SJSoane

Thanks, Michael. I always appreciate your keen eye and ideas for tooling. Now I have successfully bent a piece, I need to think how I am going to shape it. I am thinking about attaching it to a backing piece that would allow me to clamp it in a vise, as shown in the drawing. Unless someone has a simpler idea. Just for fun, I steamed the original pre-cut pieces that I previously boiled and could not get to the right curvature. They appear to have bent to the former after steaming, as seen in the last photo, and we will see how much spring-back I get tomorrow morning. This is an impromptu experiment in the advantages and disadvantages of cutting and then bending, or vise versa... Mark

Thanks, druxey and Mark, I found a little guidance in the book, The Complete Manual of Wood Bending, by Lon Schleining. It recommended forming a curve around a male form only, so the clamps can progressively and smoothly pull the wood up to the curve. My earlier former tried to capture between two halves, and it did not work nearly as well. Mark, the holes in the PVC pipe are for a row of ¼" diameter dowels 1" O.C., which hold the steaming wood out of the condensed water in the bottom of the tube. The entire tube slants to a drain hole at the end opposite the opening, for getting rid of this water. This all came with the instructions I got with the steamer unit, which I found at Woodcraft a few years ago. There are also a number of instructions online, which would be more reliable than mine. I used a rag stuffed in the opening, fearful of creating a bomb with a tight fitting on both ends. The thermometer only got up to 115 degrees, while I was expecting more; but it seems to have worked. I used the formula of 1 hour per inch of wood, multiplied by 2 for kiln dried wood. Since my wale planks are ⅛", this was ⅛ hour times 2 or 15 minutes. It took about 15 minutes from cold to 115 degrees (I put the wood in the cold tube, before heating up), and then another 15 minutes or 30 minutes altogether from beginning to end. I let it dry overnight in the forms, and hit it with a hair dryer the next day just in case. Slow, but I only have to form curved planks from the wales up to the point where the hull flairs out for the catsheads. I am retired, plenty of time! ;-) I might make a few more formers based on the first, using a piloted trimming bit in the router table. then I could steam and clamp a number in the same session. Best wishes, Mark

Santa did not bring a soldering iron or heat gun for me this year, so I turned again to the steam box parts that I had purchased a few years ago. I built a new box out of PVC pipe, scaled down to the sizes of wood I need to bend. I tried one former that was not sharp enough bend to allow for the springback, and then modified the bend more sharply to compensate (see sketch below). The final bend came out just right. I am in business! Mark

Nice, Gary, looking very good. I don't see your cannon; are those still going to be fitted on both sides of the gundeck? Mark

Michael, The more I see your clamping device in action, the more I really appreciate it. The time taken to design and construct a good jig or tool repays itself for the rest of one's life! Mark

Ed, those close-up photos make it look like the real thing. Imagine climbing out there in heavy weather... Mark

Hi druxey, I got it over 20 years ago from Woodcraft, and it was labeled only as S.A. Boxwood, which I assume is South American Boxwood. Nice to work, very crisp, but is very stiff stuff. Gaetan, I have not had success finding the heating element like Gary showed (it might have been lost or misplaced in my move). Do you have a source for the one you showed here? Mark

Hi Michael and Gary, I had that plank bender a few years ago, and didn't have much success first time around. I 'll see if I can dig it out and try that. Michael, you showed a heat gun/soldering setup on on of your posts a while ago. Is that what you use for this? Thanks! Best wishes, Mark

Michael, Very nice work on the lines. I can see the dilemma; leaving the cruder repairs just doesn't seem shipright! Mark

Hmm, my nemesis, bending 9/64" thick wood... I cut the former with a greater curve to accommodate spring-back, boiled the pieces for 1 ½ hours, and then clamped them overnight. But as the first photo shows, the spring-back was much more significant than I had planned. So there are three variables here: 1) the curvature of the former; 2) the time boiling; and 3) the time clamped in the former. Before I start experimenting with different curvatures of the former, does my boiling time and bending time seem about right? The good news is that the two strakes I bent at the same time came out with the same curvature, even though one was much longer than the other, and the joints fit well. Best wishes, Mark

Thanks, Gary, I will try this. I already cut out the parts based on an expanded planking plan, so we will see how well the jig saw puzzle goes together when it goes on the hull. Some are probably going to be recut. Did you find it helpful to have the batten at the top of the wale? Gaetan, your comment is a good reminder that so much of craftsmanship involves responding to the nature of the materials, and adapting and refining as the form begins to develop. I understand this is how the shipwrights worked, and why they needed relatively few drawings compared to the number of drawings required in our more automated construction processes today. Maybe we enjoy ship model construction in part because it lets us participate in a process when the craftsman's skills and judgement were more important. And druxey, you are right about no dumb questions, but in hindsight it was a question I asked dumbly; the answer does depend entirely on the type of glue, which I neglected to mention. Since I am using yellow carpenter's glue, the answer to my own question is that it will come apart. I am going into the shop to try bending these individually against a former. Thanks everyone! Mark

John, Greg, thanks for the comments. It is great to be going again. I planned to bend wood today, but it took most of the day to refine the joints and plank widths and thicknesses at the bow. Dumb question; if I glued together the two planks shown, would they separate after boiling them for bending? I can see some value in bending these together, to keep the joint tight. I may also try making a caul shaped to the bow, and use this to ensure uniform bending if I have to do these separately. Mark

Thanks, Mark, I am going to get up early tomorrow, bend some wood, and then see where I stand. The first planks at the bend are so long that once I get past those, the rest fit fairly snuggly against the hull. So I will only have to remake about 4 per side if they are too short. Druxey, if you are reading, can you remind me how much the first planks are thinned at the fore end to fit the rabbet at the stem? The wales are 8 ½" at their fullest thickness. Every little thinning will help me here! Best wishes, Mark

Hi Gaetan, I did my best to construct a true projection of the wales in CAD, and I taped a print of this drawing on the hull itself to confirm its shape and length. So far so good. But I do have concerns about what happens to these pre-cut joints when I bend the strakes at the bow. I may have to throw away the ones I pre-cut and replace them with pieces hand-fitted to the space after being bent. And as Greg pointed out, I also need to bevel the edges to fit the curve of the hull vertically. I have to attend a social event today, but I hope to try a first bend of the foremost strakes tomorrow, and see what happens. Best wishes, Mark

Gary, Great to see your build again! I will follow your progress with enthusiasm. And that new bench looks terrific. Hard to pass by that without it calling you to sit down and work on something... Mark

Greg, I am putting an ⅛" brass spacer on top of the vise, and visually aligning the red line of the CAD printout on the blank to the spacer. I am keeping the cutter at a constant height as I change pieces. This means there is a slight variation from piece to piece as I inevitably align slightly higher or lower, or ever so slightly tipped one way or the other. I am finding that I occasionally need to adjust these cuts slightly with a chisel and sanding blocks, to pull the faces on either side of the hook fully together. There might be another way to make this more accurate right out of the mill, but I am not sure if the extra time it would take to indicate surfaces and creep down to the line with the Z-axis handwheel would be worth it. If I were cutting these inner faces entirely by hand, I would be doing the minute adjustments with chisel or sandpaper anyway. But I am open to ideas on this! I am concerned about what will happen when I begin bending these pre-made pieces at the bow. I hope my CAD true projection of the wale is accurate. I did print it out and wrap it on the hull to confirm the length; but I don't know if the joints will still be tight after bending. I may have to consider laminating the first pieces at the bow. The pieces are 9/64" thick, and I have experienced considerable spring-back when bending this wood in the past. Michael, interesting comment about the rhythm of processing pieces through a tool. I learned from a comment from Gaetan a few years ago about the importance of repetition building accuracy and speed. I have extended this idea a bit by first cutting all the hooks on the scroll saw, then sanding all the flats on the disk sander, then moving to the mill for the inner faces. And now I see I have to move to the chisel and sandpaper to clean up the fits, which is more piece by piece. Mark

Ed, That is counter-intuitive about low humidity in the winter and absorbing more moisture. I just heard the other day that in our location near a lake, doors tend to bind in their frames more in the winter than in the summer; this was also explained to me as counter-intuitive. And yet, my own admiralty framed model opens up joints in the winter due to wood shrinking. Many mysteries in the world still to be fathomed... Mark

Johann, beautiful work. The metal work is the best, most finely detailed, I have seen. Mark

Hi Michael, I missed this project during my retiring and moving hiatus. Nice work, and beautiful jigs and tools that you are so good at creating. I look forward to seeing the next steps after a shop move! Mark

Thanks, druxey, Michael and Albert. I am constantly fighting my natural tendency to "bodge" through things, rather than being more methodical. Methodical is more satisfying for me. After playing around with various ways of cutting the hooked scarphs, I settled for now on using the Sherline mill to trim the inner flats, the disk sander to trim the outer flats, and the curved sanding blocks for the outer edges. I decided to keep the outer edges a little fat so I can trim these once on the hull. three parts fitted, 53 to go... Mark

Alan, It really shows how large those timbers were... Mark

Gaetan, Replacing jointer knives always challenges me, because the last tightening of the bolts always shifts the knives ever so slightly. I appreciate seeing the skill with which you adjust and use your tools. Mark

Yesterday I managed to cut out all of the wales parts. To refine the curved edges, I cut a sanding template to the radius of the wales in sheer in the center, and I am using this with my shooting board. The shooting board has a sloped ramp for the sanding template, which means a wider surface of sanding paper is presented to the piece as it slides back and forth, using the sandpaper more efficiently and avoiding grooves in the piece. Mark

Hi Ed, Truly remarkable level of detail and craftsmanship. You continue to set the standard. And I really enjoy your summaries of the functions performed by the various parts. In conjunction with the clear photos, it helps reveal the logic of these exceptionally complex machines. Mark

Hi druxey, Thanks, I now remember seeing ledges like this in contemporary drawings, but did not understand what they were or why they appeared in certain places and not others. Now I see the logic once I tried to solve the problem myself. One of the great delights of this endeavor, for me and I am sure others, is to reconstruct the logic of the construction from the evidence of the historical record. Mark