Jaager

I may totally misunderstand the situation, but my understanding is that a 3 jaw chuck is for round stock and as such a self centering action makes sense. A 4 jaw chuck is for irregular stock. It would be pure luck for 4 sided stock to be absolutely square. It is logical for each of the jaws to be independent. Round is almost always symmetrical. It takes serious effort to make it anything else. Four or more sided stock is almost always the opposite as far as having symmetry.

I favor hull form and a ship's ectoderm. I see the artillery as being an unnecessary distraction and see no compelling reason to include it.

Looking for dry pigment - Amazon has Mica dry pigments advertised as being designed for use in epoxy.

Is the clear epoxy in an organic solvent? If so, it may be possible that you could buy a small tube of artist's oil based pigment - a quality fine pigment brand - of the color or colors you favor - and mix your own compatible top coat(s). Epoxy is two part? Not sure which of the two would get the pigment - I would guess the thinnest one?

Wherever you read that is probably a site where mendacity is a dominant factor - or passed on by an individual who got his information such a site.

I regret that my intent was misunderstood. I two finger type and tend to leave out a lot of explanation, assuming that my mind can be read. For the record, if I have a negative view about something in logs or technical forums - I keep it to myself. I do not see a "be careful, you might be walking into a minefield" comment as being negative. I would want to know. I guess spending months on an experiment and almost presenting a paper on something that was really artifact, not recognized because of poor controls, has made me too careful about trusting assumptions. Wood identification is plenty difficult and regional differences abound. I was trying to suggest that while the silica inclusions and significant tool dulling correlates with your report, the hardness that you find in your stock does not seem to match that reported for the Anigre supplied with some kits? I have not personally used the species and have no investment either way. In your place, I would see the hardness factor as a potential red flag when ordering more. Maybe a PM would have been a better choice to give a warning. I am not telling you what you should use, in the way that you took it. I see shipping costs as becoming a significant problem. Wood has weight and volume. There is a cachet around a few species of wood that seems to affect choices. In the US, we are at a cost disadvantage for Pyrus communis ( Pear, Swiss Pear ) it is not a domestic species here - I am guessing that it is almost a weed in certain areas of Europe. The premium that we pay places it as being difficult to justify for high volume use. Boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) would be expensive, but it cannot be had for ready money. The commonly selected substitute Castelo is seeing an imbalance in demand vesus supply. The cost is becoming usurious here. I am focused exclusively on POF at a larger scale. The volume of wood needed for a single hull is in the 10's of board feet. I cannot justify paying import prices for framing stock. There are readily available species that will substitute. They are not a perfect match, but are "close enough for government work". For Boxwood - Hard Maple, for Pear - Black Cherry. Birch and certain species of Beech work as well as Hard Maple. Right now, they are ~$9 / BF. So, a "I want to make sure I have enough" 50 BF is $450. Keep in mind, that WELL OVER 50% is going to be sawdust and scroll cut discards. I find it a bit ....ironic?.. when build logs that celebrate finding that Maple and Cherry work and turnout as well as they do - given that they are a forced substitute - are taken as recommendations for their use in regions of the world where they are expensive imports. In Europe, where this most often appears, there are much better and lower cost domestic lumber species. Australia is a bit of a major player here. Most everything used in North America and Europe is an import there. I am guessing that the prices are a bit onerous. What I was trying to do: it was meant as bait to produce a discussion - or better, locally informed suggestions for species, domestic for Australia. Species that can be your substitutes and not pay the significant import costs. I was thinking that economy and saving money is a GOOD thing. The bait was for you to jump on the chance to recommend locally harvested lumber that your fellow countrymen can use as reasonably priced and easy to obtain substitutes. I was thinking that you might know ways to avoid enriching Maersk et al. and still get suitable lumber.

You may wish to verify the identity of the wood that you are calling Anigre. My only purpose for questioning this, is if you order a resupply from a different vendor, what is supplied could be an unpleasant surprise. What leads me to question your identification is: The Wood Database gives Anigre a Janka rating of 990 Pear 1660 Obeche 440 Basswood 410 Lime 700 Castelo 1810 For scratch builds using POF - I think the economical and practical choice is to use a domestic species with scale appropriate grain and closed pores. The only local lumber there - based on the US based Wood Database appears to be Tasmanian Myrtle ( Myrtle Beech, Silver Beech ) Janka 1310. Of course any immigrant fruitwood species is likely to be ideal.

I follow those Apple choices too. The Hearne is expensive and does not look clear enough to use for framing stock - which is what I would use a large volume for. Framing uses an unbelievable wood volume - even at 1:60. A yellow variety of Holly is a weed on the family plantation in Caroline county but not as much as the Sweet Gum. I do not remember seeing much of it in central Kentucky. The Apple would probably be easier to find the Eastern mountains.

Back when I was doing all that, I had 5 acres in Delaney Woods, Jessamine Co. I worked at Cooper Drive VAMC (It was 400 beds then). Red Maple ain't Sugar Maple (Hard - Rock) Acer saccharum . I use Hard Maple exclusively from the Acer family. Probably not in business anymore, but I bought a supply of Hard Maple and Black Cherry from Homer Gregeory in Morehead. I also bought too much Sycamore - back before I learned that Underhill was taking about a European Maple species - not the American Plantus occidentalis junk that I bought. They were a whole sale country sawmill then. Rough ricks in the weather - it was all well seasoned - I got 4x4 - today I would get 8x4. If I were young and where you are, I would make friends with the county extension network and try to find farmers with healthy but past production full size Apple trees. Work a deal to get some logs . Who knows, maybe you could get some Holly, Dogwood, or Hornbeam that way? It is a big regret that I did not try that when I could. Too much grafted to easy pick size now. For Holly it is a fight to beat the Blue Mold before it is seasoned. I now realize that for us, even the worst Blue Mold infected wood is perfectly OK for our use. It is just as sound. It is just grey. That is a more perfect deck color than the commercial snow white Holly. No species of wood used for decks is white and the grey mimics the effect of sun and seawater. The white has become ridiculously expensive and the stuff that is perfect of us is probably being burned.

You do not provide your location here on Terra, but the straight narrow trunk looks like a small Hard Maple I lost to a tornado - one of the bunch that destroyed Xenia, OH. My local Hardwood supplier has kiln dried Hard Maple. There is also Soft Maple - which I despise - I prefer Yellow Poplar for stock where a low density hardwood does the job. Seasoning and processing logs into usable lumber is a lot of work, ages expensive tools, and takes up time and space. I see it as prudent to only expend that effort on wood species that are either unavailable any other way, or very expensive. And expensive is a toss up. Hard Maple and Black Cherry are both available here in the eastern US and are less than $10 /BF. I have and use a lot of both, but processing either from a log would cost me way more than $10 - all factors included. No, but my present situation - age, hernia, physical location (as far from rural as it gets in Virginia and actually on The Bay) places me out of the running any more. The Bradford Pear was street trash on Pretty Lake Blvd. after the last hurricane. I had to tie a rope around the big log and drag it up the street to my condo behind my "Z". It was both too heavy to lift and I am lucky that the Z has enough room for food resupply. No way that log would fit. I tried to buy an Alaskan Mill or something like it - from Silvo Hardware. I waited and waited, then one day I got a letter stating than I was a party in a bankruptcy proceeding. I have a 16" Shindaiwa buried in the back of a closet - everything rubber is probably oxidized to brittle by now - and back when I was getting all this, there was a type of chain available that was pretty aggressive - if I had gotten the mill, I probably would have bought it - but then it must have set some regulator hair on fire, because it disappeared from the market.

I have it in mind that the English keel scarphs would be a vertical line seen from the side and a elongated "Z" seen from the top. The French method was 90 degrees different - a horizontal line seen from the top and the elongated "Z" seen from the side. To me, that means that the scarph on an English can be faked with a simple butt joint - the false keel would hide the "Z". If I have it correct, then the rectangle with the "X" indicates two things: where the scarph is and how long it is. I guess that North American practice could be either one - I see heavy Frog influence here as well as English. My bet is that which ever method was more efficient and less labor intensive was preferred at each step.

I have a bit of it. Some is on the floor of my garage - dry and waiting to be processed into billets. It is excellent for our use. I love it. Not near as much as Apple, but it is wonder stuff. Differences from Pyrus communis is that it is more brown than pink and it has a waxed sheen to it. There is some difference in the color of Spring and Summer wood and each can be fairly wide - the tree is fairly fast growing. I used an electric chain saw (el cheepo HF) to bisect the largest - to speed seasoning and remove the pith. There was significant loss to kerf and a freehand chainsaw rip cut is dangerous. An Alaska mill is both safer and produces more precise planks. A log is difficult to place so that it does not move and the end of the bar does not have the teeth digging up soil. The electric has lower power so the kickback force is easier to resist. Beyond a certain thickness, a completely round log can be a real challenge to resaw on a bandsaw. About the best that a tablesaw can do is 2" and a rolling log is a nightmare to rip cut. I used left over enamel paint to make thick coats on the cut ends - too much checking if you do not seal the ends. It dries faster if it is debarked and it removes carpenter ants and wood boring larvae eggs. Seasoning is usually one year per inch of thickness. For a lot of tree species, the branches are at ~ 90 degrees. This offers the possibility of getting compass timber. Unfortunately - Bradford Pear branches - splits into two equal forks mostly at a sharp "Y" . This does not make for much useful compass timber. For the tree itself, it means that the tree tends split like pealing a banana when exposed to high winds and the tree is old enough that there is a significant diameter ( weight).

Isopropyl alcohol - the 91% first aid stuff - will debond PVA and alcohol does not swell the wood and dries fairly quickly. PVA is not sensitive to acetone, but the hated CA is. Duco nitrocellulose is. Hide glue is completely denatured by hot ethanol. I use Titebond II (a yellow PVA) - with is water resistant - because we live on a water planet. Titebond III ( an amber PVA) is waterproof. A flat board wider and longer than the dory. Draw a center line the length of the board, A block of wood about 1/4" thick - cut one end at the same angle as the slope of the transom. A couple of holes - counter sunk under the base board and drilled thru the block can be used for threaded bolts to hold the transom support block - If the holes are a tad larger in diameter than the bolts, there will be some play to allow adjustment to square before the washered wingnuts tighten it to the baseboard. Fix it to the base at one end. The slope and flat edge of the block will support the transom at the angle cut and if mounted correctly square to the midline. A similar block can be cut to match the stem and fix it square. I would use Dritz 3009 1 3/4" quilting pins - at #70 hole is tight enough, but does not freeze the pin. A bamboo trunnel can fill the holes or a brass pin - do not leave the steel pins in the model - they will rust, Outboard blocks can be placed outside the dory body at each rib location . if placed square a wood strip connecting them will hold each rib perpendicular and vertical. Once all that is setup and bonded the fore and aft blocks can be removed and the side blocks used to secure the inverted hull. Use a curling iron - a rheostat may control the heat - to bend the planking - only heat is needed - water just swells the wood and it does not return the wood to its greenwood state - Prebending allows for an easier glue bond - no resisting forces. With a jig this involved, you can go into the mass produced dory model business. If you know the dimensions of any future models, the baseboard can be cut large enough for their use.

No, I have not. I bought a large green and a large blue single tile from Home Depot in the late 90's for the heck of it. I do not remember to price being all that prohibitive. It is just another armchair thought experiment.

I have been imagining using sea green or blue marble tile as a base. It does increase the weight significantly, but it sure ain't going to tip over very easily. It would be a chance to use the diamond hole boring bits from American Surplus. A dark Rosewood dye on the frame?

That sort of puzzle is one of the brain activating parts of all of this. Think about it when trying to go to sleep - you may wake up with an answer. Take a step back and imagine the sort of structure needed to hold the parts in place. Sometimes, this support structure is as much as 90% of the whole. Construct jigs with screws and ways that can be taken apart - so that the parts can go into a scrap box to be reused for a later project.

From your picture, it looks like the plans have full size patterns for every component. It may require use of a steam iron first, but you could scan the patterns, adjust for the built in scanner aberration, and print them out for a redo. Using something better than Lime gives a bit joy to work with - but I advise avoiding any roll cut veneer.

I tried about every organic solvent available to civilians. Several will denature it. Nothing will wash it off. I searched the MDF for the solvent in the can. It seems to be a mixture that you really don't want to know is in it and still be willing to be in the room with. I seem to remember that rubber is one of those polymers that has no practical solvent. I remember an old saw about a way to get rich was to find a solvent for Cellophane% - perhaps rubber and synthetic rubber are the same? Some chains are probably just too long. % I was born and raised in Richmond where and when the manufacture and sale of packs of lung cancer and COPD was a major industry. So too was the manufacture of tetraethyl lead.

DAP Weldwood is very thick and amber. Applied from a tube, I think that the bore of the tip would need to be fairly large and would need strong thumb muscles to extrude it. I use it to hold sandpaper to a Maple sanding drum. Mineral spirits will cause it to roll into balls, but I have found no actual solvent to remove it. So, replacing the sandpaper is a major project. Clear and gel sounds like nitrocellulose in acetone - reasonable prise hold strength, but like CA, leaves a bit to be desired holding against a sheer force.

If it is similar to DAP Weldwood contact cement it is a synthetic rubber. It is for adhering plastic laminate to a base. The layer is thick - too thick for scale - and it is prone to oxidizing after a decade or two = brittle and a release of the bond. "You don't want it."

The Wood Database translated to relevant the wood is hard it is essentially interchanged with Hickory - which means that it is open pore. The grain and pores do not scale well. Sealed and painted or hidden, it should do as well as Hickory, Ash, Oak, Walnut. It is apparently tricky to mill - tearout or burn if tool edges are not really sharp. If it were Apple or other fruitwood you would want to kill for it. Nutwood is better for 1:1 scale projects. If you seal the ends well, debark, protect from rain, give it good airflow, when seasoned -1 year per inch - you will have a good utility wood - jigs - inside the hull parts. I can get other nutwood - Oak, Walnut, Ash - already seasoned and in rectangular form from Yukon Lumber right now. It is not trash, (anything in the Cottonwood family is trash), but for a one off, learning to mill, not going to expand to other really desirable and otherwise unobtainable species, the specific reward from this log will be relatively low. I would probably process it and try to make something unique from a small fraction of it as a gift to the neighbor. Now, if you have neighbors with Apple trees, Plum, Crab Apple, Japanese Plum (Loquat), Hawtorn, Dogwood, possibly Peach if you can beat the fungus, and given the prices Holly - for us less than snow white and even Blue Mold infected Holly is right at the top of desirable - -- bribe them - be a wood vampire.

Way back when, I bought a Unimat SL. Primarily because it was as close as I could come to getting something like Longridge's Midget Universal machine. It was for the woodworking aspect rather than the lathe. At the time, there were essentially no stand alone model scale machines. I burned out a motor using the Unimat as a tablesaw. (I also bought an Emco Maier BS3 - a large benchtop 3 wheel bandsaw. - It was a well made machine, but any 3 wheel bandsaw is based on an absolutely terrible design. A perfect machine would still be awful to use.) The Unimat was pretty good at being a small under powered tablesaw, drill press, saber saw, disk sander, etc At the time, there was little or no competition. NOW, The Byrnes saw is at least 10 times more capable at its function. There are a variety of mills and drill press machines. A Rikon 10" bandsaw is a better jig/saber type scroll sawing machine. I would not advise using it for heavy duty resawing though. Byrnes has two models of disk sanders that are much better at that job. There are more capable small lathes. The Unimat was great for its time. Now, it has been supplanted. It had inspired competition from stand alone single purpose machines that were better at doing their portion of each of its functions. As for a lathe and spar shaping - a major negative is that the actual spars were shaped by cutting along the grain. A lathe cuts across the grain.

Sprue Brothers has been a source: https://spruebrothers.com/tools-supplies/tools-cutting/?page=1&mode=6

The Ibex Luthier planes are carving planes. The blades are convex. Specifically for a bevel, would not a flat plane level the desired surface? Now, for a hull, one of these looks like it has excellent potential.

I have the thought that with practice a high quality miniature block plane would produce a smooth and accurate bevel: