Jaager

Lin, I have an interest in the Leda class frigates. To be specific, HMS Shannon. I have lofted the timbers. I also lofted USS Chesapeake. I thought that the pair would be interesting together, as singleton stand alone POF. I am not into diorama. Because Leda is a copy of L' Hebe and La Venus is a sister of Hebe, I considered ANCRE Venus and what with the POF supplement I thought that I had my in. But, for my method, they still whiffed on the plans. I used the NMM plans for HMS Leda, as beat up as they are. Which plans did you use to build the hull? Did you build the hull - POF, POB, solid carved?

Let me first supply this caveat, I have never built a POB hull. In deed, I went to some effort to demonstrate an alternate method to POB to fabricate a hull that gets you the place where the real planking of the hull can begin. I jumped in because when I looked at C. Poison's pix of POB components and saw no lines to site the moulds properly on the spine, that shocked me. Your model does have them. But I do not believe that the height of the central spine has anything to do with the deck. It would be more or less useless to have one line of pseudo carlings at the center. Indeed, has it exists, it is a problem for hatches and masts. It is neigh on to impossible to have the mast below the main deck be long enough to easily get the correct rake. It just does not extend to a mast step on the keelson. You do want to test that height and camber of the moulds will support a sweet and proper run of deck planking. Use a wooden batten to do this. ( I am guessing that your deck is a sheet of basswood, instead of actual planks. But even this does not like misalignment and dips. )

If the line that is on the center spine and on each of the moulds is from the kit mfg, that is the reference/register line to assure that the moulds align properly. Not only is the shape of the hull, and the run of the planking dependent on this being correct but the top is what replaces the deck beams. The moulds look to be sparse enough in number and far enough apart that two layers of planking will be needed. This means that the bottom of the moulds must be well above the rabbet for the actual planks. Some ships had a garboard that was twice the thickness of the bottom planking and the outface was dubbed/adzed smooth and some had a step down. If the outer planking comes in too high, a wedge shaped plank at the spine can fill the gap and allow the outer plank to seat in the rabbet.

Do you need the flags to be showing the effects of wind? If it is the rectangular flat version, then the dynamic effects that vector provides are not needed. A raster based graphics program should do. Straight lines will work. I work at 1:48 for plans and the short segments that make a hull cross section be facets instead of a smooth curve, still work for me. GIMP is free, PhotoShop is subscription, PaintShop Pro is low cost, and Painter is too expensive unless you want to use a computer to actually paint a picture.

Note that the old guys used circumference, not diameter there is a factor of 3 difference. pre iron and steel - bark brown (Walnut) instead of black is less garish. diameter is easier for us - It is easily measured by counting the number of rotations of the line - tightly packed - in a inch distance along a dowel. the diameter of the dowel does not matter 1/rotations x pi = circumference

Yellow PVA (e.g. Titebond II) has gap filling properties. PVA fixed with wood flour from the same wood has even more. With the task of filling the outer perimeter gap between POB moulds - for to give support for planking and allow for needing only one layer: Avoid Balsa at all costs. Basswood comes (or used to come) in packs of sheets 1/32 - 1/4" on line or from mega craft stores. Easy to work but kinda dear on wallet damage. Construction Pine from ~Home Depot or Lowes (Slows as my framing contractor in the Blue Grass called them) 2x4, 1x4, even thinner -easy to cut, soft put sturdy - avoid sap/resin stock. anyway, no one will see it, so as long as it stays bonded in place, close enough is good enough. If you paint, fillers take care of gaps. If it is wood with clear finish, as tight a tolerance as your skill allows. If a piece does not measure up, toss it into a scrap box and start again. You will know and you will always know if you just settle. almost no one else will notice or know that it is less than perfect, but you will. editorial: decks - make the caulking seams under scale and if the vessels is before 1860 - color it Walnut, not black Drake's well was 1859.

Edge bending is trying to take wood into a shape that is against its nature. Some species take to this better than others. A lot of the species supplied in kits - look to be brittle - as well as having out of scale pores. One of the better species for serious bending is Holly and stock that has been infected with Blue Mold will work just as well . I suspect that infected Holly is not available commercially. Accepting it makes self harvesting an easier proposition than insisting on snow white stock which requires cold season harvest and immediate placement into a kiln. Commercial white Holly is becoming very expensive and the color matches nothing that was used on an actual ship. I have seen Basswood or Lime taking a serious bend. The grain, color and pore structure are spot on. Those species are too soft, fuzzy, and friable for me, though. Looking at the build in your link, the wale does not seem to edge bend all that much. The run of the planking appears to follow that of the wale, and not the rail. The stern is planked with short runs of planking with little edge bending. A ship that got into wave action requiring serious strength at that upper stern location would be in more trouble than strength there would help.

https://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools StewMac is on the high side as far as price, but they have quality tools - if a bit specialized and limited their being focused on luthiers. I have no association other than being a customer. They also use email advertising - a lot.

My Rikon 14" uses a 142" circumference blade. The spec literature allows 1/4" to 1" for blade width. I did not look too hard, but I did not find any 1/8" x 142" blades for sale. It is strong enough to tension a 1" blade, but I gave up on expecting a wider blade to improve resaw tracking and use 1/2" blades. I think the frame is steel. It is heavy enough that I hired it assembled, delivered, and adjusted. I never gave much thought to what 9" / 10" / 14" /18" really referred to. The 9"/10" are smaller bench top. The 14" is a large free standing. The 18" is really large free standing. It appears that 9" - 18" is the theoretical maximum height of cut - the upper housing to table distance. I think that the upper blade guide reduces the actual distance possible. I don't think that I would care to try to get 12" diameter log thru - too heavy, too unwieldy, way out of scale. I do not build full size furniture or guitars so wide, thin boards are not something that I need. 2" wide is generally enough and 4" is my upper limit. It is the power and precision in cutting and tracking that requires a 14" saw. If you want frustration, try using a bandsaw that will not track for resawing.

I have both a 9" bench top and a 14" bandsaw. The 9" is a model that MM sold for a short period of time. I am not sure if it was manufactured in China or Taiwan. I use it exclusively for scroll cutting. I use 1/8" blades and it is fortuitous that it uses a readily available size blade: 59.5" . It also will mount a Carter Stabilizer, which greatly enhances scroll cutting control. I would choose a more powerful motor, given the option. I only scroll cut sorta, maybe close to the line. I use a drum or disk sander to get to the finished shape. The 14" has more bells and whistles. High quality guides and a lever to release the tension. It also has a 3 hp motor. It is used for resawing, both planks and logs. I would not even attempt to mount a 1/8" blade on it. But that is below what is even listed as a choice and not available anyway. Factors that I consider important decision: the more powerful motor, a blade size that is easy to source, a quality machine if 14" A bandsaw is going to use up steel blades, For resawing dense hardwood steel blades do not last all that long. If you do a lot of cutting, the amount spent on blades will approach what you paid for the machine. I find carbide blades to be more cost effective, but bimetal blades are even more cost effective. Buying an economy machine will probably leave you with a machine that uses up blades more quickly and any supposed savings will be more than reversed in additional outlay on blades. For the 9" only steel is available and cutting frame timbers can use a couple per ship. Bosch makes Vermont American and I ran into a batch that was so dull that I may as well have tried cutting using the back edge. I now only trust Olson, they just cost more. A bandsaw is by far the more efficient and safer way to resaw. I scroll cut 0.15" - 0.25" stock for the most part and a bandsaw with a sharp blade will do the job fairly quickly and the work does not chatter.

Wondercutter is the product name. It looks to me as though the target material is too limited in density and thickness for it to provide much use for scratch building.

POB filling between moulds? The material will be hidden. It does not need to be pretty. If there is a gap, use paper or cardboard to make up the short fall. Liberal use of PVA will stiffen the paper. A right angle square, a piece of 1/2" plywood, and a sanding block will stand for a poor man's disk sander. This particular tool has been said to be a Chinese copy of a domestic tool, that may have done in the original company. It may look neat'o, cool'o but a home made version will cost less and do what you want. Tooth on the gluing surface is good, so 100/120/150 grit will cut fast and leave a surface for PVA to bond with.

Denatured alcohol is ethyl alcohol. The solvent for PVA is isopropyl alcohol, but the properties of short chain alcohols are very similar. So it could be PVA. Hide glue is denatured by ethyl alcohol - especially if it is hot, so it could be a hide glue.

I see one problem with using a standard dowel as starting stock: the grain. The face of the deadeye will be end grain. The orientation needs to be 90 degrees to that of a dowel. The length of stock to be turned would be 6-12 inches long. It would depend on the width of the starting lumber board. The starting lathe stock would then be square in cross section. I wonder if a tube with an inside diameter that is that of the deadeye could be turned into a hole saw and deadeyes cut from a sheet of wood that is the thickness. The tool used would then be a drill press. A jig could be made to position the 3 holes for the rope and these holes drilled in the sheet along with an orienting site for the hole saw, so that the holes would be already placed before hole saw was used to remove the plug that is the deadeye. Another jig could use the 3 holes to center the deadeye and the lathe used to shape the groove for the shroud.

Post #30 - the top graphic - Body plan - aft - the new green station shape. You should maybe recheck the location of the sheer point. I see it as being too close to the preceding station. There will be a bulge. If you do use that shape, you may wish to leave the inside a lot fatter. Otherwise the inside will have to have a scab layer to make it thick enough when you rasp the outer surface to get a smooth run.

The harpoons needed tending to. Not needing the level and type of work usually done by a blacksmith a smaller anvil would do. The coopering needed to assemble the barrels to hold the oil was also a function.

I build POF and am a bit biased on terminology. As a side note, what you ( and most everybody) call bulkheads are actually molds. Subs have bulkheads, some steel ships have bulkheads, Chinese wooden ships have bulkheads. Western wooden ships did not have bulkheads. They certainly are not frames. What you (and everyone else) call the keel is actually a central support spine. I have never built POB, so this is theory. How I would try to rectify this: 1. This curve is the natural shape that your piece of plywood seeks. Anything that you do only to it (bend it back with steam or heat) is likely to be a temporary fix. It will still "want" to bend. You can clamp it to a baseboard and use the planking applied while clamped to hold the shape. But when removed an twist force will be on the glue joints of the molds and inside planking - forever. It may or may not hold. 2. If the molds have not been glued, there is a stronger fix. Scab a long streamer on each side of the central spine. Remove the black area on each mold. Get a couple of long sticks of straight hardwood ( 1/4" x 1/4" or 1/4" x 1/2" or substantial size ). Drill holes thru the sticks and central spine all along the length. Use threaded bolts, washers and nuts to fix the sticks and central spine together. Make sure this assembly is dead straight. Remove the assembly. Glue the molds to the central spine. Slide the sticks thru the holes along the length and glue the sticks to the spine. Check to make sure it is still dead straight. The bolts can be removed and bamboo skewers glued thru the holes. You just need a drill bit that is the diameter of the skewers. 3. The holes in the molds remove some of the bonding surface between them and the spine. Short pieces of SQUARE wood can be used to reinforce the bond. Eight pieces per molds. Just do not block the path of the straightener sticks. 4. Rather than Balsa, consider using Pine to fill the outer planking edge between the molds. Assuming that you do not have power tools, a hand fret saw. planes, knives and sanding block will do. Select Pine in 1" thickness is easily found. There may also be thinner stock of solid Pine. Cut out the shapes, glue up the layers to fit between the molds, and do as much shaping as you can before fixing them between the molds. You are unlikely to be lucky enough that a sum one 1" layers will be a tight fit between the molds. The outer surface does not need to be continuous. Cardboard or what ever is to hand can be fitted between a layer to make up the difference. It does not need to reach the outer shaped surface. You just want the unit to be a push fit between the molds.

A stain product is actually a semi transparent paint. Cherry stain would be used on something like Yellow Poplar, Using a dye on Cherry is gilding a Lilly. Using a stain is turning a star into something mundane. If you want a finish with a reverse gear, consider shellac. Orange shellac will darken it now without obscuring it. But, as Marks writes, Black Cherry darkens over time and in few years may be darker than you intended. Super blonde will not darken it much. There is a clearer version that is about twice as expensive. The more layers, the more depth. If it is too shiny a light buffing with very very fine steel wool with make it satin. Just do not get it wet. I am of a mind to use a final layer of Renaissance Wax Polish- but that is just a theory now.

Being unforgivably pedantic, if that model was a kit, there is slight probability that it was POF. Plank On Frame is a specific style of construction that attempts to mimic the way an actual hull was constructed. It varies from stylized to being as exact as possible, depending on who the builder is. This method is pretty much limited to scratch building. It was more likely POB - Plank On Bulkhead. There are some unscrupulous kit makers, who advertise POB as being POF. If they cheat on this, it is likely that anything they offer would be suspect. Doing POF correctly is both labor intensive and uses a lot of wood. I suspect that an actual POF kit would be sorta expensive, even for a brig. My understanding is that the first POB kits were from Italy and the component that they termed "bulkhead" is actually a mold and not a part of an actual western built wooden vessel hull. It has continued on as the description used to define the method. Actual bulkheads were a feature of Chinese built wooden hulls, and not western. In Chinese ships, real bulkheads would not have been close enough together to adequately determine the shape of a hull without some additions between them. As it is, most POB molds are not spaced at close enough intervals to support a satisfactory shape for a hull. The common fix is a double layer of planking. Now, about your Katy build, congratulations on an excellent choice for a first build - both as an attractive subject - and as something not likely to overwhelm Shellac is an excellent choice as a primer for most finish material. Diluted 1:1 (50%) for the first coat. 100% for the second. Before you do that, there are a couple of riffs you might consider. After you add the keel, stem and sternpost, you could plank the hull with thin veneer. You do not list your geographical location, but for the US the effective choices would be Hard Maple, Black Cherry, Birch, Beech. (Straight grain, not figured, tight, closed grain, no evident pores) A thin veneer requires no special tools other than a steel straight edge and a sharp #11 knife blade. Disposable blades work, but if you continue with this, violin makers knives and a strop kit Bay pilot schooners did not have much of a bulwark - the Pine/Basswood of the hull above the waterway could be shaved off and a 1/8" piece of hardwood (or glued up layers of the hull planking veneer, used to add an actual scale bulwark. You removed wood that substitutes for the deck beams, so you will need a clamp strake and actual deck beams. (Doing the camber and placement of beams for hatches and masts gets you well into the sort of work that scratch building involves - just FYI) Even if you had not hollowed the hull - Rather than using a sheet of scored decking (Basswood) that I am guessing comes with the kit, an actual deck can be laid. The same veneer as above (except Black Cherry) will make for an attractive deck. I suspect that the actual decking was hard Pine it is not near white, so Maple, Birch is close in color. Rather than bopping a viewer between the eyes with stark contrast wide black caulking seams, mixing a dose of walnut dye to the Titebond that is between the deck planks would be closer to scale.

The book that I have is ~300 pages and is just Vol.1. Sept. 1931 to Aug. 1932. Issues #1-#12

You are definitely in the right place. The interests here are diversified. Small craft are a part of it. The Bay craft have their following. I have tried to collect those books and plans of Bay craft that have become available over the years, even though my subjects are larger. Check out the NRJ back volume CD, SIS CD, Model Ship Builder CD at the store.

If this is a double planked hull, how ever you do the runs of planking for the under layer can be messy and no harm is done. As a representation of how an actual garboard is placed, SpyGlass was pointing the way. I foresee a lot of frustration in the future with the way you have begun this. A proposition: The keel is part of a vertical system/structure, The bottom planking is part of a different semi-horizontal system. The join of these two systems is subject conflicting stress and potential movement. This is the rabbet. If a garboard was bent thru its width axis - against its natural tendency - to fit, an unnecessary additional force would be added that would reduce the effectiveness and tightness of the caulking at the rabbet. The solution: lay the rectangular garboard plank on the frames and push it against the keel. Where the rabbet is a horizontal line, no spilling is necessary. Aft, this usually goes all the way to the rabbet in the sternpost. At the fore end, the rabbet starts to curve up. To fit the garboard, wood is removed at the edge hitting the rabbet. he outer edge stays straight all the way. This is the defining limit for the rest of the planking at the bottom. The wale is the other defining limit. The whole wale is placed when the garboard is fitted. It is the space between the garboard and the wale where the planking is subject to spilling. For vessels larger than a boat, it is probably best if this space is divided into zones of 8 or so runs of planking. a narrow batten can be used to adjust at the stem and stern to get an attractive and natural run at the border of each zone. This reduces the effect of error creep compounding too much. I may have misremembered that the outer edge being straight being so in carvel as well as clinker planking, or maybe this as well as every clinker plank being done this way. The actual stress and movement at the rabbet is about a floating vessel. The effect of humidity changes and variation in ambient temp on a model is probably a couple of magnitudes less.

That's funny! I wonder if MAE was planning a series on the history of sailing cutters in the NRJ or in a book. It is too bad that it did not happen. I have no experience with the waters around the British Isles or the English channel, but over here the wind tends go from over the land and out to sea and the bottom is mostly sand. The mountains get closer to the sea up around Canada, but it is a long way to big rocks down south. Maybe the weather dictated the rig, since the guys who used these vessels could not afford to be sentimental about tradition.

I pulled my copy and I don't see what lead me to place the Speedy in the clinker category. There is not much more than what you quoted. There is not much about outside planking at all, but the one cross section that has any planking looks like clinker to me. I had thought that the demo model was clinker, but maybe I just saw what I was expecting to see. I saved 5 JPEGs of plans and a painting for Vigilant from the NMM web site, so it seems well documented. The Smithsonian has several English cutter plans done by Merritt Edson. It looks like he was planning a publication about cutters that ran aground for some reason. It appears that cutters were not much favored in North America. I am guessing that schooners filled their role.

Bill Shoulder's plans for Speedy have it as clinker planked. Did that apply to the whole class?