HMS Bounty Launch by Oakheart - FINISHED - Scale 1:24 – 18th century - based on drawings from National Maritime Museum

[oakheart]

Today
I am like a child in a sweet shop.
My order for Alaskan yellow cedar arrived. I know I'm supposed to be saving it until I know what I am doing..... But

I took some small pieces and cut a test rabbet, I can see now why people rave about this wood.

It is really nice to work with and looks amazing.
BUT I must go back to practicing with Basswood ( Lime ).

The rabbet was cut using a 10a scalpel blade which is my favorite tool.

Comments please.

 

 

Tim

 

 

Edited December 23, 2022 by oakheart

[oakheart]

Having told Shipman on allanyed's bounty launch log that I was going to make this build a boat as it was on the journey
ie. a very tatty looking boat at the end of the adventure.

I am now tempted to do two versions

1: using all of my tests and other bits I produce while learning: build the tatty version.

2: then build an unpainted raw wood version using my Alaskan yellow pine.

I do love the look of wood in it's natural state with just a lick of matte wax. We will see how it pans out.

 

Tim 

Edited December 23, 2022 by oakheart

[iMustBeCrazy]

8 hours ago, oakheart said:

I do love the look of wood in it's natural state

You tempt me to do a 1:24 in Huon Pine. Depends on how the 1:16 goes.

[oakheart]

A very Happy new year to one and all.

 

First delivery of the new year, a new set of clips ( clamps ) to help with planking.

After a quick test fitting of some small wooden extensions, they work well but have a tendency to slip on the frames, pushed up by the plank.

would a patch of sandpaper glued into the rounded part of the jaws help?

Has anyone tried this?

 

 

Tim

 

[iMustBeCrazy]

8 hours ago, oakheart said:

Has anyone tried this?

No, but I'm going to.

 

Ok, glue needs to dry.

 

Tim, your extensions might be a little long. You need to be able to clamp in as well as down:

And when you are doing it for real, sand the planks before fitting them, particularly the inside.

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by iMustBeCrazy

[oakheart]

57 minutes ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

your extensions might be a little long. You need to be able to clamp in as well as down:

And when you are doing it for real, sand the planks before fitting them, particularly the inside.

 

 

Thanks, I will try and shorten them first, then try the sandpaper trick

 

Tim

[oakheart]

1 hour ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

Tim, your extensions might be a little long.

Just tried shortening them, it made a big difference to the hold down.

This place is amazing, I could have spend days tinkering and trying different things, just ask and someone will help.

 

Thanks again

Tim

[allanyed]

Hi Tim. 

I notice you  have not marked the width  of the strakes on the frames.  How are you going to be able to know the strakes are the right width at each frame if they are not marked before hand?  As you know the width is dynamic so if you do not taper the widths as needed there will be problems later.  At your scale, probably every other frame should be marked.  Tick strips are the easiest way to go.  There is a detailed explanation in the Articles Data base here at MSW in the paper by David Antscherl.   https://thenrg.org/resources/Documents/articles/APrimerOnPlanking.pdf

 

I like your clamps.

 

 Allan

Edited January 3, 2023 by allanyed

[oakheart]

2 minutes ago, allanyed said:

I like your clamps.

Thanks Allan, the clamps came from ebay, about  £3 for a pack of 50.

I added the coffee stirrer extensions instead of the metal loop in the hope that will it not bruise the wood. 

The test shown is on my Version 1, rejected frames and molds with a stray piece of plank sized wood. This is not the real thing.... thanks for the link to the article.

Over the next few days I hope to get the latest version cut out, the printer is clunking away printing out the drawings ready to be pasted on the wood

I am going to try masking tape and pritt-stick to hold the paper template in place.

Masking tape on the wood, pritt-stick on the paper template, the masking tape comes off cleanly and I won't have to clean the pritt-stick off the wood.

I will let you know how it works.

 

Tim

[iMustBeCrazy]

38 minutes ago, oakheart said:

I won't have to clean the pritt-stick off the wood

If you do, just dampen the paper with a cotton bud (Q-tip) and it will peel straight off. It will leave a glue residue which will need to be washed off (again with a cotton bud). Practice on some discards.

[oakheart]

Finally got some time to do a bit of boat building.

 

Paper templates are glued in place, the wide smooth masking tape from 'Wilkos' is great for this, I also use it with CA to hold parts on the CNC machine.

 

Frames / molds cut out 

 

 

and test fitted to the new base/jig

 

 

These frames are to see if the sheet Obeche I have works for these frames. I am a bit worried it may not be robust enough.
I can see why they used floors and futtocks on the real thing, that way you can have the grain running in the correct direction for strength

That may have to be plan B. I can see that's what Glen is doing - but then he must be crazy.......

The Tape / Pritt-stick  worked well, no lifting or buckling, so I will be using it on the rest of this part of the build.

Tim 

[iMustBeCrazy]

3 hours ago, oakheart said:

I can see why they used floors and futtocks on the real thing

They also used bent trees, modelling woods tend to come with straight grain so many of the futtocks will have short grain at some point.

[oakheart]

7 minutes ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

They also used bent trees

Believe me I have looked round the garden for suitable twigs or branches.........

 

Tim 

[iMustBeCrazy]

20 minutes ago, oakheart said:

Believe me I have looked round the garden for suitable twigs or branches.

You should have started putting 'bends' in twigs twenty years ago.

[allanyed]

15 hours ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

They also used bent trees

 I remember seeing the intersection of branches and trunks, and roots at the stumps used for knees and the like but training bends in trees for frame parts was a new one for me.   How on earth did they do that with an oak tree?  

 

For model size parts, apple orchards prune every year and have thousands of branches that are miniature versions of what the shipbuiilders harvested from the forests in full size. Pear and cherry would also work well.   Not so sure about citrus. 

 

A few months in a dry basement or a day  in a kiln then cut away to your heart's content.   For smaller scales I found this to be tedious beyond belief, but for large scales like yours, it might worth the effort. 

 

Allan

[iMustBeCrazy]

29 minutes ago, allanyed said:

How on earth did they do that with an oak tree?  

Initially and for larger timbers they found trees that had partly fallen over and continued to grow. Later, for smaller timbers they tortured them in diabolical machines.

[allanyed]

4 minutes ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

diabolical machines.

Looks like a takeaway from a torture dungeon 😀

[oakheart]

Talking of timber for making ships about 15 years ago I was talking to a park ranger at Croft Castle in the UK and he told me a story, about the trees on the Ancient Tree Walk. The trees themselves are thought to be over 400 years old.
The story is that the chestnut trees were grown from sweet chestnuts that were taken from the captured Spanish ships at the time of the Spanish Amada.
It is also said that a planting regime of Oak Trees (English) and the Sweet Chestnuts (Spanish) in the grounds at Croft represents a battle formation during the Spanish Armada.

He gave me a twig from one of those trees, about 7 inches long it looks the part for the stem, but there is no way I could use Spanish chestnut on the model of the Bounty Launch.

 

 

I do that walk frequently, I need to look for an Oak twig ………….

Tim

Edited January 8, 2023 by oakheart

[oakheart]

Managed to get two versions of the keel cut today.

One in plywood the other in cedar.

 

 

Learned that it's not a good idea to try and do this kind of work in a mainly metal workshop.
Pick the wrong piece of sandpaper ( wet-n-dry ) and the wood gets very grubby ..... lucky it was the ply version.

 

I will use the ply version while fairing the frames. It was good practice for cutting the 'good ' version

 

Pleased with the good cedar version

 

 

it all needs careful fettling now. It's really easy with this soft cedar to round over the edges, I will have to watch that, I'm too used to brass

which needs a lot more elbow to make it conform

 

Tim

 

[allanyed]

Hi Tim

Sorry if I am being dense here but I really do not understand why there are notches in the keel.  The keel was 3 3/4" square at midships (0.156" = 4mm at your scale) and tapered to 3 3/8" X 3 3/4" at the stem and post.  Is it to help locate where the frames go?  That makes sense, as in the end the floors will be hidden from view anyway.   Looking forward to the next update, thank you kindly for sharing your work with us.

Allan  

[oakheart]

20 minutes ago, allanyed said:

Is it to help locate where the frames go?  That makes sense, as in the end the floors will be hidden from view anyway.   

 

Hi Allan, not dense at all, yes its to locate and strengthen the frames. As you say it will not show.
That's also why I am being lazy and making the frames in a single piece, rather than like CrazyCraig who is making floors and futtocks.
At our scales that would get really fiddly, with the floor boards in place this difference will not show.

 

Tim

 

 

 

 

 

[iMustBeCrazy]

59 minutes ago, oakheart said:

That's also why I am being lazy and making the frames in a single piece, rather than like CrazyCraig who is making floors and futtocks.
At our scales that would get really fiddly

It was fiddly enough at 1:16, I had to nest several pieces together, sand the inside of the top one on a spindle sander, cut the top one off then proceed to the next. Then I had to sand the outside of each piece on a disk sander without sanding too much off my fingernails, I only had 3mm to hold on to. All done now but it's a tiny pile of matches for a lot of work.

[oakheart]

With the cutting of the frames well underway, I now have to start thinking about the planking.

I have some 0.8mm basswood sheet which I will use for the as sailed version.

But the 1.5mm thick Cedar strips I want to use on the raw wood version, need to be reduced down to about 0.9mm to be accurate for the 1:24 scale.

I don't have a thickness sander, but I do have a mini mill and I have seen people cobble together a sanding drum on a pillar drill to do thicknessing of strips. It could work using the mill spindle head with a shop made sanding drum.

 

Question : has anyone done anything like this?

 

I should have known it would be like this, one thing leads to another, a very deep rabbit hole...

 

Tim

 

 

 

 

 

 

[iMustBeCrazy]

22 minutes ago, oakheart said:

Question : has anyone done anything like this?

 

All sorts of things.

 

The drum is two (more or less) bits of MDF cutout with a hole saw, drilled and tapped, epoxy applied to the bolt and mating surfaces, screwed on to the bold and lightly tightened together like lock nuts. The head of the bolt is cut off. Once cured it is fitted to the drill and sanded while spinning with a bit of sandpaper on a square block. Sandpaper is then glued to the drum with contact cement, you could do two different grits at different heights. No overlap and as small a gap as you can. The fence must be square, a bit of aluminium extrusion would be nice but wood will do if square.

A vacuum to suck up the dust and clean the drum and you're done.

 

[oakheart]

2 minutes ago, iMustBeCrazy said:

All sorts of things

Thanks, Good to know it does work, I have some aluminium bar which I could turn down in the lathe for a drum, stick some sandpaper on it and give it a try.

Having mainly worked with metal for the last few years, the metal bar seems easier than the MDF for me.

 

Does the diameter of the drum make a big difference ?

I guess I should make several sizes ?

 

Tim

 

[iMustBeCrazy]

3 minutes ago, oakheart said:

Does the diameter of the drum make a big difference ?

Only if you're doing inside curves like my futtocks. The contact area doesn't change much. Mine is about 40mm.

 

Make sure you can grab the far end before you have to stop pushing and wet fingers helps prevent slipping. Go slow and take a little off at a time.

[Wintergreen]

8 minutes ago, oakheart said:

Does the diameter of the drum make a big difference ?

Hello Tim!

Just happened to see your log.

Diameter makes a difference, both the obvious radius, but I guess also that larger diameter has more mass to it and depending on your drill it can maybe affect performance.

About grit you can always take inspiration from like Byrnes thickness sander, what grits are available for it. 

On my homemade thickness sander I went up from 150 to 120 after initial tests. A smooth surface is then quite quick to accomplish with 180 and finer.

 

Cheers!

(will read your log once off work...)

[oakheart]

 

Mini Mill as sanding thicknesser, proof of concept.

 

A quick test using a 12 mm Dia. Dremel sander drum some ali. angle and a band saw cut pine strip.

Well it works with a few basic things that I need to address:

The base of the drum needs to be below the bottom edge of the strip or it leaves a ridge.

The drum needs to be straight sided - the Dremel tool has a slight bulge to it.

The drum needs to be wide enough to cover the whole strip

 

Even with this very crude setup, using the movement of the Mini Mill table cross slide I could accurately sand down to 0.5 mm

It feels very controllable, so now off to make a more substantial drum and angle guide

Then test with different grits.

 

Thanks for the tips guys.

 

Tim

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by oakheart

[Wintergreen]

On 12/23/2022 at 12:50 PM, oakheart said:

I am now tempted to do two versions

1: using all of my tests and other bits I produce while learning: build the tatty version.

2: then build an unpainted raw wood version using my Alaskan yellow pine.

Making two versions is a good approach. I did something similar with my "Kågen" build (see my signature). I knew that I would screw up the first attempt so starting over was mentally okay with me.

Re the drum sander, speed or rpm is an issue as well. To fast and you will burn/char the wood. (ask me how I know...). Like, the Dremels 5000 rpm is too fast as a comparison. 🙄

Keep it up!

[oakheart]

10 minutes ago, Wintergreen said:

Making two versions is a good approach.

 

Thanks for the encouragement.

 

I will do some testing on the speed of the drum as well, thanks

 

Tim