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

[Curieux]

A picture of my Beaver’s prize model.

 

Recently , I compared the historical plan from the London museum with Hahn plan.

The breadth on the body plan is not the same. Hahn plan has a larger breadth: +4mm .

By the way, the distribution of the cant frames (aft) seems to be wrong. 
 

Congratulation on your model. Framing is superb.

[Curieux]

Beaver prize (taken by HMS Beaver, see below)
The London museum plan : 100% accurate

Edited April 23 by Curieux

[Curieux]

This is the Beaver plan . Cant frame distribution is indicated…far from Hahn plan.

English sloop, designed by Slade.

Edited April 23 by Curieux

[druxey]

Hahn was very clear that his models were stylized and did not reflect actual framing  practice.

 

Also, the plans you show are of completely different ships. The upper one is Beaver's Prize dated March 1778 and the lower one is Beaver of 1757 - a French privateer.

[Curieux]

Both shared the same history. This cant frame distribution is just an example. I checked other plans too. Cant frame distribution follows specific rules. On average the last cant frame (aft) has an angle much sharper than on Hahn plan. 
Beaver (1761) is not a french privateer but an english sloop designed by Slade, based on the shape of the french fregate Aurore.

Beaver framing is english with cant frames. French ships had no cant frames.

Beaver prize was taken by this Beaver sloop 🙂

Edited April 23 by Curieux

[Curieux]

An other example. 
Royal Navy sloop, 1776

Edited April 23 by Curieux

[Mike Y]

Curieux, so nice to see another Beaver's Prize build! Hope you can start a build log and share your progress (even retroactively, it is interesting to follow the old build steps even if it you are much further into the build by now).

I see you are building the pre-modification version?

 

Yes, Hahn frame is a styling choice and does not follow the real practice, so both of our cant frames are incorrect   We can refer to the same period Swan class that is greatly documented in the TFFM book series to see the proper practice.

 

Would like to see more photos, hopefully not only the finished model. Really like your unpainted railings, but hard to see anything else from this angle. 

 

 

 

Edited April 23 by Mike Y

[Curieux]

Dear Mike,

Your model is a lot better than mine 🙂

I should start a new one with my level of today understanding.

The Hahn method is good but could be improved without to much trouble.

 

Best

Michel

[Mike Y]

Hi Michel,

 

No, your model is quite awesome! You should really start the log and post more. There is always some other log that looks better, that is not an excuse   And we all are masters of finding flaws in our models, so it's never perfect...

 

Have you built yours out of the Lumberyard "timbering package" or entirely from scratch (plans only)? Haven't seen any Lumberyard based build logs, frankly... Would be very interesting to see!

The scrolls under your quarter gallery look laser cut, so that's why I thought about a package  

Edited April 23 by Mike Y

[Curieux]

Out of lumberyard.

 

but my wood was ok…I was lucky

[Curieux]

Either I start again the same model (without mistakes) or the HMS Beaver itself. In both cases, we have no framing plan (my guess, see photo).

HMS Beaver => french design but english built. Slade , the best english naval architect, was very keen on french design.

 

 

Date : 1770

Edited April 24 by Curieux

[AnobiumPunctatum]

Ah, the midship frames from Kingfisher. For the first. Ships of the class the frameing design, which was introduced with Cygnet is not correct.

I am busy with another Swan Class Fly. For this ship the Cygnet design is with some small adjustments possible.

[Curieux]

This framing plan was published in 1770. That is why it could be useful for the Beaver framing (1761) or the Beaver’prize 🙂
 

Floor timber shoud be around 10 inches , sided (No scale indicated on the plan).

 

I should check with the size of the gun ports.

Edited April 24 by Curieux

[AnobiumPunctatum]

I don't think so. In my opinion is the purpose of the drawing to show the differences between the standard frameing sheme (doulble frame followed by two single frames) and the sheme which was used for Kingfisher in the midship area. Interesting is also the triple frame midships.

[Curieux]

1766, an other triple frames

 

before 1770’s  double frame was more common.

 

By the way, Beaver’s prize was built in America. Double frames seems to be a more normal practice there. 
Before being converted to a privateer, she was a merchant’s ship. 

 

Edited April 24 by Curieux

[Mike Y]

Now it's time to build magazines and all sorts of decks and beams. For that phase an accurate depth gauge is essential, so I've let my brain overthink yet another tool 

 

The requirements are:

1) Soft plastic or wood to avoid scratching the model

2) Nice looking and pleasure to use, that tool would be in active service for at least a decade.

3) Ideally it should have a thumbwheel or a knob for fine adjustment. 

 

I have a cheap plastic vernier calliper that satisfies the first requirement, but it does not have an knob / thumbwheel.

Could not find any plastic callipers with a knob, unfortunately. The plastic ones are already rare enough, let alone with a wheel adjuster.

 

Then I spotted a Lego set with a container loader ("reach stacker", to be more precise) that has a worm gear and tried to make an abomination out of it. It is surprisingly challenging to build a compact functional tool out of random lego parts, a whole puzzle of its own. Respect to people who do it on a regular basis!

It kind of works, but the play and precision is not good enough for my needs. 

So I gave up on the wheel adjuster requirement and went back to the simple "calliper on a gantry" setup.

It was a nice warmup to recover some skills that I've lost over years of inactivity.

 

This time I even got help from my little helper! She enjoyed cranking the mill  

 

The resulting design has two parts - sliding gantry (no t-tracks, it is stable enough on its own) and a "calliper holder" that slides sideways on the gantry to allow the gantry keep contact with both sides of the baseboard.

The bottom edge of the caliper is trimmed to a flatter profile to avoid hitting the keelson. Both ends of the calliper can be used for a markup to allow for a comfortable pencil positioning.

The setup relies on three clamps to fix everything in position. These plastic clamps are a bit of an eyesore, maybe I will sidetrack again to build a nicer ones  

 

 

Edited April 27 by Mike Y

[AON]

clever and simple!

[Curieux]

2 books are really useful : Anatomy of the ship Bounty and Endeavour. There are both merchantmen

[Rik Buter]

Hi Mike Y,

 

Congratulations with your build log. I haven't read everything but there seems to be a lot of useful information in here. Thanks for taking the trouble to share all that. The ship is looking great. And I was wondering, how do you know how to use the milling machine? Does one need to do a course for that or would you recommend just buying one and do it with YouTube-tutorials?

 

Best regards,

 

Rik

[Mike Y]

Thanks Rik, so glad that you find it useful!  

 

For the mill - the basics are very intuitive, no book or youtube guide required if you work with wood on our level. Feeds and speeds pretty much do not matter for the small wood pieces that we work with, common sense is enough (keep the fingers away from the cutter, do not try to cut 2cm deep in one go, listen for the sound that the cutter makes and slow down if it sounds rough). The cost of a mistake is also relatively low, worst case scenario you break a cutter, so do not start with a thin and delicate right away. 3mm cutter is an optimal all-round cutter in my opinion.

 

Imagine you have a drill that not only cuts down, but can also work sideways. The key feature is that you are not doing it freehand, but by fixing your part to the mill table and precisely moving it in all three directions using wheels, with everything being perpendicular or parallel. As long as you are cutting straight lines - mill would give you the best quality and precision comparing to files and chisels (unless you are a true master of these tools). And a fantastic feeling of being able to carefully maneuver it  with a 0.01mm precision without being a surgeon.

 

It even removes a need for measurements in simple setups - the wheels are marked to indicate a travel distance.  Say I want to cut a scarph joint 1mm deep and 4mm in each direction. Mount the part on a proper angle, move the cutter to the starting point, set axis to zero - and now you can just plunge the cutter 1mm down and move to the side by 4mm minus the cutter width. If the operation is simple enough to visualise the operations in your head - the markup and measurements are not even necessary, the mill can do it for you.

 

Further milling skills are mostly about metals, eliminating backlash, feeds and speeds, different kinds of cutters, precision, finishing passes, reference surfaces - all of that is an overkill for the basic wood milling in our hobby.

What is useful is a lot of clever ways to mount the part, especially the part that is asymmetrical and hard to clamp or put in a vice.

 

[Rik Buter]

Thanks man! And I noticed you are using a proxxon, would you recommend that one?

[Mike Y]

If you are short on space - then yes, absolutely: https://www.proxxon.com/en/micromot/27110.php

 

It is the smallest mill available in a reasonable price range (excluding aliexpress drill-mill junk combos), which is both good and bad. The working area is quite small, but enough for shipmodeling needs. It is hard to upgrade and attempts to machine anything harder than brass on that mill are rather questionable. But it is a great way to start and is fairly cheap in comparison. Make sure to get the "precision vice PM40", the cutters and basic workholding clamps should be already included. 

 

If you have a workshop - then your choice is much wider, there are a lot of medium sized "mini mills", but all of them are too big and heavy to be casually pulled up on your work table, they require a more permanent position in your shop. Proxxon, on the other hand, takes less space than some smoothie blenders in the kitchen  

Edited July 24 by Mike Y

[Rik Buter]

Thanks Mike!

[mtaylor]

Rik, 

Mike had some good advice. If manuals, written materials are desired go a Google for the tool and add "manuals" to the search.   Little Machine Shop is a good place to start for documents.

[CiscoH]

Mike thank you the perfect rundown on a milling machine.  very helpful for those of us  trying to figure out what to buy - there are too many choices!

[Mike Y]

Was postponing the next big phase of the build - platforms & decks. 
It should be a very enjoyable part, one of the main reasons to start the fully framed model in a first place.
But the learning curve is steep, primarily the planning part. Previously I relied on Hahn drawings to locate the parts, and the rest was rather repetitive. 
Now I need to sail uncharted waters - Hahn only provides locations of top deck beams and that's about it.

So I relied on TFFM to understand the inner workings - these books are worth their weight in gold, I am immensely grateful to authors for simplifying a lot of research in an easy to understand form.
And, of course, old Admiralty drawings from May 1778 done by George White.
So I spent some evenings trying to wrap my head around and map the location and dimensions of the aft platform.

Brain went into an overthinking mode and too many decisions should have been done too late in the evening.
"What should I take as a reference point vertically? What about the horizontal reference?  How to ensure a fair line? What method to pick to compensate for a lack of planking on one side? How to avoid a cumulative measurement error creep?" 

 

Finally the markup was done

And a transparent template was born

 

Transfer paper allows to copy the shape easily to cut off the wood patterns, but of course it leads to a creeping inaccuracy.

Shaping 12 symmetrical parts that form 6 knees was not easy, but at least it did not require any thinking - just a pure relaxing process of small wood parts fabrication. Was missing a nano-sized flush trim router to make an exact mirror copy of each part Ideal usecase for CNC! Though where is the fun in that...

Even forgot to take any pictures, the only one is the final edge polishing. 

The final assembly was tricky. I was planning to fine tune the knee angles, but trying to assemble a trapezoid when all its sides are sliding around is a very annoying process.
If only I could somehow clamp all these pieces 🙄 Oh, wait, the past me thought about this and made some clamps. Six years ago. 😳  How very nice of me! 
Time to dust them off and use them first time for their intended purpose!
They worked excellently, providing a gentle clamping force to get all pieces under control. Still took a while to fine tune the angles (adjusting one angle immediately affects the rest, what a mess).

Here is the assembled platform, just need to fit it to the hull, add carlings and ledges and sand everything nice and smooth.

Before adding ledges one is supposed to make sure they do not interfere with the lower deck pillars, but it's too much effort for now (requiting to mark the locations of all lower deck beams), creating a risk for another half-a-year modelling block.

Will sort that out afterwards, moving the beams a little bit and even notching some ledges into the pillars.
After all, the ship I am modelling is not famous for the build quality. The whole story around it smells "Friday night shift, shoddy engineering", so a few internal structural members overlapping each other are rather on brand  

Glad it would be hidden deep in the hold, a practice piece that still gets to be on the model

Also I saw a number of build logs using pins to dry fit in place, but that implies drilling a tiny hole in the part. Do you just leave a hole there? Or plug the hole with glue and sawdust and do one more round of sanding before the final glue-up?

Would be very happy to hear advices, suggestions and ideas to improve that process. 
I made it work, but surely it can be made easier and faster (and, frankly, more accurate). 

 

 

Edited July 28 by Mike Y

[druxey]

Don't be too hard on yourself, Mike. These parts look deceptively easy, but they are not - as you've discovered.

[Mike Y]

Next up was fitting the platform into the hull. Hahn jig makes a very nice stand for dust-free sanding and fitting, would come in handy  

When fitted into the hull - the platform looks quite off-center due to the one-sided planking. Carlings would be centered around the keel line, making them shifted from the platform center.
Looks strange when taking a straight up photo, but it should be better once more layers are done, so it is viewed at an angle. I think it is a better alternative than adding spacers on the non-planked side or shaving off some meat from the knees on the planked side.
The offset would get smaller the higher up you go, this platform is the deepest structure in the hold where the ceiling planking has a significant angle.

Cutting notches for carlings was a blast! An incredible set of carving chisels came in handy, this is not even the smallest size! The smallest Veritas chisel for comparison. 

Incredible feeling when a piece perfectly fits into these notches when dry, nice and tight!

 

 

 

[druxey]

Nice! It's amazing with accurate mark-out and the correct hand tool what one can accomplish.

[Mike Y]

Few lessons learned:

1) Flattening the surface with a plane is quite tricky, since you bump into some cross piece with a risk of a chipping. Next time -  make carlings the right height from the start (with just a tiny bit of margin for sanding)

2) Used mill to make notches for ledges - it is not worth it. The positioning is overly complicated, and the notches are quite shallow, so even a 1mm mill does not go deep enough, resulting in a semi-circular notch that is too narrow.

In the end a manual markup and chiseling worked much better.

 

The final step is my favourite - a little bit of sanding magic.

This time I tried fine grits of mesh sanding pads - they are amazing! 

Before/after sanding. Isn't it awesome? There is a method to hide all imperfections like they were never there. Like a make-up for parts  

 

The whole asymmetrical layout idea is a bit questionable in the narrow area, but I still think it's the best option for asymmetrically planked model, and the offset would be much smaller once you leave the "bottom of the hold" part with a very steep planking angle.

Looks like a render, isn't it?   

I tried to use a different kind of pear for carlings and ledges, but the contrast is too subtle, will try a more contrasting wood next time!

Edited September 15 by Mike Y