Bedford

I did a bit more work on the boat, so time for an update.
 
@Mark Pearse Indeed Mark, I wanted to build something much larger and more of a proper ship. I actually looked into building Ed's Young America POF, but this would be an extremely expensive project which at this time cannot be considered. I bumped onto Hercules and immediately liked the boat - rest is history! (in the making) 
 
So, I cut the space for the propeller and removed some of the paper template so that the frames can slide into place - they do not actually, all the frame slots need filling as they are not wide enough.
 
I also cut all the filler pieces for both sides and sanded all their bevels. These are needed to give support to the garboard planks as I will not be filling the gaps between the frames with wood. This went remarkably well, although some of the bevels had complex shapes. I only had to redo 3 out of the 30 pieces.

This is a piece that had to be redone, the disk sander is not forgiving.

I also sanded all the bevels in the frames. It went well but some fairing will be needed for the frames at the middle of the hull. These are all the pieces that need to be glued. This will need a lot of work: the paper template will need to be removed and the surface sanded or scraped to remove the glue residue and the pieces temporarily screwed in to check that the frames can slide between them.  I think I ll use epoxy, it is a messy glue but has great gap filling properties.

The elegant curves of the hull and frames, or alternatively Hercules after a dose of Delayed Mouse Making Potion.


I am assuming that my CAD plans are accurate and that I ve cut the wood accurately. Of course neither is certain. The bevels seem reasonable though.


I will need to cut the rabbet before I install the frames. I will first though glue on the filler pieces, as the angle of their bevel will help cutting the hull bevel. In theory, I have all I need to cut the rabbet accurately as all lines and the interaction of the planking with the hull are marked on the templates. However, chiseling plywood is difficult and requires extra sharp chisels. 

Take care all
 
Vaddoc

Been a couple of weeks, but I've been away at a conference for a week and last Monday I was working happily away when I accidentally (stupidly) cut straight through the jib stay, so most of the day was spent simply getting back to where things were when I came in! 🤢
 
Meanwhile, other work has been going on at home. Here is the foresail complete and rigged on its yard. It won't go onto the model for a while, but I plan on making and rigging all the square sails here at home and then taking them into the museum to fit on the model as required.
 
John
 

Thanks, she looks quite "salty" doesn't she.
 
It is truly written that "A fair line supersedes any given measurement" 

Vaddoc, you know I admire your work so please don't take this as negative criticism, it isn't!
I think we can make life hard for ourselves sometimes, like all the trouble you went to in order to get the deck profile printed. All I do is plot out the relevant points and draw it. You can use pins at all the mold stations and run a fairing batten (a length of thin section flexible wood strip) around them. This not only shows you any station points that are wrong but gives a guaranteed fair curve to the hull.
I've just built a full sized sail boat this way and it's very accurate and symmetrical. 

Thanks, she looks quite "salty" doesn't she.
 
It is truly written that "A fair line supersedes any given measurement" 

Vaddoc, you know I admire your work so please don't take this as negative criticism, it isn't!
I think we can make life hard for ourselves sometimes, like all the trouble you went to in order to get the deck profile printed. All I do is plot out the relevant points and draw it. You can use pins at all the mold stations and run a fairing batten (a length of thin section flexible wood strip) around them. This not only shows you any station points that are wrong but gives a guaranteed fair curve to the hull.
I've just built a full sized sail boat this way and it's very accurate and symmetrical. 

I hope everyone here had a good start into the New Year 2025!
 
***************************************************************
 
Continuing with the bulkheads
 
Progress over December was slow, due to a couple of travels and a visitor over Christmas, but quite steady. All parts of the backbone have now been cut out and sanded/filed to shape. Dimensional accuracy was checked by placing the parts over a drawing on a LED-backlit board. The cant-frames, however, can only be finished, when the bulkheads have been glued in place.
 
Collection of finished bulkheads
 
I was happy to see that the Plexiglas-sheet is dimensionally very accurate and fitting tightly into the milled slots in the base. This means no particular arrangements need to be made to ensure that they sit perfectly perpendicular on the base.
 
Milling a chamfer on the inside of the stanchions on micro-milling machine set-up as router
 
The bulkheads still required a bit of work. I thought it would be a nice detail to give the future bulwark stanchions a light chamfer over part of their length. This kind of edge-treatment was very common on many ship parts for both, aesthetic reason and to reduce the risk of splintering in case of an impact. It is not seen very often on models though. To this end I had made the router table last autumn. A 0.5 mm drill in a collet served as guiding pin and a small conical burr was used as router. The length of the chamfer was marked on the stanchions before milling it freehand. The result is difficult to photograph on the clear Plexiglas, but will become visible, once the model is being painted.
 
Filing notches for the wales on the shop-made filing-machine
 
Another operation was to cut shallow notches for the wale. The top-edge of the wale is marked in the original drawings and its width was taking from a table of scantlings of a similar ship. Having the wale fixed in that way will give a guidance for the later planking.
 
The shop-made filing-machine in action on the bulkheads
 
The notches were cut with a 1 mm x 1 mm fine machine file on the shop-made filing machine (https://www.maritima-et-mechanika.org/tools/diefiler/diefiler.html). I was lucky to have been able to find on ebay some years ago whole boxes of unused machine files in various shapes, dimensions and cuts. A life-time supply of a tool that is not made anymore.

Collection of finished bulkheads 
 
To be continued

Plexiglas (acrylic glass) is much harder and stiffer than polystyrene. It machines very well in comparison and keeps a keen edge. It can also be polished, unlike styrene, which comes handy when building skylights etc.
 
I am kind of partial to Plexiglas, as I sort of grew up with it. My father worked for the pharmaceutical subsidiary to the parent company Röhm GmbH, the original manufacturer of Plexiglas. So we had easy and cheap access to it. In fact most of my supplies were acquired before my father retired in 1986, so the material above is probably more than 40 years old.
 
A problem is that Plexiglas is not available in thicknesses of less than 0.8 mm. So, the 'structural' parts of the model will be made from Plexiglas, while the planking will be styrene - not ideal, because I would have preferred something stiffer. I could use bakelite-paper, which works very well for the purpose, but I want to engrave some of the planks (as one will see later on in the building-log) and that does not work very well with the brittle bakelite. Also, I would have to glue everything with CA, which I don't like too much. 
 

Happy New Year to all!
 
I ve been busy these last few weeks so time for an update. Quite a few things going on.
I could have actually done more but the temperatures have been consistently subzero so my garage is a rather unhospitable place to be in.
 
So, I have finished laminating the pieces of ply I need but things took a funny turn. The laminated ply that was dead straight, warped. This is the first time this has happened to me. Still, with manual bending the opposite side and heat from a hair dryer, it went back to being almost straight. 
 
Now, I need a new bench for the garage. I already have two but my power tools are very cramped and it is difficult to work. For the new bench to fit I had to radically reorganize the layout of the garage - I am halfway into this.
 
The new bench will have the table saw built in to sit flush with the top. I tried to design it by hand but finally returned to the warm embrace of CAD!

These are the various groups of timber bits

A big advantage of CAD is that it is very easy to arrange how many lengths of timber are needed and which pieces will be cut from each one

When the weather allows, I ll get down on this. Now, back to the boat.
 
I glued the template on a flat surface and after lots of thought a sprayed it with a protective spray. Ya, right. That did not work.

I printed the pattern again and glued it on a different surface. I used custom settings and long lengths of paper cut from an A2 roll. However, the printer could not align the paper properly and the printout was distorted



So I printed the pattern in A3 sheets and aligned them carefully. This actually worked fine, I used a piece of string and all lines are straight.

I also did a lot of work to finalise the frames and other parts of the ship. We ll get to these later in the log.

I glued and roughly cut the templates for the frames. There are many dots and lines for alignment purposes. I ll sand them to the lines with the disc sander when the weather improves a bit so I can have the garage door open for the dust to vent away - however sanding of all the bevels will take a long time.

I finished cutting the keel template which again has many points and lines to allow alignment - each has been drilled through in the drill press with 0.55 mm drill to allow a 0.5 mm pin to go through. The mirror template has been glued on the other side - quite successfully.



I have also prepared some extra pieces to glue on the keel to allow some more area to support the planking. These will also help in the alignment and support of the frames. All the bevels are already marked.


I have ordered some different blades as I am not satisfied with the performance of the Proxxon scroll saw - but then again it comes with a very fine blade which struggles to cut the 6.5 mm epoxy laminated ply.
 
So next steps: To cut, sand their bevels and glue the extra pieces on the hull. To sand the frames including the bevels. I think I will cut the hull rabbet now before even the frames go on - I have marked all the rabbet and bearding lines.
 
One thing I could have done differently is the thickness of the hull. In my plans the hull is 3.8 mm thick - I did not want to make it thicker as in the plans, Hercules' steel hull is very slim. However, in the bow and stern, the rabbet will need to be up to 1.5 mm deep on each side so not much hull thickness left.
 
I still am undecided on the planking.
I think using large pieces of plywood will not allow a fair hull. I may need to plank the hull the usual way. 
I d like to cut the planks from plywood sheet but plywood does not cut very cleanly on the scroll saw- there are various other blades though.
I could however use wood for the planks or a hybrid approach - use ply at the bow and the stern and wood in between. We will see.
 
Till next time
Vaddoc

Keith, he got it from an RC sailing supplier here in Aus. There will be similar shops in your neck of the woods. It's a hard film kind of like a very thin x-ray film and the stuff he gave me is somewhat translucent, it's more for function than scale appearance but I think it'll do the job.

Yes, no reefing sails, so most work could be done from the deck, but the hands still had to go aloft to furl.
 
She's certainly keeping me busy!
 
John

She's looking the goods John!
If memory serves, when I sailed on Bark Endeavour in 2015 the manual showed 100 lines in the running rigging. She's an older style rig with fewer sails and hands aloft to do everything so I can imagine in this rig with more sails and lines to do most of it from deck level she's going to keep you quite busy!

A major step forward (at least in my opinion). The 'Duchess is now boasting a sail!  Obviously a bit more work to do before this sail is complete on the model, but at least it's there! Only 33 more to go.
 
Concerning sails:
I broadly followed Tom Lauria's method with silkspan. I found the silkspan much easier to work with than I anticipated - it seems pretty strong and stable considering its structure. Having said that, I would highly recommend handling it carefully when it's wet (don't ask me how I know that); dry - it's great. I painted my silkspan with one coat of flow acrylic on one side and that seems to be sufficient - the paint soaking through the sail. I used a 'toy' iron as Tom demonstrated to iron down the linings and that worked very well - both sealing the dilute PVA glue and smoothing out the wrinkles at the same time. I had no issue with having a little too much glue on the seam. I tried furling a test sail in the workshop by spraying it with a fine mist of water and then coaxing it into folds; it worked well; hopefully the same will happen on the model.
 
Edit: In mentioning the delicacy of wet silkspan above, I should have clarified that I meant really wet - in this case the corner of a jib was soaked with glue and I was silly enough to try and fiddle with it.
 
John
 

 

I've been a bit slack in posting updates over the holidays, but the 'Duchess' has been quietly progressing in front of admiring holiday crowds at the museum. It always worries me that the unprotected model is very close to the public, unlike on the dedicated model makers' desk which was intentionally built wide, but I never have to worry about the kids touching the model - just (occasionally) their parents.
 
As you can see, the standing rigging is finally nearing completion (sans ratlines), with only a few more stays on the jigger and the mizzen spreaders to do. I'm now changing my focus to the sails and will hopefully play with the first sail - the flying jib - for a bit on Friday.
 
John
 

A Happy New Year to you all. 

Thank you Roel, & I like the colours too. I'm doing a model of a specific boat that has these colours, so the timber choice in the case was to replicate the timber on the original, but it does go very nicely  with black.
 
One aspect I'm thinking about is the stand. I've decided to do a flat rectangular base that replicates a boat yard hard-stand area....spilt paint, etc, & the model held up with scaled support frames, some photos below. Maybe a piece of thick compressed fibre cement sheet as a base....

 

 

 
 
 

Thank you the twins!
Druxey - thank you and complements of the season to you and yours.
Thank you Glen - I hope you had a wonderful Christmas.
Hopefully Andy. Because she is with her alternate grandparents in Lyme Regis she won't be getting it until 1st January when we go to "sit on" the Grandchildren before they return to school / nursery.
 
Anyway back to the main event and a start on reporting the few jobs that I managed in parallel with the dolls house build.
 
I tried both versions of your suggestions for cutting out the gingerbread. The reverse blade method worked but I found it a bit slow so I glued the 2 sheets of brass together with double sided tape and attached them to a third sheet of 1/16" plywood. This worked well. The cutting was somewhat quicker than the reverse blade method but still slow enough to provide an acceptable degree of control. "Somewhat quicker" is a relative term as it took me ages to work my way around all those nooks and crannies.
 
The length of the decoration was circa 7" and my jewellers saw only has a 3" throat so I has to make the decoration in 3 pieces. The next photo is part way through the first piece, and features the first broken blade.
And here is the first piece completed.

And then the second piece - sawing completed but still mounted on the backing plywood.

Then separated, using white spirit to dissolve the double sided tape.

I then applied a first coat of metal paint to start building the thickness.

I also started building up the prow decoration.
The scroll was turned and glued in place.

Next i turned the elongated "bead" before shaping it and attaching it to a piece of 1/32" ply.

The next photo shows it temporarily in position with a couple of extra bits of carving also in place. The 4 beads in front of the scroll are .04" ball bearings.

I have still much to do in this area to reproduce the finished article and of course much of it will be painted gold.
 
I'll catch up a bit more before the New Year.
 
 

"God bless you merry gentlemen" and ladies.
 
I am sorry I haven't been around for a few weeks. Dolls house building and Christmas shopping have decimated my time in the shipyard. The good news is that the dolls house (and shop) is finished sufficient to be delivered to Bean (Eve) by Santa. Bean and Ben are being entertained by their alternate grandparents this year but Santa is delivering the dolls house to her home address in time for our New Year visit. I hope Bean won't be too worried about Santa's delivery mistake.
 
My son has been at pains to remind me the dolls house is to be "played with". His way of telling me that finesse isn't required. I hope that I have met his criteria. I leave you all to judge.

 
Thank you all for following along with my build over the last twelve months, as I look back I see that progress has been somewhat slow. Fortunately I have made a bit of progress since my last post so I will post an update later this week. With a bit more time on my hands I hope to catch up with all your build logs before the turn of the year.
 
In the mean time I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

Dear all
 
Although I did a lot of work on Hercules, I have little progress to show. However, there have been changes and upgrades so an update is in order.
 
I had to revisit the plans many times as I found mistakes that had to be corrected. My computer however has been playing up badly so I ordered a new one.
 
I then thought I should not wait for Santa but instead should take things into my own hands. So out with the old, in with the new!
 

Now, all plywood used will be laminated to make sure it is straight and rigid. In my plans I had set the thicknesses but this meant my laminates should actually be that thick and they were not. So I had to redo the plans to match the thicknesses that the ply ended up having.
 
Now, laminating ply with epoxy is a dirty messy business but it went ok. This is how I do it - old textbooks, butane cylinders, anything heavy will do

The ply came out very straight, this sheet is 900 mm long. It is straighter than it looks in the photo!

I ve done a lot of work on the hull and the superstructure. I downloaded the Occre assembly instructions to get some ideas but generally I think I have massively overengineered and overbuilt the thing. Some pics from the plans so far, there are lots of things going on but best explained as the building progresses:





An interesting twist is the propeller structure at the stern. Occre's solution is not very elegant - I think I can do better, we ll see.

Before I make saw dust I need to make a new bench where the table saw will be built in. This will take time and money and I need to find the correct wood. I also need to finalize the plans into printable patterns.
 
I intend to use 1.5 mm plywood to cut the planks. I am not sure how this will work, this boat's hull was built with steel sheets so it seems reasonable to use ply, provided it can bend both vertically and horizontally to follow the curve of the hull.
 
Best wishes
Vaddoc

Dear all
 
I think we can call this boat finished!
So lets break down this final update:
 
I finished the lobster pots and tied them up at the stern.

I thought it would be fun to make some oil cans and a crate to put them in.


I really wanted to add some fishing nets and an anchor but my initial attempts did not work out and I decided to leave it here and concentrate on Hercules.
 
A few photos of the finished boat:







I do need to make some kind of cradle for the model but this will be part of a much larger project, as I intend to  space in my loft to display all my models.
 
Many thanks to all for your company in this fun journey and my best wishes for a very happy and prosperous new year!
 
Vaddoc

Thanks everyone. And no longer a whiter shade of pale....
 
I'll give the Humbrol paint a few days to harden, but it seems less hard than previously. The unmasking went ok, quite a few small tears, even though I sanded everything between coats. I'll need to work on them, one tiny spot at a time. The paint mix ended up about 20-25% satin & the rest gloss, with a few drops of Penetrol. 
 
Black is quite unforgiving, it shows flaws more than paler colours. But I'm pretty happy with the most recent coat & I'll have a good look over the next few days..

 


 
The transom may need another coat, as the flatness is even more unforgiving than curved black.

 

Keith, he got it from an RC sailing supplier here in Aus. There will be similar shops in your neck of the woods. It's a hard film kind of like a very thin x-ray film and the stuff he gave me is somewhat translucent, it's more for function than scale appearance but I think it'll do the job.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours. 

Keith, he got it from an RC sailing supplier here in Aus. There will be similar shops in your neck of the woods. It's a hard film kind of like a very thin x-ray film and the stuff he gave me is somewhat translucent, it's more for function than scale appearance but I think it'll do the job.

I've made some good progress on the pond yacht, thanks to Mark Pearse for sending me the rigging cord!
 
I've made two travellers for the sheet horses from hard brass wire, now to try and work out how the sheets were originally set up, I'm trying to make sense of the pre-existing holes in the spars.
 
There is a bloke I know through dinghy sailing that has mylar sail fabric suitable for pond yachts, he's coming through in the next couple of days and will drop it in for me. I think it'll be a whole lot easier than me trying to sew normal fabric nicely.