AnobiumPunctatum

Thanks guys - here's the other side - adding the last aft timber on each side tomorrow

Kenny,
 
congratulations for finishing such a beautyful section model. It made me a lot of fun to follow your build log in the past month. Will you know start the full hull build?
 
And it made me again very sad and angry that it was necessary for the Board Admirality to stop this beautyful community project.

Continuation.
 
 

 
 
Pawel

Continuation.
 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 
The beginning of the relation is available at this address:
http://5500.forumact...ndre-1-24#66516
 
Regards, Pawel

Continuation.
 
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
The beginning of the relation is available at this address:
 
 
http://5500.forumact...ndre-1-24#66516
 
 
 
Regards, Pawel

Thank you so much for the comments and likes. 
 
Christian, there are plans for a POB full build of the Triton; but that will be a while before I start it.  I currently have a piece of Castello Boxwood that is acclimating to the climate in Texas which I will mill down and use for the Triton full build.  I also need to find some Holly and order a Byrnes tables saw and thickness sander.  In the mean time I am going to put together the Model Shipways 18th Century Longboat kit.  It's still a toss up on whether to start the Model Shipways Confederacy kit or the Lumberyard's US Frigate Raleigh kit (Harold Hahn plans and milled lumber from the Lumberyard).  Decisions, decisions.......
 
Tony, it may seem like it was fast, but I started this build in 2014, then had to take a break to finish up school and for 3 surgeries for carpal and cupital tunnel.  Once I was able to start it back up (after earning my degree) I really wanted to get it finished.
 
Now to go finish the case and get the model ready to give to my Dad.

Kenny,
 
congratulations for finishing such a beautyful section model. It made me a lot of fun to follow your build log in the past month. Will you know start the full hull build?
 
And it made me again very sad and angry that it was necessary for the Board Admirality to stop this beautyful community project.

Kenny,
 
congratulations for finishing such a beautyful section model. It made me a lot of fun to follow your build log in the past month. Will you know start the full hull build?
 
And it made me again very sad and angry that it was necessary for the Board Admirality to stop this beautyful community project.

The cross section is finished.  I made the crutches from brass square stock and painted them black and then installed them on the gangways.  I then installed the gangways on the cross section along with the ladders.  Put a coat of wipe on poly on and attached it to the base with three short pieces of 1/16" brass rod.  I also made a case to go over the model.  The base and case is made from pine.  I have apply cherry stain to the base and I will also stain the case with cherry.  The case will be attached to the base with some 1/16" brass rod to keep it from sliding around.  Anyways, here are the pictures.  I will post some of the case once that is completed.

Roughly,  62 frames are made of 1000 parts, each part has 4 sides to sand.
The setup is as follow : inside curve, ends, outside curves.
Then the tracing paper is remove with a scraper. A faster method is to pass the parts in the sanding drum, This machine is quite precise, much more than a planer because the adjustment can be made in 0,001 inch increment.
 
Frames part are divided in 3 groups : left, center and right components.
Left and right are put aside to keep the center parts which are going to be use to prepare the keel.
 
 
 
 
 

Hi Mark,
 
I actually did draw a set of plans for the Beagle in the English framing style but didn’t think I would live long enough to build her.
 
Mike

Not only the build log, also the model is coming along great. Nice progress

excellent milling job

This are very good news. Scale Hardware was much cheaper than Kupfer in Germany

I made a lower offer and the seller accepted it, and upon learning what I needed them for, seemed very happy about it.
 
So, I guess there may be some entries in this log soon - at last!

Way back in 1978 and 1979 I had the privilege of crewing on board an old Portuguese Grand Banks fishing vessel turned sail training ship, the barkentine Gazela Primeiro.  Of all the boats I sailed for pay or pleasure, Gazela is my favorite and my fondest memory.  It was a combination of a sturdy and trust-worthy vessel combined with a crew of wonderful people; that made me feel at home and safer than any other boat I've known.
<= an 18 year old me after morning wash-down on Gazela.
 
A bit of the ship's history is available on My site.
 
I've always dreamt of building a model of Gazela but I could never find her lines.  I spent a lot of time searching, contacting people like the builder of the model in Philadelphia.  Six sheets of plans were drawn up around the time I had sailed her and a profile from that set was included in a book by Allison Saville about the ship.

 
This was printed on a tabloid sized sheet, and while not perfect, was usable, but I still didn't have a body plan.  One contact had built an old Scientific kit of the boat and still had the instruction sheets.  He photo graphed these for me.

 
Another contact who had the plans, sent me a a paper photocopy on a tabloid sized sheet.

 
I scoured the Internet for any images of the boat I could find, especially those of her hauled out of the water.

 
I tried to reconcile what I had to each other to come up with a working set of plans in the 1:36 scale I wanted.  It was very tedious with all the photography and scanning distortions.
I was getting near to something I could use, but wasn't there yet.

 
I eventual found the plans drawn up in the 70's at Mystic Seaport.  They were very expensive, but I set my teeth and ordered them, only to hear they they were restricted in making copies.  They steered me towards the Independence Seaport Museum who apparently hold the originals.
 
These folks are not set up to provide copies of plans.  They offered to digitally photograph the plans for me, or send them out to be digitally scanned.  The cost they estimate for that would be astronomical.  In trying to get across what I'm after, they told me the plans were missing!  Since then they've found two of the six sheets and sent sample photos; they are the same two sheets I show you above.

At this moment, I'm still negotiating with the Museum to get usable copies of Gazela's plans.  If this doesn't work, I'll have to resort to my make-do attempt detailed above.

Thank you very much Denis,
 
made 2 additional smaller watertanks for the aft boatsdeck today and added the fill- and discharge tubes on all three
 
Nils
 

 

 
 

Great project!
 
I've raced with the skipjacks at Deal Island.  I'm tied between two of them in the photo.  Fun times!

Part 4 – The Keelson – cont’d


 
I should have mentioned wood selection in the prior post.  Kathryn has a mixture of oak and pine, with the oak being used primarily in structural components.  The HAER documentation does a good job of identifying the type of wood used for each component.  I’m using madrone (very similar to pear) for the components made of oak, and castello for the pine components.  Madrone normally is fairly pink, like pear, but my current stock of madrone is much paler than what I’ve used in the past.


 
The centerboard slot is cut through both the keelson and the keel, so the first task was to add the keel in the area of the centerboard slot.


 
The oak keel is very thin from the bow through the area of the centerboard slot – only 3” thick.  Since the thickness is consistent in this area a single piece could be milled.  The following photo shows this keel piece being glued in place.


 

 

The milling cutter would not mill the entire depth of the slot from the top of the keelson – the keelson would need to be flipped for completion of the slot.  Pilot holes were drilled through the keelson at each end of the slot location – this enabled proper location of the slot when the keelson was flipped.


 
The following photo shows the centerboard slot being milled.


 


The mast step in Kathryn is actually a longitudinal mortise, so this was also milled at this time.  The following photo of the completed keelson shows the centerboard slot and the mortise for the mast step.


 

 

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to admit that I cut the centerboard slot too far forward after misreading one of the various marks I had made on the keelson.  The end of the centerboard slot was in the proper place, so this was easily corrected by inserting a small plug in the forward end of the slot – as seen in the following photo.


 

 

Kathryn’s bow consists of an inner stem, and outer stem, and the cutwater.  All of these components will be made of oak.  The inner stem sits on the keelson, and is supported by a stem knee.


 
The inner stem needed to be shaped so that it inclines at the same angle as the forward edge of the keelson.  I was also concerned about the inner stem being sufficiently secure, so a tenon was formed on the stem and a corresponding mortise was cut in the keelson, as shown in the following photos.


 
 

 

I was also concerned about attaching the outer stem, which will lie against the inner stem, so 2 pilot holes were drilled in the inner stem for aligning the outer stem in a later step.  These holes needed to be fairly horizontal, so the inner stem was held in the milling vise at the approximate angle of installation.  A centering drill was used to assist in drilling at that angle.


 

 

Once the centering drill started the hole, a #60 drill was used to complete the drilling.


 
 

 

The setup for gluing the inner stem to the keelson was a little unusual, since it was necessary to ensure that the inner stem and the forward face of the keelson stayed in the proper alignment.  A parallel bar was set in a vice for this alignment, and the keelson/stem knee combination was aligned with the bar.  A square was also used to ensure that the stem knee stayed vertical on the keelson.  The clamping setup can be seen in the following photo.


 

 

The following photo shows the keelson with the inner stem knee installed.


 

 


 
The next work will include the installation of the stem knee and completion of the keel assembly.


 

Part 3 – The Keelson


 
After a lot of time spent researching Kathryn and drawing the plans needed to start the build – it’s finally time to make some wood dust!


 
Kathryn’s keelson is a massive timber, consisting of two parts secured by a scarf joint.  The individual frames are mortised into the keelson, and a slot for the centerboard runs down the middle of the keelson.  The keelson is 16” wide and the height varies, decreasing towards the aft of the boat.  The bottom of the keelson below the level of the bottom of the frames is only 8” wide.  Following are a few cross-sectional views from the HAER drawings to illustrate the keelson:


 



 
The first step was to make the two main parts of the keelson.  After gluing the drawings of the two parts to the appropriate stock, these parts were cut out and sanded to the lines using the disk sander and the elliptical sander (for any inside curves).


 

 

These pieces were joined at the scarf and glued, using the clamping arrangement shown.  A piece of plate glass was used to ensure that the keelson was straight.
 

 

The next step was to form the narrow bottom of the keelson.  This would be best done on the milling machine, but an approach for cutting along the curve of the keelson was needed.  I fabricated a ‘table’ for the milling machine with a peg located in the table.  (I saw this in use on another build log – a great idea)




 
By keeping the keelson stock pressed against the peg, it was possible to follow the curve of the keelson with the milling cutter.  Light cuts were progressively made on each side of the keelson until the proper depth was reached.



 

The following photo shows the milled bottom of the keelson.
 

 

The next task was to cut all of the mortises for the frames in the keelson.  Since the keelson sits on an angle, a jig was developed to ensure that the frame mortises were perpendicular from the waterline.  This jig simply consisted of a piece of wood with the top cut at the appropriate angle.
 



 

This jig was positioned against two machine screws in the tooling plate to ensure that it was horizontal, and the keelson was clamped against this jig.  A laser center-finder was used to check that the mortises would be vertical.
 



 

The mortises were then cut on both sides of the keelson (the drawing of the keelson was mirrored and pasted to the port side after initial shaping of the keelson).  All of the mortises are 2” deep.


 

The ends of the mortises were rounded because of the shape of the milling cutter.  These were then squared off using a knife and a small chisel.



 

When reviewing the photos from the recent rebuild, I was able to see that the forward end of the keelson was rounded to the depth of the narrow keelson bottom.


 

 

A rotary tool with a medium stump cutter was used to form this end of the keelson.

 

 

The bearding line is very pronounced at the front of the keelson (shown as the dark line bordering the mortises in the above photo).  The keelson was shaped to this line, again using the stump cutter.


 

 

Finally, the forward 12” of the keelson tapers from its 16” width down to 10” – this was done on the disk sander.


 

 
 

 

So the keelson is now fully formed.  Next up is to cut the centerboard slot, begin installation of the keel, inner stem, and stem knee.


 
Thanks everyone!

So it was pointed out to me that I had a crooked ledge on the gun deck.  Thanks to dvm27 for pointing that out.  I can't believe that I missed that.  When I went to fix it, I found that the ledge in question wasn't even glued in, which was a win for me.  It was easy to fix, just popped it out applied glue and set it back into place and made sure it was straight. 
 
I also finished up one of the crutches for the gangway, I think it came out pretty good.  I am going to make the rest using the same process.  Now I just need to figure out how to blacken them chemically; I'm open to suggestions since I have never tried that before. (I'm not sure how well black paint will stand up on the crutches.  Anyways, here are some more pictures....

 
 

Finished rigging the guns and built the gangway platforms. Working on the crutches now. I am going to build one out of brass tubing, but will have to use CA glue since I don't have the equipment to do silver solder.  Once it's built, I'll paint it black. If I don't like the way it looks, I'm going to make them out of wood. I am also thinking about how to make the case for this model. Once it is complete, it will be gifted to my Dad.

Not only the build log, also the model is coming along great. Nice progress

What a lot of stuff to read this morning Very nicely done and described.