Medway Longboat - 1742 - 1:24 Scale - by Chuck Seiler

[Chuck Seiler]

    Yep.  Here I am, waiting for my longboat to come in.

 

    I wanted to get my sweep in the water for this one, but will hold off until the second batch.  I want to get more progress on my QAB and don't want to hog short-supply Medways.  However I do want to get started soon.  This will be fun!.

[Chuck Seiler]

    Huzzah!  My ship has come in!!! 

 

    I ordered the kit on 20 Nov and it arrived yesterday.  Pretty quick considering Thursday was a holiday.

 

    I'll start practicing making lap joints.

[Rustyj]

Congratulations Chuck. Looking forward to seeing your progress. 

[Chuck Seiler]

I am currently on road trip in Brian's (GuntherMT) neck of the woods:  Casa Grande and Yuma, AZ.  I thought I would be able to work on frames in the motel at night.   Yeah, well.......................

 

Here is a model of the Yuma Territorial Prison instead.

[Chuck Seiler]

    December 8th and I am finally underway.  Everybody else has shown you the various parts that come with the kit.  I got the same stuff.   The first thing I 'get' when opening the box is the cedar aroma.  Very pleasant.  It increases when sanding or sawing.

    The first order of business is the keel.  As most others have chosen, I am going to attempt the lap joint method and to do that I will be using the iGaging depth gauge discussed elsewhere.  First step is to test the process.

 

    Above is my Byrnes Saw with iGaging depth gauge and some test pieces.  I cut these from the same sheet that included the keel pieces so when I got the right depth dialed in, I would be ready on the actual keel.

 

    The gauge told me that my test keel was .167" thick.  I would set the blade at .083, giving me .001 to play with.  Fine tuning the height those last .001 inches was a chore.  I finally got what I thought was correct and started my cuts.

 

    The above photo shows the basic process.  The fence gives me a constant cut length, cut depth has been set into the blade.  These will be square cuts.  The cuts on the actual keel will require a little more creativity.

 

     A close-up of the cut.  First cut is at the deepest part of the cut (lengthwise) working my way to the end.  That keeps the whole piece stable.  Once the end is finally cut I have to be careful not to push down on the piece, thereby taking off more than desired.  Moving the piece back and forth over the center of the blade ensures a smooth cut.

 

    Cuts complete....

 

    ...and glued in place.

 

    Once dry and unclamped I could see that the cuts were a little too deep and the joint was uneven.

 

    Test showed that I did not measure from the center of the blade.  Blade height was actually .086".  I reset and tried again, ensuring I measured from center.

 

    Right on target.  We'll see how this works on the real keel.

Edited December 9, 2018 by Chuck Seiler

[Chuck Seiler]

 

    Using the procedures outlined above, I proceeded to cut the lap joints for the keel.  It was a little more difficult because we are dealing with angles that are not 90 degrees.  I marked each piece opposite the cut so I could align the edge of the cut with the blade.

 

 

 

    Since the blade is pre-set to the proper height, I had to use the slot forward of the blade to align each piece.  For 3 of the 4 cuts I set the mitre to assist with the cut.  AS you can imagine, there are alot of places small errors can creep in.  I decided to make my cuts a little short of the end line. That way I could correct for any errors in angle or location by cleaning it up with scalpel/sand paper/file.  I was glad I did this.

 

 

    After a little cosmetic sanding....I am pretty happy with the resulting joints.  Whadya think?

 

 

 

 

 

[Rustyj]

Very Nice! Always pays to test your cuts before going for the real thing.

[Chuck]

Chuck....any more progress.

[Chuck Seiler]

Huh?  Whaaa?  Who woke me up?

 

No further progress on the long boat.  I have it set aside for retirement.  As you may have seen, I have started at least one other (which is also on hold).

[fnkershner]

Chuck - I want to thank you for your detailed pictures using the Igaging device. I have been anxiously waiting for mine to arrive. It arrived yesterday and so I have been closely following your approach. But when I measure and set my blade I am getting too deep a cut. I have had to set my blade height to .045 inches. and I can't figure out why. I could go forward just testing over and over but I want this to turn out right, My measurements are the same as yours and yet when I set the blade height to the same setting as you do I cut too deep. Suggestions?

 

PS the simple keel has now been cut into several pieces for testing. So there is no going back 😅