No Idea

Hi HH - yes the counter planking should run straight off of the transom fillers into the rabbet on the wing transom. At the moment the planking will hit the wing transom before the rabbet as the filler pieces should be more full towards the stern. I could get away with this for about half way along from the sternpost but then the gap is far too big and does not line up at all.

Thanks for the comments and the likes 👍 Tonphil1960 I'm sure that you will enjoy building this ship! Ok first the good news - the top timbers are now cut and I would like to thank Gerard Delacroix again for helping me understand the drawings correctly. There's a few pictures below and she's looking smart now in fact better than I hoped. Now the bad news - if you've followed my build you will know that I find my mistakes when I need to move onto the next part of the build. So this time it's the transom that I have made incorrectly. When I made these parts I really didn't understand how all of the combined parts of a ship hang and work together to make the whole. I learn by doing things and now I know better for the future but I'm left with a problem right now. The transom filling pieces do not line up with the wing transom rabbet. It's so obvious to me now but it wasn't back then and now I need to fix the issue. I've attached a few photo's for you to see my error and having emailed dvm27 (thanks again Greg) I think I have two options. 1. I can build up the lower transom filling pieces by laminating some wood onto them. I think that this would be best achieved by building up thin layers of wood over a period of time. I have no doubt that this will look pretty bad but I would get the correct shape that I require. 2. I could bodge it by cutting the wing transom rabbet deeper and change the shape of the stern of the ship a bit. I would need to blend the trailing edge of the wing transom into the planking. I could minimise this by using thicker planking at this point in the ship and blend it in as well. As always your advice and thoughts are more than welcome and hopefully I will come to a workable solution. I really need to keep in mind that this ship is and always will be a way into learning ship building skills. Cheers Mark

Thanks HH but it would have looked a little better had they have been slightly smaller. I'm trying to source some cobalt drills for the job for future nailing. So she's faired 👍 This is such a milestone for me as I always thought that when I began this build, if I could get this far I can definitely finish her. It took a while as a decided to fair her completely by hand without using any power tools. I just couldn't take the risk of messing this up and let's be honest how often does a builder actually get to do this job. I did have a one low frame which was the same on both sides. I had obviously made this frame slightly incorrectly which then meant that I chased this low point up about the next 7 or 8 frames to pull her fair. The dogs legs are also now a bit slender but not to the point of weakness. Next time I'll leave more on everything so that I have more to play with. I'm so happy with the way this little ships frame has turned out and its better than I hoped for. I also hope that some of the fantastic kit builders on MSW who's builds I follow who often talk about how they would like to try scratch building see that if I can do this then so can they. So the next job is to mark out the top timbers and cut them to length which will make her look even better. A few pictures below - Cheers Mark

Such beautiful work marsalv - it really leaves me speechless 👍

Thanks Albert 👍

Thanks 👍 Thanks druxey - It was harder than I thought it would be in all honesty! For some reason in my own mind I thought that it would be easier planking the inside of a the hull compared to the outside. I was very wrong. Hi HH - I think we all have different levels of skill but when you know you've not done your best.....well I guess we start again. So I've now completed the nailing as described above. The only change that I made was to make the nails 0.5mm instead of 0.3mm. I had to do this because I just kept on breaking drill bits at the 0.3mm size as I really needed a micro drill tool to do the job. I can't justify buying anymore tools at the moment so I just used what I had to hand. Once I moved up to 0.5mm I didn't break one drill bit. So I think there's about 1000 nails and the one's in the larger parts are 0.8mm in diameter. Its not as subtle as I wanted on the planking but it doesn't stand out too much either so I'm happy with the results. So now the next job is to fair the outside of the hull 👍 I've been looking forward to this part of the build for a long time now and there's a lot to do to pull it straight and fair. I also think that this may be a good time to mark out and cut the top timbers to length as well. If anyone has any thoughts on this please let me know. Cheers Mark

That is absolutely lovely work 😀 I'm planning this ship as my next build so I'll be watching this one. Looking forward to your updates.

Take 2! Well at last I have an update 😀 I just couldn't leave it and I have now had another go at the ceiling. I'm really glad that I did this as I have improved my techniques and I'm much happier with the result this time around. The joints are much tighter than before and the overall look is what I was hoping to achieve the first time around. Removing the work that I had already completed proved much harder to do than I thought that it would. I think this is because I try and completely fill my joints with glue. It just required patience and some acceptance that the frames were going to suffer a little damage no matter how I did it. The next job is to complete the nailing on the ceiling, clamp, keelson and breast hook. The scantlings say that the heads of the nails for the planks should be 1/5 of the thickness of the planks. The planks are 1.6mm thick so that means I require 0.3mm nails. I've found some 0.3mm carbon rod and I've made up a test piece that I think looks ok. Once again thanks for all of the help and encouragement from you all Mark

Quite simply the best customer service ever - when I decided to have my table saw altered to have the larger table I asked Jim if he could please get it back to me in the UK ASAP. I received it back about 3 weeks later so that I could carry on building and at that time we were all in lockdown due to covid. Jim and Donna sent it to me at their own expense and only asked for payment 2 weeks after I had received it back. Now thats real trust and I could not thank them enough!

This really is wonderful seeing this beautiful piece come together - amazing work

bitao - such perfection mate 👍 One day - maybe one day, I'll get somewhere near this kind of quality of ship building. Your work is so inspiring!

Now that I have actually raised frames I can can see just how amazing the positioning of your chocks are. This is inspiring work for me and I'm leaning so much from your build. Thanks Oliver!

Such lovely clean work - nice one James!

Such beautiful work and the inside photos look so real!!

bitao that work is simply incredible!!!

Your CNC skills are just incredible - WOW that figurehead looks fantastic and fits in so well with the rest of the ship.

Hi all and thanks for the comments and feedback. I got this part wrong because I was having trouble seeing the lines of how the planks should run. Funnily enough after the first 6 strakes I could see how it was all forming and also see that I was on the right track. What I didn’t do was put as much effort into the carpentry and the joints of the planks. I want to get this ship as good as I can so that I understand my next build far better and have more confidence that I’ll get it right. It just means I’ll hopefully get another post up in about 4 weeks with an improved fit. If not I’ll accept that’s the best I can do at this point and move on. Mark

I guess so - I chose this ship for my first POF build to learn as much as I could. Although some lessons seem hard to take; for me it’s well worth the effort as I know that I can do better. If I didn’t change this now I know that I would regret it later.

Hi All I've not posted in a while as to be honest I'm finding planking the ceiling difficult. I've now put in the first 7 strakes and I'm really unhappy the way they've turned out. Sanding down at the stemson has really shown me just how inaccurate some of my cuts were. I also think that edge gluing the planks was a bad idea too............so I need to remove them all except of the first 2 strakes. Here's a few pictures of how it shouldn't be done 😂 I've wetted the wood on one picture which shows my errors. Oh well upwards and onwards and hopefully I can improve on this effort. Mark

Wow Albert that carpentry is incredible 😃

That is absolutely amazing work 😀

The Sherline mill has a 10,000 rpm pulley set which is easy to fit. I use this when milling wood on mine and I get very clean cuts.

I have seen so many so called specialist ship building tools since starting this hobby. I would now say that 80% are a complete waste of money and do not help our hobby in any way. In fact I believe that many of these tools put new builders off for life when they do not do what they say on the box. These things are so easy to make and making them is part of what we do as ship builders - just my limited thoughts.

Hi All I've now started the ceiling planking - its taken me a while to get started as I haven't done this before. I thought that I would be able to apply a similar system that we use on the outside of the hull by marking out bands etc but I found that I couldn't do this. The reason being the way the planks run up the inside of the stem and stern I just couldn't figure out a way of marking them out accurately. I also do not have a flat plan of the planks so the drawings need interpreting which takes me a while to understand. So in the end I thought the best thing to do was to use a mix of the drawings and apply similar rules to the planking such as only tapering to half of the planks width. I also thought it best not to start running up the stem too quickly that we also apply on the outside. So boringly 🤣 I've managed the first two strakes - sorry for my snails pace. I really wanted to get these right as hopefully the rest will then follow. One of them moved slightly at the stern whilst drying so I had to use some PVA coloured with graphite to fill the gap. It doesn't look too bad for a first attempt and I know that I will improve as I work my up inside the hull. There's a few pictures below of where I am now and how I make my planks. I mark out the tapers and then plane them in my plank vice before clamping them together to ensure they are a mirror image of each other. Next I edge bend them which makes for a good fit and only minor clamping. The making of the planks is easy but working out the shape is hard. I'll post an update in a few weekends once I've got up to the seven strakes that I intend to fit at this stage. Cheers Mark

Hi bitao only eight hours work a day on your ship - come on mate you need to try harder 🤣 Honestly your work is so inspiring its absolutely fantastic!