vaddoc

Just caught up with your log Brian, what a fantastic model! But your log is by itself so very interesting. A moment in history that many of us across the pond were not aware of.

Greetings to all or should I say "Gratings!"? Yes, today we will be scratch-making gratings! Honestly, it is far easier (and less bloody) to get them from Chuck. But I had an itchiness to try and either way, I don't think there are gratings at 1:10 scale. Now, I did make gradings for the Deben but there I cut corners. They came out alright but were not done properly. I ve been scratching my head for the last 2-3 days and tried a few things that did not work. Sadly, a search on MSW was not too helpful. The problem is the scale. If the size of the squares equals that of the table saw blade, things are easy. But in 1:10 scale, my squares are 5 mm and the tine Proxon blade 1 mm thick. So here it goes: I have the small Proxon table saw, it is very underpowered but actually quite accurate and easy to use. I first added a sheet on top of the table saw so that I could clamp something to act as a fence. Then, I cut several 5 mm strips from a pear sheet, I think it is 3 mm thick. Then, I glued the strips on another piece of pear sheet. Then, I drilled, inserted treenails dipped in PVA glue, allowed a few minutes to dry (in the meantime worked on a second piece), then lightly sanded and cut a strip across. I actually forgot to take pictures but the strips produced look like this After I made very many, I managed to cut my finger, thankfully not deep at all. Then, I started to assemble the gratings. I had to trim every single square with a sharp chisel, by afternoon the dining room was full of tiny wood chippings but the gratings came out quite acceptable I think. They still miss a few tree nails and need sanding, gluing and trimming but I am happy. Apologies for the terrible photo, I ll take a better one for the next post. Of course they are far from perfect, the tree nails are in the wrong positions, the squares are not perfect or symmetrical, the grain runs parallel in all pieces instead of crossing 90 degrees (not an issue with pear) but I can live with these. So I have 3 pieces, one will go on the small deck at the bow, one to the floor aft and the third one I have not figured out yet where I ll use it. Best wishes Vaddoc

@mtaylor Thanks Mark, I am sure I ll figure it out, as always lots of good info on MSW. @Bedford I was not aware of Shackleton's open see adventure, amazing strength and indomitable spirit. Tiny boat! @iMustBeCrazy Thanks Craig, very interesting. Could I ask, I see you painted the boat inside. Would you do it again, or would you leave it unpainted? I would like to paint it but I am concerned the paint will bring out the many imperfections and will not look good. A bit more work done. I finished the floors, they came out ok relatively painlessly. I then started thinking how the small deck could be arranged. It took a long time and a lot of wasted cardboard, nothing is finalised but I have a vague idea how it will go. Then I made again the breasthook. The one I made was fine but the pear wood was the wrong colour, I used a sheet of apparently unsteamed pear that came from a not so good order of wood I got years ago. I made it again but this took hours, I kept messing it up. Finally, it came out fine. I then trimmed the excess plank length at the transom, I have been putting it off for some time now. This needed a seriously sharp chisel. I then boiled some pear wood strips and wrapped them around the hull to take the shape, I think it is time to start putting the boat together. Unfortunately, putting the end of the strips in boiling water had a dramatic effect on the wood. Even after it was cold, it was very soft and pliable and the colour changed from pink to a dead brown. The next photo did not capture the colours well. I ve actually never steamed pear before, I hope the colour will return after it dries. Vaddoc

Well, it's official: I am Covid positive! I am actually quite well apart from some odd symptoms and fatigue and there is a good aspect to it: I ll be able to work on the boat for the next few days. So today some more progress. I first made a rough template for a deck to sit bellow the breast hook. I d like this deck to have grating but I do not have a mill so I must figure an easy way to do it with the tools I have. Next, I started cutting the floor timbers and sanding them to height (16mm so that the floor to top of thwarts will be 45 cm in full scale). Unexpectedly tricky, I made two and wasted some expensive pear wood. These are 16 mm high or 16 cm in the real boat. Kind of look a bit high and going a bit wide and high up the sides. I could lower to 11 cm but then as discussed above, the thwarts will sit 50 cm above the floors - a bit too much. I ll cut a few more timbers and see how they look. Regards Vaddoc

@iMustBeCrazy Thank you Craig! What you say makes total sense, actually I measured the height of my office chair and is indeed 45 cm. I could raise the floors timbers to such a height, this would make a very wide floor but I wonder if the bat will look a bit shallow compared to its length and whether in real life it would be a bit top heavy - but it is a very wide boat on the other side. also thanks for the high resolution pictures, very nice.

@Bedford Excellent, lots of good info, thanks Bedford!

Well, time for another update! I was unwell and stayed home, so got to work a bit more on the boat. Now, there is some progress but also a lot of questions to be answered and decisions to be made. Any of your thoughts would be most welcome! First issue is how high to place the thwarts and the floor boards. I tried to find relevant info in books and the internet but did not get anywhere. In the end I measured the original NMN plans and the actual dimensions of the model and tried to use common sense for a realistic and comfortable arrangement. At midships, keel to sheer will be 83 mm or in real boat, 83 cm. I think the distance top of thwart to sheer should be 20 cm. The floor timbers should be something like 10 cm high to allow a reasonably wide floor and the top of the thwarts will be about 50 cm from the floor boards. I think this should be a realistic arrangement. Then again, those days people were probably shorter than we are today. Oh well... Time for a few photos. I first made the breasthook. It was a bit fiddly, sanding it curved and bevelled but actually I got it with the first attempt, which was good as pear wood sheets this thick are expensive. However, it did look a bit huge and out of scale so I reduce it - I think it looks much better now. I think I might add a small deck bellow the breasthook, I think this is what the plans show: I then made template for the floor timbers. Again, it was actually a pretty straightforward job. Now, these are my thoughts: I d like to seal the interior, prime it and paint it white but keeping the pear wood transom, keel and floors unpainted, these will be enhanced with Tung oil. The stringer that will support the thwarts will also be painted white but everything else added will be unpainted pear wood treated with Tung oil. The outer keel will be painted last. Alternatively, I could leave the interion unpainted. Just apply Tung oil, seal with water based sealer, rub with 0000 steel wool and then add all the remaining pear wood trims etc and last paint the outer hull. I do have a suspicion that if I paint the interior, since it is not well sanded and prepared, it might look horrible with all imperfections highlighted by the paint. Any suggestions would be very welcome! Regards Vaddoc

I used the design of the fellow in the link bellow. Heavy and super solid bench, cheap to make too. The selves underneath are very practical. I made a large one and then I made an even larger one. Go big, longer and wider than you plan. I think my benches are 90 cm high but I like to sit in tall stools.

Perhaps take two pieces of plywood half the thickness minus 1 mm and laminate them with thickened epoxy (hence the 1mm). Let it cure with lots of books on top. You ll get perfectly flat plywood and you can cut a new bulkhead.

Dear all Thank you for your likes and for visiting. I certainly have missed MSW! @Bedford I will seal the wood Bedford both inside and out. I doubt though this will stop the beech changing its dimensions and I am certain the paint will crack along the plank edges. But it's ok! @Wintergreen I will paint the hull Hakan and I ll fill the few dimples at the bow. Not sure if it will look authentic though! I was actually thinking of using enamel paint for this boat not sure if the wood moving makes it a worse or better choice. In the last two months the only thing I have been able to get done is sanding of the hull. But the amount of sanding needed has been epic: starting at 60 grit, then 80, 100, 120, 180 and finally 240. It is a big girl and both the filler and beech wood are hard so hard work. The photos bellow show the hull as it is after the 240 grit sanding. I ll do a bit more filling, then sand to 320 grit, seal and re-sand to 320. The hull will be painted after the interior is complete so that it is rigid. The hull is very smooth and started to reflect light. A long way to go but it is getting there. Regards Vaddoc

The small proxon one is very good. Very precise, very robust, small foot print. Combined with cheap carbide drills is a wonderful tool.

Dear all It's been almost two month since my last post. I have been working on the boat when life permitted - which was not too often. But even so, there has been progress. To start with, all the screws have been replaced with tree nails. Unscrew the screw, re-drill the hole by hand, dip the tree nail in glue and insert in the whole, wipe the excess glue and trim the nail - then repeat many hundreds of times. Then, I started filling the large gaps between the planks with filler, both from the outside and the inside. It is a shame really, these gaps are due to the shrinkage of the wood. When I cut the planks they were tight against each other. However, beech really has a tremendous movement in service and huge changes in dimension with changes in moisture. I will not be using beech again! So here is how the hull looked like after the filler liberally applied. Not an elegant sight! Then I started sanding inside. The little Proxon pen sander was very helpful. Then I started sanding the outer hull. This is how one side looks, this is with 80 grit. Beech is very hard wood. There is a dimple in one of the planks at the bow. I think I ll paint this hull so it will be filled. Now, just to show how much the beech moves, this is the hull of the Launch. There are cracks everywhere! I think I will not repair it, I ll just leave it as is. Till next time Vaddoc

A couple of things on epoxy Mark: It can be very messy, uncured epoxy though can be cleaned with vinegar (Epoxy is alkaline) Different epoxies can be very different, some flexible and some not, however they are generally all brittle. Epoxy thickened with something (I use gypsum) is far stronger. It also fills gaps very well. In cold weather, if the 2 parts become very thick, a few secs in a microwave restores them.

Dear all Thank you for your likes. Indeed Bedford, there are some tasks in model building that are certainly therapeutic! So the first bunch of nails came out just about acceptable, still trying to standardise the process and solve issues. However, from then on things went much better and lovely tree nails produced This is about 2000 nails. I ll make another 1000, and since I am at it I ll process that slice of cherry for future use. Then I ll be ready to start replacing screws. I had make a thread on making nails, I ll update that as well. Regards Vaddoc

Well, it has been so long since my last post, I had to look to find my log! So a lot of things have come to pass: I lost some more weight, gained a belt in Tae Kwon Do, injured my hamstring and converted to an electric car to name a few. In the shipyard though, progress has been far more modest - I have been very busy lately. I finished all ribs but the foremost one. This was left in place until the screws at the stem are replaced with tree nails. There were a few ribs that needed a lot of twisting and bending but steaming the ribs worked miracles. Most of the ribs are beech but I think I must have mixed my strips a bit and some birch and alder may have sneaked in. Also, I think I should have had more cant ribs at the bow - it's ok though So, each screw holding the plank to the temporary frame had to be removed, the rib installed, the hole re-drilled from the outside in, through the rib now, and a new screw inserted from the inside to push the rib against the planks. 13 planks x 2 sides x 2 screws each x 32 ribs( +stem) + a few here and there = 1700 screws. So, 1700 screws to attach the planks to the temporary frames, then another 1700 to attach the ribs to the planks. But now, all these screws need to be removed and replaced with tree nails. So we need 1700 tree nails + wastage. I have a fair few left from other projects but there is no consistency in colour, material and size. So I need to make them. The photo bellow shows my tree nail making station: Now, I have made many thousands tree nails using the needle method but I really struggled. The needle burned the wood, the nails constantly broke off inside the needle, couldn't find the right size needle, in short mayhem. I spend a lot of time experimenting and finally got things to work. These are the tree nails I made today, ready to be released by aggressively sanding the underside. I think there are about 600 or so. Every missing nail was a blockage in the needle that had to be cleared. So, these were the changes I made that fixed the problem: I used a needle with thin wall. I slowed the speed of the drill press from high to medium (low speed led to breakages). I realised the wood was too dry so I soaked it in water overnight and allowed it to dry. Finally, I made sure the end of the needle was sharp. Now, the best nails are made from hard wood with straight grain. This is the wood I am using (slices already soaked): The right wood is cherry. Very nice wood, I ve already made thousands of nails from these wood but lately it has been playing up. The wood on the left is either Howthorn (most likely) or apricot (I had two logs but I could find only one in the garage, so it is either or). It is a hard wood though so it does not matter. (The little piece of wood at the bottom of the photo is indeed apricot. I tried a slice but it is too dry and did not work.) So, next few sessions in the shipyard will be devoted to tree nails. Best wished Vaddoc

It will still stretch. I found Mara threads very good alternative as suggested by Chuck. A lot of discussion in relevant threads.

The good quality cotton threads will produce excellent rope. The only problem is that if there is any tension, the rope will stretch.

Have a look at this. I actually made two of these benches. Made a large one and then an even larger. Very heavy, very solid.

I hope all will settle soon Hakan! If they did as good a job as you do with your boat, you ll be back to normal in no time at all. I like very much your generous rabet at the horn timbers, very nice. I cannot follow it further down the hull though.

I think this is why Highfield levers were invented

Hi @USNCHief013107 These are the clips, they come in various sizes. You can never have enough clamps! Rapesco 1492 19 mm Foldback Clips, Assorted Bright Colours, Pack of 80 : Amazon.co.uk: Stationery & Office Supplies

Very interesting boat GL and very nicely done so far! It was a pleasure to catch up. Looking forward to the rest of the journey, it will be interesting to see how the rigging will be laid out Vaddoc

These are indeed good news Hakan! Hopefully you ll be on the mend in no time at all. Your boat also seems to be progressing very well. I am very impressed that you can create a three dimensional fair hull from just 2D plans, I am really looking forward to see how all will come together. I presume you will use birch for the planks? What wood did you chose for the frames? Vaddoc

I do not use glue for the planks Allan, I initially screw the planks on the frames with 1 mm screws and then replace the screws with treenails (dipped in PVA). These clamps will not dent the wood, this is 2 mm beech which is very hard but even with the softer maple, denting has never been an issue.

I have been continuously spilling and planking for the last 12 months, maybe the following thread might be of help.