The Bitter End

Outstanding! I owe you a beer

Thank you Jon I think I made a bit of an error and forgot to mention that I meant the planking for the deck. It sounds like you are referring to the hull planking. Haiko

Not a terribly exciting or informative post today... I I took a break from marking up the false keel as I needed to produce the hull planking to see what thickness I could consistently produce. I then churned out about 600 planks of 4.5mm x 1.5mm and will sand them back to their correct thickness as I need them. Because they are cut from raw trunks there is alot of wastage so there will be a fair amount of culling happening. While I was in the "big" workshop I also cut some pear wood planks of 6.7mm on the table saw and simply traced the outline of the provided keel components onto those planks being sure to avoid any knots and major inconsistencies in the wood. I then cut close to the line with my 1970s delta rockwell 14inch bandsaw with a blunt bent blade and then sanded back to the line on the belt sander and with a dremel. This has produced reasonable results and with a bit of tweaking one can get a nice neat fit on the false keel. I hope all this extra work pays off. It is not that obvious in the photos but the pear really is a beautiful wood once it has been given a little bit of attention It is probably worth repeating the warning that the parts provided in my kit were very fragile and broke exceptionally easily. The kit i have is apparently at least 15 years old which may have played a role in this fragility. These parts still obviously need cleaning up and fitting but here are the rough cuts

Thanks again for this information. I have been looking at the plans in your link and they certainly are excellent food for thought. It is interesting to see the evolution of this vessel over her long history. Perhaps you can answer a question for me with your greater access to information. I have the original deck planking at 40ft by 7inches length and width(thickness is not so relevant for me in this case. this scales to 2.3mm or 1/11" does that sound correct to you?

Hi Gregg! I am happy to have you tagging along, please keep an eye out for mistakes for me. I am also following these builds, I am truly amazed by the quality of the workmanship that exists on this forum. I hope you start your log soon and we can struggle along together. Regards Haiko

Hi Jon Firstly thank you for your input. That set of drawings of the stem definitely help. I ended up making the stem from a single piece of pear wood but I think I will cheat a bit and carve these divisions into the wood. The images of the constitution you reference on used to sails log are absolutely beautiful and this is exactly the style that I am aiming for. achieving this is another story. I would really appreciate your offer of additional drawings, it would be amazing if you could send them my way. Thanks again Haiko

I hope it stays that way, without your build log I would be completely lost too!

In principle I do agree entirely. My motivation for making the stem from scratch is that I am leaving the model unpainted and a pear wood stem should be easier on the eyes than the basswood one provided. I also want to do it in sections to increase the chances that I can get caut the stem out of as uniform a piece of wood as possible, a challenging task with all the tiny knots in these trees. I am still talking a big game about doing this but It may not happen. The pear wood I have is presenting some significant challenges due to the incredibly cold winters and very hot summers where these trees grew, creating a very uneven wood density across the grain and this is exaggerated by the fact that they were farmed to bear fruit and not produce timber so there are plenty of knits to contend with....that being said please keep the opinions coming, I give them all serious consideration

I have removed all clamps and sanded and scraped off all the excess glue and char. Nothing too notable about this process but it is worth mentioning that the wood provided in the kit is very delicate so it breaks easily and can easily be over sanded, especially at the edges, as a result I have had 2 glue back 2 broken sections indicated below as well as put in a bit of a filler strip where I had removed too much material during sanding. I have also simply photocopied the plans to transfer the bearding lines to the false keel, My intention is to do this using carbon paper but I will still have to see if this actually works. If anyone has any tips or pointers at this point on how to go about double planking the hull any help would be very welcome. When I transfer the bearding line I am working from the assumption that I will have to raise the bearding line by the thickness of the additional layer of planking that I will be adding....so far that is all that I have on the subject. The rest of the day was spent cutting more pear wood in preparation for milling. Hopefully I am not being over ambitious.\ On an unrelated note, I have been looking for plans for the keel stem so that I might make my replacement stem in pieces as it would have been made in reality. I found plans from 1929 but they are significantly different from the provided stem pieces that I cannot really make use of them. I am not sure if that is because the kit plans are incorrect or if the 1929 plans are just a modern version of the stem but I am at a loss. If anyone has any suggestions or access to plans for a stem or era appropriate stem I would jump at the opportunity.

I have finally begun this Build process in earnest. I began With opening up the box and going through all the parts, removing the small items from their packaging and transferring them to my small parts organizers. I make use of these units which have small sub boxes with individual lids which I absolutely love. https://share.temu.com/vMlcL3WUfmA (Please let me know if this link breaks forum rules and I will remove it). Next was a quick stock take and parts inspection. It has been mentioned in other builds but Utmost care must be taken when removing parts from their frames, I managed to break a keel section before it was even properly out of the box. I will spare you all another set of photo of the box contents which consist of vast quantities of bass wood and a multitude of bits and pieces. For now I have packed everything back in the box and just removed the 8 sheets which contain hull frame sections. I will begin by removing the central keel sections with a exacto knife and number 11 surgical blade(I bought about a million of them for next to nothing so I might as well use them). It is surprisingly hard to remove these sections without doing any damage. I intend to leave the hull unpainted and planked in a second layer of pear wood so I will make the visible keel sections from scratch using the same. The keel sections below have been removed for use as templates for scratch making these parts(Hopefully) Moving on to doing the glue-up on the portions which wont be visible once the hull is planked. I am doing the glue-up with titebond original. Alignment was done by gently hammering a standard toothpick into the alignment holes of the sections and then sanding them flush(hot tip - you can save money by breaking the toothpick in half and using 1 toothpick for both holes ) I then placed the sections between 2 sheets of wax paper and pressing them between various boards that were floating around the kitchen. That is it for now while I wait for the glue to dry and figure out how to make the keel sections T.B.E. EDIT! I lifted the weights after an hour or so to clear any squeeze out with a scalpel before it completely dries... and noticed that the warping of the bass wood caused the seams to open on 2 of the pieces. I therefore forced some glue into these gaps and re clamped with office clips. The lesson here is so either be more aggressive with the weight on a flat press or go with clips from the beginning.

Hi again Herr Rentner! I am actually doing the strips on a table saw believe it or not, it produces pretty good results but I will certainly try and get them neatened up with a drum sander as you suggest. I have also only cut about 30% of the hull planking that I need so I might attempt the next batch on the bandsaw. I'll be spending the morning in the woodpile with a chainsaw tomorrow so I should have more wood to experiment on during the week if my schedule allows it. I decided to get started on the hull this evening so...here we go....

Thanks for the advice and welcome. I will definitely do exactly that, i think I will need as much time as possible to figure out how to get those planks as thin as I can.

I guess this I have finally begun work on my Constitution....in a way I have decided that I will be double planking the Hull. I prefer the unpainted look to best showcase the unique element of this hobby which is hull construction from individual planks. I also have access to several thousand Pear trees which present a bit of a challenge but I am excited to approach it. It was suggested to me by @Der Alte Rentner that I simply fill in between the frames and do a single planking over this(a great suggestion which will definitely save many hours of work) but I think I need the planking practice and I have the supplied timber from the kit so I will plank the hull as per the kit instructions and then plank over it with my pear wood planks...hopefully. If anyone has any advice on what to be careful for in this process I would be most grateful. I realise that I am making the hull thicker than was planned for in the kit so I'm anticipating some issues. My research allowed me to settle on planks of 40ft by 12 inches(160mmx4.2mm at scale). this requires a staggering 95 running meters of planking by my calculations(assuming no wastage). The process requires me to cut out the straightest section of the tree with a chainsaw while avoiding sections with nails(nails are used on these trees to tie open branches to aid fruit bearing). I then rough cut the trunks to square on the bandsaw, square off 2 sides on the planer, rip 5mm planks on the table saw and then tun these planks into 2.5mm strips on the table saw with a thin strip jig built for the purpose. I then need to thickness down to 4.2mmx1.5mm(a process which I haven't quite figured out yet.

Finally finished. Please accept my apologies for the very similar photos to my last post. It has been really interesting to go back over the model in the cleaning process and see the choices and mistakes that I made at the beginning of the build which I would have approached so differently now that I have completed my first model. If anyone sees anything which can be improve or if anyone wants any specific information on any part of this build or the techniques used please let me know. Thank you again to everyone who supported and assisted me in this multi year journey. It has only been a pleasure.On to the next one!

Good morning! I will put together a series of photos on this jig. You are absolutely right about the kerf size, I use a 2.5mm kerf aluminum cutting blade(they have a slightly different tooth profile which seems to work a little better) with a high tooth count. I agree that this is unfortunately very wasteful but I have access to almost unlimited quantities of pear wood as I live in a pear farming area and farm pears myself. I know you can get blades with a narrow kerf from some specialist wood working suppliers but I am yet to see one with my own eyes. Here is more or less the thinnest full size blade I could find. https://www.amazon.com/Micro-Kerf40-Melamine-Table-Mitre-Blade/dp/B00J8UM8O4 Kind regards TBE