Bryan Woods

After pulling off the Gretel for a month, to insulate and finish my wife’s garage, aka the old shipyard. I am super relieved to get back to scale building . 4’ x 8’ sheets of plywood and 15’x 4’ blankets of insulation are zero fun. When I stopped last month I was about to start the rigging. Everytime I go from planking to sails and sail to rigging, it takes me days to acclimate my brain and build up enough confidence to get back started again. I started on the bowsprit because I could see the end 🙂 I still have work to do to get the sails ready and I need plenty of time to keep studying the plans on the rigging. The only thing that’s bothering me is the possibility I will put something up that’s in my way:-) Here I’m trying to get these reefing ropes in the main sail.

Looks Great! Olli.

It all looks great Jacques, you’re way out of my league to offer any suggestions. But the frame reminds me of John Smith’s shallop. It had jigs to build the frames and a jig to set the frames. And I wondered through out that part of the build if I would ever get passed it:-) I can’t imagine doing it by scratch.

Looking good:-) I’m on hold with the Gretel, until I get the inside of my wife’s garage finished.

Once you get your back taken care of, I think you need to give up the yard work and just model:-)

I’ve been shaping the yards and boom. Also making the sails. This teabag paper is working good for me. It doesn’t require a new skill:-) First I trace the sails on the paper then paint one side to give it a little stiffness. After a few days of drying, so it’s not tacky. I cut them out. next I cut strips for the seams, hems and corner supports. After all that’s done I paint over both sides. Then glue a rope around the sides. I still have four more sails to glue this rope on.

This week I tried to get everything glued down except the things that maybe in my way when the rigging begins. Pretty much all the measurements for the different parts are given. And the supplied wood has been a very good quality, in a novelist opinion:-) Here’s a few shots.

The last week I’ve been making all the little things that go on the deck. i still have the side windows and the bow to finish. Then I’ll be starting on the mast and yards. Oh, here’s Josh checking out the progress earlier this week:-)

First off, I’d like to retract “the stapling the work to the bench”. It was a desperate attempt with ugly results. I had some other kind of wood. I can’t remember the name, I had never heard of it:-) Anyway it was 1 x 2 mm, instead of 1 x 1 mm. I bent them first then using pins glued them together. I sanded them down to about 1.2mm. It was difficult to keep the 1 x 1 flat after being bend, to glue them together. So I’d do that again if needs be. Here’s some shots of the top rail. I work on the strips on the side. Maybe one day I can try and learn the names of the parts I’m building:-) Just to change I looked in to the hinges for the rudder. They are .1mm brass. One finger spasm would turn them into a brass nugget. I decided then I will glue them together. Then glue them on the rudder. Then glue the wood on rudder to the hull. Maybe it will stay on at least till it makes it to Auburn Alabama. The doors and windows were a nice challenge. I did them only a few minutes at a time over several weeks. Here’s where I’m at now. Thinking I’ll finish the rudder and see if I can get the cast metal stern piece to stick to the wood.

Work on the flagstone walk has slowly made progress. I set my inexpensive mixer up and modified a broken wheelbarrow, so it would set under the mixer and not require my wife to hold the handles up on it while I dumped it. Then I just drug it over a few feet to the molds. They turned out pretty good. I’ve gotten better at not getting it too wet or too dry. In the sunlight they still look like concrete. Nature will stain them like it does everything else around the yard. But the moonlight really shows the texture. I’ve been at it for 14 days of mixing an eighty pound bag per day. That fills all six stones and a bit left over. I use it just to patch pour a round stone that I’m sure I can find a place that could use one:-) At first the stones were challenging to fit together. They just came in a box with zero paper work or diagram. So here’s where I started. To push them up closer to the deck I used a straight edge to see where that middle stone needed removed. On my next pour I pushed wood strips in the cement where I needed it cut. I think I may have 12 more days to mix. What I’m dreading is, having to remove them all, to semi level the ground. I didn’t do it to start with because I really had no idea where it was going to lead. After about 5 days worth I could visualize the pattern. I may need to move it north or south a little bit to work around those trees where it will stop.

For the last few weeks,( except for 4 days and nights that I stayed with my brother to help him build a tree house for his grandson) I worked on the veneer topside. The top rail is made up of three 1 x 1 strips bent and glued together. They didn’t retain their shape after glueing them together, so I tried bending them glued. This worked on one side but the other seemed to fight me. So I just stapled it down to my work bench overnight. Next up, I need to make all the little things that glue to the deck, doors, windows.

I finished the second planking. I pretty much just decided which plank to do next and what shape it needed to be. Thinking to whole time there’s a better way of doing it:-) But it all turned out. I’ve also removed the bulk head ends above the deck. I’ll be ready to start the deck planking as soon as I decide what wood to use on what area.

Your pram looks great! Matt.

Welcome to the forum!

Thanks Eric, It’s my first veneer. Hopefully I can match the starboard side. I chose to start with the bottom mahogany strip so it will at least match:-) Below, which I’ll probably do later. I tapered the 4mm plank to 2mm and ended it at about 8cm. We’ll see if that works.