Norwegian Sailing Pram by Galkar - Model Shipways - 1:12

[Galkar]

After finishing the Dory, it's time to move on to the Norwegian Sailing Pram.

 

Starting with the transoms, the stern transom was easy enough. The bevel guide certainly made things easier, although it wasn't perfectly straightforward. I noticed partway through that I was sanding it pretty unevenly, so had to be pretty conscious on how I was applying pressure for the rest of it to try to get it to all come out evenly.

 

For the bow transom, I got a bit overeager with removing char and sanded the char off of the sides, forgetting that the instructions specifically say to not do that yet. Fortunately this was easily re-darkened with a pencil which worked just fine.

 

 

Unfortunately, beveling that transom to be flush with the knee did end up bringing the bevel past the pre-marked bevel line. I hope this won't cause any problems when attaching the planks.

 

Otherwise assembly of the transoms was easy enough.

 

Constructing the build board was a bit of a pain, unlike with the Dory. The two frames both very much did not want to fit into their holes, and so required a lot of careful sanding to ensure that they fit while still standing upright. I also drew a center line on the board and found that the bow transom holder slot wasn't quite aligned, so had to widen that and then add a shim to one side. I also accidentally snapped the arm of the stern transom holder while pushing it into the slot, but that was easily repaired with some scraps from the extra side cleats that came with the Dory kit.

 

At this point I am on the step for bending the first plank and have not had good success yet. For the Dory I followed the instruction's suggestion to soak the planks in hot water and then clamp them to the frame to bend. This worked well, but I didn't like the degree to which it raised the grain. Given that the instructions for the Pram provide other suggested methods besides soaking, I wanted to try something else this time around that wouldn't raise the grain so much. I saw in another build log someone had used some copper tubing held by pins attached to cork board to build a jig to hold the plank in shape for bending. This looked like a great idea, so I cut some cardboard to approximate the curve of the hull, built a jig with some copper tubing on cork board, and used my heat gun to try to bend the plank.

 

 

This did not work at all how I wanted it to. It turns out that push pins are wider at the bottom than at the top, which meant that the bits of copper tube would tilt when pushed on by the plank, meaning that, while the plank did bend decently well for the curve of the frames, it also developed a significant twist which I could not seem to get rid of. Thankfully the kit comes with a spare. For the spare I tried just clamping it to the frame and using the heat gun.

 

This did not produce anywhere near enough bend in the plank. This shouldn't be a surprise since the instructions do specifically say that you need to over-bend, but I was still hoping it would work a bit better.

 

This is where I am for the moment. It seems that bending is a significantly harder step here than it was on the Dory. For the Dory, the bending seemed to mostly just be a quality of life improvement to make it easier to glue the planks onto the frames, since the pre-cut shape of the planks meant the bend wasn't necessary for shaping. While the Pram does also have pre-shaped planks, in this case because we don't glue them to the frames of the building board, it seems that getting a good bend will surely be much more important for producing a properly shaped hull, as the rigid, locked-in frames will act as a helpful guide, rather than actually providing any support. I guess it's time to read a bunch of other build logs to look for ideas before trying again.

[vossiewulf]

Raising the grain is a small price for a good bend and can be quickly corrected either before or after you get the plank on.

 

But basically it's an issue of getting the lignin in the wood up to the temp at which it plasticizes, you can do it with hot water or a heat gun or even a hair dryer, see Chuck Passaro's planking tutorials, he just uses a hair dryer.