John Murray

Morning All, I have downloaded all of the files for the Triton build. On my HMS Echo cross section, I used rubber glue to place the paper cutouts on the wood so they could be cut out. I found this not a particularly good solution as the glue would quite often let go.. For this section I have taken the assembly pdfs and imported them into Lightburn to see if I could separate out the frames only and place them onto the Lightburn working area. Shown below are the forward and abaft components for the 4th frame. Since the frames are symmetrical for both sides I only needed to copy the relevant ones for the opposing side. I plan to lightly vector etch the wood. I had considered cutting them on the laser but the charred edges would need cleaning up. Any thoughts pro or con for doing that? I am combing the pdfs and the wood sections. Best I can make out is that all timbers on each frame are the same thickness at 5mm thickness.

Cheers Frank. I have milled some planks up on my Proxxon planer and thicknesser. It machines, bends, and sands ok.

Dusan, Thank you for that. The picture does help. I am glad to see this issue isn't just me. I will add more to the rabbet and then thin and adjust until the stem fits correctly.

Yes, that makes sense.

Cheers. 🙂I searched the forums but it seemed a 50 50 split between basswood and limewood being the same and they are different...

One further question I have is that I have just discovered a local supplier to me able to supply sheets and strips of Limewood, Mahogany, and Walnut in the lengths and thicknesses I will require. This would be a better option for me if the woods are suitable. The Walnut and Mahogany are darker though and my preference would be a lighter coloured wood such as the Limewood. Searching the wood forum here did not assist in the decision. Not being a woodworker, I am not familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of these woods.

Morning all, Work slowly progressed the last few days. I have gotten myself a melamine building board and have started to glue the rabbet onto the false keel. I used my Byrnes table saw and Proxxon thicknesser to make the 4mm x 1.56mm (5/32nd x 1/16th) strips for the rabbet. The rabbet eventually came out to 1.53mm thickness. I used an Iron to heat the strip and clamped in place whilst it cooled and set with a curve. With the rabbet in place, I positioned the stem and the keel piece #1in position to check for fit. As can be seen in the 1st image, both ends of the stem are in contact but there is a roughly 0.8mm gap (perhaps more) in the centre. My question then is how to rectify this? 1) Do I remove wood from the top of the stem allowing the bottom to act as the pivot? 2) Do I remove equally from the top and bottom realising that this will affect the stem to Keel #1 piece. If you look carefully at the stem to keel #1 joint, you will see there is a flush fit everywhere bar the stern most vertical joint where there is a 0.8mm gap. Also note the false keel step on the stem and keel #1 piece joint. Thoughts on how to proceed would be appreciated.

All of the joins were as supplied in the files. I calibrated the cut power as best I could. I have not yet investigated the kerf or taper of the laser. The machine though apparently has a 0.15mm kerf. The 11 pieces of the stem fit together snugly after cleaning the tabs that hold the pieces in place after cutting. I am now in the process of assembling the keel and frames. I hope to have an update here soon.

Thank you. 😊 I should be so lucky the rest of the build will be like this. A wood worker I am not. 🤣 Not all my photography is like this. I do have pro equipment but sometimes I find the Samsung phone does the job for in progress shots.

I have assembled my 3rd version of the stem after having issues with the laser using too much power.. I used some Sassafras that I had and thicknessed 3 300mm x 80mm x 6.35mm planks with my Proxxon DH40 thicknesser. I used one plank to calibrate the lasers power to the material and then cut the pieces out on the 2 remaining planks. I had taken the original files and used acrobat and illustrator to make new cut files that would fit the plank sizes I had. I may use this as the final version of the stem.

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.