vossiewulf

Am sick as the proverbial dog, although I managed to get the keel all made and fit before sick as dogness set in yesterday morning. Have slept most of the last 36.

And thanks again Pat, I think this is the first time the images are going to be doing what I want them to do.

As mentioned, keel and stem and rudder post, need to do the stem now before I can cut the scarf joint between it and the keel. I decided to make it out of four pieces, with the kit's original top piece being the fourth to save a bunch of machining time. I wasn't worried about the color differential in the woods, as you'll see below.

Funny thing is all of this and the keel and rudder post are not going to be seen, as of now the only paint I intend to use is the white bottom. But long way until there, we'll see. But I've never made a stem and keel from scratch so wanted to do it anyway for practice and challenge.

Which piece isn't cocobolo again?

That's some red-brown alcohol-based aniline dye I keep mixed, along with a green-brown, between the two you can solve lots of color issues. It will come off in the subsequent machining but is easily added back at the end, we know the color will be good.

Carbon fiber pins between all joints, note they are always orthogonal to the glue surface; drilling wood like cocobolo at an angle is a problem you don't want.

All glued up with all joints pinned.

Rough sanding outside.

Now rough sanded inside and out and top and bottom, all looks good.

Kit confirms we're still a bit big which is good.

First test fit of stem to hull. Cue Bob Uecker with "JUUUUST a BIT outside..."

In here is lots of slow careful work, mostly with good riffler files. The problem you always run into here is a surface getting rounded from sanding shaping so it's touching in center and neither edge is touching. So I use round riffler riffler files down the length of the joint so the joint is actually a slight concavity. This guarantees that if you're square, both gluelines will be good.

This is the riffler file set I have, in cut 2. It seems really expensive until you use them, they can easily make very difficult materials like exotic hardwoods do what you want them to do.

Looking a bit better now. Couple small gaps but the rabbet will be over this area, so it's a better joint than was really needed.

That allowed me to mark out the joint between the keel and the stem, here we are test fitting, this looks good. They were done with very fine-toothed saws and knives and files and sandpaper on flat brass. Don't bring just your knife to an exotic wood joint fight.

The keel had been rough ripped down, but now I tapered it in situ while dry fitted with its carbon fiber pins holding it in place, it reduces from about 2.75" at the stem joint to .212" at the rudder post. I used my long straight brass piece with PSA 120 sandpaper. Cocobolo mostly points and laughs at 220.

And now stem and keel together, after another 15 min of fiddling the fit. The joint is good but not well-centered, the scarf is badly out of balance, something I will have to do better next time.

And finally the rudder post that was ever so slightly easier to make being just some straight lines. Here it is dry fitted with pins holding it in place and this looks good too.

So whenever I can stand up again I'll be gluing all that on, and should be able to CA all of it with no clamps. Right now back to sleep I think.

Congrats on the progress first on the health front and second on Le Licorne. The latter is looking as good as one could want.

 

Thank you for rating.

The drawings in this book

 

FrontCover.jpg

 

I have those books, hadn't seen those drawings. I will go look. I'm going to buy a set of those tools from Mikhail, he says around February, and Minerva looks as good a figurehead as any for a first try. Plus I have all your photos to refer to

Julie,

 

I like these planes but I am a fanatic about sharpening.  Are you real good at sharpening these?  and are there any tricks?

Julie,

 

Thanks for sharing the video.  I was not aware these are available.  Use Shapton Glass ceramic for most of my sharpening but these really look like they will do the trick.  I also have some old Arkansas stones that I bought years ago that are curved which may do the job.  It appears the configuration of these would handle about any shape.

I too am a fanatic for sharpening, I have to be to do chip carving like I do. I also at this point primarily use Shapton glass stones, having experimented with everything under the sun, I find that Shapton stones remove metal faster, stay flatter longer than anything but diamond, and will probably last my lifetime.

Anyone who hasn't tried one should, in my opinion they stand head and shoulders above all other hand sharpening stones. Also in my opinion stones above 10k aren't worth it, inexpensive strops of various types work as well or better. And you don't need the godawful expensive Shapton flattening stone, first you won't unflatten it meaningfully doing ship modeling work, and even if you did there are reasonably flat diamond stones out there for 1/10th that cost that will do just as well.

But back to your question Bill, see the Veritas Ml.II honing guide I linked to above It's not intended for gouge curve radii but it will do an extremely good job of curved edges at widths from 1/8" with narrow blade attachment to 2 7/8", it's very well made, and it is what I use to sharpen my $200-$300 Veritas bevel up smoothing and jack planes as well as everything else it's appropriate for, in all cases leaves an edge I couldn't conceivably improve on.

And as I mentioned above, no one should every sharpen a straight plane iron purely straight, have to feather in a smooth curve to .001 to .003" or so relief at the corners depending on width of iron to prevent those nasty straight lines from the corners of purely-straight plane irons. So I only use the straight roller on the Veritas honing guide to establish the basic bevel, and until that needs to be redone again I will sharpen with the cam roller, spending the most time the first time around to establish the curve I want. You can try to do that by hand, I used to, it doesn't work very well. In short have to pry my honing guide out of cold dead hands.

Here is a surface straight off my smoothing plane, three full-width passes right to left. You're going to need an extremely good straightedge to detect any deviation from pure flat, and there is no abrasive that could improve this surface. And this is wenge, extremely hard wood.

Here are the shavings it's taking doing that.

And here's the jack plane doing the same thing to a piece of rock maple but that is way easier than wenge. Just about every shaving is almost full width and feathering out on the edge, exactly as desired. 

And to back once again to the main point , the Veritas guide will do just as good a job on the double-concave iron in Julie's plane.

Where did the drawings come from Alexander, is that a 3d model or just sketches from different angles?

And of course the carving is completely beautiful.

That's because the rest of us also bought from Cornwall. Oops!

For simple rounded sole planes with a much larger radius than typical gouge radii, I use the Veritas Mk.II Honing Guide with the camber roller. In fact I also use the cambered roller on the straight blades as well, just not as aggressively, so their edges feather out.

At this point I have to ask who ISN'T building Lady Nelson.

Yes thanks, exactly what I was looking for.

Well first I found that >I< was using large thumbnail links from Imgur so that was part of the problem, I've edited and now that last post is at least showing the 1000px versions. I found no options controlling max image size. I will try submitting a large image again, but if it still doesn't work I found you can set a link on an image, so in worst case I can set links on all the small images to 4k versions on Imgur.

Hi Vossie, just found your log.  You have made a great start here and I look forward to seeing the model develop.

 

WRT photos, there is a setting I think WRT how thumbnails are handled.  i simply take my photos and resize to 72dpi and about 2040 x ???? depending on orientation and any cropping.  When I add to the post, the site software simply creates the thumbnail and wwhen I click on them they are then open to full size.  I am not sure if you are adding the attachment to the post (in the 'more reply options) after downloading the photo?

 

WRT colour, not sure but I have a series of (poor quality) photos of a model of the ship which is at Mount Gambier here in Australia which shows a brown with black livery - not sure if this was the actual scheme?  i can send you copies if you think they would help just PM me.  The model is not the best I have seen

 

cheers

 

Pat

Hey Pat, thanks for the kind words and the suggestions on the images. I'm not using attachments, just the insert image button because you can't interlace text and attachments at least as far as I know. Let me see if I can find the options that control the max image size.

Again, how does one link to larger versions of images here? I can't figure it out, and these small 700px or so images are not very good at showing detail.

Instructions want to first have the keel/stem/sternpost added and then deck and then the last stern hull bulkhead, so I've left the hull in the "almost sanded fully down" state, and fully sanded the deck side so it's ready for the false deck to be added.

First I made a sanding block out of maple with a radius somewhat less than the radius of the deck sheer so I could sand the deck lengthwise without fear of flattening the sheer.

And used it to fully clean up the deck along with knives and planes.

Then it was time to start making the cocobolo replacements for the keel/stem/sternpost, so I first ripped that 2x2 turning blank, making a .550" x 2" piece that I could then take to my little table saw. Checking the existing keel shows .124" thickness.

So I ripped my .550" x 2" x 12" piece into strips that were .550" x .150". Then I took those to my Mk. I Thickness Planer, you see it's a pretty high tech machine consisting of a Veritas low-angle smoothing plane with PM-V11 iron, a 1/8" thick piece of scrap, and two cam clamps. It's more physical effort of course, but I'd be surprised if a Byrnes thickness sander was faster than this method for anything less than a whole pile of planking stock. And this method leaves a far superior finish, absolutely perfectly glass smooth, even if you wanted to improve that surface, you couldn't.

Here's the replacement keel.

And it doesn't vary more than .001" over its length, not bad for three total passes on each side.

I like sturdy, so I decided I'd put some .040" carbon fiber rod reinforcement to the keel glue joint. For this kind of thing I just use my rotary tool with nice twist drills from Otto Frei on 3/32" shanks, they drill wood like it isn't there. I can drill reasonably orthogonal holes in surfaces freehand looking at a 45 degree angle, and that's what I did here since we can ream it out if there's a problem, but there wasn't in this case. Still for real precision holes I use a pin vise and constantly flip between two 90 degree views to ensure perfect alignment. Sometimes I use my mill, but most often done by hand by one of these two methods.

Here are the keel and sternpost/stem pieces, arrows point to marking knife cuts showing shape of stem and sternpost pieces. With the keel piece, I just flipped it up on its side and planed a perfectly straight and smooth and square edge with the smoothing plane.

First I drilled holes in the kit false keel and made the carbon fiber pieces. Red arrows pointing to those, since they're hard to see.

Then drilled holes in my cocobolo keel, and here it is mounted on the kit false keel with no glue. So I think we're good here, and I will rip it down to final height now.

However before I did that I also planed about a .005" sweep in the glue joint of my new keel, so when it goes down on the carbon fiber pieces the two ends hit first. So when I go to glue it I can use CA and just press down in the middle for 30 seconds and the whole length should have a good glue line.

That's where I knocked off. Next up is cutting out the stern post and stem pieces, gluing the latter together, and then then gluing them along with the keel onto the boat.

The first item in the book is actually of a cutter with enough information to fully rig your "Lady Nelson". Much more detail is provided than on the plans (I'm building this myself at the moment).

 

Rick

Awesome, thanks Rick. Off to order it.

" I will try my best to make a perfect Lady Nelson, but know I will never get there."

As this kit is actually generic in that there was no cutter "Lady Nelson" as long as you follow the general layout etc. for an 18th century cutter you will have produced your own "perfect" model. Lennarth Petersson's "Rigging Period Fore_and-aft Craft will give you a reasonable rigging plan (better than the stripped down version supplied) and a look here at contemporary cutter models will also provide some illumination.

 

Rick 

I'm aware of that, but I have a set of plans that say Lady Nelson, I'm not going to call it "generic cutter from the 1800s".

Thanks for the pointer to the book, I didn't realize this rig qualifies as fore and aft rig, when I saw that book some time back I decided I didn't need it for now. And I'm still confused between brig and brigantine, I know the description but Wiki's diagram doesn't make much sense. It says the Brig has two square rigged masts and the Brigantine has one square rigged and one hybrid. Don't see how that's the case when both have spankers, just one a bit bigger than the other.

            Brig                                               Brigantine

Edit: I'm aware the cutter isn't either, but its one mast is one or the other of those two's mizzen masts, I'm trying to figure out which one and why.

Weird, I was posting 1000 x whatever it was pixels images and they weren't getting resized, if I post a 4k image it gets resized to 680px or something, I guess the breakpoint is above 1000. 

Ah hell these are still 600 or so px when you click on the thumbnail, what is the purpose of having the thumbnail function then? Ok I go back to 1000px next time unless someone can tell me how to get bigger ones to be shown when someone clicks on a thumbnail.

Anyway, in spirit of a documented build log, more photos. Here filling in balsa in first three bulkhead gaps on bow and stern.

Excalibur saw, rough cutout.

Quickly rough-shaped with knife and gouge.

And glued in place. I was using CA until one grabbed and refused to move, leaving it slightly out of position. Reminded myself CA is not always necessary and did the rest with yellow glue.

Once all blocks were in place, both ends got another quick go-over with the gouge prior to sanding.

The deck sides of the blocks were knocked down to .5mm above deck with a chisel plane so I could get into the stanchion corners. He was made intentionally somewhat dull as balsa can be cut with a butter knife along the grain and doing so made it easier to prevent him from nose-diving into the wood, which every chisel plane tries to do. This is more or less the same as doing it with a paring chisel, but I think I have more control with the plane, and both were down to the very minimal sanding required point quickly and easily.

And sanding began but had to call it a night at this point. Sanding is being done with a flat plywood piece and a 9" long segment of 1" diameter aluminum rod, both covered in PSA 120. Next time around I will start with 80 for speed's sake, this time being cautious to figure out how to get to the final shape without taking too much anywhere.

Speaking of shooting boards for tapering and beveling planking strakes (no really I did mention it up there!), I'm considering using a method I employed for something similar a couple years ago - taking my LN scraper plane, flipping it upside down, clamping to benchtop, then do my tapering and beveling freehand and Mk.I Eyeball. When I did it before, I found it much easier to control than I thought it would be, so going to run some tests using scrap stock. If that doesn't work as planned, I think I'll just make a traditional shooting board and use that to do the taper. I'd then do the bevel freehand with one of my small scraper planes.

Question for the knowledgeable crowd, since I'm doing no paint I should do the stem correctly in multiple pieces scarfed together. Where can I find the correct layout for this class, or at least some RN cutter from the period? I don't see this joinery detail in the period plan elevations, and it's not in the kit drawings.

Also looking for rigging detail in James Lee's Masting and Rigging book - is the one mast of this cutter essentially exactly the same as a ship-rig's mizzen mast? Only discussion I see in the entire book seems to assume a three-masted ship rig.

I have the L-N convex sole block plane

It acts in the same way as the Veritas palm planes but is a bit larger.  I haven't yet found a use for it in model making but I have used it for carving out the hip relief on solid body guitars. 

I have the flat version of this plane and agree it's excellent, but then again it's Lie-Nielson and everything they make is extremely good. However as Julie says, not sure of the use for models, if so it would only be on the very large ships and even then you're going to want super-straight grain that's oriented the same way on every plank, otherwise bad things will happen. If you want to go bigger than the Lee Valley micro planes, I'd recommend the small scraper plane from Veritas, sharpened well it can still remove material pretty quickly but it's a scraper plane, so no tearout. I think it should have a heavier iron than it does but it still works reasonably well.

Good morning and welcome to MSW, sounds like you have a good plan with your wood. I think cocobolo will work good as is not porous like oak, for instance, which is a problem at these scales. Being it is as dark as it is and the size of the pieces being used the wider grain will not be that noticeable. As for bending, I don't think it should be too much of a problem as the pieces to be bent will only be 1.5 mm thick. Myself I would use it for the keel also, I am not so sure how you could blend in a white paint line so it would look good with the cocobolo and boxwood. The boxwood and holly are also good choices and ebony, although lots of work, will look great. What do you plan on using for the mast then?

 Looking forward to more updates

Good question. I'm not sure. Probably boxwood, but I haven't decided that or the color, except that I don't want to use the dark brown shown in the kit as that's not even in the ballpark of being correct (at least I think so, correct me if I'm wrong). Although I haven't yet confirmed, I'd also be surprised if it was actually made in one piece like in the kit, with no iron hoop or other reinforcement. Whatever is the correct real configuration of the mast is what I'll be making, and if yellow/buff is the correct color for the mast then boxwood would be the obvious choice.

And thanks for the input on the cocobolo, I'll plow ahead then with my plan. Only sticking point being I ordered from Crown Timber a couple weeks ago and have gotten no response on my request for a timeline. If they don't deliver relatively soon, we're going to be stuck.

Anyone who has any ideas on the color scheme please let me know. To reiterate, currently thinking of cocobolo for stem/strenpost (keel painted white) and wales and rail tops, boxwood for the main planking (probably stained light brown to go with the cocobolo), holly for the deck, and maybe ebony for the yards. One of the points here is to make a minimal-paint version, it's likely to be the first and last I do this way, in general I prefer the historically-painted look.

The one I'm worried about is the cocobolo because of its large figure, and have to think it's a pain to bend also.

It's a nice ship to build, Jay, and you're off to a great start. If you haven't done so already, it's worthwhile to have a good look at the logs of the Lady Nelsons, Sherbournes, Cheerfuls and other cutters which are very similar and give lots of good suggestions for historical accuracy, rigging details or modifications you may want to make.

 

I don't think it's a rite of passage to produce the build log. I think the idea is more to give people the opportunity to post their own progress and ideas -- firstly to help others who want to do the build, and secondly to discuss problems or questions they find as they arise during the build.

 

The great usefulness of each log is that no two builds of the same ship are ever identical (just as no two ships of the same type were ever completely identical) and there is a huge variety of approaches to making the same pieces (even if you try to stick rigidly to the suggested approaches in the kit and use only their supplied pieces), so there's plenty of leeway to come up with your own way of doing things.

 

Everyone also brings their own particular previous history, experience and tools to their builds. So each build is also unique in that additional way. There are approaches from almost every walk of life -- including carpenters, lawyers, engineers, dentists, doctors, archaeologists, anthropologists, readers of marine history, bus drivers, bankers, sailors, and 12 year old students.

 

It's these aspects that can make build logs so interesting, especially when the builder gives great detail about their methods of construction and reasons for their choices. What is not so interesting is to see a build log just with pictures of final results, where the comments are just full of 'oohs' and 'aahs' and 'likes'.

 

I look forward to seeing your own approach, expecially given your own skills and experience you bring to it.

 

Tony

Thanks Tony. As for approach, I've never built a kit of anything out of the box, I'm sure that will be the case here. Certainly I think I can do better on the masting and rigging looking at the plans and the kit photos. And otherwise do it as well as I possibly can, I will try my best to make a perfect Lady Nelson, but know I will never get there.

I have looked at some finished ships and skimmed the build logs, but I'd rather figure out my solutions than follow someone else's steps. so I only look at what other people are doing in detail if I'm struggling to find a workable solution. A major part of the fun is figuring out whatever I need to do next from first principles. For example I have looked at a number of discussions of planking, enough to understand the concepts and the options, but I'm still not exactly sure of the process I'm going to follow, except that I've decided to start with a plank bender. I'll figure that out once the rabbet is in place and I'm ready to start. In the meantime I'm cogitating on shooting boards for taper and bevel and which of a number of small plane options to use. Probably a scraper plane to avoid any issues of tearout.

As for this step, I thought about it but it didn't make much sense to me to bevel the builkheads prior to assembly, trying to guess what the final bevel contours should be considering the vagaries of kit manufacture and minor variances in assembly seemed unlikely to be fully accurate. And anyway it's such a small amount of material to remove. So right now it has the balsa in place and that's been brought down until I'm just starting to shape the builkheads. Tomorrow it won't take long to finalize, then I'll move on to the deck. To avoid a clamping circus, I'm just going to glue that on one bulkhead at a time with CA, gluing from underneath.

I'll remember to take more pictures and explain more, my first thought is people have to have seen bulkhead setup eleventy trillion times and a cutter is not exactly scratchbuilding Le Soleil Royale at 1/24 scale level of interesting. I'll have more photos later when I start using the 18/0 fly-tying thread to serve and seize all the rigging correctly. Or at least trying to.

Seems to be a required rite of passage to publicly flail your way through a first build. For introductions, name is Jay and I'm director of production support for the MAP division at Visa that includes Cybersource and Authorize.net. That means I'm on call 24/7. So, no stress or anything.

When it comes to the subject at hand I'm something of a ringer though, as I have extensive experience making small precise stuff in many materials, and I have two entire rooms dedicated to workshop. One is for medium-sized power tools and a small scale machine shop (mini-lathe, mini-mill, etc.), other is primarily a woodworking area for hand tool work (this is where ships will be set up). Well three rooms because the semi-finished "bonus room" has my full-sized table saw and I have plans for a Laguna bandsaw to go in there too.

And I've already spent a couple years reading extensively on the ships and the building techniques while working on my game, which also needs to continue to make progress, called Line of Battle.

Anyway, I have a crapton of tools and my home is arranged around my workshop areas, so you can assume I am divorced and have no constraints

The plan for now, and I already have all the kits, is to go Lady Nelson -> brig Syren -> MS Constitution -> Victory HMS Revenge -> Caldercraft Victory. But I also want to do some very small scale also, we'll see.

Since this part is uninteresting, only a couple photos - one of squaring up the transom bulkhead and the assembled frame. In case you're wondering, all my little brass flat sanders that are used with PSA paper were machined perfectly square so I don't need to fiddle with heavy machinist's squares except for outside 90s.

In case you're wondering, it's being held in a GRS engraver's block. But anyway all clean and straight and square and ready to go to next steps.

Planned next step is balsa filler blocks at bow and stern, and to make things super easy on myself I'm probably going to fill in the first three gaps on both ends, so everywhere significant bending is occurring I'll have a surface to work against.

However, need some advice on wood. I bought the Crown Timber boxwood package for this, so I have a bunch of boxwood coming. However, I have my own wood and don't want to do it 100% in boxwood, whatever I don't use will get used later in something else. Right now what I'm thinking of is cocobolo for the keel, wales, and rails, lightly stained boxwood planking, and a holly deck. BTW these 1x1x12 American holly turning blanks are available at Woodcraft for $10, good deal if you can resaw to scale timber.

However, I'm not sure about the cocobolo, the color of course is great but it has pretty strong grain and figure and may not look good in this small build. Also I'm not sure about the idea of having a keel/stem darker than the main planking. Anyway, advice appreciated, as I'll have this ready for the keel and planking soon.

I know, I'll plank it in snakewood. Cut this into 4mm strips, cut in half (it's 5/16" thick) and then plank both sides with strips in the exact order we see here Just kidding of course. That's a $150 guitar fingerboard blank and will be used for that purpose in the future.

Trying to do an inventory of my stuff, coming up with a few more.

First anyone serious should spend some time here, jewelers have a phenomenal assortment of abrasive solutions, particularly for small/hard to reach places. I haven't yet tried the ceramic polishing tools listed on this page yet, but those look really promising:

One type I use regularly are these, the flexacrylic rods mounted in my rotary tool. They are easily shaped into points and rounded tips by running them against a piece of sandpaper.

I also have several types of silicon polishing wheels and points, they are like hard pencil erasers with grit embedded. These are really excellent for cleaning up carvings, those of you doing serious stern decoration and figurehead carving should have these in your arsenal. Several manufacturers listed on this page. The ones I like best for small areas are the Italian 3mm points.

Saw Frame 

I have this saw frame, and to say it's an improvement over standard frames is like saying wagyu beef burgers are an improvement over 1960s school cafeteria burgers. It's much, much lighter. With the cam saw tensioner, it's way faster to change blades and tensioning them doesn't require jamming some pointy steel corner on a normal saw frame into your hand.