vaddoc

No winches in my boat Mark! Plan is to make rigging as complex as possible (to learn and for fun), I d like to have many ropes and blocks. Also, I made many blocks because making them is so complex and time consuming that I did not want to go back to it. I counted the blocks I have ready, they are 50 in different configurations. I hope they will be enough.

Well, it is one step forward and two steps backwards! I thought with the coronavirus situation I would have plenty of time for the boat but this is not the case. As the little ones do not go to school, we have to do an awful lot of work to keep them busy and keep some pace to their education. So I ve been doing a lot of painting and drawing, made model boat, trains and trucks from various materials, played board games etc. Going back to the boat, I decided that I do not like the way that I stropped the blocks with copper wire served with thread. The blocks took so much work to make that it did not do them justice. Ideally I would like to use rope and splice the ends. In the Ketch, my previous model, I used splicing extensively but all ropes there were three strand ropes so easier to splice. The rope I make now is made of threads and not strands and splicing is almost impossible. I experimented for weeks, mainly trying to use heat shrink tube. Michael's suggestion to use it on the shrouds was fantastic but despite all my efforts,I could not make it work on the blocks or the rope ends/thimble. Bellow are some of the failed attempts. They don't look too bad but I could not standardise a method and was not happy with these results This is the old strop versus a proper rope one So finally I found a relatively easy way to do it, giving consistent results I am happy with. So here it goes: A few tools, a copper/brass ring with soldered ends, thread and needle, some rope and a brass electrical connector thingy is needed. First, I open the ends of the connector carefully to preserve the round shape and to not leave sharp edges Then I flay a bit the ends of the rope. I secure the rope on one connector. Which side the rope end is matters. Then do the loop and secure the rope and the threads to the other. This is the most difficult step, there is a learning curve Ready to be tied. Despite the crimping, pulling on the rope ends the loop size can be adjusted. Tied with fine polyester thread, the ends buried underneath with the usual loop trick . I decided to use black and highlight the stropping rather than try to hide it. Tying the thread around the rope is relatively easy as the rope is secured in the crimps Ready! This block though will have an eye, this is simply tied with black thread I like this method, gives consistent results and the blocks are reasonably strong I now have to strop another 40 or 50 more blocks. Humongous work on these blocks and in the future, no one will ever know! Oh well, that's life! Stay safe all!

Beech and maple respond superbly to heat bending

😉 ground coffee is essentially wood dust! Epoxy is strong but brittle. For used as glue when gap filling is needed, for filleting, for laminating, it needs to be thickened. It increases the strength, reduces brittleness and makes it much less runny. If sanding is needed, it makes sense to use a filler that sands easily. I ve worked a lot with epoxy and I like talk powder. I think that the way your idea could work would be to mix some epoxy with talk powder, wood dust or whatever similar and actually glue thin strips of wood on the inside of your planking. This would resemble a "cold mould" construction and should be pretty solid. It will be lots of messy work though, maybe best to go for filler pieces or more bulkheads

How and where are you planning to apply the epoxy? If you plan to fillet the joint of bulhead and plank from inside of the hull, best to thicken the epoxy with talk powder (or anything else, i ve used ground coffee in the past) to consistency of peannut butter and apply. It should work fine. Epoxy is a bit messy though. Uncured epoxy from hands cleans with vinegar but best to wear gloves

Why not use wood sheet? Make circles, roughly cut them out and then shape round with the disc sander. Or make paper templates with circles and the positions for drilling, drill the eyes, then again cut out and shape with the disc sander. The grooves around can easily be made with the thin 0.5 mm proxon grinding wheel attached to a dremel. Finish with sand paper.

Very interesting info Mml I recently had to drill some difficult holes. The photo shows 2mm brass rod, with a sleeve made from 3 mm tube soldered around it, so a pretty solid thing. The hole going through is 0.8 mm, this is 0.03 inches. I used the TBM 220 Proxon drill press (8500 rpm) and cheap chinese carbide drills and they drilled through in no time. Still I broke 2 drills to make 8 pieces but this was me not keeping the piece securely. The Dremel goes up to 33000 rpm but I doubt I would be able to drill with steel bits

I think I hit a milestone today as I installed the bobstay, the first bit of rigging to go on the boat. I am not entirely sure where to attach the line on the boat, I think I ll add cleats to the bowsprit and maybe a couple of belaying pins to the heel. Maybe another pin rail is needed. I also finished the poles for the rails. They are not all identical but at least there are 4 pairs. The tape protects the part that will be glued as I applied some renaissance wax to the rest. I could not restore the brass colour, the copper kept appearing in the surface. A bit of internet search indicated that my pickling solution was contaminated with iron which makes the brass copper colour as it removes the zinc from the surface. So I ll need a new solution, I think I ll use citric acid this time. I though that rigging would be relatively quick but this is not the case. It takes time and I will need very many shackles so I ll start making some more Vaddoc

Dave, I have very little experience but I have always struggled to drill brass with steel drills and had the same issues. However, using Tungsten carbide with my drill press, no issues at all.

Lol, Carl this would mean going to waste the 150 m of rope I spent weeks making! Maybe best to press on...Indeed, Mark, not all countries are continents!😄 In England we are like sardines in a can.

I did a tiny bit of work today but I managed a breakthrough! To complete the rails, I needed discs made of brass at 7 mm diameter with a central hole of 2 mm. I looked for brass washers but could not find them in these exact dimensions. There are Jewellers tools that cut discs of any size but are expensive. I ve been scratcing my head for days now but finally I figured a way to make discs from brass sheet. Needs a fair bit of tools but nothing too specialised. I used the Dremel bit for mounting grinding discs, the screw has a diameter of 1.3 mm. I drew 7 mm circles in thin scrap wood and drilled a 1.3 mm hole in the middle. I cut small pieces of brass with a hole in the middle. I sandwitched it all, mounded the assembly on my cordless drill and started grinding against the rotating disc sander. The result was excellent. This is a process to make a few discs, not for mass production. I opened the hole to 2 mm on my drill press. This needs care as it is easy to make the hole off center This is how each rail is supposed to be, The shaft, the disc and the sleeve at the bottom will all be soldered together. The shaft will be glued through the deck and there will be 4 brass nails through the disc and into the deck. The next photo shows scrap pieces but the final rail will be something like this.

Mark and Carl, it is a BIG baby! Even as a half hull! I think after completion I will take the masts down in all my models and pack them away, to come out in 20 years time... Bedford, I tried the hairdryer and it seemed the wrong tool for the job. The heat gun came in and it was much better, more controlled and consistent. Safer as well as it was the admiral's hairdryer!

Just caught up GL. Great news she is safely back. The boat looks fantastic, I enjoyed going through the planking very much! I am surprised that you had so many straight edges and so little spilling was needed. This is a very elegant hull, pure wood poetry! Bad luck with the crushed wood. 2.5 mm strips can be very hard to bend into place. Did you use any heat? You may have mentioned it but I must have missed it, what wood are you using for the planks?

Well Keith, the Yawl is I think next on line but at 1:10 scale it will be equally huge so the Deben needs to leave the shipyard first (and go where? I do not have the answer)

Thanks GL I used Beadalon wire, I think this is 0.65 mm. This is a great wire as it is encased in a plastic transparent wrap. It is served with ordinary black thread in my home made serving machine. Brass electric wire crimps are used for thimbles. The seizing in these is beadalon crimps blackened with black gesso, as they were made a long time ago but now I would use the smallest size fishing crimps wrapped in thread-this gives a more elegant result.

Regarding Stay Brite 1. Does it have gap filling properties or pieces need to touch as in silver soldering? 2. Do you use a torch or a soldering gun in high setting?

Welcome Marco, good luck with your boat!

I think maybe another update might be in order as I was allowed to spend quite some time in the garage. First of all, a photo of the finished belaying pins. They have a coat of Tung oil on but the colour of the wood barely changed. I also took a photo of my drill inventory-part of it at least. You can never have enough drills. I did an experiment with seizing the lines. This is wire rope, seized with black thread and encased in shrink tube. The crimps are fishing crimps cut in three. It looks ok I think. One side done. Note that the ropes are not touching but I think after the crimps have been seized with thread they will come closer together. I attached a piece of wire rope to temporarily hold the spreaders in place. The other spreader was badly attached so I had to remove it, fill the pivot hole and re-drill. A few more photos, the boat is large and is difficult to get good shots I also installed the forestay. The bowsprit had taken some nasty bumps over the last few months and I noticed it was loose. I glued it again but I must remember to be careful. With the bob stay on, it should be more secure. Suddenly it feels that the end is very close! A couple more photos

Thanks to all! Deuxey, the shafts on the pins were temporary to allow spinning of the heads for shaping. The pins now have very long shafts that will be cut to length later on Keith,making shackles is easy and actually fun! You will find very useful the thin grinding discs that Proxon sells to cut and shape the brass. Mark, I have drawn up the rigging (most of it anyway) except for the sheets for the jib and staysails-no idea how these will be. There is always the chance I ll need more than I have. I was not aware it is called "becket", learned a new word! Regards Vaddoc

Many thanks to all for your likes and comments. Like many we are not allowed to leave the house so plenty of time to work on the boat! I ve made lots of blocks, many more than these in the picture. I hope they will be enough, making blocks is very complex and time consuming and I would not want to go back to it. I also made two hearts for tensioning the stay sail. I had to make them 4 times before I was finally happy. I then made some belaying pins. I do not want to buy wood at this time so I used whatever I had. I found a 3 mm dowel in my stash, I think it is Birch and used also toothpicks. It was a bit tricky to drill and then shape it but I used a wooden peg which worked very well. I then made the reefing comb, again fully functional with brass sheaves. I then finished and install the spreaders and then attached the 3 pairs of shrouds with shackles I then polished all my shackles. I think they will not be enough but making more is easy and relatively fast. In the end I used CA glue to secure the pin Now, to attach the shrouds and define their length, the mast needs to be up and somehow secure in place. I used scrap wood to secure it in place. I then made some templates from scrap plywood to hold the eyes in a fixed position The (dreadful) figure is 1.75 cm in height. It looks a bit out of scale, I think I ll need to recheck things. On the other hand the Deben is about 7 m long so it is not a big boat. There will be pin rails on the shrouds and I roughly checked the height the need to be placed at for a comfortable reach I will use black shrink tube as Michael suggested earlier in the log, I think it is a very elegant solution. I also got some fishing crimps which I cut to size and should give a very tidy result. However I need a heat gun which I ordered. So waiting for the gun to arrive, I started work on the rails. These proved very fiddly. I need 8 and after I had spent hours making them, I managed to ruin them all by carelessly drilling at random places for the second rope to go through and not parallel to the first rope I realised my mistake after I had marked or drilled all 8 pieces and run out of brass rod. Next day however, I thought of just soldering a piece over and re-drilling. There will be more pieces soldered to the base so I think in the end it will look fine This was good progress and I think I should be able to do a bit more work this week

Cargo should not have any issues, only people are not allowed to travel If you buy from Arkowood please feed back your experience, I was very happy previously but that was years ago Vaddoc

Welcome David, from the other side of the Atlantic!

This is just amazing. Getting those eyes done on the brass straps is a herculean act on its own.

Maybe just use thin brass or copper wire, served with thread around the block to look like rope, but bare beyond and blackened. A couple of turns will secure the wire/rope to the block

Dear all A small update, mainly to keep my log from going into complete hybernation. I finished the second bunch of blocks and then I put a coat of Tung oil on. They came out fine. Without Tung oil And oiled. The block that has the rope on is actually wrong as it is upside down so later on I had to redo it Making these blocks is really gigantic work but one that can be done at the sofa or the dining room table. I now have to attach the ropes. A few months ago I realised that copper wire served with white thread does a much better job imitating rope. I soaked the "rope" with CA glue to keep it from unravelling and to stiffen it up a bit.q A couple of close up photos, the first two show the block that was upside down. I now work 6 days a week + often doing a few bits and bobs on Sundays and with the kids and all there isn't really any time left. C'est la vie!