The Hayling Hoy by jpalmer1970 - 1:48 scale - First POF build

[jpalmer1970]

I set about milling the steps in the fore deadwood. A depth of 1.5" needs to be removed from each side of the piece and I removed most of the required area on each side using the mill. I set the depth of the mill bit so that it was flush with the face of the deadwood and then I shimmed the deadwood up by the required amount so that I knew exactly how deep the cut was going to be. I found it was easier to judge the correct depth of cut this way rather than trying to set the mill bit to the correct depth. As you can see I left an area at the rear of the piece simply so that when I turned it over to mill the other side it was able to lay it flat and square on the mill table. These areas will be removed using a chisel when I come to fit the fore deadwood to the keel in due course.

After milling out the bulk of the area I then tidied the corners of the steps up using some small chisels.

There are in fact 6 steps in all on the fore deadwood and so I still have further steps to cut towards the rear of the piece. However, the steps toward the rear are extremely small and as I mentioned previously I found out that is easy to damage them when trying to fit and refit all the various pieces of the keel etc together. I will therefore wait until the piece is ready to be permanently affixed to the keel before I cut them and finalise that part of the work. At the moment the deadwood is also a little over length and needs trimming to size - this will also be done before the final steps are cut.

 

Here is how the stemson and the fore deadwood fit against the stem at present.

[druxey]

Nice methodical approach, JP. I notice some cross-grain on the stemson and fore deadwood. Try to minimise this by orienting the pieces when you lay them out on the stock. This will be important when  cutting frame components.