vaddoc

Gaetan, it is difficult to fully perceive the depth and beauty of your work. I seriously doubt that the actual ship was as well built! A great pleasure to visit you logs. Vaddoc

Lovely work Michael and very inspiring! Did not know that shim sizes of brass sheet existed. Great work on the hinges, I now regret missing the opportunity of making working hatches and companionway for the Deben.

Gary, I just finished catching up with your log. Not only you are creating a wonderful model, you are clearly having lots of fun! Now, your boat is a source of inspiration but one issue I ve always had was the colour and texture of the masts. Strangely, it never occurred to me to paint the masts with acrylics. I do not have your skills in mixing paint but this is definitely something to try in the future.

Many thanks to all for your input! Gary, I agree, pear is lovely. The problem I always had is that due to the pink-ish colour it seems to only combine with ...pear. But I am looking into your suggestion. GL, I indeed remember our discussion very well and I am following your logs (not as often as I would like due to life pressures). The yawl however has a much more rounded bow and I really doubt that 2 mm steamed pear will be convinced to follow this curve, even steamed, without fracturing. Also, I guess the planks will need to be cut over a pattern with a knife to come out with a fair curve and pear is very hard. Still, I ll give it a try. Michael, how right you are. I just received a copy of "Boatbuilding" by Chapelle. What a lovely book it is! It describes how the various types of boats are built and how lofting is done with a pencil and ruler. This book is all about the 80/20 rule and finding the golden balance between being well prepared and having done a good lofting but also at some point start building the boat knowing you can correct miss-matches by taking more or less material. Today's CAD accuracy is a completely alien concept to Chapelle. There is actually a point where he advises, if the frame cannot be bent into place, "just use a shim"! I must say that in previous boats, the planking would actually correct design issues as the wood would want to find its natural fair position-then just had to be framed into place. Back to the boat, I have finished designing all the temporary frames as well as the building jig. This will be a really big boy! I have also placed a rather large wood order but ordered only samples for the wood planking. Not sure how the admiral is going to take it but she is busy getting new floor and carpets so maybe the timing is favourable. I ll post new photos once the wood is in Regards Vaddoc

Welcome Peter! This boat can certainly be repaired, repainted and re-rigged. Then you might be tempted to take on a new maybe more challenging project. Regards Vaddoc

Welcome VM! Have great fun building your boat but do start a log as well!

Rick, Valejo model colour range is for brush painting but make sure you use their own thinner (not the air brush thinner). Do not use homemade one. Also use a bit of their retarder. Combine with system 3 brushes and you can successfully repaint the Capela sixtina!

Valejo paint is great. I use the hand brush range and it is fantastic. Humbol enamel are great as well but water based paints are just too easy to use. Try decoart (americana) sealer, cheap and very nice. Dries in 15 min. Make wood dust as soon as possible, rest will come. Welcome back! Vaddoc

Tried a few wood fillers both modelling and trade (avoid), wood dust with PVA, even silicon as filler. Best by far is Elmers. Nothing stops you mixing it with wood dust or acrylic paint. https://www.amazon.com/Elmers-Carpenters-Change-Filler-E917/dp/B00JKB2GP2

Actually, let's just discuss it here. I plan to order wood from Massiv Holz (EDIT: It was actually Arkowood) in Germany, I have bought a lot of wood in the past and it was good quality. They have a wide range of woods, some of which I know and some not. The minimum number per size is 10 strips and also, I think I will need maybe 15 pieces 100 x 1000 mm sheets for the planking so overall quite a lot of (expensive) wood. Some woods are much more expensive than others. The way I see it, there are 3 main groups of components. The planks, the ribs and all the rest. All will be left unpainted. The curvature of the planking mainly near the bow I think is too extreme and probably needs a wood that has excellent steam bending properties. Similarly, some of the ribs will need to bend quite a lot. This means that pear and cherry probably cannot be used (or can they?). They do not respond that well to steam bending and can be brittle, especially pear. On the other hand, birch, beech and maple will take any curve with no issues, holly and ash as well. For the hull and other pieces, anything can be used. However, I would like dark colours and birch, maple and holly (and hornbeam which I liked) are very white. In the next photo there are 6 woods that I could use. From left to right they are dark swiss pear, cherry, light pear, beech, birch and maple. The birch and maple are actually a bit paler in real life than in the photo. The only combination I can think is beech for planking and the ribs and pear or cherry for the hull. Any suggestions on wood species, bending potential and colour combination would be very welcome. Regards Vaddoc

Indeed Druxey. I read they were purposely forcing the growing trees to become crooked so they had a supply of such timbers. Now, I am slowly finishing the drawings by arranging the temporary frames but I really would like this boat to look good and I need to decide what wood to use. I would like to ask your help in choosing wood but maybe best to create a new thread, your contribution would be greatly appreciated. Vaddoc

Thanks GL Indeed, I was unsuccessful in getting the shapes of the planks with CAD. It will be much easier on the actual model with battens and paper shapes. It is possible though that the planks will have a very odd shape and significant curvature. Of course 50 or 60 cm wide pieces of timber are not really realistic, this is why I think the planks for these boats may have been scarfed which reduces the width of the blanks to half. Back in the 18th and 19th century they were building similar boats but up to 40 ft long, these had to have scarfed planks. Vaddoc

Wonderful drawings! I like the a4 box trick. In the past I struggled lining up both faces of the frame, this seems to have worked fine I ll be following from the back rows GL Vaddoc

Dear all Life is so busy that I do not have any time to work on the Deben. This is likely to be the case for the next months and probably even years. Regrettably I am also struggling to keep up with the numerous logs I have been following. Still, I have been stealing some moments mostly at night, in between the girls' bath time and sleep time to work on the yawl. The results were mostly disappointing but I got to understand planking and boat building in general much better. I really wanted to get the planking done on CAD but this proved immensely difficult. I spent many evenings but I could not get it to work. It certainly will be much easier in the actual model with a few battens! I am posting some screenshots of the multiple attempts I did, trying many different ways. Some photos look great but really are not. I think the garboard is pretty close but all other planks are likely to end up with very strange shapes. This boat has a very round bow and I think this adds complexity to the planking process. It is probable that this boat absolutely would need scarfing to get the plank shape. For some reason I have a childish optimism that I will be able to get the lapstrake done. I intend to do it properly with all the bevels and nails. I ll be considerably older by then though! In any case, I concentrated in finishing the hull and frames. I really do not know how these boats were built. I suspect that they used solid wooden frames and not steam bend ribs but a superficial look in my library did not yield any results. I visited several online logs of actual boats being built and got some ideas on how to arrange the hull. It will have to be a modern version of the boat with its 19th century lines but it will have to do! I also ordered some more books but in the mean time I finished the hull with the intention of using steam bend ribs. I arranged the ribs at 2 cm intervals. Each rib will be 4 mm x 2 mm. Any of the paired ribs can becoming a 4 mm thick frame for the building and all the bevels are already defined. Note the new sheer due to the gunwale I will install, which will be 2 mm thick. There will be two cant frames at the bow and one aft. Next photo shows all of the boat's timbers Stem and false stem. These boats probably had a massive solid stem but I do not have the timber or the tools to handle such big pieces of wood. I think the stem will be solid wood and the false stem will have a laminated core and solid wood sides. The sternpost and knee will need to be pretty massive timbers and will need to be somehow built up. I have the shape and bevels of the transom but of course this will be an area I will struggle a lot. Oh well... It is necessary to have a false keel. The planking amidships will be very wide and will run almost horizontal. There will be grooves to accommodate the transom knee and stem. The keel will of course be very massive. It will be 56 cm long, 11 mm high and 8 mm thick and of course will also need to be built up. This will be actually larger than the keel of the Deben which I thought was pretty huge. A final photo of the deconstructed hull I think the boat is actually done and I cannot see any massive problems. It should be feasible to transfer to wood but in 1:10 will be a really big boy. Best wishes for the new year, health and happiness for all! Vaddoc

This is how I would imagine an Elf's workshop to be Gaetan! Love your pliers collection!

I have huge respect for table saws after I experienced a few kick backs from my very very underpowered proxon saw that sent pieces flying into orbit. Our faces are less than a meter away from a sharp blade spinning at thousand of RPMs! $50 is admittedly not very much but especially for this piece of machinery, I would go quality. Still, the proxon was equally cheap, equally weak but right out of the box. Thick plastic proper goggles are an absolute must using these things.

Welcome Bhupi! This is a big boy for sure but looks very nicely done. Mighty project for a first scratch build!

I ve been following all your paper builds Danny.. Mighty nice! And mighty small...

I have a tin pot where all sharp things go upside down. Also a small cardboard box for drilling and cutting related stuff, one for general stuff, one for sanding related stuff, one for rope making and so on...An organised chaos but tidying up is quick and when looking for something I know where to broadly look. Of course from time to time I do lose things that resurface later on.

You are having too much fun GL! Lovely boat, I like the colour combination a lot. Looking forward for the rest of the journey Vaddoc

Very nice work on the rabbet, I guess your chisels are razor sharp! Very crisp edges, I always struggle and end up with wider margins and irregular surfaces.

Good news! No need for concern, the plank shape and run is fine! The computer can unroll a curved surface to give the straight surface it originated from, very useful when it comes to planks. The shapes I got were odd, and despite what the software was saying, eyeballing the hull they did not make sense. The problem was that really, CAD is very unforgiving. The hull is curved and fair but the planks are flat. I divided the hull to planks widths and asked it to unroll but this sections were curved and hollowed along their width, following the contour of the hull and not flat. This led to funny inaccurate shapes! I created a random sheer plank but made it flat this time. The result was much closer to what I expected. The plank blank now needs to be 39 cm wide which is much more feasible. Another interesting snapshot is the following, comparing my frames and sheer to the plans as given. The sheer is spot on as well as the aft frames. Note frame No 1 is identical and frame 2 and (to a lesser degree) frame 3 quite a bit different due to the errors and difficulties we discussed above. So all is good, the only minor loose end left is actually building the boat.😁 Putting all sort of disclaimers on accuracy of lofting etc, if any of you have an interest to build this boat let me know, I am happy to share these plans. Regards Vaddoc

Now I played a bit with the planking and odd shape planks come out. So odd that I now have two questions: 1. Can all boat shapes be planked? 2. For these period long boats (7 m long!), is it always one piece plank or is it common practice to scarf planks? There are other boats 35 ft long which is 11 m, so these cannot be one piece plank. The reason is that the initial tries show planks very curved at the transom end, which would need 50 cm wide blanks to come from and would have the grain running almost vertically at the aft end. This seems to happen because the hull at mid sheer runs vertically down wards before turning towards the midline and there is a pronounced curve of the sheer at each end. Looking at the NMM drawing this is indeed how the boat is drawn. More headscratching needed!

Druxey, indeed! GL, it is really not that difficult. Get any CAD, draw a dot, then another one, then connect these with a line. You 're off to a good start! The rest is improving on this! Keith, I actually do have access to a massive CNC mill but it feels a bit like cheating! I would sure like a bench top milling machine though! Bob, you are very correct, CAD (Rhino, well spotted) is very unforgiving and indeed this degree of accuracy is not necessary. I am aware that when actually cutting the wood the tolerances will be just horrible in CAD terms, nothing that sand paper or filler cannot fix. This however is a small boat so it was feasible to get all lines to work together. These guys of old, cutting wood without power tools and following some drawings where even one copy was not identical to the other...but I read that it was not unusual for ships to be a bit asymmetrical! In the end of the day, the ship has to be built! The picture you paint I think was their reality. Now I was indeed tempted to draw the planks, which would be a lot of work being a lapstrake. It is unnecessary though as I ll do the planking the old fashioned way but I will divide the hull just to get a nice run of the planks. I ll post this images later on I actually have in a couple of weeks another few days of computer time, I might be tempted to loft another boat or even something a bit larger. I ll have a look through the NMM plans. Regards Vaddoc

Just went through the log Michael. I was left speechless. Wonderful work! I am clueless in this area but could I ask, how are all this moving parts kept lubricated? There are no sealed ball bearings, just metal on metal. I presume there were no ball bearings in the real thing either.