Zeehaen 1639 by flying_dutchman2 - 1:37.5 - Dutch Fluit of Explorer Abel J. Tasman

[kees de mol]

Nice to see the hull is getting shape. Lots of work, lots of fun in front of you!

[flying_dutchman2]

Thanks for all the likes and comments. 

 

It has been an interesting week, with some big mistakes on the bow. Made several horizontal and vertical templates to fit around the bow and nothing would line up. 

 

Then it dawned on me after a couple of days that the bow was 38mm too long. I had added an extra bulkhead to the ship. 

 

So I sawed it off, balsa cuts easy, and a bit of sanding it was ready for the little piece of the bow. 

Resawed a new bulkhead # 95 and glued it to the balsa spacer. 

Now it will dry. 

Marcus 

[Piet]

Hello Marcus,

 

Great to see your start on the Zeehaen.  I love those Dutch ships. 

I too have the same books and like to brows through them so once in a while. 

 

Cheers,

[Omega1234]

Hi Marcus

 

What’s life without the odd boo boo, or two, every now and then, hey?  No dramas.  Nice save on the bow.

 

I’m looking forward to the next update.

 

Cheers

 

Patrick

[flying_dutchman2]

Been a while since I've worked on the Fluit with the great weather and my edible garden in full production which is in a need of my attention. Furthermore, in the last 4 weeks I have manned the woodworkers booth on 2 occasions. 

I entered my Boyer and the Windmill in the woodcraft catagory and won 1st place for the Windmill in the mixed woodcraft catagory and 1st place, Sweepstakes and Best of Show in the all woodcraft catagory. 

 

I glued balsa wood in between the bulkheads and started to shape the outside of the hull with very coarse sandpaper.

Marcus 

 

[mtaylor]

Congratulations, Markus.  You deserved it.

[flying_dutchman2]

Last Saturday I felt like I had an upset stomach and then spiked a temp of 103.

Went to the ER. After all the tests came back the CT Scan showed an enlarged, encapsulated, appendix which had ruptured as well. 

Got operated on it. Was in the hospital for 5 days. Now home and recuperating. 

Marcus 

[amateur]

Oops.....

Good luck you were on it in time.

take care!

 

Jan

[G.L.]

Wishing you a good recovery.

[flying_dutchman2]

9 hours ago, amateur said:

Oops.....

Good luck you were on it in time.

take care!

 

Jan

Doc said that if I had waited until the next day, I would have died. 

Marcus 

[cog]

Ruptured appendix is dangerous as the doc said. Glad to see you back amongst us. Take your time recovering!

[mtaylor]

I'm happy you didn't wait on going in, Marcus.  Hope the recovery goes well and is uneventful.

[Piet]

Ouch Marcus!  Glad you went to see medical help when you did.  Yeah, I remember going through the same thing when I worked for KLM in Amsterdam.  No fun, was out of work for 4 weeks, complications set in.

Take it slow Mark, the wood is patient.  Hope the recovery goes well and swift.

 

Cheers,

[flying_dutchman2]

Thanks for all the well wishes. I am completely healed. Still need to take it easy. Not carrying 60lbs of goods, yet. 

 

Been sanding the outside of the hull which is now 90% complete. 

The stern will probably be the most difficult part. In the last month I have been looking at pictures of Fluits. In books and the Net. Staring at the curvature of the stern. I need to be able to visualize it in my head. 

 

Temporarily attached the stem, keel and stern to the ship. I need a decent fit before I permanently glue the pieces in place. 

Marcus 

[Ab Hoving]

Your hull looks horrible :-)). Don't worry though, the planking will hide it all.

The trick with the planking is that you will have to judge the run of the wales only from the side. They all seem to have the same regular distances. But seen from above you get a varying width between some of the wales, especially in the aft part. It even needs extra planks there. Once you have those wales in the right place, nothing can go wrong.

Maybe this picture can give you a bit more information of how it works:

As you see my hull looked terrible too, but the end result was satisfying.

 

Edited October 2, 2019 by Ab Hoving

[flying_dutchman2]

18 hours ago, Ab Hoving said:

Your hull looks horrible :-)). Don't worry though, the planking will hide it all.

Thanks for the advice. All my hulls look like this one or worse and as you said, "the planking will hide it". 

Marcus 

[flying_dutchman2]

Completed the sanding of the hull to its required shape and glued in the stem post, keel and stern piece. 

From the above pictures on can see the extreme curves of both the stern and the bow. Should be a fun project planking them. 

 

Rough cut the top of the railings. 

 

The next step is to figure out where the wales are going to be. This is very important. Once wales are installed the rest of the planking is easy. 

 

Marcus 

[Louie da fly]

How did I miss this build? I once played with the idea of doing a diorama of Tasman's ships anchored off Tasmania, but too many other projects to get past the idea stage.

 

Beautiful job, Marcus.

 

Steven

[flying_dutchman2]

On 10/9/2019 at 6:22 PM, Louie da fly said:

How did I miss this build? I once played with the idea of doing a diorama of Tasman's ships anchored off Tasmania, but too many other projects to get past the idea stage.

 

Beautiful job, Marcus.

 

Steven

HI Steven, 

Thanks for the compliment. 

Your plan is what I have been thinking about since I got the plans and the book. 

One problem, it will be a huge display, something like 4x4x4 feet and I don't have the room for that. Need to donate it as soon as it is completed.

(I am getting ahead of myself) 

 

Marcus 

[flying_dutchman2]

Guesstimated where the lower wale will be installed and marked it with narrow tape. The 3 lower wales are 6mm wide and 6mm apart from each other. The 2 upper wales are 10mm apart from each other. 

Lower wales green, pink and blue tape. Upper wales purple and brown tape. 

Next exercise is to completely soak several pieces of walnut and bend them according to the flow of the tape and use as many pins needed until the wood is dry.  Once the wood is dry, remove tape and glue the wale in place. 

 

Marcus 

Edited October 11, 2019 by flying_dutchman2
Add

[flying_dutchman2]

Wale installation.

So that the wale would follow the curve of the Fluit, I created 1cm long blocks with a hole in it. The hole is for a push pin.

I line up a block to where the bottom edge of the walnut plank is to be. All blocks are push pinned Into a bulkhead. 

Then I get 2 pieces of 2mm thick by 6mm wide by 50cm long walnut planks (soaked for several days in water) and slowly bend and push against the block each of the plank along the curve of the Fluit. The planks overlap and somewhere I lay them on top of each other and cut several notches so they will lay tightly together. 

 

This is the most challenging part of building the Fluit. Once that is done, the rest of the planking will be easy to install. 

Marcus 

 

[G.L.]

1 hour ago, flying_dutchman2 said:

This is the most challenging part of building the Fluit. Once that is done, the rest of the planking will be easy to install. 

Marcus 

 

Marcus, I am convinced that many more challenging parts will follow.

[flying_dutchman2]

Installed more wales on the hull. There are 5 wales on each side.

Three wales equally spaced. 

2 wales equally spaced. 

Stern

Bow

 

Wales:

There will be 3 strips of 2mm thick glued on top of each other. Each wale will be 6mm thick and the wood is walnut. 

 

The rest of the ship: 

1st planking layer is basswood and second layer is cherry. What I like about cherry is that it darkens over time. 

 

Last month at the woodworkers club meeting I was given lots of walnut and cherry planks so that is the wood to be uses for planking. Furthermore, someone gave me a slab of basswood (12"x 12" x 2").  This wood I will use for the carvings. 

 

Marcus 

Edited October 16, 2019 by flying_dutchman2
Punctuation

[flying_dutchman2]

Thanks for all the likes and comments. 

 

On both sides of the Fluit the lower 3 wales have been glued on. The 1st upper wale is pinned to the hull and drying. Towards the stern this plank has to be bend in two different directions. 

Lots of pins used, a "PIN FOREST" 

Stern. 

 

After the 3 lower wales with enough space between them for the 1st layer of planking, I should have done this differently. 

 

After the 1st lower wale, I should have installed a strip of basswood next to it and then a strip of walnut, etc.  Instead, I made little blocks and pinned those between the wales.

Complete Waste of Time!!  Oh Well....... 

 

Started planking the 1st layer with basswood started with strips next to the keel. I was going to follow the planking pattern from the Fluit pictures in the book but they are all different so I will follow the pattern from the Boyer which is similar to Fluit planking.

Marcus 

[flying_dutchman2]

More planking of the 1st layer. Planking the area between the stern and where the poop deck is to be placed is a challenge. Basswood soaked for 4 days to get it thoroughly wet, then slowly bending it 2 ways and pinning it down with pushpin. Lots of pins used.

 

It is a tedious process. 

 

Marcus 

[flying_dutchman2]

Here is some more planking 😁, the walnut shows where the wales are going to be.

Getting a bit boring? 

There is progress...... 

Bow

Stern

Marcus 

[flying_dutchman2]

More planking. This time, besides push pins there are clamps as well. Building up the back of the ship. 

She is looking good, nice curved hips 😁.

Not a straight line anywhere in the first layer of planking. 

 

Marcus 

[flying_dutchman2]

Thank you for all the likes. 

 

I am going to try to explain this and if you don't understand, please feel free to ask questions. 

 

I wanted to plank the Fluit in similar ways as the models in the 17th century Dutch merchant ships book, pages 73 to 77 (look below, pictures from the book and the model). 

 

The wales were installed first and I followed the contours of the ship without a problem. 

 

Then started planking going up and down from the wales and there I got into trouble. Also planked few strokes away from the keel.

 

The models in the book show the following: the plank is at its lowest around the middle of the ship. 

It then slightly curves up towards the bow and the plank butt, ends up straight at the stem post.

From the bottom wale going up, planking is easy to execute, lots of curves but nothing extreme.

 

From the bottom wale going down, every planking strip becomes difficult to execute. Not only curved like a 'smile', but the plank is also curved inward (when you hold a plank by its sides with your thumb and pointing finger and putting pressure on the fingers to bowe the plank lengthwise).

 

All plank butts, end up on an angle against both stern post and stem post on the model.

This is not like the models in the book.

Bow

Stern

 

 

In the book the stern area is much more bowed then my model. The models in the book have fat hips, whereas my model has skinny hips. It still curves. (I'll figure this out when I built my next sectional Fluit, just the bow and the stern).

Fat hips

Skinny hips 

Fat hips 

Furthermore, when I cut out the stern bulkhead #5, #10, #15 and #20 and spaced them 38mm of each other it was what the plans looked like.

Looking at the models in the book bulkhead #0 (if there is such a thing) is the same width as bulkhead #5.

 

Conclusion 

I read on other forums that planking a Fluit was a difficult exercise. (maybe I should have built a Cat first, which is similar to a Fluit).

I cut out the bulkheads correctly and lined them up with spaces correctly.

I am just not getting the fat hips.

*********

I could start all over......... not doing that. 

 

I could saw (cut off) her where bulkhead #30 is and recreate the ship from bulkhead 5 to 30 with bigger hips.

 

Leave the ship as is and install the second layer of planking like what the book shows.

See if it is possible to built up both the bow and stern to get the results (bigger hips) of what is in the book.

 

If you got this far, thank you for reading.

 

Marcus

[GrandpaPhil]

Leave as is and build up.  That’s my vote.  I did it with my Victory using wood putty.

 

 I shaped it with a Stanley hand plane.

Edited October 31, 2019 by GrandpaPhil

[mtaylor]

I'm seeing fat hip.   Try taking a sheet or two paper and hang them straight now from water line.  I think you'll see them.  Either way, follow Phil's advice.