HMS Winchelsea 1764 by Wyz - 1:48 scale

[Ron Burns]

Happy to hear you're staging a Winnie comeback  I've been plonking along at a snail's pace with this damn C-word recovery and pain seems to be it's middle name. My wife says it makes me a bit cantankerous but I say it builds character! Way to punch through it and keep going Tom!

[FrankWouts]

Hi Tom, my build has just started as well.
I hope you are fully recovered soon and that our builds of POF Winnie models  can go alongside,

as I'm sure I can learn a lot of you and your years of experience!

[wyz]

No, there will be no quitting with this project.  Thank you, Frank and Ron for your concern and best wishes.  I feel confident all of us will be moving our Winchelsea builds forward soon.

Tom

[wyz]

My back is healing, albeit slowly.  I've started my second solid hull Winchelsea, but only the prep work for actual construction.  The lift templates are finished, and I'm making steady progress on the hull shaping templates.  Still, it should be a couple of weeks until I can start making sawdust again.  If I hadn't been so crest-fallen when I hurt my back I might not have been so hasty to trash my first attempt.   The lesson:  If you make a serious mistake or some other tragedy befalls you put the project down and walk away from it for a while, at least until you are clear-headed again.  Oh, how I rue the decision to not do that.

Tom

[wyz]

Ok, I'm back up and running again.  The lift templates were done last week, and I'm now in the process of sawing the lifts to shape.  Yesterday I finished the hull shaping templates with the application of their 5th and final coat of polyurethane.  I will start showing pictures again when I have something new to show, so don't expect anything until I get to the point where I stopped working on Winnie I.  With my back feeling much better it's nice to return to the shop to work on the model again.

Edited March 11, 2021 by wyz

[FrankWouts]

On 3/11/2021 at 4:52 PM, wyz said:

Ok, I'm back up and running again.  The lift templates were done last week, and I'm now in the process of sawing the lifts to shape.  Yesterday I finished the hull shaping templates with the application of their 5th and final coat of polyurethane.  I will start showing pictures again when I have something new to show, so don't expect anything until I get to the point where I stopped working on Winnie I.  With my back feeling much better it's nice to return to the shop to work on the model again.

Very, very, good to hear that Tom!  Back problems are terrible, I can tell as I have some damage in my lower back on the left side. It sometimes takes me out for days or weeks! We'll be checking regurarly for your progress, as I think your work is very beautiful and methodically.
Keep on going Tom!

[Greg M]

Glad to hear you're back on your feet Tom.  Back problems are the worst and trying to rush recovery just seems to just make things worse.

 

I missed the conversation about the Baltic Birch and am glad everyone jumped in and said it was a bad idea.  I used baltic birch on my Winnie and fairing the inside of the hull burnt me out and put me in a building funk for the last 3 months.  If I could go back in time, I would have splurged on the National Balsa ply or ordered the bulkheads from Chuck.  Looking forward to checking back in on your progress.

[wyz]

Thank you, Frank and Greg for your best wishes concerning my back.  Daily exercises are helping to strengthen it and make it less likely I will hurt it again.  I'm moving along at a decent pace with the model.  Yesterday I glued the first four lifts together, and today I would like to do lifts 5 through eight.  Hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll have Winnie II ready to be mounted on the building board and ready for carving.  Yes!

[wyz]

 

     I've been working hard to get Winnie ll to the point where I was at with Winnie l just prior to me hurting my back, and tonight she makes her debut.  Is this version as heavy as the first hull?  No, no way, but it's still quite weighty at 24.8 lbs.  I lightened the hull but not appreciably.  She's still a big girl!  As you can see in the first photo I brought in some "heavy-weight" tools to trim Winnie down a bit.  When I shape a hull it's standard procedure to move many of the front shop room tools to the back. 

 

     Winnie ll is different from the first version in several ways.  I removed the horizontal arm reinforce pieces in the bow and stern, the model is hollowed out a little further, and I made changes how I attach the temporary keel to the hull.  In the past I just used #4  1 1/4" Phillips flat head screws, but in Winnie ll I drilled holes and inserted 1/16" diameter Birch dowels in the bow (4 in number) and stern (5 in number).  Why?  With the wood removed from the bearding line astern there simply wasn't much room on either side of the hull for even very small screws, especially if they didn't go in perfectly centered.  Now any slight error won't matter as I can sand or carve away any visible part of a dowel.  In the bow I used them for a slightly different reason.  As I shape the curvature of the hull it's simply easier to saw through or carve away a glued in dowel instead of removing screws. 

 

     It's time to make some saw dust, but there's one more thing I have to do before I start shaping the hull.  I need my friend to help me move and mount the Jet Air Filtration System in the back shop.  Dust is going to be a serious issue when I start sanding the hull.  There is no way I'm going to start without it. 

Tom

 

 

Edited March 21, 2021 by wyz

[scrubbyj427]

Looks good Tom, looking forward to seeing some more progress.

JJ

[FrankWouts]

Hi Tom.
Good to see your lovely and tidy workplace again and a new start on the solid Winnie hull.
I'm still astonished how you can make those beautiful lines from such an abstract piece of cubic art you
start off with, true mastership if you ask me!
Frank.

Edited March 22, 2021 by FrankWouts

[Ron Burns]

What an astounding comeback! You don't play around do you Tom? Truly fascinating watching you do your thing. I can't wait to see

your Winnie II come together. I get heck just cutting a few planks from the other half...I can only imagine the amount of dust you are going to kick up!

 

Ron

[wyz]

A big thank you to JJ, Frank and Ron.  This past month I've put in a lot of hours at the drafting board and in the shop trying to get Winnie ll ready for hull shaping.  Last night I broke out the gouges, chisels and mallet and cut loose on the port side of the hull.  Today I started in on the hull's interior with a Makita oscillating multi tool.  That tool makes the job much easier.  I still don't have the Jet Air Filtration System installed, so I can't use the Porter Cable belt sander with the 36 grit belt.  It will be up and running by Thursday evening.  That's ok, there's more than enough hand work to keep me busy until then on the interior and exterior of the hull. 

[wyz]

Over the past three days I started to shape Winnie ll with mallet, chisels, gouges, a block plane and a few power tools.  Exterior shaping is pretty much where I was at on Winnie l when I hurt my back, but the interior hollowing out is, as you can see, much further along.  Although the model is 6.2 lbs lighter than when I first began it's still quite heavy at 18.6 lbs.  The Jet Air Filtration System was suspended from the ceiling today, so I was free to use the heavy dust producing power tools.  Very soon I will start hull shaping with the set of plywood templates I made.  The photo of the work bench shows the tools I used on the first pass.

 

 

Edited March 26, 2021 by wyz

[FrankWouts]

I see a very nice layer of saw dust underneath your new air filtration system Tom, so a very good buy indeed it seems!
But the bigger particles still go down on the floor I guess? For me there's no way out, no escape, as I'm building in my attic, which was semi-transformed in an attic sleeping room, so my Admiral makes me vacuum clean it every day if I produced some dust...

[wyz]

Today, when I was carving out the interior of the hull, I came across something quite disturbing in the third lift from the bottom, a brown ribbon-like streak of what looks like rotted or partially rotted out wood.  I probed it with a dental tool in a number of spots and found that in some areas it had a sawdust consistency, while in others it was a little harder, but not much harder.   At first, I thought it was localized and tried to carve it out, but the more I did so the longer and deeper it became.  I continued to carve but nothing changed.  The problem is that I'm dangerously close to the hulls exterior in places, approx. 3/8", and I haven't even begun to shape with templates yet.  This is not good.  When I constructed that particular lift I had absolutely no evidence whatsoever of this problem, inside or outside.  What could it be?  I know my fellow Winchelsea builders are not constructing a solid hull, but I want to know if any of you have ever seen or heard of anything like this before?

 

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by wyz

[Hubac's Historian]

It sounds like spalt, but it could also be bug damage of some sort or other.  As your exterior hull will be planked, what do you think about injecting epoxy into this void, in order to solidify the material?  As you arrive closer to your finished dimensions, you may find it necessary to repeat the process, but that should restore your material integrity.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Hubac's Historian

[FrankWouts]

Hi Tom, If possible I would mill it out completely whatever it is. It’s better to get rid off it so the rest of the wood cannot be inflicted, whatever it may be, I have no idea what if might be precisely, but it looks like simple wood rot to me...Sorry for your extra setback and delay, but I’m sure you have the qualities and expertise to solve this as well.