Fam

Bow to the right, see pinnace orientation and shrouds slopes ... Fam

Thank you for the kind words, Carl, I have to admit that I'm proceeding slower than I would like but cannot do anything more than stealing any free minute I have from my family life... if I don't have enough time to sit down and concentrate on what I have to do, I prefer not starting working at all ! Better not rushing in this hobby, this is my philosophy Just speaking of short time, yesterday evening managed to drill the holes for the oar ports, 7 on each side. Then stopped again to think a little bit about the orientation of the slot permitting the oar blade to be slipped through... which side? Toward the bow or toward the poop? this is the same picture that JA showed in his build-log, from the monography. I've also found this picture of the Le Cyclope, showing both opened and closed oar ports: I thought that when pushing on the oar handles for rowing, the oar pushes back (as a reaction) against the forward border of the oar port. So, coherently, the slot should be oriented toward poop, to reduce the wearing of the hole walls. If this is true, the ports in Le Cyclope are wrongly oriented... any suggestion? In the first picture above I also simulated the rotation of the port lids (blue line), to verify that its shape and size are adequate to close the oar ports... and they are ! Regards Fam

Definitly circularfor ships contemporary to my Brig, thx Tadeusz

Yeah, druxey, I suspected this but could not get a confirmation from the drawings... I measured the angle of the hull, then converted the projected horizontal size of the holes (from the lateral view) into the real size, as seen from along the hole axis, using the cosine function of the angle... but the width I got was still 90% of the height. I will redo the checks, and in case will post here the figure About their orientation, from the measurements I've obtained a longitudinal alignment straight along the keel, and decidedly downward. Hope it is correct! Thank you again for the prompt reply Fam

Hi all I have a question about the hawse holes: I’ve just drilled the pilot holes for the 4 hawses in my ‘Brick de 24’ (http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/8675-brick-de-24-by-fam-scale-148-1809-pob/page-3#entry293866), but looking at the Ancre plans I was not able to verify the shape of these holes. I understand that a circle, when seen from an angle, looks like an oval: so all views of the hawse show them as ovals. I tried some trigonometry, to calculate the height and width of the holes from their projections in the 3-view drawings, but the result is always the same: they are vertical ovals, with height greater than width. So checked on the pictures of the Le Cygne models I have, and also checked the models of brigs belonging to the same class (Cyclope, Esperance, Faune, Curieux): some have circular holes, some have elliptic holes... Any suggestion? What is the standard practice? By logic they should be circular, why not being so? Thank you in advance for any help Fam

March 02nd, 2015 Hi all new small update from my 'Brick de 24' shipyard... I’ve completed the laying of the false deck, built with 0.8mm plywood. Each of the 6 pieces needs to be fixed on the perimeter and along the bulkheads, so before starting I had to perfectly prepare the supporting surfaces so that all the pieces are joined without discontinuities, as if they were a single piece... considering the double curvature of the deck it was not that easy!! Of course I had to cut the holes for the masts before covering their position. This is the completed job, after a final sanding and after having marked the positions of the bulkheads... The lines of the bulkheads are needed for aligning the butt joints of the deck planks, even considering that the bulkheads top-timbers are going to disappear, either removed or hidden behind the internal planking. Next step, as scheduled, was the waterways... Damn, a real dusty affair this! I used limewood cut in blocks, 5 pieces per side. The problem is that there are no two surfaces square to each other, each piece took really a long time and a lot of sawdust!! How to proceed? I developed a method which is mine, maybe not the best nor the quickest... but worked! Don’t know if it works for everybody (Ed Tosti with his tenth of waterways of all possible shapes is the person I mostly admire, he makes it look so easy...) I started from the bow, because these are the most difficult pieces to build due to the curvature, the variable slopes of the bulwarks and the thickness variation. You can see a darker piece of pearwood at the bow, along the centreline: it is a piece of the bow timber protruding inside the bulwarks, so I set it as first as the starting point. It is cut from the same type of timber as the stem pieces. - First: the curvature matching the top-timbers is cut from the limewood piece, using the cardboard templates of the false-deck to define the rough shape - Second, the top-timbers are not square to the deck surface: e.g. for the above shown bow pieces they are sloped outboard close to the bow timber (about 5deg) and then become sloped inboard (about 8deg) from bulkhead #VI, with a smooth transition between the two positions. I used the new disk sander (a perfect tool for this job, indeed!), adjusting the tilting table and very lightly touching the piece of wood with the sanding disk, one mm at a time, with continuous fit tests against the top timbers - Third: after the piece matches the bulwark, I had it to match the deck longitudinal curvature. In the above picture it is apparent that the central part of the 2nd piece is raised in the middle from the false-deck, due to the curvature of the latter. So another 'kissing' of the sanding disk is needed. - Fourth: cross (athwartship) thickness. Luckily, it is constant so I used a compass to trace, on the lower surface of the piece, a line parallel to the external edge. Then I cut with a scroll saw along this line and sanded it smooth. - Fifth: vertical thickness. The two bow pieces have linearly variable thickness, so I had to draw a ‘straight’ line using a guiding flexible ruler from one end of the piece to the other. Then again I cut with a scroll saw along this line and sanded it smooth with the sanding disk. Again luckily, the other pieces have a constant height, so they are much more easily traced and cut. Sometimes, to avoid erroneous cuts, I used a sharp cutter instead of the scroll saw, removing small slivers at a time and finally sanding with a sanding block - Sixth: the internal slope, the easiest part of the job! I traced with the compass two lines, one on the top face 1.5mm inboard of the external edge, and the other on the internal vertical face 1.5mm above the deck (they can be barely seen in the above picture, on the last-but-one piece). Then joined the two lines by removing the excess material with a cutter. That’s all: I had to repeat the same sequence for the 10 pieces, plus the two curved pieces at the bow that I had to rebuild twice! In total it took four working evenings (about 8 hours), and this is the result, finally completed: I’m not going to glue these pieces now: I’ll keep them floating on the deck, just temporarily fixed in position to act as spacers for setting the bulwarks internal planking. The planking is cut from the same boxwood as for the bulwark exterior, that is quite hard to sand smoothly and needs a power tool to get a fine finish... so I don’t want to risk ruining all this job while sanding the planking!! Next job: before going forward, I decided to define the positions of the 4 hawse holes so to ease the job of refining them after the hull exterior is finished with the 2nd planking... and before definitely fixing the waterways, just in case... The hardest was to identify the holes position inboard and putboard, as they are sloping downward but very few references are available. The pilot holes were drilled by hand... the first attempt at starboard was not so good ... the second shot at port much better! And seen from outside... After correcting the alignment of the stbd hawse holes ... the next scheduled step was to define the position of all the openings in the bulwarks. This is the final result of lot of measurements (sorry, the picture is a bit dark). Now I'm ready to start drilling and cutting! The first will be the oar holes... Ciao Fam

Great job as usual JA, take care and enjoy your holiday... greetings to the beautiful Tuscany on my behalf! Fam

February 20th, 2015 Hi all it’s been a long time since my last post, finally I’m back home from my business trip and the shipyard is re-opened! Have to admit that I missed it a lot, I was scratching my hands for the need to touch some wood and some tools!!! Am I ship-aholic enough? Obviously I restarted from what I had left uncompleted, i.e. the wales. The stbd wale was already installed, but still unfaired, the port wale was missing. So, as first I completed the job on the left hand side, repeating exactly what I’ve done on the right... not exactly at all, as I did two alignment mistakes at midship and at poop: height of the wale, measured from the top of the bulwark, did not came out same as on the right regardless of thousand measurements I did! Probably the first strake slipped a little bit when applied pressure to set it. Not a difficult task to fix it, just time consuming: I added two small slivers where required and then sanded all flush... done! After the 1st strake was correctly set, I had no more problems for the remaining two strakes. Then I had to merge the wales onto the standard planking of the hull, but only on the lower edge: I had to take care of the upper edge so that the step remained unaltered. And finally this is the result: you can see the different texture and color of the Cirmolo wood, and how the wale thickness is smoothly reduced to zero. At the bow I had no evidence of what Chuck found for his Cheerful cutter, i.e. that the wales’ thickness decreases to zero where they enter into the rabbet of the stem piece: the Ancre plans are not so clear in this detail, so I preferred to leave them at the complete thickness. This was another milestone reached for the project: now it is possible to step forward and start working on the deck! Well, before I completed the fairing of the transom, on the starboard side, but that was just a matter of 5 minutes... The first task in the deck area, before installing the false deck, was to reduce the thickness of the top-timbers. So, started the demolition days! 3 days, with sharp scalpels, files and sand paper. To help getting a uniform thickness I built a template, which can be seen in the second picture: a slot in a piece of scrap plywood that reproduced the combined thickness of the top-timbers and the external planking: 3mm on top, 3.5mm at the bottom. Every top timber was slowly cut, removing thin layers from the inside and continuously measuring with the template. This is the result, almost ready for internal planking! But before this can be done, lots of other jobs have to be completed. I tried to schedule the sequence of working, as my method will be quite different from JA’s. I will locate the openings of the gunports, and of the oar-ports as well, and then will create the surrounding frame simulating the real structure of each port linings. Then the internal planking will be installed, completing the bulwark: their thickness will remain empty, contrary to JA who preferred to build a solid wood bulwarks. So my sequence will be the following: false deck waterways define the gunports & oarports opening locations install the opening linings install the internal planking cut the openings First task so was to lay the false deck, which is a layer of thin plywood that will support the deck planking. I used thin cardboard to firstly create a shape template ... anybody knows better material than scrap corn-flakes boxes? I’ve got some 0.8mm thick plywood, 4 sheets of A4 format, but the deck is so big that I had to divide its length in three parts. Of course the deck will also be cut along the hull center-line, so this makes 6 pieces in total. For this reason, I have 2 joints along the deck and I need a good supporting surface for the fore and aft ends of the false-deck pieces. As the bulkheads are only 5mm thick, I enlarged a little bit the supporting structure by gluing two pieces of 5mm plywood to the front side of bulkheads nn. M2 and VI Next step ... gluing the false-deck pieces! Stay tuned Fam

JA I've checked the pictures we have about the Le Cygne, Le Cyclope and L'Esperance models... you should have them, as well. Apparently on these three models the oarports have a teardrop shape on the external side of the bulwarks, where they are closed by swivelling lids, but the shape on the internal side of the bulwarks is left square and not closed by any lid. So it is correct to cut the teardrop hole in the 2nd planking only, but.... this is only 0,5mm thick, the resulting borders of the hole will be probably too weak! What about adding another layer of veneer into the hole, flush with the 1st planking? So the final thickness will be twice that of the 2nd planking, maybe better and less prone to break... Bye Fam

Ciao JA I'm finally back home so hope to reopen the shipyard soon! As far as the sheet blocks, consider they should be flush with the second external planking and with the internal planking. So probably it's better to prepare the rectangular slots for the blocks but delay their installation to after the 2nd planking is complete (just a suggestion!). I'm also interested in understanding if the drop shape of the oar-ports is only limited to the second planking thickness, the section is not clear on this matter. Bye Fam

Hi Modeler12 I tried this with great success: - prepare diluted white glue 50-50, or 40 glue+60 water - brush the diluted glue directly on the sail, on the side blown by the wind. Use a quite large but soft brush - while applying the glue, at the same time blow the sail from the same side with a hair-dryer set to mid temperature and high fan. I know, you'll maybe need a 3rd hand but we are accostumed to this, are we? - continue brushing the glue while at the same time it is drying , insist where you want a more bulky belly Combined pressure from brush and blown air shapes the sail quite well, the glue sets quickly thanks to warm air and the shape is maintained. But if you are not satisfied, apply more diluted glue to the position you want modify and blow until dried. Final looking is matt, color of the fabric is not altered. You can do this directly on the installed and completed sail, with no need to tilt the entire ship (OMG!!! imagine if the vise fails!!!) Bye Fam PS: Test separately to see how it works, as always!

Beautiful work JA, as always! So, can I state that the gunport sills seat parallel to the waterway, and thus to the deck sides? Fam

January 26th, 2015 Hi all finally, after a couple of attempts blocked by bad weather, I managed to get at the US Naval Academy Museum, in Annapolis (MD). What to say... just fantastic! I remained astonished when entered the upper floor, completely stuck with tenths of large ship models, all from the age of sails, all contemporary, all magnificient!!! Here are only 3 examples, out of about 300 pictures I took USS Syren HMS Prince Frederick, British 3rd rate 70gun, 1714 Who knows what is this?? (recognition game) What else to say, it was a pleasant sunny day perfect for visiting this completely free museum: first floor is dedicated to the history of US Navy from the Independence War to Vietnam War, going through the development of shipbuilding techniques, with lot of interactive touch-screens describing the main naval battles and the strategies in detail, lot of models, dioramas, contemporary pieces of any type. Second floor, as said above, is the Roger’s collection of contemporary models, also including several 1:1 dioramas to explain the way of living on board of these ships... Fantastic, really worth the almost 3 driving hours from where I’m staying! I really enjoyed it! Regards Fam

Superb idea! I'm looking forward to seeing the final result! Cheers FAM

Very useful tip, Nigel, I'll use it for my Brick de 24, too!Thx Fam

Ciao JA you really did a neat job, I like it very much!! Looking forward to seeing the other gunports done! Ciao Fam

Thank you for the information Toni, I'll check their website too. Best regards Fam

Thank you, I really appreciate! Fam

January 12th, 2015 Hi all This will be my last built-log update from the ‘Brick de 24’ shipyard until February, because I’m scheduled to travel for my job. I’ll remain connected, anyway, and will be always able to read and answer to any comment. As I wrote in my last post, I’m now working on the stern end of the ship, refining the Counter and the Transom areas. The Conter was completed with the required 1st layer of limewood planking, 1.5mm thick. Each plank was edge-bent prior to installation, then trimmed to length for a snug fit within the protruding ends of the terminal boxwood planks, then glued. When glue was set, I trimmed the boxwood planks flush with the Counter surface and sanded it down to a smooth finish. Here is the result: As can be seen the hole for the stern-post and rudder is left unfinished, I just cut some planks away in preparation: I’ll complete it when the stern-post will be ready for installation, together with Stem and Keel pieces, just before starting with the 2nd planking. Also note that there is some mess-up in the upper leftmost corner of the Counter: see the below description of the wales for the explanation. Next, I prepared the Transom molding: the shape is provided in the Ancre monography plans, and is the same I already used to create the temporary cardboard template shown previously. I used for it a 0.8mm plywood, easy to cut and to bend to match the Transom curvature. The two holes for the chase-guns are already cut out and finished to final shape, as they will be the reference to create the Transom internal filling pieces. Cut, sanded, glued… easy-peasy thanks to all the preliminary measurements! For additional checks I added a couple of reference lines: one vertical on the ship mid-plane and one horizontal. I used them to align correctly the piece while gluing to the Transom structure, and will be used later for further alignment checks. The shape and size of the Transom is now defined, but what I call “the wings” are quite fragile. So the next task was to cut some fillers to glue on the back side, facing forward. Firstly, I had to check out from the plans what would be the final thickness of the transom: it is a mere 4.5mm, plus the moldings and decorations to be added on the back side only. As the forward side of the wings is flat, to accommodate the side stern gallery structures, I selected a 2mm plywood and cut 4 pieces, to be laminated. The wing itself provides the shape of the fillers, again no problem for building them. My new tool was helpful in sanding the correct angle of their internal edge, to match the acute angle of the wing-to-bulwark intersection: it is about 14deg, when the table of the disk sander is correctly set only few seconds are needed to sand the 4 pieces (instead of minutes and minutes of test-fit, file, test-fit again and so on). Great, I’m really satisfied with it! Then I switched to the filler pieces for the chase-guns gunports in the Transom. I had left a free space in the transom structure, about 16mm high. As the fillers will be, in the model, the liners for the gunports and thus will be visible, choice of a good material (instead of scrap pieces of plywood) is compulsory. Pearwood, 4mm thick, was the natural choice as I have lot of pieces of it left from my Pinco model. Its color is different from the material I used for the Stem pieces, a bit lighter shade: I've got this wood for free directly from a fruit-tree log, thanks a farmer friend of my father-in-law. The fillers were cut to shape and adapted to their housing. Then I roughly cut the circles of the gunports, using the transom molding itself to draw their shapes on the filler. I left about 2mm of extra material, to allow for the next adjustments and finishing. Then glued the fillers to their positions. After the wings fillers and the gunport fillers were set, it was time for some fairing. I only sanded the port side of the transom, as the starboard side was obstructed by the clamps for the wales (see below): I left the completion of fairing for after coming back from my business travel! The next pictures show the result I got using two different sizes of sanding drums in my power tool (another useful Proxxon tool !!). The alignment of the upper face of the transom is almost horizontal, as visible from the plans, and the side wings are aligned to the ship fore-aft axis. Transition from the wings to upper face is smooth, as can be seen. Consider this is only a rough shaping, the fine shaping will be done when the time for the transom decorations will arrive. About the gunports, I worked from outside with the smaller sanding drum, trying to maintain the tool as horizontal and fore-aft aligned as possible. As the Transom is aft sloped, this means that the lining of the gunports is also sloped, to remain parallel to the waterlines. My last job, before closing the shipyard and cleaning the workshop, dealt with the wales. As previously described, the thickness of the 1st planking was scheduled to reproduce the diminishing thickness of the real-ship planking, but this could not be obtained immediately with the limewood planks I used for the hull. So, to get the final 2.25mm thickness of the wales planks I had to add another layer of planks. Their thickness is easily calculated: 0.75mm is the required measure, plus something to allow for the next sanding, gives a 0.8÷0.9mm. For this detail I used the Cirmolo wood I’ve got at the very beginning, which is quite easy to cut even at this small thickness. It is 6mm wide, so I considered that 3 planks should be enough. This 2nd layer must be sanded down to zero thickness at the lower edge of the wale, as the wales merge without thickness discontinuity into the standard planks of the hull. So to finish them I will have to remove 0.9mm of material at the lower edge only, with a smooth thickness transition over a 18mm total width… will see if feasible. Cutting, bending, pre-shaping, beveling, gluing was done in the usual way, no need for additional description. The only note worth reporting: if the planks are soaked, then roughly bent with the hot bending iron, then re-soaked for 10 seconds and positioned to dry directly on the ship, locked into their final position, they take and keep the final shape much more easily. I’ve read this note earlier here on MSW, but this is the first time I test it... and worked well (at least with this type of wood). This is the final looking of the wales before trimming and sanding (only some rough sanding done): For completeness of description, I’ve done a mistake in the previous calculations for the wales position. It is evident in the pictures above, as the wale strakes are overlapping the yellow bulwark strakes! What happened? I took the vertical position of the top of wales from the Cross Section figure I posted on Nov 24th (here: http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/8675-brick-de-24-by-fam-scale-148-1809-pob/#entry262452),and measured vertically down from the top end of the bulwark... all correct, but the model is still missing the gunwales, so I started planking the hull with limewood 1.5mm more down than required (exactly the thickness of the gunwale). On the contrary, the top of the wale should have been positioned level with the top of the deck beams, thus just 1.5mm higher!! I realized this error when test fit the planking templates, frame by frame along the hull and correctly aligned with the top of the yellow bulwark, to check the correctness of the wale/bulwark separation line and found the wale was systematically misplaced... What could I do to fix this error? Well, obviously the wales still had to be added, so I just shifted them up of the required amount... but now the first boxwood strake is no more 5mm wide: it is only 3.5mm! Well, I think I will have to live with it: this area will be painted black and the error will be concealed by the paint. Nonetheless this is a lesson learnt: never relax the attention, never rely on memory only, check and re-check, measure and re-measure, and before using glue measure again! This is all for now. As always any comment, question, suggestion, criticism is more than welcome. The shipyard is temporarily closed until I come back. I have two questions for the MSW members living close to Annapolis, MD: - I’d like to spend my weekend free time visiting the US Naval Academy Museum: does anyone know if entrance is also permitted to non US-citizens people? Because the museum website home page says “...Visitors to the U.S. Naval Academy must show a valid government ID (driver's license, passport, CAC, etc.) at the gate....” - is there any other attraction interesting for us ship-modelers in proximity of the museum? Thanks and ciao Fam

Yes Carl, I really like the shade of color of this pearwood and am looking forward to test the stem against the false-keel... Unfortunately it's still too early: I've already checked the shape correctness with the cardboard template, but before joining the stem to the false-keel I have to clean up a slot for it into the 1st planking. I've left the inner side of the stem still rough, to permit some adaptation should it be needed Now I'm concentrating on the opposite end of the ship! Thank you for the likes and ciao! Fam

January 09th, 2015 Hi all the MSW members, and Happy New Year 2015! A new update from my ‘Brick de 24’ shipyard after all these days of holidays. Well, I prepared this text a couple of days ago, but then I was so busy that had no time to post it. So the work on ship has progressed a bit more now. Planking of the bulwarks is now completed, the planks sanded down to almost shining finish... This wood I’m working with, namely boxwood but I still have some doubt about it, is the hardest wood I ever worked with! I cut 60 planks, 20 for each thickness as detailed in the previous posts: 1.75, 1.25 and 1.0mm. To allow the subsequent sanding, I increased these thicknesses by 0.25mm each. My intention was to have a 0.5mm step between the 2nd and 3rd strakes, as shown on the cross section detail in the monography. But after testing the stiffness of this wood (as detailed below), and checking the plans for confirmation, I decided to sand it down so that all the planks are flush and progressively diminishing in thickness from the wale upward: the plans confirm that the scheduled step is covered by a molding, so not visible in the final model! With 20 planks, I laid 2 strakes to port and starboard sides, 5 planks per side & per strake. Their length was adapted to match the position of the bulkhead top timbers and so that the butt-joints are shifted among adjacent strakes. About this last detail, being not sure about which shift-scheme to use I just adopted logic... Each plank was worked as per the following sequence: - pre-bending edgeward, to match the bulwarks longitudinal curvature - bending again to match the hull curvature as much as possible (so to reduce inherent tensions in the gluing) - cut to length - beveled on the lower edge - darkened on all borders to simulate tar caulking (using a soft 2B lead pencil) - glued in position After all the above was completed, the bulwark planks exteriors were sanded with coarse to thin grade sandpaper (80 to 240). Problems found: Type of wood: what I bought as ‘boxwood’ is a timber with a lemon-yellow color (uniform in all the thickness of the log), quite hard and dense, medium heavy (the planks sink when soaked in water!), with a very thin texture (almost not visible). Is it really boxwood? I was curious about this, so I Google-searched images but was never able to find anything similar to my timber. I suspect it is something else, nonetheless I like the color and think it is suitable for the bulwarks, and therefore will continue with it... Cutting the boxwood: after sawing about 60 planks of different thicknesses, all 18.5cm long, the ‘Super-cut’ blade of my Proxxon KS230 appears to be a bit worn out, such that continuing cutting this wood is becoming slower and slower... Does anyone know if these blades may be re-sharpened and which is the technique? The planks themselves are very stiff, but with some effort they can be bent by hands without splitting: I was able to bend a plank 1mm thick to a quarter-of-circle arch (90°)!!! They hold very well the sharp edges, so that I had to handle them with care to avoid inadvertently cutting my fingers skin! Bending the planks: as I said, the planks are quite stiff in their plain and almost do not accept any edge-bending. Even following the suggestions by Mtaylor (1 hour soaking in hot water, followed by overnight drying in a bending jig) I was only able to give a slight permanent curvature of 1.5-2mm (off the straight line) over 18.5cm length... just suitable for my needs, indeed! Conversely, bending out of the plane was quite easy after re-soaking for 10 minutes and using a hot plank-bender tool, an adapted soldering iron. I also noticed that after this heat treatment the planks remain quite flexible and accept minor modifications to curvature/warping by hands. After all this long excursus on my problems (sorry for annoying, if this was the case), I show you a couple of pictures of the current status of the hull: I also tested something for the treenails, just to see how they come out on the boxwood. I’m using poplar toothpicks, pushing their two ends in pre-drilled holes, then letting the glue to set, cutting flush and sanding down to the final looking. I tested with 0.8 and 0.6mm holes, 4 holes for each size. Consider the plank is 5mm wide and not finished yet with any oil or other surface treatment. What do you think? (Poll) What else during these holidays? While waiting for the bulwark planks to dry, I started designing and building the Stem pieces. This is a step forward w.r.t. the job my good friend JA has already completed, so tried to stay aligned to his quality level with a step by step scheduling of this task... Usually there are several pieces in the Stem, it is composed like a sort of jigsaw. So my first question was: what do I really need? Firstly, the hull of the ‘Brick de 24’ was covered by copper tiles, and almost surely my model will be so. Secondly, the uppermost part of the Stem (not coppered) will be covered by the figurehead. Thirdly, and finally, it will be entirely painted black. So apparently there is no need for cutting all the jigsaw pieces, a single piece might suit the requirement. My intention is to build these parts (and the keel, false-keel and stern-post as well) from 8mm thick pearwood. So I quickly checked what I have available in my shipyard and found that my 8mm pearwood pieces are only 5cm wide... I definitely needed to cut the Stem into several pieces and later joint them! Thus, how many pieces? I’m not the lucky owner of a large amount of power tools, I still cut the wood by hand with a scroll-saw, which makes keeping square angles hard on a dense, hard and 8mm thick material like the intended pearwood I have in my mind. Therefore the fewer pieces the less effort is required! So, in the end, I decided that 3 main pieces adequately suit both the requirements and my needs. From brain storming to drawing table... passing by JA’s drawings of the stem and by a check in the plans for the exact shape of the stem and its subparts... It is quite strange that this detail is only marginally treated in the monography, only shown in one side profile. For this reason, and also considering this detail will be covered and not visible, the shapes of the jigsaw parts are no perfectly matching the little detail of the plans but more matching what I saw here on MSW... fantasy, some interpretation, some compromise... This is the result, with the three sub-assemblies circled in red: Here after cutting the pieces: and here the completed Stem after rejoining together the pieces: The separation lines among the parts are only engraved with several passes of a sharp blade and then highlighted by pencil graphite. Similarly highlighted are the joints among the three main pieces. A part from the hand scroll-saw, the only power tools I used are a brand new disk sander (Christmas present I did to myself), 10” diameter, tilting table from +15 to -45deg (Proxxon TSG250/E, great stuff!!) and a sanding drum vertically mounted into my press-drill. That’s all for now: next jobs in the scheduling will be completion of the counter 1st planking (done yesterday and the day before), then preparation of the transom molding (done yesterday) and the keel. Then I will switch at last to follow JA’s sequence with the weather deck. Stay tuned Fam

Hi JA Happy New Year 2015! The looking of your planking is really fantastic, I like it very much! It's a pity for the holes of the pins, I hope your sawdust trick will do the job of making them disappear Fam

Thankyou, mtaylor, I'm currently soaking and using an adapted solderer... apparently soaking for longer time could help, I will try!Merry Christmas to you all Fam

December 23rd, 2014 Hi to all the MSW members, as promised, I’m posting a final update before stopping the shipyard for the Christmas holidays. In the last week I reached a major milestone, i.e. completing the lower hull planking. Now the 1st layer of limewood strips is set on both hull sides, from the upper border of the wale downward to the keel. I took a couple of work sessions to smooth out all irregularities and bumps in the planking, by sanding with progressively finer sandpaper: started with 80 grit, then 120 and finally 240, for a smooth and even finish. No need of filler in any point. I’d like to show you the result with the following pictures. I am in the background because this permits to appreciate the size of the hull, which is quite large: about 71cm long, 15cm high, 20cm wide. Next job was to trim the planks closer to their final size and start refining their stern side. Well, this was done during the final phases of the hull sanding, to ease the smoothing of the surface in proximity of the stern counter. This is why in the next pictures the hull finish is not smooth yet. The next picture shows how the planks running into the counter were cut to permit accommodating the counter template. After this was obtained, I cut the rudder hole into the counter base plywood, in order to facilitate the following works on this detail. The job was done by firstly drilling lot of small holes along the inside of the hole profile, then joining them with a cutter and finally cleaning the hole borders with needle files and grinders. Next was the preparation of the first counter plank, whose scope is also to finish the running of the hull planks. I soaked a piece of limewood strip for about 15 minutes, then tried edge-bending it with the help of three clamps and a piece of suitably shaped scrap plywood. When released from the clamps (after a couple of hours) the wood was completely dry, the spring-back was minimal and the shape was maintained. I was so pleased by this result that later I decided to try the same technique with the bulwark 2mm thick boxwook planks (see below). Well, the result was unexpectedly negative: the spring-back was so large that the shape was completely lost. I have the doubt that probably this was due to the different characteristics of the wood, much more dense and compact w.r.t. the limewood, but also to the larger thickness (2mm vs 1.5mm) requiring much longer soaking in water and more time into the clamps. Will try again changing these parameters, but if anybody has any suggestion for bending the boxwood I will appreciate and try it immediately. Next picture shows the first counter plank positioned, while glue is setting. A second plank was fitted right below, needing some width adaptation. The shape of the counter is such that its upper and lower border does not run parallel to each other, so the width of the plank needs to be narrower at the extremes and wider in the middle. Five full planks are needed for the counter, plus a filler at the joint with the transom. With the hull planking completed, I could not resist the temptation to try my new wood reserve! So I started cutting the planks for the bulwark exterior. This area is partially painted black, from the wale up to the gunport sills. Then from this level up to the gunwales the color is natural yellowish, with an ochre tone. For this reason I decided to use boxwood to plank the bulwarks all the way up to the gunwale. As stated above (Nov 24th) the planking thickness above the wale starts with 1.75mm for two stakes, then there is a small step (0.5mm), reducing to 1.25mm and fading to 1mm thickness at the top of the bulwark: four strakes are required above the gunport sills up to the gunwale. So started calculating the amount of planks require for the first thicker band. The Ancre monography states that hull planks length varied between 30 and 40 feet, which translates into between 190 and 254mm in 1:48 scale, if British feet measure is used for conversion. But my question is... did French shipwrights use British units during the Napoleonic Wars? I don’t think so! Additionally, conversion into 1:1 scale gives planks of 9-12m length, that in my opinion is a bit excessive... but again I’m ready to change mind if anyone has suggestions... I also had to consider that my planks need to seat on the top-timbers, so in the end decided to shorten a little bit the plank length to an average 180mm, slightly varying depending on the position of the bulkheads top-timbers. The following picture shows the planks being cut from boxwood billets 5mm thick: for a 1.75mm thickness I set the table-saw to 0.25mm more (2mm total), to take into account for the next sanding. The cut is crisp and the wood is holding very well a sharp edge! Also I noticed that, regardless of the small thickness of the planks, they are really stiff and quite hard to bend... I should have anticipated the problems I described above, but was too excited by the beauty of this wood to be capable of thinking forward... The next picture is not describing any work phase, but I want to show it because I like the streamlined shape of this hull, the neat alignment of top-timbers and ... the straightness of the keel as a result of hundreds of continuous cross checks... well done Andrea!!! Two more shots of yesterday evening job. I started laying the first strake of boxwood on top of the limewood planks: the separalion line between the two qualities of wood defines the upper border of the wale, which now shows very prominently. A small step is evident, the boxwood being 0.5mm thicker than the limewood (or even more, considering the latter has been sanded): a second layer is still missing to the wale, for a total wale thickness of 2.25mm in this area. Also evident in the first shot, the bow, is the reason why I tried to bend edgeward the bulwark planks: the slight upward curve is quite visible. The curvature of the planks at the bow is quite strong, so I had to use again the water and hot-iron technique... have to admit that lot of previous training in doing this job with my little Knarr was very helpful, as I managed to bend the planks as required with little effort and also managed to give the small upward bending that is visible in the picture First bulwark plank strake completed and glue drying... and run out of clamps as well Last detail: each border of the boxwood planks is blackened with a soft pencil graphite, to simulate the tarred caulking. I’ve already used this technique with my 1:50 Pinco Genovese, and being completely satisfied decided to use it again! That’s all from my ‘Brick de 24’ shipyard. Any comment and suggestion, as always, is more than appreciated and will be happy to answer any question. I wish to all the members of MSW, and to their family as well, a Happy Christmas and a Happy Prosperous New Year 2015!! Fam

Try using pins like these for corkwood boards: They are also very useful for the 2nd planking!! Fam