vaddoc

I actually like my Dremel saw. It is permanently attached to my work bench with a fish tank pump attached. It cannot compare with proper scroll saws and has lots of vibrations especially if you crank the speed up but it is very cheap and has performed well for me. It is also built well.

Your boat begs for a crazy party Patrick, bar men preparing tequila cocktails with straw umbrellas, ice cold beer and wine, waiters carrying platters of finger food and fruit salad, music…Brilliant work, really lovely!

The problem with this approach Druxey is that there will be a lot of wood to take out, and amongst all the battens and the building jig it will be very difficult to do it. I have accepted that a lot of the cutting will need to be done after the sternpost is installed but I want to try and get as much work as I can beforehand. The scale is large and I will probably need to use power tools. I have very little confidence I will not mess the whole thing up after it's been glued to the keel!

Dear all I now have very little time for modelling so this boat will be built at a very slow pace. Still, some progress has been made. I managed to figure out (I think) how the sternpost will work, at least on CAD but it will be really difficult to create this very complex part in the actual boat. I made an attempt using a scrap piece of pine, it came out horrible but I now have a better understanding and I think with extra care I should be able to produce something acceptable. Quite a lot of the cutting/scraping/sanding will probably need to be done after the sternpost is erected which I expect will also be a huge challenge. The inner skin is now faired and I have prepared the templates for all the temporary frames. I have also completed designing the transom, wood keel and the stem including all bevels and rabets. All these parts are complex and will need to be made of laminates. The following pics show an outline of the boat so far without the details. I also finished designing the keel, which also curves in all directions. In the full scale boat it is made out of iron. It will be made in a bread and butter construction, from several 4 mm slabs appropriately shaped. Plenty of time before the first piece of wood is cut. In the meantime no harm in silently getting a few things that will be very useful for the built later on. Hopefully the admiral will not notice!

Dear all, I think it is time for a quick update. Patrick no sawdust I am afraid. Although for the last month I have devoted all my (limited) free time to the plans, I have produced only heat from the computer's fans. Jim and Bob, you may be right, it could make a beautiful model but I am struggling a lot so far, it is a much more complex boat than I thought. Hexnut, Rhino is great, but making it bend to my will is another matter. Your good words were, I am afraid, a bit premature. I realised that all my lines were wrong so I had to scrap everything and start again! After 5 complete lofting cycles I think that now I do have a reasonably faired hull that seems to work well. I have achieved a smooth outer skin and defined the inner skin. I also defined most of the temporary frames that will be made of 3 mm plywood All bevels and the shape of the rebate have been (more or less) defined as well By far the most difficult part of the boat is the sternpost. I see that usually this is a flat heavy timber but not in this boat. It curves on all sides in a massively complicated way. I had to do a lot of guessing as the plans are not detailed enough. Probably an experienced builder would have no problem at all but I had a hard time figuring out how things work. This photo from the internet was a great help, I think actually it is a Deben. This is the sternpost I have to make! The plans give the outside of skin but conversely the true dimensions of the Transom and this was particularly problematic. I could not figure out a smooth transition from sternpost to Transom. Furthermore, the sternpost near the Transom needs to widen a lot as the rebate line curves outward to meet the outside skin of the planking at the transom. This needs an added slice of wood. I wonder if I bit more than I can chew. I will try and make the sternpost out of cheap wood and see if I can have reasonable results. If I can't, another option would be to loft again starting with a simpler sternpost. I would not like this though as I would move away from the original design.

Now, how nice is this! Patrick this is not an accurate model, there is no way the real boat would feel as good. Good to see fruit again in your photos! I ll have a gin and tonic in the sun beds thank you very much!

In my previous model I attempted to loft by hand and that was a disaster. I have a huge respect for people that can actually pull this through with just a ruler and a pencil. I started designing the boat on Rhino and soon I realised that the plans were difficult to figure out and that the offsets created curves far from fair. Maybe I made mistakes or did not interpret the plans properly but I struggled a lot to get a fair hull. When I checked with the diagonals, my lines were off but not by much. I do not think there is a point with re-doing the lofting, I am actually happy with the shape of the hull. After I had the outer skin, it took some effort to determine the inner surface of the hull and then it was very easy to determine the shape of the temporary frames. Actually, at this stage I can change the stations as I like. There are many things to consider, including: 1. I think I will raise the temporary frames, install battens, install all ribs and then plank the hull, removing battens progressively. 2. I need to figure out how to secure the frames to the sloping keel and keep them square without gluing or drilling the hull (not too much at least) 3. I am not sure how to bent the ribs and how to fix to the planks. 4. Some serious jig will be needed to secure all these and I think building the jig will be close in complexity to building the boat. Regards Vaddoc

Dear all Following completion of my last boat about a month ago I intended to take a break from model building. Somehow however, I found myself lofting a boat on CAD having spent 3 weeks trying to figure out the interactions of the complex curves of the hull. So here we go again with another project! I really would like to scratch-built a 2 masted schooner but undoubtedly one or more in-between steps are needed . I searched on the net for a relatively simple boat that would still have some of the building features of a larger ship so I could get some experience on rabbet cutting, carvel planking etc and came up with a small single mast sailboat, the 5-ton Deben. The plans and table of offsets are provided free on http://www.whisstock.com I actually think it is the ugly duckling in the forum but then again it has been said that all wooden boats are inherently beautiful! As my understanding of the design grew, I realised that it is not really a simple design. The wood keel is not straight but tapered and at an angle, the sternpost also is tapered aft and the above make for a complex rebate line. Also, there are many steam bent ribs and the offsets are to the outside of skin so the planking thickness need to be subtracted. Certainly I got the complex boat I was looking for! I have not decided whether I will just built the hull or complete the whole boat. This is like a first date, you never know whether you ll end up married or drunk in a bar.

Looking very good Elijah. BTW, if a woman suggests you have too many tools, wait for the right timing and suggest she also has too many shoes and/or bags. Proceed on the above step with extreme caution.

Search for the thread "tree nails in bulk", it might suit your needs

Mike I have sizes 5, 8 and 12. Perle 12 makes a fine 0.6-0.7 mm rope, 0.8-0,9 mm with the 8 and 1.2 mm with the 12. This thread is more supple than the cordonnet. The finest rope I have produced is 0.5 mm left hand twist with 100 weight, it is quite rigid though.

The DMC Cordonnet is right hand twist and the Perle left hand. There is a light twist in silk but negligible. It is very strong but very slippery too, really difficult to work with. Also the rope it produces is very stiff. Synthetics and linen might be the better option. Cotton rope really stretches a lot.

Mike I use DMC threads for my ropes. Most are right hand twist so either you will end up with somewhat stiff left hand twist or with right hand one made of several yarns and strands but it will be thick (and beautiful) However, look for DMC perle, this is LEFT hand twist and come in various sizes and colours so with one pass through a ropewalk you can make RIGHT hand twist rope which can be very fine. DMC is expensive though! I experimented with silk thread which does not really have a twist and is very strong and fine but it is too difficult and too expensive to work with. One other thing to consider is that cotton rope if set with some tension on the model it tends to loosen over time. I will try linen thread at some point. Regards Vaddoc

Looking good Patrick! But where's the remote for the TV?

Thank you all, much appreciated! Michael, I would really like to go for a fully framed 2 mast schooner but I think this is too big of a bite for now. So I have decided on a much smaller project that will give me the chance of practicing planking, framing, rabbet cutting etc. Of course there will be a log!

Dear all This is the last photos to be posted as the project is finally competed. The photo quality should be much better as I used the Admiral's new phone. I managed to fully blacken the barrels containing the essential supplies for any yachting expedition. Although the metal is copper so supposedly easy to blacken, there were persistent areas that did not. In the end I took the Dremel to the entire metal surface to get it to blacken. For the future though I will be using thinned black gesso and then dip the parts in Pledge as I found this produces very good results with minimal hassle. I also fitted the reefing lines and made a cradle. Nothing too fancy though, I used leftover wood and a cheap cutting board from Tesco. The joinery was a bid tricky but came out fine, I still need to finish the cradle and add the name to it. Butterfly Explorer! I thought though that it would look better with the sails furled. This was a 21 month journey but it was great fun and I learned a lot. A big thank you for your support and suggestions throughout the built and of course to Tad for releasing such a nice design. Regards Vaddoc

With the model in your hand, its small size comes into perspective, looking at the full interior in the last close up photos I had forgotten just how small. Also, the wooden decks really bring the model into life and hide the bulk of the structure. Looking very good Patrick!

Thank you all, considering it is my second model I am happy with the result. I realised though that I forgot the reefing lines so one more loose end to tie. Patrick, houses in Britain are really small so no chance for a glass case! Bob, I used Aleene's glue which I think is just ordinary PVA glue which shrinks and dries virtually invisible. The cloth is synthetic but still it glued fine.

Dear all It is getting very difficult to find time to work on the boat but still I got a few more things done. I think the end is very near. First I made quite a lot of rope of different sizes. I thought I had enough but it is amazing how much rope even a small boat like this needs, in the end I had to set everything up again and make more. Also, the standing rigging has come loose, the cotton threads in the ropes have stretched but I decided not to tighten it. The search for sail material ended quite easily, I found in a box 3 feet away from my work bench some cloth I had bought a couple of years ago and forgot all about it. I made new sail templates and then spent days trying different ways of making the sails. All failed and I just glued rope to the cloth and cut the sails. It worked ok but I am sure there are better ways of making sails. I then added the running rigging and cheated a bit as I used beads to secure the rope ends. This was much quicker and cleaner than making knots. I also finished the rudder and found a realistic solution for the lanyards. The rudder actually works very well and there is good leverage to extend and lift the blade. The boat is too big for the phone camera to easily cover One more new skill I need to master is brass/coper blackening. I thought I had prepared the metal well but obviously this was not the case. The axe came out fine though. I was surprised that the solder did not blacken. All metal was coper and I used gel LoS. I would like to make a few more random items to put in and definitely have another go at blackening the barrels. However, the boat is almost complete and definitely needs some short of a stand.

Patrick, what can I say, its always a joy to read your updates but this is just lovely. There is craft, there is art and there is also style!

I installed a motor to my ropewalk which made the process much faster and simpler. It is still dead ugly but I can produce 2.5 m of rope in minutes. I tried using silk thread but it brakes, a much thicker thread would be needed or maybe multiple threads per station

Nicely spotted Frankie! The deadeyes were supposed to rotate freely in the brass ring but when I applied the Renaissance wax to protect the brass shine they locked in place! I tried to rotate the ones that are upside down but couldn't. Now that everything is soldered and epoxied, fixing this is a major job. Some times better is the enemy of good...

Love those cupboards and the bench Patrick, very nice work, can't wait to see the engine room completed!

Lovely details, so much affection radiating from your boat!

Dear all I had very little time to work on the boat but I managed to complete the oars. This actually has been a problem I was considering for a very long time and only recently I came up with a solution. As I need six oars, they have to be identical so I had to use a standardised and reproducible method of construction. The curved oars I made initially are totally inappropriate for this boat, as only Hercules could row for more than 10 min without reaching for the rum barrel. I really did not want to order new wood so I had to use my inventory of pear wood left overs. Also, the correct calculated length just looked too long and I shortened it a bit. So here it goes: First, I designed the oar in 2D, made several copies and glued on a 2 mm pear sheet. The oar will initially be 6x6 mm wide tapering towards the blade. All were cut as close to the line as possible to minimise the considerable amount of sanding Sanding completed and two more pieces added on each side. Each piece will be a laminate of two strips 6x1 mm but not to the handle where only one 1mm strip is needed on each side. These pieces will be sanded to shape when glued to the main shaft but the distal end needs to be shaped beforehand as it will be inaccessible later on Then all get laminated together. I often use for such purposes two MDF pieces from failed attempts at making my disk sander. The pieces are kept flat and compressed. All glued ready for sanding. They look identical as well. Sanding to shape was done carefully with the disc sander. One of the oars was sanded excessively and got ruined but I did had a spare one. Other than that it worked beautifully. Masking tape was applied over the area that will not be sanded round. The handle was sanded square with needle files. The handle was covered with masking tape and secured on a drill. 80 grit sand paper takes out a lot of wood easily. The oars were sanded to 400 grit. The handles were sanded round and then the blade edges. A coat of tung oil finishes the job. All oars are identical and there was minimal wastage of wood. I also worked on the rigging and spend a lot of time experimenting with rope making. I have not yet found sail cloth but I rigged the throat and peak halyards, the boom downhaul, the main sheet and the centreboard ropes. I still need to find a way for the ropes to lay nicely. To satisfy all pure modelling hearts please note the rope used has right hand twist. DMC has threads with a left hand twist so quite small diameter right hand strands can be produced. Pricey but very nice stuff.