Jaager

I varied between 200 and 300 W.   The temp did not get above 120 F  and was mostly 90-100 F.  I mounted the box inside a shelf in my unheated garage.  The temp in the box was something like 20-30 degrees higher than the temp in the garage. The foam sheets were not a tight fit, the air leakage was needed, and the foam only 1 inch thick.  This is nothing like as aggressive as a commercial kiln,  but it does produce an effective movement of water out of the wood that was a lot faster than air drying.  I think it is not so much the temp as the relative humidity that counts.  I was drying Holly so it was a race with the blue mold. I also wanted a temp that was higher than the mold liked.  It worked.   The exhaust fan - being a computer fan is DC - needed an AC power adapter - it seems that an adapter that is equal to or greater than the fan rating is OK. One with a lower output will burn out the fan.

6 foot is a bit much to stand on end and make a vertical slice.  Ideally, you want the bisecting cut to follow the plane of the pith.  Securing a log to do a free hand longitudinal chainsaw cut is still difficult for me to see how to do.  You want to see where it is going and not move and not bite into the dirt.  2 x 4 's and large nails ?   You probably should use a chalk line as a guide.   Ripping with a chainsaw is probably a bit more dangerous than crosscutting.  If you don't use one for a living, you may wish to get help from someone who does. An accident with one of those things.....  I know it looks simple enough to do, but free hand is much more dangerous than using a mill rig.  It is probably going to want to kickback the whole time.  It scared me enough that I used coorse toothed hand saws

If you can get the cuts done - here is a repeat of my advice on how to handle the wood.  (With the simple kiln, you should get something usable in a month or two.  But a 300 W light bulb on 24 hrs/day for a month - it will increase your electric bill a bit.)

 

If you can billet (1-2 inch slab)  your wood,  I would debark it.  In any case, make sure, - this is important - make sure there is no beetle infestation.  If there are beetles, burn it.  If you billet, box out the pith and discard it.  The effects of drying will be more to your liking with it gone.   Coat the cut ends and branch cuts with wax, latex paint, varnish -  something to stop the rapid water loss from the cut ends.

 

You can speed up the drying process by making your own kiln.   Use the foam sheething that comes in 4' x 8' sheets.  The foil surfaced type is probably better, with the foil surface on the inside of the box you make.  The heat source only needs to be  a 200W to 300W incandescent light bulb, or heat lamp if incandescent bulbs are no longer available.    The water vapor needs to be exausted, but a $10 computer cooling fan mounted in a hole on one end is sufficient.   Air leaking in the seams where the six sides come together  will replace what the fan pulls out.  The size only needs to be what encloses your stock.

 

When you stack it, sticker it for proper air flow around the billets. 1/2" x 1/2"  sticks will do.

You can get a moisture meter for $10-20 from Amazon if you want to follow the process. 

 

For billeting, you cannot beat a band saw.  Try to find one with at least a 2HP motor.   

Getting a round log into rectangular  slabs - 

First, you need to get 2 perpendular flat surfaces on the log.

Use a sliding carrier board to ride on the saw table and against the fence.

Fix the log to the carrier board.   The carrier board should be longer than your log, so that you can attach at both ends of the log.

For attachment, I use the right angle support braces used in house timber framing and wood screws.

Aromatic Cedar (Juniperus virginiana)  (Red Cedar, Eastern Red Cedar, Juniper)  does not seem to have suitable properties for our use.

Alaska Yellow Cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis)  on the other hand looks to be an excellent choice for our uses. 

Brian,  Willow would not be my choice, unless you intend to fill, seal and paint it.  Like Ash, Hickory, Oak, Walnut, Elm, Sassafras the grain does not scale well.  Most of these species have open pores, which in scale, may resemble soup bowls in the timber.

Unless you intend to use it for 1:1 scale furniture, 16 -18 inches should be long enough.  That is about 70 feet at 1:48.  Section out the straight areas.    That is a heavy log to handle even at 18 x 10 inches.  That thick can be difficult to manage on a non-industrial band saw - keeping it from rolling during a pass.  Even using a chainsaw to cut it down the middle might be worth the loss to kerf if the sawyer can get you a flat plane down the middle.  This way you should lose the pith, which you don't want anyway.  Splitting is likely going to produce a torqued plane and leave the pith, which you would then want to box out.  With a half log, you may be able to get a billet that is 7-8 x 1-2 x 18  from each side,  but 7-8 inches is a lot of work on a saw motor.  A Wood Slicer Resaw band saw blade will make it easier on the saw,  produce a nice surface, have about as narrow a kerf as you can get, and be very resistant to breaking.  But as you diagram out your billets, consider just how wide you really need the billets to be.

I find Apple to be an excellent wood for just about any use for our purposes.   It feels a waste to see it burned.  It is probably a bit too dark to use as deck planking.  Although not nearly as vulnerable as Holly,  getting it into 1-2 inch billets as soon as possible for drying is probably wise. It is subject to invasion by fungus while wet.  I would debark as soon as possible.  It smells good to us and it probably smells good to beatles.

The color varies from tree to tree, but it makes for attractive keels, frames, hull planking, beams and other internal structures, rails, deck structures.  It should turn well.  You should get as much as you can, a go to wood for just about anything.

A crevise tool attached to a shopvac - mounted on top of the table at the back will get pretty much all the the wood dust.  It is just noisy.  A useful mounting method is to remove the lamp shade from an inexpensive swing lamp and attach the crevise tool and some hose to the distant arm of the lamp swing mechanism.  You can put the end of the tool where you want it and get it out of the way easily. 

I got a series of sanding drums with a slit and core hole for friction clamping, that allowed for the use of sheet sandpaper on the drum.  Neither Peachtree nor WoodCraft seem to be vending them anymore.  Norton Premium sand paper seems to hold up much better than anything else I have tried.

 

Years ago I needed to bend 1/8X1/4 stripwood edgewise

 

Rather than risk Physics and time working to reverse your efforts , spilling and scarphing would be a more harmonious way to contour a plank curve in the thick dimension.

How about using a rice / vegetable steamer to heat a plank?   There are some relatively inexpensive ones  and they have dual use.

I think a while ago, experiments showed that water alone was as effective as household ammonia in wetting wood for bending.  It is less deletorious to the wood also. Household Ammonia was only ever suggested because it was confused with the industrial anhydrious ammonia process.  They are not similar methods.

If the proper choice of wood species and quality has been made, there is another option: wood dyes.   A stain is sort of a semitransparent paint. A dye is totally transparent.

You could replace the plywood with regular wood -

Or use wood veneer and laminate you own plywood in place on the model.  The veneer should bend easily and glued up in place - hold the shape if clamped tightly while the TiteBond dries (glueing the layers together).  WoodCraft has 3 sq ft packs of beech, cherry and maple (unbacked) for ~$10.  These varieties are closed pore and tight grained. The thickness of the veneer is not listed.

This wood is different from Pyrus communis - Swiss pear.

Bradford pear - Pyrus calleryana  Bradford  -  is a rapidly growing ornamental originating in SE Asia.  Widely planted starting in the late 70's(?) in the US, when mature, it was found that this cultivar has one bad trait.  The branches grow up at an acute angle to the main trunk (which is often not more than 5-6 feet.  In high winds the branches split away from the trunk.  There are other cultivars with better habits.

The tree grows fairly rapidly. It grows well in spring and summer so both the spring and summer wood bands are fairly wide.  There is a color difference.   Excellent color with the spring wood being a lighter color, but neither are red or burgandy. The wood is dense, hard, nonporus, few, if any knots.   It works well and easily has a polished surface.  For small parts, it is often easy to get all spring or all summer, so there is no grain in that piece.

It should be useful for framing, planking, masts, yards and deck equipment.  I like working with it and how it looks.  I got a decent stock of it when a wind storm in central KY left one of my trees looking like a pealed banana.

Here is my take on this subject:

Swiss pear - is usually Pyrus communis - it has about 2 inch fruit, but it is often used as root stock and fruiting varieties are grafted to it.

The "Swiss" part is (I believe) a treatment done to the dried wood - steaming(?) to get a uniform color.

Most any fruit food will provide excellent working stock.  With the thicknesses that we use friutwood stability is not a problem.

Nice color, hard, no pores,  relatively little contrast in grain,  bends well  - tight grain =  all the traits we are after.

The furniture cherry wood is Prunus serotina (Black cherry).  It has ornamental value, and because birds like the fruit, is often found in fence rows, but the friut is small.  It is not likely a variety  grown for its friut.  The wood from backyard cherry trees is useful, but will likely be a different color.  The furniture wood is not difficult to obtain or expensive from hardwood dealers.

The difference between hardwood and sapwood is due to the tree storing "extractives" inside the cells.  It makes this section denser and a different color.  It is less likely to shrink during the drying process.   The sapwood is more prone to checking.  When dry, the sapwood is useful for our purposes, it is just a different color.   No need to discard it.

If you can billet (1-2 inch slab)  your wood,  I would debark it.  In any case, make sure, - this is important - make sure there is no beetle infestation.  If there are beetles, burn it.  If you billet, box out the pith and discard it.  The effects of drying will be more to your liking with it gone.   Coat the cut ends and branch cuts with wax, latex paint, varnish -  something to stop the rapid water loss from the cut ends.

You can speed up the drying process by making your own kiln.   Use the foam sheething that comes in 4' x 8' sheets.  The foil surfaced type is probably better, with the foil surface on the inside of the box you make.  The heat source only needs to be  a 200W to 300W incandescent light bulb, or heat lamp if incandescent bulbs are no longer available.    The water vapor needs to be exausted, but a $10 computer cooling fan mounted in a hole on one end is sufficient.   Air leaking in the seams where the six sides come together  will replace what the fan pulls out.  The size only needs to be what encloses your stock.

When you stack it, sticker it for proper air flow around the billets. 1/2" x 1/2"  sticks will do.

You can get a moisture meter for $10-20 from Amazon if you want to follow the process. 

For billeting, you cannot beat a band saw.  Try to find one with at least a 2HP motor.   

Getting a round log into rectangular  slabs - 

First, you need to get 2 perpendular flat surfaces on the log.

Use a sliding carrier board to ride on the saw table and against the fence.

Fix the log to the carrier board.   The carrier board should be longer than your log, so that you can attach at both ends of the log.

For attachment, I use the right angle support braces used in house timber framing and wood screws.

Back to the original question:  if the stock is thin enough, why use a table saw at all?  Clamp the stock down with a straight edge ruler ( they are 6/12/18/24 inches) and use the edge of the ruler as a cutting guide and do the cut with a blade.  No curf loss.

I was suggesting a way to cut thin stock on a 4 inch or smaller table saw.  Using not particularly long stock, since at 1:48 a 6" piece is 24 feet.  After the first cut , the blade would not be cutting into the covering carrier and the trailling part - the part behind the stock can be wide enough that the blade need not emerge before the stock is completely cut.  But yes, the blade guard must be out of the way, so it is like a dado cut.

Making narrow cuts in thin stock --  Would a "push stick" that is a covering layer of the stock with a piece of the stock to be cut tack glued across the back to push it work?  The covering piece can be thick enough that the blade does not come close to cutting thru it.  It would work like an upside down sliding crosscut table.

I have found Bradford pear to be an excellent wood to work with.

Closed pores, holds edge well, relatively dense, drys OK, does not check too badly.  Nice color.

Holly will be a problem.  Once dry, it is an excellent wood.  It can be used for any part.

Drying it is the problem.

It will host a fungus - blue mold.  You need to get dry as quickly as possible to keep the mold from ruining the wood.

My suggestion.

1) Coat the cut ends and knots.  Latex paint will do.  Parafin, varnish, just block the uneven rapid water loss. 

2) Get it into billets 1-2 inches thick as quickly as possible. Debark the billets.  A band saw with a powerful motor is an efficient tool to do this.  Fix the log to a wooden sled to get perpendicular cut planes on 2 sides - then you can use the cut surfaces against the fence and table.  Hooly is very hard.  It will labor an under powered saw.  The Wood Slicer bandsaw blade is as good as it gets, but you may wish to use standard blades for the green wood if you have a breakage problem -

3) You can make your own kiln for not much cost.

     A box can be made using foam insulating sheathing that comes in a 4x8 sheet. I used 1 inch with a foil surface on one side. I got Home         Depot to cut it into  4x 16 inch pieces - my 350Z is not much good as a truck.  They sell 2x2 foam pieces for projects that will work for the 2 ends.  I built my box into a shelf for support but duct tape will probably do.

4) Heat -  200-300 watts from incandescent light bulbs will do for my sized box.  I put the foil surface on the inside.

5) Moisture removal - Amazon sells computer heat exhaust fans for ~$10.  One is enough.  Match a DC power supply to the fan -  I understand higher is OK, lower will burn out the fan ~$10.

6) Sticker the billets - 1/2 inch x 1/2 inch strips cut from a furring strip will do .  You need good air circulation arround all sides of the billets,

7)  A month should do more than enough.  Amazon also sells a moisture meter for ~$12 if you wish to follow the progress.

I air dryed the Bradford pear and it did OK.  I kiln dried Holly and Dogwood.   Holly wants to warp and twist as it dries.   If you start with a 4 foot long billet and  it twists 45 degrees over that length - well - a 6 inch piece will be relatively straight and at 1/4 scale that is a 24 foot board.

A useful Titebond dispencer -  go to a local pharmacy and ask for a 10ml oral syringe.  The plunger can be removed and the barrel filled.  If done carefully and with the help of gravity - the plunger replaced and air expelled.  The end can be easily covered - I use electrical tape - (the gauge is different from injection syringes so those needles and caps do not fit -  but then the bore is large enough to work with the glue's viscosity. 

I think the limit on dilution v bond strength is 10% water.

The tighter the clamping - the stronger the bond.

For rigging and flags - take a look at Lineco -Neutral pH Adhesive (Amazon)  a book binders PVA glue that should help minimize the effects of O2 and UV light.

If you are going to use the plans for Prince from a Euro kit, there is a factor to check.

A while back, I was investigating 17 century vessels.  It was just after Dean's Doctrine was first printed. I ran thru the exercise of designing a ship based on the directions in the book.  In that era the length of a ship was based on "touch". Essentially, this is the part of the keel that actually touches the baseline.  At a later time this was changed to "length between perpenticulars" or "length of gundeck" (which is essentially the same thing).

The reported length of Prince would be based on touch.

The plans seem to have used that value as though it was LBP.  The plans as drawn are forshortened by not including the radius of the stem and the cant of the stern.

One problem to think about - tea and coffee are acidic and contain tannins - they may react with the cloth over time and break it down.  Woodcraft and similar sell wood finishing products - especially water based and alcohol based dyes.  They tend to be more stable over time.

Penn State Ind.  has several - specific to popular machines and universal:

http://www.pennstateind.com/store/universal-duplicator.html

Take a look at aqueous or alcohol based wood dye and use clear over that.  Stain is essentially paint. 

Depending on the wood, you may wish to prep the surface by applying water ( with maybe 10% TiteBond or WeldBond ) and scrape or sand the raised grain.

Only the ends and the knots (if any)  The wood needs to dry.   Wood is similar to a bundle of soda straws.  Water migrates more quickly out of the open ends.  If you stop all water loss by coating the sides, fungus will thrive in the environment that you produce.

If the ends dry more quickly than the bulk =  wood is majority water when qreen,  as the water leaves, the cells shrink.  If one part drys more quickly - it shrinks more quickly and the stress causes the wood to split (check).   The goal is uniform drying.  And drying to stay ahead of fungus.  Oak has tannins so it is likely more forgiving in this reqard than is Apple and especially Holly.

 You need good good air circulation around the log, so sticker it.  You can use pieces of furring strips or scrap lumber for the stickers.

Watch the ends and recoat if checking starts.

For outdoor drying, the old rule for seasoning was 1 year/inch.

You can get a moisture meter from Amazon for ~ $10 ( or atleast I did. ) and follow the drying process.

Thick paint - wax - varnish -  you just need to slow the loss of water from the ends

You should probably remove the bark -  it speeds water loss and there are insects that lay eggs under bark and their larvae bore into the wood.

Your better option - billet the wood into 1-2 inch thick pieces and sticker them to dry.

One thing about oak ;  Even modeling at the high end of scale 1:50   - the grain is way off scale and the pores are pot hole size.

If you split the stock for the yards from a plank - using a fro-like tool - the yards will be less likely to bend or twist - as this follows the grain - something a dowel is hit or miss with.

On  a theoretical basis, if you are setting up a line for masking tape, would using a laser pointer instead of a pencil help do the job without leaving a mark?