Advice Requested For Bending 1.5mm square walnut strip at stern

[Haliburton]

Hi everyone, I wanted to see if I’m on the right track to bend a strip of 1.5mm walnut to match the bend of the stern fascia on my Caldercraft HM Chatham Yacht build. The instructions call for the strip to be applied at the bottom of the fascia and I’m thinking of using a jig as shown in example 7 of the NRG article on plank bending. I know walnut is quite brittle so I want to be careful. A photo of the instruction showing the bend I need to achieve is in the photo below.  Any thoughts/suggestions are welcome, thanks, Scott 

 

[ccoyle]

That strip should be sufficiently bendy that soaking it and clamping it to the fascia until dry should do the trick. An inexpensive upgrade would be to replace the square stock (which is a simplified kit element) with beaded strip. Some modelers make their own with a homemade scraper, but you can also buy double-beaded basswood strip from BlueJacket. I used this on HMS Fly to good effect.

[Haliburton]

Thank you guys very much appreciated!   Scott

[allanyed]

Haliburton

It may help if you go over planking tutorials as the techniques could apply in this case as well.  You can cut to shape from a suitably thick sheet rather than use this straight piece, or soak it for a while in water and set up a jig and bend it and heat it with an iron as Chuck Passaro shows in one of the tutorials.   Heat is as important as the wetting process.  This method is similar to that advocated by the German model builder Gebhard Kammerlander. Not sure about walnut as many species of walnut are grainy and tend to be brittle thus split more easily than some other species of wood more commonly used for ship models over the centuries.

Allan