The Bitter End

Thanks to some additional inspiration by @Der Alte Rentner and some research I finally came up with a design for a thicknesser of sorts. Its mostly from a design stolen from this site with some slight modifications. Essentially just a board with a piece of aluminum channel on a pivot point bolted to my drill press. I added a set screw and a tension spring and the results are surprisingly consistent and neat. Its not quite a Byrnes but its a hang of alot better than doing it by hand. TBE

You make an excellent point. I guess in this case its all fantasy anyway because as you said everything would have been painted in reality. It probably makes the most sense to just do what looks best to the eye. TBE

Good Morning Peter Thank you for your input, I think I will skip the caulking as per your suggestion. I had the exact same thought about caulking the hull planking as you did, its a strange quirk in a way that everyone caulks the deck but nothing else. For all we know I will have to paint the hull regardless but let us see. As for the use of the term gunnel, I should probably have checked the terminology, I worked in the oil and gas industry before I became a farmer and we used the term gunnel, along with alot of other vernacular that would not have impressed my mother. I am continuing my search for a reasonably priced hobby drum sander but it is roving to be a challenge. I even made an attachment for my belt sander that should in theory function like a thicknesser but it grabs the piece of wood and shoots it past the belt before it can do much....very frustrating. Kind regards Haiko

Good Morning Jon A wealth of knowledge as always! It is a real pity that the Peabody photos are no longer available, I searched high and low myself. I will give all that you have sent me some serious thought and make a decision. I was thinking this morning that there cant be many models out there with more variation than the Constitution, I guess the nice part of that is the fact that it really forces you down the road of research and learning. Thanks again(and sorry for hijacking your peter) Haiko

That is a very complimentary question to ask, thank you! I am just a farmer, that means that a big part of my life involves making things. Out here I have to be the carpenter, mechanic, plumber, electrician, weather man and a thousand more things. I am not particularly goo at any of these tasks but they all help in some small way to keep me going. If you are interested this is my home...https://www.instagram.com/langdam.guest.farm/ Are you a carpenter? i think your models must be some of the most precise on the forum.

Thank you for the compliment. It was a joy to build.

Mustafa! Thank you for the encouragement. I am making vary good use of your log to help me along with this build. Below is the portion I am referring to. The portion above the planksheer. I hope that makes sense Regards Haiko

I am about the start planking the gunnel(I dont even know if this is the correct term). Can anyone tell me if there should be visible caulking between these planks? I know its a strange question because the original vessel was obviously painted but suggestions would be appreciated. TBE

Waterways and planksheer The waterway process was pretty simple. I just cut stock the the size suggested on the plans from a pear stump then cut away the portion of the waterway that was going to make contact with the bulkhead extension until it sat nice and flush along its length. I then marked the toe of the stock with a 1.5mm strip of wood and the top of the stock with a 2.2mm piece of wood. This created 2 pencil lines which i could just taper between to create the profile of the waterway. I hope this makes sense, i realise its a pretty shoddy explanation. The process of shaping the waterway was greatly helped by the application of the hand sanitizer mentioned in a previous post. It really helps with the hand carving component In order to make the curved section I marked out the waterway with a pencil on the plans then cut out this profile and glued it onto a suitable plank after which I cut out the shape on a bandsaw and fine tuned it on the belt sander. The pieces were then marked using the same technique and installed with the rest of the waterway and steamed for bending to fit correctly. I also made a little modification to my lathe to create a sanding disc that could neaten up the faces of the waterway and make better butt joints. The final step for now was installing the planksheer. It was incredibly difficult to cut 2.38mm square strips on my full sized table saw but with some sanding I got the stock pretty close. This stock was then cut to length, steamed and shaped to produce the final result which can be seen below. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to get your bulkheads and extensions properly leveled and aligned. do the extra work or you will end up with a wavy planksheer and waterway. I am going to have to fill in some gaps when it comes to the first row of planks and hopefully this hides the defects. TBE P.S. After writing this post i decided to steam loose the planksheer and waterway where it dipped then force a wedge(a chisel) under the low point and allow the timber to dry. This means that in those places the waterway no longer makes contact with the bulkhead but is at least running straight. Due to the fact that I am using a plywood carrier for the deck I think I can live with this compromise. I have included a photo below of what this minor modification achieved. I fear only the most OCD amongst you will notice the difference. It is still not perfect but I can accept it knowing that alot of this will be hidden by future work and it is a reasonable price to pay to use this pear wood.

Bowsprit fitting Just a quick post on the bowsprit. In order to get the waterways to fit correctly and be snug up against the bowsprit I needed to do a temporary fitting of the timber. This item will probably be discarded in the end as there is an old plum tree in my garden with a dead branch that is begging to be turned into masts for this project but we shall see. To do this one must cut a tenon at 25 degrees into the end of the bowsprit and in my case cut away the knightshead timber support that I made over size. I had noticed earlier in the build that there was some misalignment in the bulkheads which meant that I needed to cut away a not of bulkhead A to allow the bowsprit to lie straight. This also meant that I need to make my tenon slightly narrower so that i could shift the base of the bowsprit slightly to starboard to get everything lined up nicely. The bowsprit in place will appear in my next post. the images below just show that I id this cutting process in essentially 2 steps. TBE

Bow filler blocks Just the usual copying of the plans, gluing them to the blocks with rubber cement and then sanding back to the lines with the belt sander. As with the stern fillers I used the contour strips provided to help with shaping(see useless photo below). After the basic shape had been formed I then cut out the profile for the notches in the filler blocks to accommodate the knightsheads(apparently this is a misnomer of sorts but I's sure you all know what I mean. These notches were cut with a combination of cheap chisels from temu and some sharp number 11 scalpel blades. It did require some fiddling to get everything correctly sized for a nice fit but I got there in the end. I did pass the block over a flame to burn away some of the messy standing grain that is common with this type of wood after the carving was done. Nothing special with the knightshead timbers except that 4 strips that will ultimately edge the bow gun ports were lined with a thing strip of pear wood as I am still hoping to avoid painting this model if possible this can just be seen in the last photo of this post on the starboard side. I made them up with the usual copying and gluing then sanding method. You will also notice that i left the profile of the upper supports square and did not cut them away. This will later provide support for the spar deck when It gets installed. It is worth noting that this was not entirely correct and I had to later cut some of these pieces away to allow the bowsprit to fit These parts were then fitted and fared until all was reasonably well positioned for something which will later be hidden under planking. TBE

Moving on to the transom. Once the stern counter had been installed and the first of the transom pieces held in place it became obvious that there was an issue with a measurement or two. The transom pieces protruded above the edge of bulkhead "R" this would need to be addressed. As stated earlier I elected to not make the stern counter thinner but rather modify the transom pieces to correct the issue. The approach I took was designed to address both the misalignment of the transom and the incorrect angle of the transom. I took an image of the stern gallery and overlayed a protractor onto the image to determine the correct angle for the transom which turned out to be 70 degrees...see below.... This is a happy coincidence because removing the offending material from the top and bottom of each transom to get them flush with bulkhead "R" translated into a 70 degree transom. Its a bit hard to explain but hopefully the images of the pencil lines below will show what I did to correct the issue. I then cut away the relevant material above and below the pencil lines, re cut the notches for the cross planking and obviously forgot to take a new photo. To glue these in place I again copied the plans and stuck the cutout onto the stern counter, then makes the transom positions with a pencil and glued them down while measuring their spacing at multiple locations to ensure they were square. As you can see the extensions are grossly misaligned, I like to think this is mostly the fault of the kit but I guess I may have played a role in that too. I remedied this by spraying the offending extensions with Propranolol based hand sanitizer and then clamping a slightly flexible sanding block made of wood to the transom to create a nice smooth curve. I was pretty happy with the result. Installing the beams was pretty straight forward. I had however cut the slots slightly wider than needed so you can faintly see that there are infact 2 beams in each slot to make up the extra space. Once this was all in I sanded the faces flat so that everything was nice and flush. The last part of the stern for now was to add filler blocks to the port and starboard sides of the transom. Be careful to not over size these and allow for the "wings" which are go behind the stern galleries. I like to do her stern in the 1812 style with 7 windows and a more curved taff rail. Hopefully this can still be achieved with this layout of transoms and some finagling. Post addition...once the stem and stern were complete I also added support blocks between the bulkheads cut from a random pine plank I had lying around the workshop. A simple matter of measuring the distance between bulkheads at the false keel and then cutting a matching set of blocks to fit the gap. The result wasn't terribly pretty but I know that this will all be hidden. It might not have been the worst idea in the world to cut these blocks with great accuracy and install them while installing the bulkheads an the glue was still wet. In this photo you will also see there is reinforcements on ether side of the space for the 3 masts, again nothing fancy, just some off cut wood glued either side of the gap while ensuring they do not protrude above the false keel and interfere with the masts. TBE

This is all a bit delayed so I will endeavor to recall what was done when. I took some photos as I went but its all a little murky. If anyone has any questions or needs more photos please let me know. Stern filler blocks and counter. I began with the stern counter. I did this by making a copy of the plans and sticking it to the provided timber of the appropriate size and then sanding back to the cutout, then making the location of the rudder hole and drilling it out. It is mentioned in the build log of @Der Alte Rentner that the plans dimensions for the stern counter create a counter that is slightly thicker than it should be. In my case this was something like 3.2mm(excuse my french) too thick. I considered slimming down the stern counter to account for this but decided against it as I felt it would have moved the relative orientation of the hole for the rudder in an awkward manner so I decided to keep the counter the original thickness. This actually worked out fairly well for reasons I will explain later. When fitting the counter I ensured that the rudder had decent clearance through the hole before final glueing. Next up was to shape and install the stern filler blocks. This was again a process of copying the plans and then glueing the relevant portions onto the correctly sized blocks then slowly working back to the cutout line with my belt sander. I then used the provided template strips to bring back the shape until it matched the countour lines suggested. Once this had been installed with the help of some elastic bands and a couple of clamps there was more sanding required to get everything to flow correctly. Unfortunately I did not take the amount of photos I should have but i think its all pretty straight forward. TBE

Hello all A bit of information for those that are interested. I contacted the USS constitution Museum on the advice of JSGerson to enquire about the appearance of the Constitution figure head after the damage she sustained damage during a collision with the President in 1804 and before she had the soon to be headless jackson figurehead installed...This was their response. "After the Hercules figurehead was destroyed, a simple billethead was put in place. This is detailed on pages 116 and 117 of A Most Fortunate Ship by Tyrone G. Martin (Naval Institute Press) and also on his website The Captain's Clerk at this link: https://thecaptainsclerk.com/speaks/book06.html " The above url leads to a great little website full of additional information.... https://thecaptainsclerk.com/ I hope this was of some value to someone out there. TBE

Thank you! I will be doing my best to order a suitable blade. All the blades I have have significant offset so they create a very ugly cut. That almost looks like a meat blade, so I may be a big of a cowboy and see if I have one which will fit on my rockwell and try that before ordering. TBE