jdbondy

So things seem to be moving along nicely, as long as we are talking about the frames that are relatively midships in location. In order to proceed into the stern, it’s time to build up the deadwood. I cut segments roughly corresponding to the pieces indicated on the plans. The miter cutting capability of the Byrnes table saw came in handy for making sure the deadwood pieces articulated correctly with the sternpost. Now everything is glued in place. I marked the locations of the frame stations by marking the bottom of the keel, then extending lines upward from the keel through the deadwood pieces. This image shows one of the frame slots being cut out. Also in the image is a small compass that is from an old set of drafting tools I inherited from my mom. The tools were made by Staedtler in Germany; I don’t know how old they are but were used by my uncle in the 1950s. As stated in a previous post, the articulation between the keel/rabbet and the individual frames is important to get right, because this will determine how high or low a frame will sit with respect to the keel. It will impact the fairness of the hull all the way from the keel to the sheer. Fortunately, for the midship frames, this articulation is pretty easy to get right since the rabbet doesn’t change much for a fair distance fore and aft. So the depth of the notch I cut in each frame is relatively constant. This frame is starting to get toward the stern, and the frame shape at the keel becomes much more vertically oriented. Even further toward the stern, and the frame shape really tapers off gradually towards its bottom edge. So how deep do I cut the notch? How do I make sure the stern frames are positioned so they are not too high or low? My printouts of each frame include the planking thickness, and show how it articulates with the keel. Theoretically, the distance marked with the caliper above should correspond to the distance from the rabbet line to the bottom of the frame at this particular station, at one of its surfaces anyway. This particular image is of the larger side of this frame, so this more precisely would be the distance between the forward corner of the bottom of this frame to the rabbet’s edge. And the edge of the rabbet is fortunately clearly defined on the plans. So here I am measuring up from the rabbet line to the point where the bottom edge of that particular frame should end up. For the more experienced builders out there, I apologize in advance for my denseness. It eventually occurred to me (but was already evident to those of you with experience) that the bottom edge of the frames should outline the bearding line of the rabbet, and that line is definitely not depicted on the plans. But I should be able to get the bearding line from my 3D model, by taking a section of the hull’s shape using a plane perpendicular to the centerline, but shifted slightly from the centerline so that it corresponds to the outer surface of the keel. Manipulating the 3D model in this way gives us this curve, which is printed with the outer shape of the keel also in the image for guidance, so I could use it as a pattern. The pattern was transferred to the keel, resulting in this curve. So I thought I had solved the problem. Until I thought about it some more, especially after cutting notches into some of these stern frames and realizing how variable the shape of the bottom edges of these frames could be. They literally taper down to nothing. In the case of this frame, the result is that one side of the frame adjacent to the notch is significantly higher than the other side. Can I really rely on the articulation of this feather edge with the bearding line? If not, what can I use? And how about a frame like this one? Once again I indulge the patience of those of us builders that have more experience with these issues. Of course, as they know, the solution is to use the waterline as the reference point. And the location of the waterline is indicated on every frame shape that is generated from my 3D model. I spent a lot of time reprinting templates and affixing them to the frames I had previously trimmed to the proper shape, then transferring the waterline to the edges of those frames. I then set up the laser level on boards of appropriate thickness to bring the laser line to the level of the waterline. Of course, the laser line has width, so the waterline pencil marks on the frames and keel were brought to the top edge of the laser line. Many of the stern frames had to be redone in order to bring the waterline to the correct height while still preserving the articulation of the bottom of the frames with the keel/rabbet. In this image, the frames at station 8 and 9 are too high (well, low, actually, below the laser line if the hull is inverted upright), and the waterline mark on the sternpost is also high. This is probably because the laser line hasn’t been properly leveled yet. After adjusting the level of the laser, a consistent waterline is laid out. Here are the eight frames that are located right where the bearding line sweeps upward toward the transom. You can see how the heels of the frames are totally varied in their position, and how inconsistently they relate to the bearding line. But this should come out in the wash when it’s time for planking, as long as I carve the rabbet correctly. 13 frames are now lined up in position, and you can see how the laser denotes the waterline pretty fairly. A lot more fairly than if I had left it to other means. Glad I finally figured out using the waterline as a reference point. I spent some extra time getting the basswood filling blocks between each frame to be of the right thickness for its individual spot. These frames are going to need a lot of support when it comes time for fairing with a sanding strip.

Just as an aside, while I am between posts, I want to share a Youtube channel of an Englishman working up in the Pacific Northwest who is completely rebuilding a 1910 gaff cutter designed by Albert Strange, called Tally Ho. He has been at this for about 3 years. His videos are excellent, and he so completely describes and depicts traditional boatbuilding techniques that are immediately applicable to anyone building a boat model that intends to duplicate the way the original boat was actually built. I imagine that some of you are already familiar with his work. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg-_lYeV8hBnDSay7nmphUA/videos Watch out! It's easy to get sucked in. JD

Braver man than I...

The floral trailboard at the bow, did it need to have any contouring of its backside to get it to lie fairly against the bow planking?

Hi Phil, thanks for the bibliography. More resources to pursue! Shout out to the USS Oklahoma City from your avatar. I agree the terminology can be confusing, and describing molded vs sided measurements can defy easy explanation. Which is why I remain so surprised that there are not readily available drawings depicting the difference, not even in Chapelle's Boatbuilding. Glad my drawing has been helpful. Jaager, thanks for the updated dimensions. Ultimately we will see how these compare to actual measurements, which I will obtain sometime in August or September when I revisit the Mary Day in Camden. Michael, good to see you. Thanks for following!

So length on deck is 83 feet, beam of 23 feet, max draught is 7 feet. I will be interested to see what measurements your source provides. Thanks in advance, Jaager!

Jaager, that is great! The length on deck is 83 feet. When I get home from work today I will send you the beam and draught measurements.

Since I can't find any pictures illustrating molded vs sided dimensions... I hope that helps!

Druxey, I could probably get a used microtome from my colleagues in pathology, now that I think about it... Vaddoc, I am referring to the molded dimensions of a frame, which is the width of a frame as you look at it from the bow or stern. It's the dimension of the frame from its outer surface where the planks contact it, to its inner surface that is visible from inside the boat. Boatbuilders refer to the molded dimension and the sided dimension of frames, where the sided dimension represents what we might call the thickness of the frame (its fore-and-aft dimension). Whereas the sided dimension of a frame is usually constant, the molded dimension of a given frame is greatest at the level of the keel and becomes thinner as the frame approaches deck level. I can't believe that when I search for online images demonstrating these terms, that nothing pertaining to boatbuilding comes up!

In my last two posts, I included an image that represented a significant jump ahead in the work on the model. Now I will fill in some of the blanks on how I came to the point of having so many frames filled in on the model’s baseboard. I could theoretically have omitted the rabbet from this model, and created a garboard plank with an edge that just abuts the keel. But given the Christmas craft project I completed and showed in the last post, I certainly now feel comfortable with the idea of carving out a small rabbet into the edge of the keel. I think it also will make the installation of the planking easier, and also some degree of rabbet carving would be absolutely necessary in the area of the deadwood. In the month of February I got to visit the Rockland Apprenticeshop on the coast of Maine. There I watched an apprentice working on carving out the rabbet on a full size keel for a lobster boat they are constructing. At full scale, of course, when carving out a rabbet, you have the benefit of fully lofted rabbet lines, bearding lines, and apex lines. At my scale, though, all that is going to have to be eyeballed. So, I took a deep breath, and while holding a frame for a particular station against the keel using a jig, I laid out and started to cut small areas of the rabbet at a couple of different stations. I used a 3/64” thickness strip of wood as a simulated plank in order to check the depth of the rabbet and the interface between the edge of the plank and keel to make sure I wouldn’t have a gap. I now regret not having a picture of my jig for holding everything while I worked on it. In this picture I have carved out 3 different locations, which enabled me to carefully extend the rabbet between these locations. The process involved a lot of moving back and forth between the jig and the microscope, through which I monitored my carving. I did use some of the same micro-chisels that I constructed for the Christmas craft project I had just completed. Here I am starting to extend the rabbet into the stem. A long, straight segment of the rabbet in the midships area has been finished here. I stopped at this point and awaited further development of the stem and stern framing before working on the stem rabbet and the deadwood (which hasn’t been constructed yet). Next step was to solidify the job of the baseboard by installing guides for the placement of the station frames. I used basswood of approximately 3/16” thickness to create shapes that resembled the shape of the frames they would support, but smaller in size so as not to interfere with the future process of fairing the shape of the hull once all frames were in place. As these were put in place, they were of course checked against the keel to make sure that the frame remained vertical and articulated with the keel in the correct location. I believe this is station 6 (of ten). Station 7’s support pieces were installed in the same way. Then, between stations 6 and 7, the intervening frames were test fitted, with additional pieces of basswood of appropriate thickness to support each of them. In this photo, the sheets of paper are being used to leave some residual space adjacent to each frame, to reduce friction. The sheets of paper have been removed. A detail of the edges of the frames as they sit on the boards. Shims are being installed to ensure accurate location of the frames at the level of their bulwark stanchions. Some of the frames in the image are still unsupported. Others have their fore and aft shims installed, while the frames on the station lines have fore and aft shims as well as shims to restrain their transverse movement. Once I was happy with the frames’ positioning on the baseboard, the keel was brought in, and the filler blocks located between the foot of each frame were installed. Compared to the waterline, there is an upslope of 2 degrees as the keel moves toward the bow. So this angle had to be accounted for in order to make sure that the slots for the frames were oriented vertically. The miter gauge with the Byrnes table saw made this easy work. Just making sure that everything here is still staying vertical…this was a good way to make sure that the keel pieces between the frames were of the right length and that errors weren’t creeping in. Then it’s on to the next station and its support pieces. In the end, I think only the station frames will have these support pieces permanently installed. Here I am using the frames to draw out the shapes for the basswood support pieces that are put between the frames. Shims have been installed between these stations. Building up the sandwich that is going to make up the shape of the hull. At this point, I am opting to use boxwood for the frames in the midships and in the bow, and trying to confine the use of plywood to the aft part of the hull. That way, if I want to leave a part unplanked for display, the forward half of the ship will look authentic. If I opt to do that, the exposed frames will have to be trimmed to their actual molded dimensions rather than being solid bulkhead-type pieces of wood. More of the keel spacer pieces have been installed. Next up will be the deadwood, which will cause all sorts of questions to arise!

If only the rest of the world valued holly as much as we model builders do, I would be the richest man in Babylon! And I haven't even finished cutting up what I have...

Those of you who have the Calendar of Wooden Boats by Benjamin Mendlowitz may have noticed that June 2020's cover girl is...the Mary Day!

Hey Maury, I am glad I have happened across your build. It's my own fault for not finding it sooner! Will review your progress so far. You may remember that we are virtual neighbors: I am over in north Dallas.

Very lovely but I would never ask someone to make such a sacrifice! Aber vielen dank! JD

In my previous post, I was musing about future directions for the model. In particular, wondering about how faithful to be to the actual structure of the schooner. If I were to just plank over the frames (bulkheads, really), then I have already gone above and beyond in creating all these bulkheads. But to take full advantage of the work I have done so far means leaving at least part of the hull unplanked, in order to show off the framing pattern. I am leaning toward leaving part of one side unplanked, and in that area making sure that the visible frames are ones made of boxwood, rather than the 3/32” Baltic birch ply that I started using more frequently. Fortunately, nearly all the frames forward of the greatest beam are boxwood frames, so it is reasonable to think of just leaving a portion of bow planking off on one side of the boat. I am going to proceed as if that is the plan. In the picture above, it’s possible to distinguish the boxwood frames from the plywood frames. Plywood frames are visible in the area of maximal beam, and there are more of them headed off to the stern. In between the frames, I have created basswood inserts that are smaller than each of the frames. I envision having these in place for the fairing process, as I get the shape and bevel of the outer surface of all the frames worked out. I am going to rewind a bit, to the process of fitting each frame to the keel and baseboard. The first frames to cut out and size up were the frames at the station lines. Four intermediate frames are found between each of the station frames; those will come later. It took some time to figure out a good method for cutting the keel notch to the appropriate width and depth, with clean corners so that each frame would articulate properly with the keel. The best method I have come up with is using an X-acto knife to first cut out an appropriate width from the paper template glued to the frame (not shown in this particular case), and while doing so, make a tiny cut in the edge of the frame in the area where the notch is supposed to be. Then I extended that cut carefully across the width of the frame, then gradually cut into the frame vertically at the edge of the notch-to-be. Then I used the X-acto knife to work into each corner, and then trim out the floor of the notch between the corners to a level surface. I initially did not realize how crucial a process this would be. It was only when I started to consider how the planking would have to come down the surface of the frame and fay smoothly into a rabbet that I realized that I had to make the depth of that notch of just the right depth so the surface of the frame flowed into the rabbet. Only after that was done could I consider trimming each frame/bulkhead at its upper surface, in the area of the bulwarks and caprail, so that each frame would fit into the space allowed between my baseboard and the keel on top of it. At this point, the keel does not have a rabbet cut into it, but the rabbet line has been transferred to the keel. I was able to use a sample piece of wood of appropriate thickness (3/64”) to make sure that I had the depth of the notch about right. Each of the frames here have had a notch cut into them, and in the case of the forward-most and aft-most station frames, notches have been cut in the stem assembly and deadwood, respectively, to receive the frames. You can faintly see the rabbet line penciled in on the stem and keel in this picture. The deadwood hasn’t been fully built up onto the keel yet. Since I had already done some work pre-beveling the first seven frames, I went ahead and worked on cutting out notches in the keel to receive frames 1 through 6. As you can tell, it was a challenge getting the spacing of the notches exactly right. The third notch is too far forward; I fixed this by extending the notch further into the keel and making sure the extension was more properly spaced. In addition, I glued shims to the baseboard to receive the uppermost surfaces of the frames. Due to the slant of the baseboard in this area (mimicking the upward slope of the caprail), the uppermost surface of each frame had to be beveled accordingly. Frames 1,2,3, and 7 in place. Cutting the depth of the notch in each frame here was crucial in order to make sure the bottom edge of each frame was spaced far enough from the rabbet line to allow for the cutting of the rabbet later on. Frames 1-7 in place. I will probably need a filler block forward of frame 1. This brings us to July of last year. At this point, the model went on hiatus, and that is entirely the fault of my carving teacher and a mutual friend, who made me aware of Renaissance prayer beads made of boxwood, depicting ornate scenes from the Bible, such as seen below: Which got me to thinking. My wife is a French teacher, and every year she and her students read The Little Prince by St. Exupery. An idea of a Christmas gift formed in my mind, and the next half year was spent constructing a (much simpler) boxwood sphere meant to represent one of the planets from the story, with (much simpler) scenes from the story on the inside of the bead. The hinge hadn’t been installed yet at the time of this picture. The sphere is about the size of a golf ball. I am happy to report that the gift was well received, and I was able to move on and get back to model ship building! Except, now the little planet needs a stand to rest on…OK, maybe I will work on carving a stand when I take breaks from model ship building. At the time of the next post, we will pretty much be up to real-time status.

Did I miss something? You painted all those friezes since your last post? Wow!

Still looking for someone who can tell me about how molded dimensions of individual frames were calculated...

Been doing pretty well with quartersawing these holly logs. Do I need to go out of my way to remove or avoid the pith, or is the pith something that will become obvious once the wood has dried? I am told that any residual sapwood on the outside surface of the slabs will just flake away, so I am not worried about that part.

What kind of paint are you using, and primer if applicable? I agree, painting is one of my least favorite parts of model building!

Edward, when you notice that a neighbor has cut down their Buxus sepervirens, please let me know and I will come across the pond to get some!!

Oh, and I almost forgot: check out my new toy! A Swiss drawknife!

I got to the bandsaw tonight with a 12 inch log of about 4-5" diameter, and a smaller one about 2-3". The smaller one already has a big check in it: But I cut it up to get flitches of about 3/8" thickness. How's this for a first attempt at quartersawing: These pieces are 1/2" to 3/4" in thickness. I took what the bandsaw would give me. My technique needs work; the pieces are of variable thickness due to difficulty controlling the log against the fence of the bandsaw. I forgot to finish cutting one of the corner pieces on the right. My kiln! AKA a shelf in the garage. I am gonna need A LOT more space. There is a lot more wood to come, including pieces of 24" length.

Keith, I love the gilded cage that is my workshop! OK, we have to talk. The moment I received the builders plans for the Mary Day, I had envisioned building a model that was a true reflection of the way in which the Mary Day was constructed. After all, I have all this information. May as well make the most of it. So to do that, I would have to accurately craft a keel to serve as a backbone. I would then need to create 51 sets of frames, whose shapes are determined by a 3D reconstruction of the model so as to obtain frame shapes that lie between the eleven stations that are detailed in the lines drawing. These 51 frames would of course need to be accurate in their outer shape, but then also they would need to be accurate in terms of their width (molded dimension) as they travel from the keel up toward the sheer and the caprail. They would also require accurate cutting of a notch where they articulate with the keel, so that their shape flows accurately into a rabbet carved into the keel. Since each of these frames would then be quite fine in dimension, they would have to be composed of strong and stiff material, and be dimensionally stable. (There must be some traditional way of determining what the molded dimension of a given frame should be, but I haven’t yet found anyplace where that is described. If you know what it is, please let me know!) But…do I intend to fully plank the model? Why go through all that work if it is just going to be covered up? If I do plan to fully plank the model, shouldn’t I just stick with the 11 stations, and forget about creating all 51 frames? Is there a middle ground, where I do use all 51 frame stations, but don’t worry about milling each frame to its true molded dimensions? In fact, I have already done a lot of the work toward creating 51 frames. So I have not yet crossed any Rubicons that would keep me from moving forward with a traditional build. (Except that some of the frames I recently cut out were made from 3/32” Baltic birch plywood, instead of the laminated boxwood that I used prior to learning about Baltic birch ply.) Fortunately, at this particular point, there is still a lot of work I can do prior to having to make the decision on how accurate a construction to use, and on whether to, say, plank only one side of the model. I still have to create a few more frames. I have to mark all the frames up for the waterline, sheerline, and planking bands. I still haven’t finished carving the rabbet, and I need to create filler blocks for the bow and stern after finishing the rabbet. Then the outer surfaces of the frames would need to be faired to their final shape before I would consider removing any material from the inside of the frames. To aid in the fairing process, the spaces between the frames on the baseboard are filled with 3/16” thickness pieces of basswood, to stabilize the whole structure while sanding the outer surface of the frames with what amounts to a longboard, a 4” piece of wood with 100 grit (or so) sandpaper. So I guess I am putting this post out there in order to see what opinions people have. Feel free to let me know what you think!

I found even nicer pieces of holly on my second visit to the brushpile, including logs of 5-6" diameter with extensive straight segments and no branching. Some are as long as 24"! And there is even more there if I want it; but I am having to restrain myself! I took a couple of pieces with painted ends, and started work on de-barking them. For this I was using my best available tool, a sub-optimal 3/4" width chisel. Now I am in the market for a draw-knife! Hopefully I will be able to get to the bandsaw later this week.

Great feedback. OK, my plan is to cut this recently harvested wood into logs of reasonable lengths, then put exterior latex on the ends. I will get it to my neighbor's bandsaw as soon as I can for "slabbing", as you call it Druxey. For an individual log, I will probably split it right down the middle first, then slice what is left in such a way as to exclude the pith. Then I have to find a place to sticker all this wood! For the older piece I showed you, that will go to the back burner since it is already dried over many years. As you can see, it already has long splits in it. And much of the bark is still on.