Sharpie by Jim T - Scale 1:16 - SMALL

[Jim T]

This is the first post in my build log of the construction of the Generic Sharpie, based on my recently received NRG plans (ordered last Monday and received on Thursday). It was designed by Bill Strachan with the plans drawn by Al Saubermann.  The scale is 3/4" = 1' (1:16 scale). Bill also wrote a 277-page, step-by-step monograph to go along with the plans. This was the deciding factor in my decision to do this build. 

 

Before moving on, I'm posting some background info from my introductory post a few days ago:  Lately I've renewed my interest in model boat (notice I said "boat" and not "ship") building. I've been around boats pretty much all my life. I owned a commercial salmon troller (37') for 29 years and did extensive rebuilding of it (steel) during that time. I built a 16' Hartley Trailor Sailor (double chine plywood) some 40 years ago now. Also an 8' sailing dingy during that time. Since my teenage years my I've been in and out of building and flying model RC airplanes. A couple of years ago, I fulfilled a life time desire to learn about machining metal and purchased a Sherline lathe and mill and have built several model steam engines. I've been a lifetime woodworker and still have a fairly complete woodshop. As I eluded to, my main interest is in smaller boats that can be built in a larger scale (1:24 on up). Some years back (about 8 ) I purchased the Model Shipways "Glad Tidings" kit. After looking at it, I decided to get my feet wet with something simpler and started on the Model Shipways "Speakeasy" kit. I recently got back to the "Speakeasy" kit and am just now starting the planking process. I'm currently thinking about getting involved in Chuck's Medway Longboat group build and doing a build thread representing the bottom of the skill level ladder. I've done several build threads of my engine builds over on Model Engine Maker and they're quite fun to do. Plus, they're such a great platform for getting input, support and guidance from more skilled folks. Also, I'm going to order the plans for the NRG "Generic Sharpie" to look that over as well.

 

OK........ I received the plans, have been reading Bill's monograph and have decided this is the project for me. I'll keep pecking away on the "Speakeasy" build, but my main focus will be on the Sharpie. 

 

Here's the link to the plans: https://www.thenrg.org/plans-and-projects.php#!/Plans-for-the-Generic-East-Coast-Oyster-Sharpie/p/102467696/category=13294033

Here's the link for Bill's monograph: https://www.thenrg.org/resources/sharpie/nrg-sharpie-monograph-updated.pdf

I tried to add a link for DocBlake's Sharpie build thread, but got after I added it I couldn't add anymore to this post so I, unfortunately, had to delete it.

 

Don't want to get too windy in this post, so will end it and add more in future posts. 

 

Jim 

[Jim T]

OK let's see if I can get this picture posting thing figured out. 

 

Got the Building Jig #1 cut out, along with the Support Blocks for the Station Templates. Glued the paper patterns onto 1/8" aircraft plywood.

Milled the slots for the Station Bulkheads. My first time milling wood with my mill.........worked great! I was able to custom fit each Station Template as I went along. 

Moved the Building Jig and finished up the slots. 

PS: Here's the link to DocBlakes Sharpie build thread that I had to delete from the previous post: 

 

Edited October 28, 2018 by Jim T
Additional material

[Tigersteve]

Looking forward to following your project. 

Steve

[Jim T]

Thanks.

 

Got a little more done today. 

 

Cut out the station templates and got everything done except for the bevel on the sides. I'll wait until my new Byrnes Disc Sander gets here in a couple of weeks to do that part. 

 

Then I was able to get the material milled out for what will be Building Jig #2.

 

 

I'm really impressed with how easy it is to add pics to posts in this website.  Gotta try and not get too carried away! 

 

Jim

[Jim T]

Got Building Jig #2 completed. Once my lumber order arrives from Syren, I'll be ready to fabricate the keelson.

 

 

 

 

[Jim T]

The truck from the Syren Ship Model Co. showed up at my house today with my lumber order.

 

Alaska yellow cedar. I'm really impressed. Beautiful wood, nicely packed, along with a few bonus pieces. Chuck said that the lumber is as it comes off of his Byrnes table saw. I can see one of these saws in my future!

 

Guess I'm going to have to take time now to build a scale model shipyard lumber storage building. 😉 Back in my commercial fishing days I remember one time, when I had my boat hauled out at the Bumble Bee Shipyard in Astoria, Oregon, I discovered the building where they stored their boat building lumber............impressive.! I also remember that they had a machine shop that was still run off of overhead belts. 

[Jim T]

Cut my keelson stock today and milled the centerboard slot. The monograph does this keelson by laminating 4 pieces together. Decided I'd try and do it with a single piece. So far so good. It's nice to be working on an actual boat part...............however................ I'm really enjoying getting these building jigs set up. 

 

 

 

[Jim T]

Finished up the Keelson and it's now sleeping overnight in it's little water filled time capsule.

 

[Richard Griffith]

Hey Jim, you're off to a great start~!                    Duff

[Jim T]

Thanks Duff and Steve. 

 

I've really been enjoying this project. I like this 1:16 scale. Makes me wonder what 1:8 scale would be like. I've been reading through Michael Motts "Bristol Pilot Cutter" 1:8 thread. 

 

Jim

[Jim T]

Well after my overnight soak of the Keelson I put it in the keelson press overnight. Next day it had only bent about half of what I needed. So next I put the end with the bend in it in boiling water for a few minutes and then wrapped a wet paper towel around it and steamed it with an old iron. Then into the press overnight. Success!

 

 

I received my new Byrnes disc sander yesterday so spent part of the day bonding with it. What a nice tool! 

 

I've found some discrepancies in the plans between the station templates and the bottom view that the building jigs are set up on. Anyway, I took the bottom views to be accurate so spent part of the day resizing the station templates and gluing them in place. All seems good and will start fitting the chines tomorrow. 

 

[michael mott]

Looks like a great start Jim, I shall be following along, you mentioned that the yellow cedar was right off the Byrnes table saw, I am guessing that you meant the strips and not the sheets.

The Keelson looks great. Yes the 1/8th scale is fun but one is limited to the size of prototype to model, for small craft it really allows for some nice detail work.

 

Michael

[Jim T]

8 hours ago, michael mott said:

Looks like a great start Jim, I shall be following along, you mentioned that the yellow cedar was right off the Byrnes table saw, I am guessing that you meant the strips and not the sheets.

The Keelson looks great. Yes the 1/8th scale is fun but one is limited to the size of prototype to model, for small craft it really allows for some nice detail work.

 

Michael

Thanks Michael.

 

Correct............... I ordered enough strip wood for this project, plus some sheet stock. I have a 10" Delta Unisaw, but wasn't sure how well it would work on smaller strips and a Byrnes table saw (definitely on the radar after seeing the quality of my disc sander) would be about 4 weeks out after ordered. It's been enjoyable to think in terms of doing this build like a full size build.............only doing it scaled down. I still haven't been able to figure out how to scale myself down like you did though....................gotta work on that! 🤔

 

Jim

 

 

[michael mott]

Jim I also have a 10 in Rockwell  Unisaw I picked it up back in 1979 about 10 years ago I swapped out the 2 hp motor for a 3/4 one as i am not ripping up commercial quantities of lumber any more. What I really like about it though is the rigid, and solid nature of the blade mandrel and the cast top. The thin curf blade that I mentioned earlier that is designed for non ferrous metal gives and almost mirror finish on thin wood. I also use a micro adjustable fence that I show in this thread

 

Michael

[Jim T]

10 hours ago, michael mott said:

Jim I also have a 10 in Rockwell  Unisaw I picked it up back in 1979 about 10 years ago I swapped out the 2 hp motor for a 3/4 one as i am not ripping up commercial quantities of lumber any more. What I really like about it though is the rigid, and solid nature of the blade mandrel and the cast top. The thin curf blade that I mentioned earlier that is designed for non ferrous metal gives and almost mirror finish on thin wood. I also use a micro adjustable fence that I show in this thread

 

Michael

Thanks for the info Michael. I read the whole thread you linked to. Lot's of great info. 

 

Our Unisaw's might be twins. I think that's about when I got mine. Came with a 1 1/2 hp 230 volt motor that's still in use. I added a Biesemeyer to it about 30 years ago.

 

Anyway, after reading your linked thread, I was at Home Depot today, so I bought a 7 1/4" 140 tooth plywood blade (nothing special....$8.97) to try out. I needed two chines for my Sharpie build and one option was to mill them out. They needed to be 1/8" by 3/32 wide and cut at a 9 degree angle. I measured the kerf of my new blade to be .073" and 3/32" material width is .094. So here's what I did:

 

I set the blade to a 9 degree angle and ripped the edge of my 1/8" plank. Then I clamped my dial indicator that I use for setting up the 4 jaw chuck on my Sherline lathe to the rail for my saw fence and zeroed the dial. 

Ok......... then I moved the fence over .167 ( .073 for the saw kerf and .094 for the 3/32" width.............0.167").

And cut my chine. Then repeated the process.

It worked out great! The two chine pieces came out within .002" of each other. 

 

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but just wanted to brag a little and thank you for giving me a little input to think outside of the box. Next up is to fabricate a better setup for the dial indicator.

 

Jim

 

 

 

[michael mott]

Well that looks fantastic. see you can teach an old dog new tricks 😀

 

Michael

[Jim T]

I gave my newly cut Chine lumber a good soak and then bent it into place on Building Jig #1. While it was still wet I hit it with the heat gun that I've used, in the past, for shrinking monocote on my RC airplane builds.  I wanted to see if that would help then chines assume the proper bend. It worked great! Plus it dried the chines so I could continue work on them.

That done, after getting back from the pool, I spent the afternoon fitting the chines to the keelson at the bow. Then moved on to adjusting the notches in the station bulkheads to get the proper fit to the bottom structure drawing. 

I thinking I'm getting closer to being able to glue something to something. 🙂

 

Jim

[Jim T]

In between bouts of being outside getting fall yard work done, I managed to get the bottom planked (at least as far as it's going for now).

 

Next up is to start working on the bow stem area.

 

 

 

[DocBlake]

Jim:  Very nice work!  Did you have any problem fitting the chines? I may have made the notches a little too deep so I'll have to shim them, or increase the chine height slightly.

Edited November 12, 2018 by DocBlake

[michael mott]

Very nicely done Jim, are the plaks lapped at all or are they butted only?  I could not tell from the pictures.

 

Michael

[Jim T]

1 hour ago, DocBlake said:

Jim:  Very nice work!  Did you have any problem fitting the chines? I may have made the notches a little too deep so I'll have to shim them, or increase the chine height slightly.

Thanks Doc and Michael...........and others for the "Likes".

 

Doc........My notches were too deep as well (vertically). Didn't turn out to be a problem. The two important things were to get the keel perfectly fitted into it's notches (with a fair run) and to get the chine notches cut so the chine lined up with the chine line on the bottom view. I had to cut my notches a fair amount (toward the keel) to accomplish this. Then when planking the bottom I just raised the chine up in it's notches so the plank laid flat across the keel and chines. This left a gap under the chine, but wasn't a problem. I hope all that makes sense.

 

Michael.......the bottom planks were just butt jointed and edge glued. I like the idea of lapping them.........wish I'd thought of that. They're 1/16" thick so it'd of been easy enough to do.  I'll do a little research and see how it was done in the 1:1 world.

 

Jim

 

[DocBlake]

Thanks, Jim!

[Jim T]

Got started on the bow stem assembly today. 

 

The tricky part was milling the inner and outer pieces for the bow stem. The object of an inner and outer stem is that the rabbet for the side planks can be made without having to actually cut a rabbet. It sounds like this was an actual practice for these Sharpies (back in the day).

 

I cut 1 3/4" off of the end of a 3/16" sheet and made sure it was a true rectangle.

 

That piece was clamped to an angle block and ran along the miter gauge of my sander........set to 90 degrees. I was then able to sand a 20 degree bevel on one side. 

Turned it around and then sanded the other bevel.

After sanding a flat on the edge of the beveled piece I went back to the cross cut table and sliced off the inner stem.

 

Made the outer stem in the same manner. 

 

Got the Horizontal Support Log and Inner Stem glued up. May wait a bit before gluing the outer stem in place. 

I don't know if this is too much detail to post or not. My thinking was that it might be useful information it this should ever evolve into a group build?

 

Jim

 

 

 

 

[ccoyle]

9 hours ago, Jim T said:

I don't know if this is too much detail to post or not. My thinking was that it might be useful information it this should ever evolve into a group build?

I don't think it is too much detail, especially since you are the first to post a log for the sharpie here. I, for one, am enjoying watching your progress.

[Tigersteve]

A very precise build so far!

Steve

[Jim T]

Over the last couple of days I managed to get the Mast Step Locks and Mast Box Log built and fitted. The Mast Step Locks are those little angled pieces between the Mast Box Log and the chines. The only thing, of note, about them is that they needed to be beveled at 9 degrees to fit the angle of the chine. The Mast Box Log needed an angle sanded on the bottom which I'll address below.

The Monograph said that the bottom of the Mast Box Log needed to be sanded at a 4 degree angle to account for the rise in the keelson. However, I measured it to be a 1 1/2 degree angle. It IS 4 degrees as it related to the horizontal level line, but as it relates to the uprising keelson it measures 1 1/2 degrees. More on that in a bit. Anyway I clamped a piece of 3/16" sq stock in a tiny vise and slid the Log over that. Set the table on my (new favorite tool) Byrnes disc sander, angled the table to 1 1/2 degrees, and using the miter gauge as a fence sanded the bottom of the log. 

Set the Box Log in place and stuck a piece of 3/16" sq into the hole to simulate a mast and this is what it looks like. 

A 4 degree angle would of had the mast leaning forward quite a bit. The plan sheet, that shows the mast, seems to show the mast leaning even more to the rear. I think I'm not going to glue the Mast Box in place at this time In case it needs further adjustment. 

 

Jim

[Magic]

thanks for tip on 4 degree angle

 

[Jim T]

My last post on this build was Nov. 14, 2018. The reason being.......I hadn't done squat on it since then! ☹️  Davec's thread rekindled my interest.........sort of.  I got it back out and tried to figure out "where the heck was I"! I had a few pieces made for the stern, so thought I'd better at least get them glued on before I lost them.............which is what this post is about. Got that work done the last couple of days. Next up for me is to figure out the stern log construction. There's not a lot of information on the plans about that. However, the monograph seems to address that. Plus, when doing this type of boat construction, I think just doing what seems right will suffice. I have a hunch that that's what a lot of the original builders did. Lately I've been working on a CLC dory model project, so not sure how far I'll go at this time, but I am starting to feel the juices starting to flow a little bit.

 

Stay safe out there, Jim

 

 

[Jim Cricket]

Hi Jim,

Glad to see you back on it! I will come back when I have more time to read your log from the beginning. Nothing like having a few people working on the same, or similar, projects to get your interest piqued again. I'm trying to get a hole in my house closed up today (door repair). So this evening.

Thanks for posting,

Cricket

[davec]

Hi Jim - great to see you building again. I learned all sorts of things reading your log that will help me move forward - would be great to have someone else working on the same model at the same time.

 

Dave