Which wood is best for steaming?...

[M.R.Field]

Hi all,

having got back into my model boats after a spell with other things, I am wondering about making a proper clinker model of a Norfolk Wherry.  I'm wondering which wood is best for steam bending as a double ended wherry needs some quite extreme bending and the planks will be 1/8th" thick in 1/16th scale.  I have some ash from my vintage car days, which should be nicely seasoned by now.  I know it bends well, but is it a long lasting wood if suitably protected?  This will be an R/C model, so will be well epoxied inside and out.

 

Martin

Edited April 28, 2020 by M.R.Field

[Jaager]

Ash is long lasting on land even if it is not very much protected. At least the shovel and mattock handles of tools I got from my contractor grandfather held up.  They had spent time in the rain and sun.  The summer wood was proud of the spring wood.  Bare wood, they were not pretty, but they were plenty strong.

For a display scale model, for any visible parts, Ash, Oak, Hickory have grain that is too stark and pores that are too large.  If painted, an extra step using a sealer to fill the pores is needed if a smooth surface is a target.  For structure hidden inside, these should work.

For your purpose,  I am thinking Ash should work just as you hope.  The epoxy will take care of any out of scale grain or open pore characteristics, especially if you finish with paint and not clear coat.

[Jaager]

As for steam bending, Holly is really good at this.  Unless you have or have a relative with Holly to harvest,  access to a kiln and can wait until Winter to cut down the trees,  you will have to use the snow white commercial stock.  For what you want to do, using store bought Holly would be a bit like making counterfeit pennies using Silver and spending it like a penny.

[vaddoc]

Beech and maple respond superbly to heat bending

[M.R.Field]

Thanks for your help, gents.

Jaager, I agree about oak at least, although I don't know hickory. I have ash from my vintage car body frames.  I had enough of oak's odd ways when i restored a 70 foot canal boat!

I shall use the ash I have and see how that goes. As a model of a Norfolk Wherry it will be black. Wherries were tarred every three years. The bottoms were various colours, usually pale green or brick red. The upper works were very brightly coloured, right up to the mast head where a large iron figure of a girl, called a Jenny Morgan which trailed a fathom of red fabric. The masthead had coloured loops that told any wherryman who the owners were and probably who was skippering it.  The sail was always black unless a new one was being stretched.  Dressed with soot and fish oil they were jet black and towered over the flat Norfolk landscape.

Now to get my drawings enlarged.

 

Cheers,

Martin

[Roger Pellett]

Spruce steam bends well and for an RC model is light weight.  The best spruce is  Sitka Spruce, look on the classified ad section Of Wooden Boat Magazine for suppliers although they may not be in a position to sell you a small quantity.

 

The poor boy approach is to go to your local lumber yard or Big Box home improvement store that sells 2x construction lumber.  This lumber is commonly marked SPF ( Spruce Pine Fir).  If you go through the pile, spruce is the whitest, the lightest, and doesn’t have the nice resinous smell of the others.  In fact in my opinion it smells bad!  Don’t try to find usable lumber in the 2x4 pile.  Look in the 2x8 or 2x10 piles to find usable, straight grained stock.  Since you are going to be ripping this up knots are not a problem as you can map out your cutting to avoid them.

 

20 years ago I rebuilt an Old Town wood canvas canoe dating from 1915.  I needed two 1-1/4in x 1-1/4in pieces of spruce for the inwales.  I bought a spruce 2x10 from our local Menards store and ripped what I needed from it.  It steam bent without a problem and the scrap left me with a lifetime supply of drafting splines.

 

PS- When I started composing this post, I didn’t realize that you were from Britain.  Reading clinker built wherry I skipped over the Norfolk and thought “Rowboat.”  My advice, therefore won’t apply to you.  Sorry!

Roger

Edited April 29, 2020 by Roger Pellett

[M.R.Field]

Roger, thanks for your response. We can get spruce, but it's very much in hobby sizes. I used to make miniature furniture and used spruce as the carcass wood, then veneered with the fancy stuff.

But I might be able to find some 1/8th" sheet. Not a bad idea, actually. Thanks.  Being a clinker boat, some of the planks will be a funny shape which I might not be able to get out of my available ash, so a typical 4" wide sheet of spruce from the model shop might well be the answer.

 

Cheers,

Martin