Framing, best materials

[Levmiller]

What’s the best wood for framing. Is ash a good wood?

[Jaager]

Ash, like Hickory and any Oak, has open pores and a distinct and distracting grain.  This causes any one of them to be a poor choice for any part that is to be left natural.  It also requires that the pores be filled if any of these species are to be painted.

If the framing is to be completely planked over and the deck is completely planked, Ash will serve, since it will be totally hidden.

 

Pet peeve about the internet:

Now, about your question as asked,  This is not any sort of competition.  A ranking based on some arbitrary score serves no purpose.  Using the superlative tense is some creature of the internet, and in most cases takes a discussion in a non productive direction. In addition, the best in a group that is all crap, is still crap.  A productive ask would be a search for excellence.  You do not supply your location on Terra.  If you are located in eastern North America, and you are seeking commercially available domestic wood that is a reasonable price,  Hard Maple and Black Cherry are excellent species to use for framing.  If you can harvest, mill and season your own wood, the choice of excellent species becomes a much larger one.

[Bob Cleek]

2 hours ago, Jaager said:

If you can harvest, mill and season your own wood, the choice of excellent species becomes a much larger one.

 

And that's a huge understatement. The world is full of great modeling wood species. Many aren't commercially viable at all because they don't grow large enough to produce anything other than small pieces. In fact, those small, slow growing species often produce the best modeling wood species of all. Think "boxwood" and "holly," etc. I just had a three inch thick branch break off of a persimmon tree on my property. I'm looking forward to seeing what I can mill out of that. I expect it will be great modeling wood. (It's main commercial use once upon a time was for carving golf club driver heads.) Good luck trying to buy some at your local lumberyard. And the best thing about harvesting your own wood is that it's all free!

[wefalck]

Difficult, if you are city-dweller in an appartment ... I once kept a branch from a cherry tree in my parents garden, but never found a way to have it cut up.

[Levmiller]

I am in Ontario, Canada, and I have a lot of Ash I harvested myself. So if I can use it for this would be a bonus. 

[wefalck]

The concern about the visibility of the grain aside, it probably depends on the scale and type of the model and whether you are thinking of bent or sawn frames ... otherwise, what works for you on the practical side and what pleases you visually should be the guide. Perhaps from trials to test the workabiliy and how it looks with the desired finish would be sensible before embarking on full-scale parts production.

[garyshipwright]

Hi Levmiller.  Have you thought about hard  Maple. It's a good looking wood and built Richard's frames from it. Its also good for full size furniture like a hobby desk and woodworkers bench. I  prefere a light creamy type of wood such as para marfin and castillo box wood and use woods like pear for accent's. The model am building today have para marfin for the frames and really like the color of the wood. Came out like a honey looking color.  Gary

[ChrisLBren]

Personally I prefer Swiss Pear - bought a flitch of it a few years ago from this business 

 

https://www.rarewoodsusa.com/

 

I do own a 10 inch Dewalt saw, along with the Byrnes tools - but what I have very helpful is having a relationship with a cabinet maker.  My resource lives close by and with their industrial equipment can break down boards to useable dimensions.  Its much cheaper than buying pre dimensioned wood and less messy in terms of saw dust.  

[allanyed]

Lev  

Are you going to build the frames as was done in real practice or will they be paired/sandwiched frames?    If the former, any of the woods mentioned work well as well as castello and others.  If you are going to make paired frames wherein there are two laminates, you can go with an inexpensive species such as poplar, especially if you are going to plank over the entire hull.     

Allan

[Chuck Seiler]

I have used cherry in the past with much success.  SYREN used to carry it, but no longer does.  😢  I got my last batch from Ocooch Hardwoods. 

 

https://ocoochhardwoods.com/

[Maury S]

I prefer Box which is impossible to find any more.  Years ago I used Cherry for frames on the Fair American (Lauckstreet kit) and the color has deepened to a beautiful brown. 

Maury

[Jaager]

On 10/7/2020 at 2:34 PM, allanyed said:

Are you going to build the frames as was done in real practice or will they be paired/sandwiched frames? 

I forgot to comment on this.  I disagree that bends - paired frames with timbers overlapping the butt joins of the partner - were not "real practice".  It is a bit difficult to be sure how 1600- 1719 hulls were framed.  But after that ( up until ~1860 ),  I see bends as being the major framing structure.  In France and North America, almost all of the frames tended to be bends, at least as far as the plans that I have explored present..    The English used bends where the stations lines are sited.  The frustrating factor here with traditional model frame lofting is that the stations defined the shape of a bend at the midline. This makes it nit useful  to define  the shape of a glued up bend.  For English ships, in the middle of the hull, the stations tended to define every other, or every third, or every fourth bend _ depending on how lazy the draftsman was.  The English tended to use singleton free standing filling frames between bends.  I do not see this  use of filling frames as being done  much in North America or France.

 

For POF ship models, there are two commonly used touch stones - Davis and Hahn.  

 

Davis came from a background of wooden shipbuilding around 1900 era.  I think there was a break with the traditions from pre-1860 and more influence from iron and steel engineering at play, and they framed all bends , but room = space.  His books describe a method that is pretty much determined by his work experience.  He was not an academic. 

 

Hahn had as a focus the time period of the American Revolution.  There was a fad then of framing warship hulls with almost no space between bends or filling frames.  Hahn wished to display the frames, by leaving some or all of the planking off.  It would be pointless to display framing as a near solid wall of wood, so he omitted every other bend.  It is a modeler's convention, not a reflection of framing practice at the time.

 

From 1719 to the 1770's and after 1815 - if not earlier, the general practice looks to me as being ~ 2/3 wood and 1/3 space for everywhere but England. 

As an aside, I suspect that the effort expended on NMM plans showing the framing was because the framing was different from standard practice.

 

To add to the answer to the OP"s original question:   a serious factor to consider in your choice of framing wood is cost.  If  1:72 to 1:48 is your choice of scale,  there will be a lot of wood being used.  No matter which style of framing is used, because of the curving and the beveling,  there will be a lot of wood lost to waste.  The Hahn style of bonding wood slabs for the timbers and fixing the pattern to it to free the bend shape involves the most waste.  By dropping every other bend, it saves on a lot of wood so it becomes closer in loss to waste when compared to methods where the individual timbers are cut out and then bonded.   But never the less, there will be a lot of wood used. 

My theory:   A magnum opus of a large scale 17th century floating palace with museums' full of carvings and sculpture may rate a high cost exotic hardwood as the framing species,   The more utilitarian and prosaic vessels and the run up practice models would do as well using a species that is economical and not difficult to obtain.