vossiewulf

They are a complete and utter steal at $300, this quality sold in the west would easily be >$1000. I've told him that but he says "my prices are normal for Russia". 
 
I've had mine for many weeks and I use them daily in the shop now. As good or better than any carving tools I own and I own lots of expensive ones. You should run, not walk to book a set with Mikhail. Only problem is his earliest delivery window is now October.
 
You can either get the pen handles like Druxey or more traditional palm grips. 
 
Biggest problem is sharpening, let's say it's not easy to maintain correct angles with these sizes. Take a look at the Carving from Belgograd topic for a discussion between me and Alexander, designing a sharpening jig. I received brass and some other things for my design, will be working on it soon.

Use the forum search field above to search for other build logs of Bluenose. There are many, pick a couple that did a very good job and read all the way through, doing so will make your build go much more smoothly.

The degree to which you can bend wood is a function of how hot you get it for how long, at high temperatures the lignin that provides the strength of the wood structure gets progressively more flexible. The hotter you get it, the more you can bend it without fracture. That's why steam is much better for serious bending as it gets the wood considerably hotter without burning than other options.
 
She looks fine as is with the bow planks covered, so no worries, just something for the next time around. Good steam cleaners that produce lots of steam on demand are pretty cheap these days, and all you need is a clear plastic tube to attach to the output end of one of those and you have a perfect plank steamer. Leave them in there for 15-30min and you'll be able to tie bows with them. Ok you won't be able to tie bows with them but you can bend them around very tight curves. Look up Kortes' boier build, it's apparently against the law in the Netherlands for a boier yacht to have a straight line anywhere, and their hulls are closing in on being circular. He had to do lots of severe wood bending for that, all done with steam.

As Jon said, this is deck sheer and is one of the basic design considerations in building ships in the age of sail. Generally it went from very high sheer in the early carracks and galleons, slowly reducing over the age of sail until we had nearly flat decks just before steam engines arrived.

Good luck Gaetan we have faith in you

Had company for another week, and haven't gotten much done but am plugging away at the #%##@@#$@#$ rudder. Well not the rudder itself, it's ok, but the damned brass gudgeon straps that go on the hull, I have been driven past distraction to insanity.
 
Star Fleet personnel couldn't glue brass. I don't know why all frying pans aren't made out of brass, because nothing sticks to the stuff. Not even lacquer primer on a cleaned surface, just handle it for a few seconds and pieces will fall off. GAH!
 
I made the tiller as close as I could to one of the Tony's contemporary models, but this kit is designed with the tiller going around the top of the rudder rather than inserted into the rudder head as I see in the contemporary models. It's done except for a flat clear coat on the tiller.




 
In other news, I had lost my previous Dockyard Supervisor last year, her name was Takita. She sat in my lap pretty much every minute I was home for 16 years, because I was not competent to do much of anything without her input.

Yesterday I went to visit the new Dockyard Supervisor, who is also Tonkinese like Takita, but four weeks old. In two months when she is 12 weeks she will begin her education into how ridiculous humans are and how they desperately need cat supervision at all times.

 

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.

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.

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.

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.
 

Considering the Lady Nelson instructions consist of about two pages of "stick all the stuff in the box together", you'd already be way ahead of my choice with the instructions you get with this kit. And with minimal rigging and what looks like relatively straightforward planking, I think it would probably make a good choice.
 
If you want the argument against, it's pretty big and has a fair amount of fiddly-looking deck detail, you'll need patience for those. And if you're not just a novice ship builder but a novice making stuff, you might want to start even easier with like the Model Shipways rigged longboat.

Isn't this another kit that was designed by Chuck Passaro? You're right that you solved the problem well and are moving on, but out of curiosity's sake and future needs, you might could drop him a PM and see if he has any input on bending the wood that MSW is including in the kits these days. You're right, woods have different fundamental bending processes and you could do everything right and still have problems with certain woods.
 
The beauty of the steam cleaners is that you just tell the admiral you're buying an excellent tool for cleaning bathrooms and kitchens to total sterility, and she approves and awards you a medal of bravery  

Remember the primary red pigment of red ochre which was by far the most common red paint was iron oxide. Bright red isn't correct.

Unfortunately in my place I made the workshop impossible to cut off, seeing as it's the house's alleged dining room  I've had no problems with cats knowing that there are places they aren't allowed on, but of course the young ones will jump up just to prove they can the second you leave the house. So extra safety measures will be required at least until she gets out of bratty cat teenager phase.
 
I didn't have cats until I was 21, when I moved into a house with a girlfriend after college, and pretty soon there were four cats and three dogs. For whatever reason I picked up cat language pretty quickly and have had them since. My wives have always laughed at me having regular conversations with them as they follow me around the house and monitor my activities.
 
Progress remains slow, just haven't had much time to work on it, but steady in that I try to move forward a little bit every day regardless. Unless I talk myself into rudder pendants, the rudder is done. I just don't see pendants on the contemporary models, but I still find it hard to believe they'd go into the North Sea and the channel with nothing holding the rudder on but gravity. At least I'd feel like a colossal moron for drowning in a capsizing ship because the rudder just fell off and I had no backup to catch it.
 
This was also one of those cases where cup burs come into play. I don't use them super regularly, but when I do, boy howdy do they speed along the process. Here as you see below, after I tore off the brass and started using styrene, I drilled holes for .030" styrene rod, and after letting the CA set for 30 seconds on those rod pieces, I just clipped each one off close with a good nail clipper.
 
Then I went over them all with the right size cup bur in the rotary tool, and we have reasonably even nice rounded bolt heads very quickly. By the way, I drilled the holes in situ instead of on the mill or something to give it a more handmade look, but I ended up wobbling more than intended in a couple places. Rarely does a good idea go fully unpunished.
 
Next up is deadeyes, which I've started but am at the moment wondering how to chuck them somehow to properly round them off. I've tried a few things so far with no luck, I'm considering just drilling a hole through the danged things and then filling them later with side grain wood.
 
 

To return to another point of yours, how thin the blade is definitely matters, but it also matters in how often it needs to be sharpened and how strong that edge is. If you're making straight cuts and don't mind sharpening often, I long since had reached the same conclusion as you where the sharpest blade is achieved when each side of the blade is a whole bevel. I've been sharpening my detail/chip carving knives that way for a long time now, and I carved 90% of the chip carving below with a Hock detail knife sharpened that way.
 
The disadvantages are weakness under any twisting load, they have to be sharpened often, and sharpening takes much longer because you're hitting so much metal. Most of the knives I use for ship work aren't sharpened that way, they still have a big bevel but not the whole side of the blade. For me the only time the performance vs. drawbacks is positive is when I'm chip carving where you need well more than scalpel sharpness.
 
 

You know I seem to remember an argument some time back where you insisted nothing was as sharp as a scalpel  I'm glad you've seen the light (and the metallurgy). The only downside to Japanese knives is they push the hardness to Rc63-64 and therefore the edges can be brittle, don't try many twisting cuts with your new knife. 
 
And I agree with you about the weight, that's why I add the brass weights to my knives, to move the balance point to just ahead of center and to give them more mass for control.
 

Let's do a size comparison. Gaetan uses his GRS engraver's block to refine one small part of his ship. 
 

 
 
I use mine to hold my ship.

Important thing is don't think of them just as carving tools, think of them as the best micro joinery hand tools in existence, over half the set is straight and skew chisels, with the latter having left and right-hand single bevel tools in three sizes.
 
Speaking again about handles, if you intend to primarily carve with these get the palm handles as you see below. If you intend to use them for general ship joinery, get the pencil handles as they will be able to reach places these can't and will be more natural to people used to holding xacto knives.
 
I told Mikhail what I think he should do and I might do is pull the tools out of these handles, get a pencil handle set from him, and then modify the handles like graver handles with set screws to hold the tools. I first thought about cutting the wood part off on the lathe and then adding a threaded insert and switch between handles that way, but he has the tool a good 5cm into the handles.
 
 
My set:



 
This is what I mean about joinery, I decided to cut a rabbet on the stem for these inside planks, just because I could now with my spiffy tools. What you can't see is that despite the confined area and that the carved wood is cocobolo that never saw an edge tool it didn't hate, I was able to quickly cut a perfect rabbet that even has an angled bottom relative to the stem so it perfectly fits the square ends of the planks.

I figured you would have just worked from M. Boudriot's careful calculations of the amounts of wood of various types required. At least I remember him having good data for wood quantities, it's not something I look up on a regular basis. Although you're working at furniture scale, the easy calculations we use doing that wouldn't apply to an object where um, maybe 20%-30% of its internal volume is more wood structure in zillions of separate pieces, so I like your method of working off the volume.

In general there are many build logs and also many people who get started but never go beyond that. Add the fact that yes there is a bias for military vessels, and you're not going to have lots of people visiting right at the beginning. But if you keep going, people like Michael and Nils will find you and other people will see you're sticking with it and decide it's worth following along. So I think you'll find it worth it to keep taking those photos and posting them. Also, look around for other similar builds and stop by and say hi. And have a link to your build log in your sig. Lots of people don't have time to do lots of build log searching but they'll notice something waved around in front of them.
 
You already have people here very much worth having available to answer questions, look at some of their builds if you want an instant fit of jealousy  Or you just wait for Keith to post a pic of insanely nice little lathe. I'll be growing up next to Michael on the watchmaker life path next time around.
 

Very nice and straight and aligned, that's a very good start, looking around its surprising how little attention some people put to this crucial step. Making sure everything is aligned right at the beginning means everything else will go on without any gymnastics.

In general there are many build logs and also many people who get started but never go beyond that. Add the fact that yes there is a bias for military vessels, and you're not going to have lots of people visiting right at the beginning. But if you keep going, people like Michael and Nils will find you and other people will see you're sticking with it and decide it's worth following along. So I think you'll find it worth it to keep taking those photos and posting them. Also, look around for other similar builds and stop by and say hi. And have a link to your build log in your sig. Lots of people don't have time to do lots of build log searching but they'll notice something waved around in front of them.
 
You already have people here very much worth having available to answer questions, look at some of their builds if you want an instant fit of jealousy  Or you just wait for Keith to post a pic of insanely nice little lathe. I'll be growing up next to Michael on the watchmaker life path next time around.
 

We're going to need more boxes.

There are a couple hundred pitfalls you can drop into that are basically invisible until you've fallen into them, so don't get down, you fix whatever you need to and move on a bit wiser in the ways of building ships.
 
When it comes to gluing a piece back that has broken off, drill a small hole on each side and glue in a small dowel at the same time you glue the two pieces back together. It will make the joint much stronger. So one thing you definitely need is a set of small drill bits and a pin vise to hold them for drilling holes.