John Murray

G'day Frank, Thank you for that. I have joined a makers space nearby that has woodworking, metalworking, 3d printing, and 2 laser cutters in the space that I can use. The two laser cutters are 1 ) Trotec Q500 running Ruby with a bed size of 1,300mm x 900mm and a 120 watt laser. 2) Thunder Laser Nova 35 running Lightburn with a bed size of 900mm x 600mm and an 80 watt laser. I have used both. I found the Nova 35 running Lightburn much easier to use due to the Lightburn software. I need to be inducted though in 2 weeks time before I can do it myself. Currently, I need someone over my shoulder supervising. My plan is to use Poplar 900mm x 600mm 6mm ply that I can source locally for the bulkheads and other things requiring 6mm ply. For the 1/4" stem etc I plan to use either Poplar or Huon pine slabs that I can rip to thinner boards with their bandsaw. Once that is done, I will run each boards large face flat on the planer. Once they are all done, I shall then flip them all and run each board through the thicknesser to get to 1/4" thickness. I have downloaded the full Creative suite. I split the bulkheads into individual pdfs. Then, in Illustrator I created 2 documents sized 900mm x 600mm. The first document has the 3 keel pieces and the first 14 bulkheads all fitted into the document. The 2nd document has the remaining bulkheads. In Chapter 1, all of the 1/4" pieces were placed into a new document sized to minimise the waste of the Polar or Huon. The MDF 6mm cuts were ok, some slight scorching on the rear. Having talked to a few users in the makerspace I get the feeling they use just the material defaults in Lightburn and are happy with the results. Me though, I have looked into the software and there is a lot of tweaking that can finetune the laser to the particular material and thickness. Once I am inducted, I shall do some calibration tests for the 1"4 Huon or Poplar and 6mm Poplar ply so that I will get good, consistent cuts by the laser. I will also be checking to see if the laser is set to allow for the kerf of the laser. Once that is done, I will then run the final 1/4" and 6mm pieces through the machine. Everything I am doing so far is to build my experience with the software and to eliminate as much waste as I can. I will do things myself only to eliminate the issue you raised or buy things I need that I cannot manufacture myself off Chuck. .

I spent some time gluing up the parts. One thing I noticed whilst I was watching the laser cut was that around 2 thirds of the lines would cut with a single pass of the laser. These resulted in nice clean cuts. However, the remaining lines each had up to 10 or more passes which resulted in scorching and small holes from I assume reflections of the aluminium grid it was resting on as the beam repeatedly passed over the same path. As can be seen in the two images, some of the joints are spot on. However, there were other joints where the wood had been scorched away from repeated passes of the laser. This resulted in gaps in some of the joints. I have highlighted problem areas in the two images. The scorch mark are obvious in the images I posted above. That is the top side view of the board. The underside was much worse. I suspect the person operating the laser (I wasn't inducted) did not know how to correctly setup for the cherry. I did not notice a setting in the software for wood except MDF or Plywood. I shall be modifying my approach to this piece. I used 1 1/4" cherry and after cleaning the scorch marks and correcting a very slight bow I induced from the glueup, To glue up I will be using pins and a board to hold the pieces flat whilst drying. This attempt though I did not. (I used my Proxxon Planer then Thicknesser to flatten and clean up both sides.) I ended up with a flat stem at 210 thou instead of 250 thou. It shall be remade and I am considering changing from Cherry to another wood that I can source in Australia. Poplar or Huon Pine. I have also attached an image of two other laser cuts I made on the same wood panel. This show the underside though with the scorching. Unfortunately I did not get an image of the stem panel underside.

A little bit of progress on Pegasus. The wales were sanded flush to each other, masked and then tamiya flat black with mlt to thin was sprayed on the wales. There is also one row of the 2nd planking above the wales on both sides. I have yet to decide how to trim the rear of the wales as I don't yet understand the run where they should finish and what shape they should be.

Hi Everyone. I bought the plans and downloaded them several weeks ago. I was contemplating having Chuck send the starter kit to me in Australia. It seemed the easier way. However, I have chanced up a community makers space a few miles away which provides access to laser cutters, and woodworking machinery that I don't have. I bought a block of Cherry a while ago and thought I would see if they could assist with sizing it into 3 x sections by ripping the 1 1/4" slab on a bandsaw. The bandsaw was waiting a new blade so they used a table saw. I sized the slices to 1/4" on their thicknesser. I then used 2 of the pdfs I had for the stem to test out their laser cutter. It has a bed size of 1300mm x 900mm. My little piece was accommodated with ease. One question I have though regards the bulkheads and keel pieces. They are 1/4" ply. That size is problematic in Australia being a metric country. I can source 6mm or with some difficulty 6.5mm plywood. Both are fine? grades for exposed faces in furniture production. 1/4" though is 6.35mm. If I substitute the 6mm OR 6.5mm ply, what issues could be expected further down the build? Thoughts or workarounds?

I shall be posting updates as I go. I have a build log here. I am currently finishing the two layers of the 1mm x 4mm Wales in the kit. This is a problem area for me as I am trying to work out how the Wales finish and are shaped at the stern.

I think this method makes sense to me. It may be what I do on my next model.

Cheers for that, I am being flooded with information from youtube builds, a few of my books, and suggestions here. They all make sense. However, with this being my first build in 40+ years, I plan on this method to try and get just basic techniques down pat. I want to find out the shortcomings and then perhaps look at adapting what I did on this model and then adapt and modify what I did to the next model. I have seen 4 of Chucks videos on shaping the planks. Nice method but I do not have enough info at this stage to go further.

Hmm, I haven't noticed any posts. I shall do a search. Cheers for that.

Thank you for that. I plan on doing 5 or 6 and then remeasure the gap and redo the calculations. The hull will be coppered but I do want to do the best I can to learn the techniques for when I do a hull that is not coppered.

Hi, I will be edge setting and bending the planks as supplied in the kit. I plan to lay down 5 or so planks each side to thee size suggested and then redo the planking calculations based on new measurements. I plan to redo that every 5 or so planks. Regarding the taper from the last bulkhead, I plan on assessing those as I fit each plank. I have yet to come up with a solution so will assess on each plank.

Evening, I am starting to get close to 2nd planking on my Victory Models HMS Pegasus. I think I have the idea of a planking fan sorted out. Does this look a reasonable way to approach this? Do the calculated tapers seem reasonable? I have seen other more involved methods but being my 1st wooden model in 40plus yrs, I think this will do for this one.

Work has continued on the Pegasus. The last few days has seen the 3 strips on each side placed. The stern of these strips needs to be placed securely. So far they are not fixed correctly. These 3 strips each side will have another layer of strip on top. This will then be the wales completed. The 2nd layer of planking will then be tackled. The Keel, Beakhead, and Stem were also located and glued into position. The rear counter at the stern was also planked.

The last few days have been spent filling in the last 2 rows of planks. That was time consuming but satisfying work. There were small gaps in the rows that I could live with. The more planking I did, the more I refined my techniques so the planking got better as I got more experience. The next step was to sand the hull done to give a relatively smooth finish. A few hours was spent on this yesterday hand sanding as well as using my small detail sander to get most lumps out of the planking. This morning I filled the bumps, gaps and problem areas with an epoxy resin to enable me to do finish sanding and to bring the hull to a uniform level ready for the 2nd layer of planking. The next step I have to do though is to fit the beakhead, keel, and stem to the boat. That will then be ready for the final planking to go on. I need to study the correct method to plank the hull. Even though it will be coppered and thus hidden, I still need to do the best I can on this layer so I can gain experience before I do a non coppered hull.

I am now 12 rows in of the 1st planking. As the curves at the bow and stern become steeper, I needed a method to bend planks along the thick section of the plank as well as the thin section of the plank. The planks are 2 mm thick so I used offcuts of 2mm planks to form a bending jig on some spare flat wood I had laying around. I did not measure the curve precisely, I just wanted some curves to test out the jig. With the plank to be bent forced into the channel in the jig, I laid a hot iron onto the jig for a minute or so. This heated the lignin in the plank and softened it allowing it to retain the new shape when it cooled down in the jig. This worked surprisingly well. The idea for the bending jig came from videos I saw by Chuck Passaro? and Ohla Batchvarov. With the plank bent, I then cut a small taper from the bow around 100mm back. I then sanded slightly a slight angle on the edge of the plank. This allowed the plank to sit better against the previous plank. With the bend and the taper, the 3 planks I placed each side went on with little effort. Bar of course the tapered tip of the last port side plank. This splintered due to a nail miss when I hit it. It is visible in one of the images. The planking is not something I ham happy with but it will not be visible after I smooth it all to remove dips and fill holes.

I used heat to soften the glue on the problem joins on the bulwarks and much better clamping to ensure the joints were solid. I have now progressed to 6 rows of planking along with a stealer at the stern. The 1st plank is an issue at the stern but I shall tackle that with water, heat, and clamping. I am just concentrating on the planking technique so far. I tapered the 6th plank at the bow and will see what effect that has on the 7th row.