vaddoc

Completely missed this Richard! Unlucky! Also looking forward to the recording being released. Many thanks and Merry Christmas!

Could I also add a couple of potential challenges with large scale. The planks get pretty thick and resist edge bending. Tolerances need to be tighter as gaps will show. Bevelling edges will be needed. The building starts to get closer to the real thing which is something I enjoy very much! The requirements in timber, supplies and tools grow geometrically. I remember a picture Gaetan had posted with the pear wood that was delivered to his house. Must have been a few trees in that pile!

A quick update. Little progress due to fevers and aching throats with the whole family out of action. Not Covid! A few pics, I think it is going reasonably well.

@allanyed The thickness of the planks is 2mm (Actually 2.2 as they came a touch oversized), spot on 7/8 inches! Now, in regard to the width, these are my amateur, non-educated thoughts: The widest planks are 1/2 inch, you have a good eye! Honestly, I think 0.8 inches might be too wide. Maybe the upper planks near the sheer could be made as wide but the rest I think not, as the turn of the bilge is quite acute and needs more narrow planks. Also, replacing the garboard and the next 3 planks with only 3 wider planks, I think this would be a struggle. And I like all planks to be reasonably equal in width. Despite the above, I suspect you are actually correct. My planks always end up on the narrow side, irrespective of the shape of the hull!

I think this is a great idea that makes every sense today. We will offset the carbon footprint of the construction by building many wooden clippers which will be the only merchant ship allowed in the oceans. Where do I sign?

Just got scent of your log Kevin, enjoyed very much reading through it! Not much to contribute but I ll be watching from the back of the room.

Very nice Hakan. Looks like there is plenty of room in your shop for a ropewalk, if you ever felt like making your own rope. Just saying! Alternatively, I should have plenty of very small diameter rope if you think you could use it, could fit easily in a nice Christmas card! PM me if interested.

My models tend to need thousand of holes each. Hand drilling is not only tedious, it can also lead to problems. It is easy to brake a drill which gets stuck in the hole and then cannot be removed. Using a rotary drill and flexible steel drills, this risk is minimised. 300 rpm I think is too slow to drill wood. I switched from Dremel to the DC Proxxon, which I find much better overall and with more torque. Drilling wood, it is always in the highest rpm setting.

Thanks Allan! Indeed it is this very boat.

Many thanks to all! Things move on slowly. Although planning the planking was easier than the launch, getting the shape of the planks particularly at the bow is a bit tricky as the planks follow a large curve but also twist along the axis a lot. Also, the planks absolutely need to be steamed (or boiled for 30 sec in the kettle as I ve ended up doing) to be convinced to bend into position. Then, they also need to stay clamped overnight to retain the shape but also to dry and return to the original dimensions. Beech swells up a lot when boiled! My fore and aft frames are wrong and material needs to be taken off. This is surprising as I really thought my CAD plans were very accurate. I think however I know the reason. I believe the transom for some reason was made a bit more narrow in its bottom half. Not sure about the bow but then again I was never happy with the shape of the first two frames. It does not matter though, the planks very nicely show the natural curve so that that material can be chiselled away from these temporary frames. The steam bend ribs will just follow the curve of the hull later on. Enough talking, a few pictures: Till next time Vaddoc

Don't worry too much Avi, just experiment! Take some wood and paint it, seal it, prime it, you ll figure out what works for you. Have another look at the tips thread, should give you lots of info.

I applied Renaissance wax to polished brass fittings. Many years later, they are still as bright! This wax is also completely invisible and very hard. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that this is what museum use to keep metals from tarnishing.

Hi Avi Nice hull! You could consider using a sealer. If it is a water based one, it will raise the grain. Sand it back lightly with 400 grain, reapply, lightly sand again and you have a smooth sealed wood surface. This will reduce the number of coats needed but as acrylics have poor coverage and depth of colour, you ll need many coats. Thin to a consistency of milk. It does not matter if it is too thin, as long as you use the Valejo primer, but avoid thick paint - it will cause may issues. Any imperfection will be 100 times more visible after painting so now is the time to correct these. Good luck, have fun painting your hull Regards Vaddoc

The sealer will fill the pores, seal and smooth the wood, stopping it from drinking too much paint, also there will be no problems with the water based paints raising the grain. It is a much better experience painting sealed wood. The primer is not to solve adhesion issues which are pretty much non existent with wood, it is to give you a nice uniform colour, close to the colour you d like to use. So for a black hull, I d use grey primer. The primer will not fill any imperfections in the wood, however you can use a filler under the primer coat as it will not be visible. Thin to a consistence of milk I d say I think a varnish layer will always give some protection. However it needs care as gloss varnish can be very gloss, and matt needs extra stirring and care in application so that the matt medium does not leave streaks. In the past I have used Renaissance wax on wood, which is completely invisible. Nice on brass as well, keeps it shiny for years. Try out these products on scrap wood, not on the model! Best of luck with your hull!

I like this last photo Hakan. A small model boat, on a massive shipway, in a workshop that looks adequate to build a full scale boat!

Dear all Many thanks for your likes and good words! Planking continues, I am making an effort to get the planks to sit nicely without big gaps. It seems to be going well so far and the most difficult planks are behind me. I did not have to remake any plank, they all came out fine on the first attempt. One thing that surprised me was the amount of adjustment I had to do on the frames. The two more forward and the two more aft frames had to be trimmed quite heavily, despite my CAD drawings looking good. I am not sure why, however: the two forward frames were the ones I had problems with at the drawing stage and I suspect I may have sanded the bevels at the Transom wrongly. It does not matter though as the planks do act as batens and show where wood needs to be taken off to have a fair curve. I think it is all fixed now. A few pics: All planks up to the level of Transom finished. The next plank sits at an angle at the transom and needs extra care to sit handsomely. These are the paper templates for the next plank. And the process is repeated. This is a difficult plank but I think it is coming out fine and fits well with the previous plank on both sides. This is how I steam my planks now, I just stick them in the kettle for a few seconds and then immediately place on the boat. The beech will take any shape with ease. Till next time Vaddoc

I hope your treatment is going well Hakan and that a speedy recovery will follow. Nice oars!

Heller drills are ok. But in my experience, most if not all mini drills sold on ebay as single sizes (not in a set of 100 assorted drills) are ok. For carbide, I get the cheap ones from alliexpress, they are fine

The small Proxxon drill press TBM220 is fantastic. Very accurate, powerful enough, very small footprint. A lovely thing to have, along with a variety of carbide drills.

Congratulations Richard! Wonderful shipyard. I particularly envy your white painted walls. My garage has dark brick walls and I had to install a ridiculous number of tubes and bulbs to get a half decent light which I was only yesterday thinking is actually not enough.

Absolutely Thomas, however in 1:10 scale, most woods in 2 x 10 mm will resist edge bending except to push a bit fully into contact, spilling must be very close. Edge bending followed by twist along the axis of the strip are much more difficult to convince wood to accept than simple bending into a curve. This spilling method is nice but I d think mostly for planking larger ships. I ve never seen seen this type of dividers before, seems like a useful tool to have and not only for planking. How are they called?

Well Jaager, to my opinion, clinker or carvel does not really make a difference planning the planking. The deciding factor to divide the hull into zones is basically to minimise the curvature of the planks and the aggressiveness of spilling. A batten that runs through the most curved and hollow parts of the hull will be pretty much straight so the planks above and bellow this will be of reasonable curvature. Also, the point where the sternpost meets the transom must be a zone. This combined with eyeballing to make sure it looks good! Maybe also have a look at the Launch log, I ve posted the whole process there but it indeed makes a long and difficult read.

May thanks to all for your like and comments. I have corresponded with @Jaager and I thought it would be best to continue our discussion here. 1- Instead of directly using a compass or mechanical proportional dividers directly on the mold (or for POF frame) edge, use a tick strip so that the actual distance is part of the measurement? Indeed, this can be done and actually I did use card strips on this boat. Anything to get the job done. 2 - One edge of the plank (the outboard edge) is always dead straight. The spilling always done on the edge meeting the previous plank? Not necessarily. Maybe some planks in large ships but never in boats in my experience. The upper edge of the garboard only is indeed supposed to be straight but it does not really need to. However, planning of the planking is dealt with in depth on the launch log! 3 - Divide the area to be planked into two or three zones ( more for a larger vessel). A thin batten that defines an idea plank run at intermediate positions? Absolutely. This boat was divided in three zones. 4 - the subdivisions would be between the battens? Indeed, battens were used to define the zones to ensure fairness of the curves. 5 - A planking fan could be used instead of mechanical dividers? Ordinarily yes but this boat is actually a very difficult one to plank, the fan cannot really be used. 6 - The garboard is the first, but instead of one, you make two identical planks - P & S at the same time? 7 - Each subsequent strake also be made as duplicates with the fine tuning done on the individuals on either side? Port and starboard being planked at the same time in parallel? 8 - The battens would only be needed on one side. I see a madness producer in trying to get symmetry. If the molds are not near identical on each side, then they need to be done over? 6, 7, 8 Indeed, the two sides should theoretically be identical. In my experience they never are. They can be quite close but in this boat I cut a few corners and each plank is individual. But if someone has such a steady hand to make each frame and each pair of planks completely symmetrical, the work would be cut in half. 9 - A jig could be used to locate the mold positions on the plank stock? Sure but it is easy to mark the positions on the card template 10 - Once a plank has been fixed, the open are is measured with a new tick stick and a new (one less) interval be measured? If there is one place where error creep is a certainty, it is with planking. If a gap needs 12 planks to close it, dividing the whole space into 12 segments at the beginning and trying to use them for every plank will not turn out like you expect, hope usually? A new subdivision measurement after each strake will mitigate error creep? Yes, up to a point. Some builders do not like to mark the plank positions, they just do as you suggest and plank away without fully marking each plank beforehand. I think this needs huge experience and an ability to imagine the planks just looking at the frames. I like to mark the run of each plank, as I would like it to go, but I am not fixated on my planning. Some time a plank wants to lie a bit higher or lower than my marking, or to be a bit wider or more narrow-that's fine by me! I also trim or shim the frames if the plank suggests it is needed. This is how the boat looks now-it's mothballed until I finish planking the yawl

Looking good now EG. Time to build it now?

Reasonably big job Paul. You ll need to loft the hull somehow, either by hand or CAD. The plans you have are not enough but as this is a simple multichine hull, it might be doable. There is a very recent thread on this. Then to build it, balsa I think is not a good choice and I personally would avoid basswood. But do explore the dark side, scratch building is lots of fun. Have a look on MSW and go for it.