness as the squares. I then left plenty of space outside the t track so the base of the squares could sit safely on the board. My board isn't going to be transported about but I think it is a good idea to have as large as board as you can manage to transport. Good luck with the build.

Congratulations, excellent work!

Hi, There is a set of these for sale on EBay at https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/405254327288? if you are still looking for copies. Best to check they include the CDs and plans etc. Not cheap though....

Only a small amount of progress since the last update but I have reached a mini milestone and wanted to document that. Work continued with the positioning and drilling of the pedestal bolts through the keel. I spent a while working out where the best positions seemed to be and decided on two locations the same distance ahead of the sternpost and aft of the stem. These worked out to be at the fore end of the aft deadwood and on the first part of the rising wood. I initially drilled a 1.2mm pilot hole in each location with the drill press and then moved up to a larger 3mm hole. I have some 3mm threaded rod which I am going to use as the bolts to hold the keel to the building board. With the keel clamped in place on the building board I was then able to mark out where the 3mm holes were placed so that I could then drill through these straight through the building board. I needed to fit some 3mm nuts in the aft deadwood and the rising wood but before starting on that I firstly ground down the opposite sides of the nuts a little to make them slimmer so that they didn't sit too close to the edge of the keel. To make cutting these recesses for the nuts a little easier I drilled out a 4mm wide area just slightly deeper than the nut thickness, and then I used the chisels to cut out the remainder of the hexagonal shape of the nuts. I then cut my 3mm threaded rod to length and inserted these through the keel and building board. The tops of the rods are held in place with the recessed nuts in the deadwood and the rising wood whilst underneath the board I have attached some wingnuts to clamp the keel tightly to the board. I still have to epoxy the recessed nuts in place at some point in the near future but this doesn't necessarily need to be done just yet. The reason why this is a mini milestone for me is that I have now reached the point in the build where David's book starts to document the build. The first picture in The Haying Hoy shows David's backbone of the ship in place and bolted to the building board and after six and half months I have now reached that point. There are 365 build step photos in the book so I still have a fair way to go..... but at least i have made it to photo 1 ! 😀

Excellent work, she looks splendid! I am sure you will be glad you went the extra mile with the reef points when you look back on this build in the future.

Have fun, the Vanguard Models are excellent.

I continued work on the rabbet, focussing now on the area at the fore end of the keel and up the stem. It was easy enough to continue the line of the rabbet along the straight part of the fore keel and when I reached the curve of the stem I proceeded very slowly as this area basically had to be done freehand. I was able to find a flexible piece of wood slightly taller than the thickness of the stem that I was able to lay on the inside of the curve to use as a guide to stop me wavering too close to the inner edge of the stem. Even so it required light and repeated passes with the gouge and plenty of pauses for resharpening to get the line of the rabbet established on each side of the keel. Again, I probably haven't cut the rabbet quite as deep as is required yet but I can go over that again at a later stage when the bollard timbers are in place and can act as a guide. With the rabbet out of the way for the time being I returned to the fore deadwood and finished cutting the rest of the steps towards the rear of the piece. The are six steps in all on each side and the difference in height between the last three is very very small. I did the best I could to make sure they were even and matched each side but I found it very difficult to get them exactly the right height without risking the very aft one breaking off. This may be something I also need to revisit later in the build before adding the relevant frames. I also removed the rest of the excess width at the rear of the fore deadwood which had been left in place to keep the piece square and level whilst the steps were cut. This brought me to the stage of being able to to assemble all of the various pieces on which I have been working for the last few months. Firstly, I glued the rear half of the keel to the front section and then drilled and inserted copper wire for the bolts in the scarph joint. I then installed the fore and aft deadwood and the rising wood on the keel. The stemson was then glued in place and finally the sternpost was added. With the sternpost in place I was then able to install the stern support on the baseboard. It was exciting to finally see all of these pieces come together after working on them individually for so long. It felt for quite a while that I wasn't making that much progress but at least now everything is there to be seen together.