Bateau de Lanvéoc by JacquesCousteau - Scale 1:32 - From Ancre Plans

[JacquesCousteau]

Lots of ups and downs, but I've made some progress on the Bateau.

 

First, I advanced a bit on the building jig, although I still need to file the frame notches to the proper size (I forgot to bring the files that day) and add the bolt, nut, and washer assembly that will hold the jig up properly.

 

I also decided to try cutting out my first frame. 

 

The first futtock turned out great. For the second, though, I didn't leave enough space cutting outside the line, and somehow managed to cut at a bit of an angle, resulting in an unusable, thin piece. I resolved to do better with the floor. But, as I was nearing on tip, the wood suddenly snapped, cracking at a diagonal that rendered this piece, too, unusable.

 

The good piece is on the right, the unusable ones at center and left:

 

This was a frustrating experience, but I think I can draw two lessons from it. First: I should just start drawing a line about 1mm outside the frame line to follow, because I have a hard time cutting a consistent distance outside a line. Second, I should cut the frames purposely overlong and only trim the edges to the proper size afterward, so that there's more support around the ends of the frames and they're less likely to break while cutting.

 

Meanwhile, I worked out the rabbet shape. It was a bit tricky to get right, because the edge of the garboard is bevelled in a way that changes over the length of the hull. So rather than assuming a squared-off plank edge and setting the rabbet to the changing angle of the plank, I had to figure out how the plank bevel was changing and would interact with the rabbet. The result is a little messy and probably not quite right, but it should work and I can always make minor adjustments as necessary later.

 

At both the bow and the stern, the rabbet needed to transition from a simple beveled edge to a squared-off cut, which I did with a sharp blade and mini-files. I think I extended the squared portion a little too far forward at the stern, but checking with a piece of planking wood shows that everything should still fit well.

 

 

While the deadwood was pretty straightforward, just thinning the lower edges and corner a bit, the stem and sternpost were more complicated. At the top of the sternpost, the planks enter pretty much straight from the sides due to the pronounced curve of the hull, but that gradually shifts until, by the bottom, the planks will run flat into the sternpost.

 

The stem is similar, but a different shape.

 

To transfer the rabbet shape to the opposite side, I used a metal divider to scribe the line before cutting.

 

 

After a lot of careful cutting, I decided that it was finally time to start gluing. I began with the bow. Unfortunately I couldn't get a clamp onto the parts very well while holding them against the plans on a flat surface, and right after gluing, I realized that it was angled to the side--very slightly, but possibly enough to cause a problem. I applied alcohol and began to separate the parts, when a minor tragedy struck and the stem snapped at the joint:

 

After a bit of cursing and considering my options, I decided that I may as well see if I could glue it back together before making a new one. Between carving out a tight scarf joint and the rabbet, the stem had been the most complex part so far, and I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about remaking it. Fortunately, the parts fit very well and, after clean-up, the joint was practically invisible from the sides.

 

While waiting on that to dry, I glued the sternpost and deadwood to the keel:

 

And then the stem. After sawing off the excess bit of keel at the stern and sanding off the extra I left below the stem, I'm pleased with how the keel structure turned out!

 

 

There's a bit of touch-up here and there to do, but it's coming along well. The repair at the bow is invisible from the sides and barely visible from the bottom (which of course will be barely visible on the completed model).

 

 

Overall this has been an eye-opening experience. The complexity of making a POF build from scratch is an order of magnitude greater than any previous builds I've done, and I've made plenty of errors. (And tried to learn from them.) Even something as seemingly simple as the keel structure has taken a lot of work and plenty of frustrations. Challenging as it is, I'm learning a lot and (mostly) enjoying the experience.

[Keith Black]

 Jacques, I missed this build till just now. I look forward to following along. 

[wefalck]

Very nice ship's capentry job !  Although on a real boat it would be a lot more physical labour to cut the rabbets, laying out in 1:1 is a lot easier than at a small scale (how do I know this ...).

 

[Paul Le Wol]

Nice recovery Jacques and beautifully crafted!

[KLarsen]

Very nice work, it's coming along great!

However, when you lay out the frames to cut, try and use the curved part of the sheet to your advantage: some of the frames could have had the veins running all along them instead of across them. I always try to maximise the curved veins in a sheet when I'm lucky enough to get them 😁

[JacquesCousteau]

Thanks, all! @wefalck, yes, I think I'll be looking into getting some more tools for detail work--a riffler file, maybe some micro-chisels--in the future. I'm making some basic furniture in my carpentry class and there's a lot more room for error at full scale. (At least for my current skill level--no fancy dovetail joints for me!)

 

@KLarsen, you're right, I need to figure out how to make more effective use of the wood grain, especially when the futtock takes nearly a 90-degree curve. I think that laying out more frame pieces at a time will help me to set them up more efficiently on the sheet.

 

[Glen McGuire]

6 hours ago, Paul Le Wol said:

Nice recovery Jacques and beautifully crafted!

Completely agree with Paul, JC!

[JacquesCousteau]

One step forward, and what may be many, many steps backward. 

 

Good news first: I've reached another milestone and finished the first frame.

 

As mentioned earlier, my first attempt at sawing out the parts met with failure due to 1) cutting too close to the line, and 2) not paying enough attention to the rings in the wood sheet. So, this time I drew a line a short distance outside the actual frames, extended the ends a bit, and minimized the presence of rings running across frames. Drawing the line really helped guide my sawing, and I was much more successful this time. While my first attempt had led to failure on two out of three frame parts, this time I only had one failure out of eight parts (and I think it was because I was rushing to try to finish sawing before the workshop closed--a good lesson there to take my time). Granted, this is just with rough-cutting, and I still might break parts during shaping, but it's a promising result.

 

Making the first frame (number 😎 did take a little while, though. The pieces required a ton of sanding, even with leaving a bit for fairing. In the future, I'm going to try to draw the saw lines slightly closer to the actual frame, while still leaving space for fairing. In any case, after a lot of sanding, I was ready to glue together the frame. I removed the paper from the areas that would be glued. I then secured the futtocks to a copy of the plans with a couple tiny dabs of a glue stick, so that they would stay in position but be easy to remove later.

 

I then glued the floor in place, making sure it was properly lined up. Given that it would be quite difficult to clamp like this, I simply held it with finger pressure for 10 minutes or so. I also used a damp brush to remove any excess glue.

 

Finally, I was able to remove it from the plan sheet. I gave it a light sanding to smooth things out, and removed any excess glue left over. With that, my first frame was complete!

 

In the future, I may want to leave slightly more meat on the frames to ensure proper fairing. I'm also wondering how I'm going to fair the interior, which seems quite complicated. But, I'm happy to have a frame complete!

 

Now the bad news.

 

Looking over the plans, I placed the frame over its proper location in the top-down hull view, and found that the top of the frame was a good bit wider than shown on the plans. It's not just because of having left the frames a bit thick for fairing, as the interior edge was too far out as well (even with the extra left on for fairing). I began measuring across the hull on the top-down view at frame locations and comparing them to the distance across frame tops on the frame drawing sheets, and found that the frames were over-wide.

 

I was worried that I had missed something weird with the scaling when I resized and printed the plans at 1:32 scale. So I went to the original plan sheet. There, too, the frames were overly wide compared with the top-down view. For example, on the original plans at 1:36 scale, Frame VIII measures 10.8cm across from the outer edges of the tips of the frame on the frame drawing sheet (Plan 3). Meanwhile, in the top-down hull plan drawing (Plan 2, the one showing the details of the hull interior), Frame VIII measures 10.55cm across (against from the edge of the frame, discounting the hull planking which is shown on the plans).

 

I'm very concerned by this. If the frame drawings are wrong, I don't really know if this build will be possible. It's one thing if everything is a couple mm wider and I just need to widen the jig a bit, as this is a model of a generic type rather than a specific vessel, but I don't know if the frames will still produce a fair hull. And unlike with a POB hull, where you can sand a lot to fair, that's not as possible with a POF build. It's also quite frustrating as the whole reason I bought a monograph was because, in theory, the drawings should be accurate. Not to mention that I had many of the wood sheets cut to custom thicknesses for this build, specifically.

 

The only thing I can think of is that I believe @KLarsen mentioned being surprised in his Santa Caterina build that the top-down view corresponded to a lower point along the hull and not the sheer line. I still need to check whether that may be the case here. I'm hoping my issue is a relatively easy fix like this, as otherwise I'll need to work how how to correctly adjust the scaling on the plans, reprint, and redo things.

 

Finally, I realized that while I checked the hull length and width to make sure there were no scaling errors when I first printed out the plans eight months ago or so, I forgot to do so when I printed a new batch more recently, so I need to double-check that as well (although it would of course not impact the broader problem which is in the original plans).

[JacquesCousteau]

I realized that images would probably be helpful to show the issue. Below, you can see how the tips of frame 8 are 10.8cm across on the plan sheet. (It looks like slightly less, but it's because the phone lens is centered and so there's a slight angle).

 

And here in the top-down view, frame 8 looks to be about 10.55cm wide (accounting for the same canera angle issue as above, and keeping in mind that we're measuring to not the outermost line, which is the hull planking, but the line just inboard from that).

[Tony Hunt]

I suspect the top-down view (plan view) may be drawn at the level of the deck (i.e. the top of the wale), not the level of the sheer strake. Hence the discrepancy.