Beavers Prize 1777 by Mike Y - 1:48 - POF - Hahn style

[scrubbyj427]

Very nice joinery! The pear wood looks really good. I’m sold!

[jdbondy]

Lovely appearance! I love those Veritas chisels.

[Wintergreen]

I obviously missed some posts here due to my habit of sailing in the summer.

What a nice looking platform Mike!

And since it's new years eve I take the opportunity to wish you a prosperous 2025 with lots of hours at your workbench!

 

Keep it up!

[Mike Y]

Thanks Håkan, truly appreciated  

Yes, spending more time on the hobby is my new year resolution, even sneaked a couple of hours recently! 

Best wishes to you and a lot of joyful days in your workshop!

[md1400cs]

Mike,

Yikes --- just catching up - 🙂 your work is so good!

 

Cheers,

[Mike Y]

Time for some side projects  

 

Fist I was concerned about the side-to-side alignment inside the hull.

The height measurement gauge is asymmetrical, and flipping it around may introduce some measurement errors. So I wanted to make a pointy thing that can be moved side-by-side on the top gantry. 

There was a question in another log - "what is the mill for" - here is a classic example of a simple part that should be square with a precise and square-profiled recess. Mill is much more consistent and requires less skill than a "well tuned table saw", for example.

For the "pointy bit" I needed something very soft to avoid scratching the part. Basswood from the Model Shipways kit was ideal - I use it a lot as a soft lining for clamps and jigs. 

I wanted to practice milling it in a rotary table instead of using lathe or a rotary tool. Not the best idea, the finish was not smooth at all (though such a soft wood is not making the task easier)

The resulting gadget. When in action - only one clamp is holding the arm in the correct position, while the assembly slides side to side. Should work even with curved beams, by probing the ends of the beam.

In action:

[Mike Y]

Next up was the problem of wood stock preparation.

Majority of the interior construction is made out of relatively small lumber, 2-4mm in 1:48 scale.  I could never cut those perfectly on a table saw, they always need a lot of finessing later on, resulting in an uneven strip. The wood sheets I have are 1 or 2 or 3mm thick, so more sanding is needed if you need something in between. The strip preparation was taking too much efforts.

A thickness sander would be ideal, but the only one in a small scale is Byrnes, which is rather a collector item nowadays.

DYI options are not appealing either, and they are still noisy and dusty.

Another alternative is a thickness planing jig. Most of them are too complicated for my task - with knobs and adjustments leading to inaccuracies, so I decided to use spacers. The range of required thicknesses is rather narrow - on of the largest parts (gun deck beam) is just around 4mm thick. 

 

Decided to build the jig out of scrap piece of walnut. Did not want to risk using plywood, the grooves might end up on a wrong layer, resulting in an uneven surface. They are tiny, but need to be smooth. 

 

Cutting precise grooves on a table saw is not so easy, but slow and steady does the job

Router plane helps to clean up the bottom of the groove:

Resulting jig, custom made for the miniature Veritas bench plane:

Spacers are made out of styrene, very good material for that. Easy to get in a variety of thicknesses, affordable, does not warp with moisture, fairly hard (to avoid compressing too much when planing). I have cut a bunch of spacers with a smallest increment of 0.25mm, should be enough for the range of thicknesses I need.

Jig in action:

Quite happy with it! Simple jig, but very effective. And perfectly quiet  

The finish is incredibly smooth out of the box, so I can use the part right away with no further surface cleanup or sanding. If necessary - should not be hard to add a sanding block for the same jig. 

I could easily get down to 1mm thickness, anything lower - and it is better to hold the "tail" of the strip rather than push it into the stop, otherwise it might get wavy.

 

[No Idea]

Mike that is genius;  what a great way of achieving your needs - even better you are only producing wood shavings instead of dust 👍

[AON]

Do you stack the spacers to get the variety of thickness in 0.25mm increments?

[Mike Y]

Yes, I need to stack different thicknesses, of course trying to reduce the number of spacers (using one 2mm instead of two 1mm, etc). It's a bit similar to the dado stack on a table saw  

Since the depth of the groove is around 4.5mm - you do not need that many spacers to tune to the proper thickness

 

[Wintergreen]

Lovely, opposite ends of the spectrum. On one side, the mill with lathe setup and on the other a "simple" shooting board. Excellent!

 

Can't wait to see more progress 😉

 

Keep it up!

[gjdale]

Very clever design and use of jigs Mike - great work!

[jdbondy]

Very impressive! I may have to duplicate your jig.

[Mike Y]

Thank you for the comments, as always! They do help to keep the momentum  

 

To proceed with the pillars - I should first dry fit deck beams into their positions.

Laser cut beams provided by The Lumberyard in the "timber package" were surprisingly all wrong - too narrow, but way too high. Almost an inverse of the necessary dimensions. Also their arc radius is too small, compare it with the one recommended in TFFM:

Making them from scratch is an exciting little brain teaser. There are so many ways!  

I opted for a template and a mill method.
Making the template is a matter of copying the curve from TFFM onto a piece of plywood and gently shaping it.
Rocking it side to side against the light helps to highlight the curve.

The shaping is done with a router-style jig, I added small tabs to limit the rotation of the part, just in case. 
The beam is attached to the template using hot glue. Tried double sided carpet tape - it is too flexible, allowing the part to move on the jig.
But which cutter to choose from? Plenty of options!

After a set of experiments it is clear that you need two different approaches for each side of the beam.
Dremel cutters pictured here were quite bad, rubbing the wood rather than cutting it, creating a lot of force on the part.

The outside curve is best shaped with my go-to 3mm Proxxon cutter. No effort required to feed into it, it cuts like butter and leaves a super clean surface that needs just a gentle touch-up with a sandpaper. Here is the raw surface after milling (an unfinished blank is below, for comparison):

However it does not work on the inner curve - it catches the wood easily and is way too dangerous to operate, since my fingers are quite close to the cutter when feeding from this direction. Using it was like trying to feed a tiger, would not recommend.

The best was to use the rotary tool sanding drums - a courser one to remove bulk of the material and a finer one for the last few passes.
It does not catch and provides just the right amount of resistance when feeding the part. And much safer - I brushed my finger on it a couple of times and it left no marks, as opposed to the sharp mill cutter that can eat you alive.

Of course it leaves sanding marks, but they are not too bad and are easily removed by hand sanding.

Also the geometrical consistency is not great, the drum is a bit barrel-shaped. But on that scale (and on the surface under the beam) that deviation is invisible and can be adjusted by scraping it.

Now I have first 5 beams, 10 more to go!
 

 

 

But now the difficult decision is the type of wood for the lower deck structure. These first 5 beams are made out of boxwood, should I continue the entire deck in box or should I try pear instead (same as on the aft platform)? It should darker over time and be similar to the inner planking.
So far I'm thinking to keep the lower deck in lighter colour, so it would be more visible deep in the hold when the upper deck is built. Both decks would get a very minimal planking, possibly no planking at all on the lower deck.
The upper deck would be in Pink Pear, I think.

But is the boxwood too bright for the lower deck? 
Of course it is an artistic choice, but would really appreciate some comments and opinions!  

I'm really bad at trying to find the colour match, but I understand how important that is in a long run 🤓

[BradNSW]

The lighter color of the boxwood on the lower deck would highlight the geometric construction.  Then the upper deck geometry would be highlighted the same?  Then using the pink pear for deck planking, furniture, etc.  The inverse would be nice also...darker geometric construction and lighter (scrubbed/washed/moped) decks.

 

Either way, your work is superb!

[Pirate adam]

I would do the deck beams in pear to match the lower platform and the deck with the boxwood matching the inner planking. I don’t think you can go wrong either way. 
 

Adam

[Mike Y]

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts! 

Brad, I will aim for some contrast indeed, do not like the bland look of monotone models where all elements are done in the same wood shade. At the same time not likely to paint anything, except some black wales and railings.

Giampieroricci's Pegasus is a great example of that - a couple of contrasting wood tones, black trim.

Potentially planking above the wales would be slightly darker (light pear?) than the one below (boxwood).

 

The trickiest part is that the visual taste would evolve over years of the build, so a style that I decide on now might get ugly by the time the model is completed..  

Edited February 14 by Mike Y

[Mike Y]

It is time to understand the internals of the ship's lower deck... And it is not easy, even after spending hours with the drawings (both Hahn and NMM archive plans) and my beloved TFFM books.

Would really appreciate help from the audience 🤓 Some conventions of the Admiralty drafts are elusive for me, hopefully make sense for colleagues with research experience.

 

Brief background: after the capture the ship was surveyed and slightly modified, and I am building the post-modified, Beaver's Prize version of the ship. The relevant bit: "Lower decks were altered to provide more space"

The aft section of the lower deck raises a lot of questions..

Here are Hahn's plans reflecting the original ship, note the strange step in the run of the lower deck. I guess it was done to improve the headroom in the officer cabins? Is that really common? Looks like a hack  

But once I started looking in the Admiralty drawings from NMM (ZAZ4296 and ZAZ4297) the picture got even more complicated:

(the modifications are in dotted lines, that's what I am aiming for).

1) That strange step is still there, but the very next beam is raising the floor back, so it looks like a trap designed to make people trip?  Why not just continue the deck in a straight and fair line? 

2) Additional beams are added and the deck continues further aft, making the Breadroom significantly smaller. I guess the "additional space" was not for provisions, but for officers, makes sense

3) Btw, what are these highlighted sections on the deck draft? Are these gratings, or scuttles, or ladder ways? 

Here are two plans aligned:

And the last one - what are these two rectangles? 

 

Meanwhile I keep cutting some wood while trying to avoid a modelling block because of these puzzles   And surely there would be more of those going forward...

[AON]

Possibly it is reversed?

The lower section is on centre for more clearance passing through and the raised levels are the officers cabins?

They'd step up into them.

I admit it is all unexpected.

I am just guessing.

Waiting for someone "in the know" to enlighten us both!