Jaager

Here are some fine tuning points, that I am being reminded of as I assemble the hull of Vincennes: It was an early and transitional development stage. I milled the stock, arranged the patterns, scroll cut the timbers, used a disc sander to set the butt joints, assembled the timbers into frame pairs (bends) using pins - to check for butt joins that were too fat, and disassembled and stored each sandwich in a multi compartment storage box. Now it is over 5 years later. The Black Cherry has darkened nicely. but it also reminds me of things that I now do a better way. Four pin locations are better for each timber. The points being two at each far end. The points not being too close to the pattern line. I was using a 4 point Ariel Black lower case letter "o". It is round in the center. The area is close to a #70 drill bit hole. The wall is thin and guessing where - how far out to place each one - is tedious - having to decide for each. My solution is to make a new letter. It is a 7 point "o" merged over a 4 point "o". I saved the layer and have lots of copies. The hole is a precise size and the wall is thick enough that if I just kiss the pattern line, it is far enough out that the hole does not mar the face of the timber. The wall is thick enough that by staying outside it when scroll cutting, The hole is not cut into and made useless. ( I loft at 1:48 and reduce the patterns 80% to get 1:60, I place the locator points on the 1:60 - the final size.) Placing the points and then reducing is not a good idea. With this idiot proof construct, now the main "be careful" is to make sure the locators are inside the butt lines at the end and are not sanded into when the butt lines are sanded. A model where all of the locators are inside the timbers will avoid most of these problems. One suggestion. more points than you need is better than not enough. It just costs a few seconds when lofting to place a point, and if you do not need it just do not use it. If you do not have enough, it is too late once the timber has been isolated. It is actually too late after the pattern has been printed out. For the floors, a really wide line to sand to is a difficult task to do precisely. The butt of the floor with futt 2 is better done if it is above the inside moulded line of the floor. It is also easier to disc sand if it is an angle . higher on the inside and sloping down to the outside line. For POF, I have gotten better at disc sanding exactly to the butt lines than I was 5 years ago. Too fat and it is back to the sander, so that the assembly works. Too much off, and there is an ugly gap. This is not the best look for POF with visible frames. Wood flour in PVA fixes small gaps, thin shims fix larger ones. For a solid hull, that is sealed and painted, precision at the butts is not so important. Wood flour in PVA will fill and paint will hide. For the lofting - When importing a scanned plan into the drawing program. Adjust the change in scale that most every scanner will do. It is different for each scanner, but is constant for each one. After the scale is repaired, set a large, but not too large sensitivity range for the magic wand, click on the background, CUT The layer should now only have the desired lines and be otherwise transparent. Now adjust the rotation to get vertical to a vertical and horizontal background. Lock the layer, duplicate it. Clean up the junk using CUT on the duplicate, lock, and duplicate this clean one. Unless you like repeating work, only make changes to duplicates When you add something new, do it on a new layer. Layers are your friend. The only limit on the number of layers is in how large the drawing program will let a file size become before it gets squirrely and or adds artifacts. Backup often - Large hulls may require more than one file. At 1:48, a frigate requires two files. A 74 requires even more. I really fear what the Pennsylvania will require.

I do not know if I addressed this before, but one factor to defend against with a multilayer build technique is error creep. When each pair of overlapping frames is glued up, it will be strong and stand up to sanding. I remove the pattern and rub it on a sheet of 220 grit sandpaper on a 12" x 18" piece of tempered plate glass. There should be no difference in thickness at each butt. The thickness at the rail should be the same as that at the keel. The pattern on the two end frames of a sandwich should not be removed now, Once the station sandwich is a single unit and it has been shaped, then the pattern is removed and those two face sanded on the glass surface. Measure the thickness at the rail and keel for the sandwich. When the build gets beyond this, it is difficult to get accurate thickness measurements. As the sandwiches are joined together, the key control is to make sure the keel is dead flat. If the top is off, it can be shimmed or sanded to get things right. I was remiss in measuring with Marseilles. It is a first rate and has a lot of upper works. I built the fore half as a single unit and the aft half as a single unit and joined them at the middle. With a flat keel, there is a 1/4" gap at the rail - right in the middle. I can shim it and it will be planked over anyway, but that taught me to start the joining in the middle and work to each end, Any error creep is much easier to fix.

Mike, If your question is about my presentation, yes, ~ 1/8" +/- would work just as well. I kinda jumped the description to a thickness that - to me - is about the max as far as stock thickness for reasonable ease of cutting ( ~1/4"). I do not know the dimensions that you will be working with, but if 1/8" x 8-10 layers or less does the job, you are where I am with the hulls that I build. If it required 20 or so layers, I would go thicker. If you go with Pine, the cutting and shaping will be fast work. Right now, I am fighting with the different bonding required for the spaces next to the room for USS Vincennes (1825). La Renommee was a bit of a flyer in that I built it with all room. All room, which is what I suggested for you, is much easier and faster. And even less work on pesky details, your ship has no gun ports to worry about.

Two different types of adhesive is Gorilla Glue and Gorilla Wood Glue. Gorilla Wood is just another brand of yellow carpenters PVA. Gorilla Glue is a brand of polyurethane glue. Like CA it is water activated. But unlike CA, exposure to water causes it to triple its volume. I guess in applications where having a waterproof bond is important and the joinery is so Jack leg that a joint filling glue is a good thing, this is a useful material. For a ship model, the joinery should be so tight that any expanding glue would be a disaster. I would imagine that the parent Corporation for Gorilla now wishes that the marketing department had done a better job in naming their first product. With no type of glue differentiation in its name, there is now confusion with other products in their line.

Silverman, That planking technique is unique or seems to be. The illustration clarifies the what and how. This craft may well be a "missing link" in the transition from shell first to frame first. I wonder if that particular planking joinery may have left something to be desired as far as stability and reliability? The result of that experiment being the reason it was where it could be found far in its future instead of joining the fate of its fellows? I can see how for everyday full size projects, Fir vs Oak is a choice to consider. In the scale model world, I recommend forgetting that Oak even exists. Oak is hard, but it is also pug ugly at most any model scale. It may be useful for totally hidden structures. But a negative factor for even this is that in some species of Oak, the fibers, being coarse, do not hold together at shape edges and the way out of scale pores could be at the edges and leave dips. They are awful enough on the surface. One of my preferred species of wood is a Maple that is fractionally harder than White Oak. It is no problem as long as tools are sharp, motors are powerful, and for bulling away a bulk of it - 60 or 80 grit sandpaper. I find that the resistance to being able to easily overdo its removal to be a plus. All the more power to you, but the fuzzy nature of a true Fir would have me wanting to act out in frustration. I find this is much more fun when the species of wood being used works with me, and rewards me in how it looks when replicating something its miniature in scale.

Chuck, I completely agree about the three carvel strakes and then clinker possibility. It is this interpretation that I am having a question about. The same plank going from carvel to clinker along its length? I can only see it as being one or the other. If I am right, it saves a lot of work. There are a couple of clinker projects that are active now. When I looked up a question on the strake lap transition at the bow and stern rabbets, in a modern text, (John Leather) I also checked how the fittings were done. Were there spikes that just went thru the plank overlap and were clinched on the lower strake's inside face? It looks like the spikes were only at the frames and went thru the two planks and also the frame and was clinched on the inside face of the frame. Were there any spikes that went thru one plank and then thru the frame? No. It appears that it was only at the overlap. My problem with the garboard description was because I have never seen any reference to a garboard having fittings at the rabbet at the keel and thru the plank into the keel. My question is, why mention the absence of something that was not done in most any situation anyway? Thinking about why this would be the situation: That seam is the most troublesome of all of them. It is at the place where two different planes meet, with different dimensional flexing, I would guess that spikes could impair garboard reactive movement. The stress could generate a split along the row of spike holes and turn the garboard from one board into two boards producing a fatal leak. This happening when the sea was particularly lively. I recall an illustration a ship suspended between two oncoming waves. One was holding up the bow and one was holding up the stern, with the middle hanging in the air. I believe it was about hogging and what could cause it.

The description in the thesis is clear as mud to me. It does not read as though it was written by someone who understands hull construction. You could correspond with him and further define just what he means by: "lay flush" "were not fastened to one another" - as opposed to? "stakes overlapped" a picture of what exactly he means "the central......garboard....not connected to it." apart from Med very ancient blind mortise and tenon plank to plank - the attachment is plank to internal structure - the between is for waterproofing material "the bottom and bilge strakes..." is he describing carvel planking where the planks would grind in a beach? There was a time of transition from clinker to carvel - but I imagined it was between strakes and not within one. The hull having a carvel planked bottom and lapstrake sides up to the rail. About the plug. The trick is to fix each plank to its final curve before it is attached. Pre-bent as it were. This way, they stay were you fixed them. Plank bending 101 The lignin that holds wood fibers together is not soluble in water. Heat loosens its bond and allows for bending while hot and staying in its new position when back to room temp. Steam transfers heat better than dry air . Wetting wood before bending is to provide steam. The time of immersion need not be long. Different species of wood have very different reactions to being bent. Some are pliable and some would rather break. Lignin is soluble in ammonia. But it is the anhydrous ammonia that was used for commercial refrigeration and is liable to explode. The active part of cleaning ammonia solution as far as bending is the water that it is in. The ammonia there just ruins the surface of the wood and makes it an ugly color. There are many ways to provide the heat. The trick is to choose a way the does not cook you in the process. Does not char the wood. Does not dent the wood while bending it. Your homemade draw plate = to cut/shave the wood, hard steel = good. stoning and honing a crisp cutting edge at the hole and holding it hard steel = good drilling the hole to begin with hard steel = not so easy For draw plate trunnels - bamboo is pretty much it getting something to draw from wood is too much work and too much is wasted. For short - just for show trunnels you can find examples here of steel medical needles -- tip ground to be like a lab cork borer - drill press - stock is a block of wood and boring it on an end grain face. If you drill thru the block, the trunnel is longer, but stays in the bore. I do not know if boring the next open will push the earlier one up the bore of the needle or just stop the process. If it moves on up, I guess the quill center could fill with trunnels. If it does not move, pulling the needle , and ramming the trunnel out for each one would get tedious real fast. The other way is to bore part way and when as many as can be got are bored, the distant end is cut off at the intersection at the depth of cut.

I just got an email. It was the Covid shutdown. The message: GOOD NEWS! The city-ordered shut-down is over. We are able to get back to printing and binding our book orders. When the city shut us down as a non-essential business in the Covid 19 Pandemic we had just begun to outfit our new space with updated machinery and work spaces. That came to a sudden halt and we were forced to rely on our kitchen counter to produce our boat building and design booklets. These conditions are obviously ;not practical for printing and binding hard-cover books. However, at the end of July we were able to re-enter the space and yesterday we started up the book production side of our business once again. It will take a little while to get up to speed but we are now producing books to fulfill the backlog that has resulted from the closure. We are happy to confirm that your order will be completed in the order in which it was received. Many thanks indeed for your patience and understanding. Now, I have to see if I can do a re-order since I got a refund from PayPal. A charge back from a credit card company is costly for a vendor and it tends to ....annoy... them.

Hello, Yankee Virginian. I had an apartment at Telegraph Hill, when I was USPHS stationed at St, E's A large clipper is a steep slope to climb. The composite iron and wood - very late sailing era clippers - add another layer of complexity in the masting and rigging over the earlier types: iron spars, wire standing rigging, chain involved with running rigging. It would probably serve you to read this post = For Beginners -- A Cautionary Tale it is just above this post in this forum.

Silverman, Three thoughts: Your choice of wood: Fir (the English seem to interchange Fir as a name for what is Pine here, but regardless, similar characteristics for this use.) Using a softwood species for frames, planks, beams, chocks, ... you are making this a more difficult, frustrating, less elegant process than it could be. Guys a lot closer to you than to me, seem to have ready access to all the Pear they need. You would probably really like how it looks and works a lot more than Fir. If you want a lighter color, there is Maple - in your case - Common Name(s): Sycamore maple, European sycamore Scientific Name: Acer pseudoplatanus The planking - The usual nature of lapstrake/clinker planking is flush - in a gradual transition - only at the ends. Are you certain that the middle is flush? Frame first - Have you considered making a plug/inside the planking mould? Planking over that? Adding the frames to the inside of the hull? I will be subjected to stoning, but if a Byrnes draw plate costs more than is in your comfort zone ( I own one, so it is not about quality) drill gauges can do the job. Here, wire gauge drills, there are two necessary #80 to #61 and # 60 to ~1/4" not sure - but only the #50's really matter. Bamboo skewers can make strong trunnels. The species of Bamboo used can make a big difference in how easy it goes. hard strong holds together needs a lot of force hard brittle fights you all the way low vield soft holds together peels off with less work - do not hammer -push soft splits easily crushes not worth the effort This may require visiting different vendors - if you have a local independent Chinese grocery store - there may be several types available as well as Bamboo chopsticks Gripping the bloody things - to pull them thru - without crushing - a constant challenge.

John, I have zero experience acrylic paint, but I think there are two major classes of color coatings: paint and washes. A wash - pigment in a solvent. The wash applied, the solvent evaporates, the pigment just sits on the surface. A dried up can of wash just needs more solvent to reconstitute it. An applied pigment has nothing to hold it on the surface if exposed to external forces - rain, splash, abrassion,... A paint is pigment, a binder, and a solvent. Paint applied, the solvent evaporates, the binder undergoes a chemical reaction as exposure to Oxygen increases. A larger, more complex polymer is formed. It sticks to the surface and keeps the pigment in place. I think that dried acrylic has a different chemistry. You may be able to mechanically shatter the plastic of the polymerized binder, but it will not work as a binder when this new gemisch is applied as a paint, even if you can make the mess into small enough bits to suspend in the solvent. It is now a wash. Another factor, pigments have interesting chemical names, cadmium, titanium, heavy metal type elements. Not really healthy to breathe. Thinking about it, it probably a good idea to wear a mask or work in a hood when sanding dried paint. If you are paid a reasonable wage, the time spent recovering the dried mess, even if it were not a fruitless exercise, is likely more costly than new paint.

In the spirit of a wink and dry humor: Challenge? if you want a real challenge: ANCRE - monograph for St. Philippe - scratch build @ 1:48. There probably won't be much competition in the number of copies. A factor with HMS Victory is the really large number of copies, although, the number started and abandoned is probably at least 2 magnitudes higher than the number completed. Less daunting in decoration but without a peer for beauty - another 1st rate - a contemporary of Victory - also an ANCRE monograph is La Commerce de Marseille. Any first rate is a momentous challenge. Done well, it is a magnum opus. At a scale where you have a lot of detail, Furniture will have to be given up to have room to display it.

A cutoff of a 2x12 makes for a good base. Both Lowes and Home Depot, list - price not absure - HD will cut - avoid treated lumber. The samples of Armstrong lino flooring - maybe two layers at each bolt as a washer/ pad vibration insurance.

Mike, I am without doubt obsessed with the method and this vessel is far more recent than my eras of focus. If your plans include a complete Body plan with delineation of each of the stations shown above, The Station Sandwich Method would get you a hull. How I would approach it = I would use clear Pine sliced from framing 2x4. No thicker than 1/4" , but it is easier and less open to mistakes if the sum of the thicknesses is an exact match to the distance between each station. The interior of the hull is not of much interest so a solid hull is possible. I would still make it somewhat hollow. The moulded dimension would be enough to encompass any bevel that is between each pair of station lines. I would not shape the inside. It would be horizontal above the floor and vertical at the sides. It saves on lofting time. Rather than cutting each of the layers as a single piece, I would use a rough version of wooden ship framing. Do it at the first step as a pair of layers with overlapping butts. One of the pair would be three timbers - a full "floor" and a "2nd futtock" on each side that extended to the deck. The other would be four pieces - two "1st futtock"s that butt at the centerline and go beyond the floor/2nd futt join. And two "3rd futtock"s that extend to the deck. The smaller pieces are easier to scroll cut. there will be no cross grain. The butt line of the "1st futt" provide an easy way to locate where the keel is. The lofting process can be done easily using a drawing program. The plans provide the precise outside shape. Connect the dot straight lines define the inside shape. Each piece has a pattern rubber cemented to it. When the layers between two stations are all glued together, the pattern is left on the "frame" at each end. Because of the locators. the patterns on each end are in precise alignment. The bevel will be correct. Locator points and the lofting of them: On a wooden hull sailing ship, where the inside shape is important and relatively narrow, a perpendicular locator to position two frames, much less the series of them between two stations, will not go thru the actual body of more than one frame. This starts to happen when you get much beyond the middle of a ship. I solved this by placing my locators outside the actual frame. It makes for extra wood for each timber and for more wood to remove when getting the final shape for each frame sandwich assembly. This is not a factor with your hull. The thickness of each frame sandwich would be wide enough that an inside perpendicular would work as a locator. You would need 3 sets of locators. 1 - to align the timbers of each pair. 2 - to align each of the pairs into the sandwich of layers between two stations 3 - to mate the two sandwiches that meet at each station. For #1 I would use the 1.75" long steel quilters pins they are #73 wire gauge and #70 hole is close without being difficult to remove after the glue has set. For #2 and #3 I would use off the shelf bamboo skewers. Measure the gauge and buy a few bits that are close enough not to wobble, are a push fit, but no not need a hammer. Glue in the bamboo. The assembly method would be scroll cut the timbers - no need to get too close to the pattern line - A good hand fretsaw would get your there, a scroll saw if you have one, I use an 1/8" blade with a Carter Stabilizer on a 9" benchtop bandsaw. Join and glue up the "frame" pairs. Assemble and glue up all of the pairs in a station sandwich. Using a sanding drum, shape the near outside shape and do the bevel for the sandwich. Join pairs of sandwiches and fine tune the transition by sanding. Starting from the middle and going to each end, join the pairs of sandwiches to the whole and fare those transitions. The bow and stern build and shaping are a different challenge. I would use a buttock dimension series of layers there. Pine is relatively inexpensive and readily available. It is easy to work. Worse comes to worst, the hull can be the subject of a serious sealing and undercoating. With a good final coat of paint, it should look metal. If you wish the metal plates to be hinted at, rectangles of paper can be glued to the hull before sealing. Things like bilge keels - parts needing to be glued to the hull - mask the glue area before sealing. Anyway, here is an alternate method that breaks the hull shaping process into smaller and more manageable sub assemblies.

To anticipate the next question accessories: Unless you have a specific need for beveled planks, the tilting table will probably have the least use vs expenditure value. You can make do with either a metric or standard stop. Wonderful would be a digital readout like my caliper - fraction/digital/metric - fine marks and age rigid lenses make for a hard of seeing situation. The sliding table is elegant. A homemade version that performs the function is not difficult to make, but this one is well made and the specs are in excess of our needs. For short piece cutting, a homemade version with a short table on one side would save having to remove the fence. Jim has custom fabricated an oversized table for some members here. He needs the body to fit it, so if you work really oversized stock, this may be an option to discuss when an order is placed. Most of the rest are not expensive and are generally of the better to have and not need category. One blade company that we use has gone away recently, so for blades, more variety is better and a backup for the ones that are really used a lot. This works if CYA is your way. The key concept for blades is that the number of teeth on the blade appropriate to use is inversely proportional to the thickness of the stock being cut.

I did not catch that you already have a thickness sander in reading your question. I was not questioning or criticizing your present setup. The Byrnes thickness sander is a solid, precise, stable machine. The medium is easy to renew. My only criticism is for the strength of the spring holding the depth wheel. I jury rigged a fix. For its function, there is no peer, or even close. The Byrnes tablesaw. Nothing else comes close. It will probably require tech with a near zero kerf ray with no charring to replace it. Or a neutronium wire. The Byrnes disc sander - powerful, the dust extraction is excellent, I sand to a pattern line, but I have every confidence that miter gauge is accurate. No plastic is sanded here, so speed control is not needed. The ideal choice is all three. If you must choose one, odds on, the tablesaw is number one, once you have a hull to plank. It does not come into play for framing, though. Framing - the disc sander is minor, but vital. Processing commercial lumber - the thickness sander - but a big powerful bandsaw stands ahead of it.

I haven't gotten to 1487 in The Great Sea yet, but the Turks were mostly lubbers and the Greeks mostly handled the sea going - if not Genoa, or Venice or other webfoot traders - leading up to this time for the city on the Dardanelles. For the ship type, I would be reluctant to make any regional specifics limited to too small a region in the Med. The relevance of the script may not be all that much. There are some interesting details. 3 masts, main mast made, sliding slot for lateen mizzen, two part yards, near horizontal after castle, too many mushrooms when drawing the fore castle slope. serious number of wales, I have wondered about the vertical strakes at the waist - vertical wales? , but with the number of horizontal wales and the problem that they could cause, I guess that they are rubbing strakes. These guys stopped as often as a city bus, for water, food, and trade so hauling up a boat or big barrels must have been a near daily operation. The "circular attachments" on main mast castle and fore mast castle - shields? The web above each of the mast castles - was there a problem with resting sea birds and their poop? If things got to a point where that was needed as a defense netting, conditions on deck would likely have been dire already. To keep the soldiers in? I remember a dice shaker - a flat base, a clear hemisphere, middle long spring with a suction attachment - pull it to one side and let go - the dice rattle all around the interior. In a blow, anyone up there would be a die. Why does only the right side of the mainsail have a stitched supplement?

I use the sander to mill to final dimension, the stock that the saws will process. For POF - lumber - big bandsaw - thickness sander - scroll cutting saw - disc sander - drum sander - hand tools - for frames lumber - big bandsaw - thickness sander - 4" tablesaw - disc sander - hand tools - for planking and furniture. Given your - Current: I do not see where a thickness sander would serve you. For planking and furniture - the volume used places a Byrnes tablesaw within the place of being practical for generating dimension stock from a 3/4" plank. A 2-4 foot long board wider than 6 inches would be no fun. At a large scale 1:48 - a stock plank that is 1 foot long is 48 feet in scale.

At first, I thought you really meant "keel". I am seeing that you are likely asking about a center spine and the moulds for a POB build. Consider 1/4" Baltic Birch plywood - if you are US based, HomeDepot has convenient to handle sizes - on the final model, none of it is displayed. Go for quality. A-A is ideal - B-BB will probably serve. The synthetic stuff - among other factors, may provide a poor bond with hull planking and any space filling material you might use.

Since Degame is impossible to source, 3/4" plank of planed unfigured Hard Maple and a froe - stock for spars. I have a plank of Hard Pine - it was old when I got it from Grampa in 1972. Straight grain - the Spring wood is blond, the Summer wood is red and rock hard. For a mast, the spacing looks like it is a made mast.

As for the kickback problem when the product slice is between the blade and the fence, I am of a thought that a GRR-RIPER type hold down with a push barrier at the back end would block any kickback. The pusher part would get a bit mauled, but if attached to the hold down, it would not go anywhere. It may take practice to figure out how to push work thru correctly when it is blocked from view by the safety tools.

I found the reference in the Vol 1-40 CD's. The store here sells the CD. They also offer some PDF of already requested pages, if contacted, the office may be willing to do these pages. But unless a guild official gives the go ahead for a back channel copy, I am reluctant to traffic in copyright protected media. The CD set is worth owning The editors used the opportunity that the journal offered to reprint some obscure and rare original material. Much of it is multi part. Some of the content titles: LE COMTE: PRAKTIKALE ZEEVAARTKUNDE SHIPYARD AND SERVICE CRAFT: PLANS PORTFOLIO RIGGING DATA FOR TWO BRITISH FOURTH-RATES A FIFTH RATE 1684 KELTRIDGE DRAUGHT SPECIFICATIONS FOR OARS OF VARIOUS BOATS OF THE USN FOR 1900 17TH CENTURY MAST AND SPAR LENGTHS SUMMARY IN A SEA GRAMMAR SAMUEL BENTHAM: FORGOTTEN SHIPBUILDER AND ENGINEER THE COPPERING OF 19TH CENTURY AMAERICAN MERCHANT SAILING SHIPS THE WHIPSTAFF EARLY HYDRAULIC ENGINEERING MACHINERY A GENERAL DISCUSSION ON FRENCH 64-GUN SHIPS OF THE LINE BOUDRIOT,JEAN THE WILLIE L BENNETT AND NOTES ON OTHER CHESAPEAKE BAY SKIPJACK THE COMPLETE SHIPWRIGHT BUSHNELL,EDMUND SOME THOUGHTS ON THE RIGGING OF COLONIAL SCHOONERS THE DECK FURNITURE AND MACHINERY OF LARGE MID-19TH SAIL FISHING SCHOONER ELSIE 1910: RESEARCH AND PLANS A STUDY OF MID-LATE 18TH CENTURY AMERICAN SMALL VESSEL FRAMING PAINT AND COLORS FOR AMERICAN MERCHANT VESSELS 1800-1920 THE APPEARANCE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SHIP

This is resawing and it is best done using a large band saw. A 4" wide piece of stock = this may well be necessary for the floor timbers of a 1st rate 17th century warship if you are framing in Navy Board style. That style is really profligate, when it comes to efficiency in the use of wood. Set your fence so that it is a bit less than the maximum depth of cut for your saw. Rip a piece from the 4" board that is that wide. You do not want to do your bending tests on 3/4" wide stock, never mind doing it using 4" wide stock. If you are working at 1:48 scale, real planks were almost never wider than 10", so even doing your tests on 1/4" wide stock will be out of scale for ultimate use. Since this discourse is about you being able to mill your own stock, you have additional degrees of freedom in your choice of species to use. Give some thought to avoiding GIGO. The original kit species of "Walnut" is likely garbage. At model scale, Oak is garbage. Black Walnut is certainly not garbage, but it is an inauthentic color. Below the waterline, Black Cherry planking will darken to be close the old penny copper in color. No verdigris staining, but sort of close to a real copper bottom.

Karl, Closer inspection will show that your #1 and #2 are a single timber. The bevel tricked you, too. There was a discussion, in NRJ about chatter grooves 19:81-85 with illustration chatter strip 16:236

I have not come across any mention of out gassing and Yellow Poplar before. That does not mean that it is not true. One other factor: clear finished Yellow Poplar can scream: please paint me. Did you by chance use PVA to assemble the box? It is essentially a strong concentration of acetic acid in the bottle. I failed an Organic Chemistry lab quiz, because I did a shortcut jump on a: Is it an ester or an ether? problem. There was no ppt, so I made the wrong choice. I forgot that acetic acid is a liquid and does not form a ppt. Anyway, the acid will slowly evaporate and I suspect that polyvinyl polymerization continues for a long time after the desired bond is formed. The reaction probably releases acetic acid, that could occur for years at a very low level.