Jaager

It is not good to bend wood. The recommendation was based on a misunderstanding of a commercial process used in ship building: pure ammonia (anhydrous ammonia) was used with heat and under pressure to bend wood. This form of ammonia was also used for commercial refrigeration - ice houses and such. There is no water in this form of ammonia. It is the water and heat that allows the wood to bend. Any ammonia present just adds an unnecessary negative complication - if it does anything at all.

One problem that you could have is getting an identity for the species of mahogany. A lot of tropical sourced wood that is dark red is called mahogany. I suspect that the species that CrisCraft used in the early 20th century is not easily found now. If you are after the color, see if you can source some Black Cherry. It scales better, bends fairly well when steamed, and should not be much different in cost.

Because you do not seem to intend to expand on the possibilities offered by a band saw (harvesting your own lumber - a powerful saw is best for this, a scroll saw - a generic 9" will do) and only use it occasionally, why not go an alternate path? Find a local woodworker, or high school, or trade school who has a full size unit. Buy a blade (for what you want to do the Wood Slicer Resaw blade is ideal) that fits their saw and do it there. A local custom cabinet maker could do it, but unless you find a generous solo good 'ol boy, the cost may be too high.

If you use natural fiber rigging material and you care how long the rigging will last, consider using bookbinders/archival quality PVA. Lineco Neutral pH Adhesive is one brand that is available. The pH of Titebond II is 3.0 - which is fairly acidic. Not much negative effect on a closed wood-wood area, but rigging is all open to air surface area. Although we need it to live, oxygen is destructive to organic materials that do not have active repair systems (are living).

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For planking help - at the top : Home page - Resources - Database. The Wales were not tapered much if at all. Their function was not as fenders. They were a band or bands of thick timbers to support the frames and strengthen the hull. Their location is key, so they would be the first outside planking to be applied. Up until about mid 19th century, the Wales stood proud above the regular planking. Near the end of the wooden ship era, some ships were planked with transition planks - in a cross section view , the outside planking was a smooth curve - keel to caprail - if somewhat fat looking in places.

OK. On your 1st jpeg - the keel - at the stern - extend the inner line of the sternpost to the lowest horizontal line. This will be the aft end of the keel "touch". At the bow, the fore part of the "touch" is where the stem line starts to curve up. Measure this distance. Using the scale of the plans (1:76, 1:72, 1:64) Covert measured inches to full size feet. If the scale is 1:76, then 127 feet should be = 1.67 feet or 20 1/16 inches. If the measured touch is 20 inches then the plans are correct. If it is closer to 16 inches, then the plans were drawn incorrectly. At the place on the keel where the center mold is placed - add the extra length. If you measure 16 inches and it should be 20 1/16 add 4 1/16 more to the keel here. Adding more molds is not a bad thing. If you had twice as many or more, you could get by with just a single layer of planking. The planks would need to be twice as thick. The hard part is that you would have to draft the outlines of the intermediate molds. When you do this, you are doing the most difficult and most tedious part of POF construction.

I got plans for HMS Prince a long time ago. I later worked thru part of the exercise in Deane's Doctrine in developing plans for a first rate of about 1670. In doing this, I learned that vessel length was based on touch of the keel. When I checked the plans of HMS Prince, I found that its length was based on LBP, not touch. The model plans were about 25-30 feet too short. Because they used the model in the Science Museum to provide the deck details, the deck is a bit crowded - trying to squeeze in the hatches and bits and such and the gunports were too close together. Plus, the model looks short and fat. If your plans are too short, you can measure the distance from the front edge of the keel to the scraph of the stem at the gundeck and the back edge of the keel to the scarph on the sternpost. Add this distance to the center of the Keel piece at the dead flat (midship mold). Make two more copies of the midship mold and add them on either side of "0" and call one "A" and the other "1". You will need to adjust the gunports, and deck furniture between the quarterdeck and forecastle, but you will have the correct distance to place it all. This will save having to redraft the hull lines

There are 2 relatively recent books about this vessel: authors - James Sephton, 2011 and Hendrick Basmann, 2002. Before you cut wood, you may wish to check the following: Possible - about the time that these plans were drawn, there was misunderstanding about hull length. After about 1700, the given length was that of LBP (length between perpendiculars) with the perpendiculars being where the inside of the scarph at the stempost and sternpost meet the line of the gundeck (or main deck). There were slight variations in nominclature. There was at least one set of plans for a 17th century warship drawn using this to match the published hull length. Before ~1700, the given length was "touch" ( the portion of the keel assembly that is congruent with the baseline). The stem and sternpost made the actual length longer. If the published length matches what would be LBP - then the plans have the vessel about 20% too short.

I have always thought that they went at this from the opposite direction. The hull form developed to work from the waterline that designer drafts (or from the Dutch style -had in his head) and then when a float, blasted to meet that waterline.

Shellac is soluble in alcohol. HomeDepot, paint stores, hardware stores - all I see now for shellac thinner is ethanol. There used to be a lot of methanol (wood alcohol) products - but ethanol works and is not as toxic. So, if alcohol removes it, it is shellac. Varnish - I think paint thinner - mineral spirits or turpentine - will remove it. Shellac is an excellent primer for most anything else. The first coat should be diluted 1:1 with alcohol. You can follow on with full str shellac, old style varnish, polyurethane or other clear finishes or any paint.

Lignin is soluble in pure Ammonia, not aqueous ammonia, and certainly not the 5% solution that is household ammonia. For our purposes it is the heat that makes lignin pliable. Water/steam transfers heat much more efficiently than dry wood. Using ammonia instead of plain water just adds an unnecessary component.

Running rigging - moves, functions, is subject to stress, wears out and is replaced in actual vessels. Unless it was a denovo rigging, I doubt that the running rigging of most any vessel matched, so as long as your replacement is within the range of colors reported it should be fine. Look to wood or fabric dyes for any color additions. Using tea or similar substances adds an acidic component which can age and oxidize the fibers at an accelerated rate. If the white paint does not clean with ammonia or dilute Dawn (then rinsed off) - you may consider that it is possible that the paint itself has discolored with age. As far as the varnish flaking off: I am thinking - Properly prepped (first coat diluted shellac or dilute oil (Tung, boiled Linseed, Walnut, Danish) it may darken but it should not flake. You might consider removing what is there and redoing it properly.

Rather than using saliva, would not distilled water be a better choice? Saliva is certainly not residue free. Among other components, it contains digestive enzymes. Tap water contains minerals. The water I had in central Kentucky could have had enough calcium to prevent Osteoporosis all by itself. Given the age, the clear finish could be shellac, which will form a white layer if it contacts water, or a varnish which is a mixture of an oil (like boiled Linseed) and shellac which is not water sensitive. An alcohol ( Methanol, Ethanol, or Isopropanol ) will remove shellac. Mineral spirits or turpentine may remove varnish. The painted surface may respond to non-sudsy dye free Ammonia cleaner.

POF- Plank on Frame actually uses fairly small individual components. The goal is to simulate prototype construction in scale. The largest pieces tend to be made up of subunits (keel, stem, frames) . There are many books and articles (some original, some secondary sources) showing how this was done. POB - Plank on Bulkhead ( actually plank on mold as in the wooden ship era, only Chinese ships had actual bulkheads ) the molds are large - usually plywood - everything else is pretty much the same as POF. If you wish to scratch build in POB style, you could make your molds from the Oak - either straight out pieces, or band saw veneer slices and laminate alternate grain layers to make your own plywood. The building style that uses large pieces of wood is Solid Hull. An Oak solid hull would be strong. But man! - the work in carving Oak instead of White Pine or Basswood/Linden....

2 x 6 billets should be just fine and should be dry in 2 years. You can get a low end moisture meter (4 pin) from Amazon for under $20, if you wish to be sure. 1/4 inch scale is 1:48. 6 inches x 48 = 288 inches or 24 feet at high end scale. Much longer than that would be a lot of work to handle in a shipyard. The way I imagine it: when really long , large trees were available, the saws were human powered. When steam or water powered saws were developed, the big trees were long gone. So, a 12 inch long billet would yield a 48 foot long board for a high end (museum) scale model. At this scale, a model tends to be 3-5 feet long, which is OK if you live in a mansion. The longest stock I store is 16 inches. Not too heavy, not too long to saw, band or table, with no help. As for the Oak itself, except for the scale of the grain and the pores, the other characteristics (hardness, tight grain, etc) are excellent for model use. It is certainly hard enough to make it difficult to over do a single cut using chisels, files, knives, sanders, etc. You will not be scroll cutting at a rapid rate either. Before you start on a model, I advise you to get some Apple, Pear, Maple, Birch, Beach (if you were in North America, I would add Black Cherry, Hard Maple, Yellow Poplar) and cut it and compare to Oak - think of the scale effect.

Jay, I was looking at your 2nd example and envisioning the top middle block as being an epoxyed Cool Block to reduce friction, instead of what looks like Ebony. The color is close to Cool Block color.

It is not cheap, but you could used a Cool Block that is rectangular instead of wood.

If this works similar to a band saw, then the thicker the wood being cut - the fewer TIP the blade cutting it should have. When the gullet of a tooth gets filled, it cannot cut anymore.

Paraffin, latex paint, oil based paint, varnish, shellac, polyurethane finish, just something to keep water from leaving the wood from the cut ends of the fiber straws instead of the sides. Wood preservative would probably be very bad. Wood really is like a bundle of soda straws. The function of the straws is to transport water. Water leaves so much more rapidly from the cut ends than thru the sides of the straws that stresses develop from uneven water loss and the wood cracks and splits (checking). What you want to do is block the open ends. Keep an eye on the painted ends and reapply the coating if checking starts to occur. I think bowing and twisting is more a function of the plane of the cut of the billets - with quarter sawn being less prone to this and every species of tree having its own degree of amount. Leaving the wood as a log to dry - there would be much less bowing and twisting of the final planks, but a much longer drying time and often much more checking and splitting - sometimes making it difficult to get anything useful.

Almost any wood can be air dried, Birch and Beech, I am pretty confident can be. The main one that I know to be a problem is Holly. There is an extremely aggressive fungus - Blue Mold - that can invade the green wood faster than it air dries. This species needs to be kiln dried. A kiln is just a hot box with an exhaust function to remove the water vapor. Since we are not making full size furniture, the size of the pieces can be what cabinet makers think is scrap and cutoffs. The temp and exhaust rates can be much more forgiving with smaller pieces. End grain still needs to be sealed to reduce checking, but that is also the situation with air drying.

The quick and dirty approach would be to do wood, solid hull lamination - interior hollowed out - or not - using : White Pine, Basswood, Yellow Poplar, or Tupelo.

There are several species of wood that go by mahogany. 40 years is not that long ago as far as substitutes for the traditional species of mahogany being slipped in, so based on name alone, it would be difficult to determine just which species it is. As far as modeling use, both Oak and Mahogany are open pore and the grain of Oak does not scale down to 1:50 - 1:100 range all that well. If you intend to seal and paint, both are suitable for frame structures, planking, deck structures. You would need to fill the pores before the finish paint to get a smooth finish. If you are contemplating harvesting and being your own sawyer and millwright, I offer the following: A band saw is much better suited to get from round stock to finished planks. Just make sure the motor is powerful enough - 1.5 HP at least. In general it takes 1 year for a 1 inch thick plank to air dry. So If you get round stock into 2 inch billets, it is ready to use in 2 years. If you intend to go traditional POF with as much natural wood as possible, Investigate which species of wood are grown in Northern Ireland. You want closed pore, hard, tight grain and if possible low contrast between Spring and Summer bands. Fruit wood - Apple, Pear, Plum, Crab Apple, are ideal. Maple is excellent and what you call Sycamore, is a member of the maple family (Acer). In North America - what we call a Sycamore, is in an entirely different family and has a less desirable grain pattern. I am guessing that there is a history of formal gardens where you are. You may be able to get some Buxus sempervirens (real boxwood). There are species of smaller trees that grow in your hedgerows - not large enough to be commercial product, but certainly worth your time and exploration. Beech and Birch are usable species and may be available from local hardwood sellers.

The direction of the grain! This probably the reason for the fuzzies. Any torque and the piece would snap. The appearance - if not sealed and painted, is unnatural. The grain should follow the long axis of the piece - and horizontal. You will not get as many units from the milled stock, but just mill more stock pieces.

You may consider adjusting the 20mm guide. The planking would probably work better if the land at the stem was lower - closer to mimicing the trac of a waterline.