De Zeven Provinciën 1665 by Dražen - Scale 1:45

[amazone]

nice work drazen

[amateur]

Very nice indeed

 

Jan

[Drazen]

Yesterday, I was bending the deck beams and testing my new, as I call it, "steam engine".

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

I put my wood in the box and close it with screws. Please, note the small opening on the lid (one cannot see it well, but it is pointing in your direction) where the condensed water runs out. This must be positioned down in order to allow all water run our. Othervise the wood gets soaked in the water.

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

I put my wood in the box and close it with screws. Please, note the small opening on the lid (one cannot see it well, but it is pointing in your direction) where the condensed water runs out. This must be positioned down in order to allow all water run our. Othervise the wood gets soaked in the water.

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

The setup:

I needed later on to hold (fix) the middle part of the pipe in high position - so the condensed water can run back or forth and not be jammed in the middle part.

 

The steaming took approx. 30 minutes.

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

Later on I bent the beams and fixed them in the bench vice. There, I need to leave them a for week or more in order to dry properly.

 

Important: On the outer side of the curve, I put a piece of a cheap wood - if something splits this will be the cheap wood and it will protect with its pressure the inner parts (parts I want to keep safe) from splitting.

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

Today, I was airbrushing the ladder-box - the only part of the lower deck I will (slightly) show. The floor/deck part in the middle of the photo has already been pickled.

 

Dražen

 

[amateur]

Just wondering: will your deckbeams hold their curve?

 

Jan

[Drazen]

Jan,

 

do you mean if the curvature is right (it is) or...

if they will stay in wished curvature after complete drying (more or less they should).

 

?

 

Dražen

[amateur]

I meant the second: will it remain in the correct curvature when dried.

 

Jan

[Drazen]

Jan,

 

Normaly it should. I did bent it over slightly. The fixation is just for securing that no relaxation happens when getting completely dry.

 

Dražen

[Drazen]

voilà

 

Dražen

 

[amateur]

That's a real black box

I like the way you disguised the corners of it, by allowing the black paint on the deck itself.

 

Jan

[Drazen]

Thnk you Jan,

... so many things in life need to be disguised, isn't it 

 

Dražen

[cog]

It does look like you look to a lighted piece of deck in the dark, or a piece of a deck in the spot light. Looks superb. NICE

[Drazen]

Well, the lighting comes from above (opening for the ladders on the upper deck): In the reality, it should leave such impression. The gunports will be mostly closed on the lower deck, so no light from there. From gratings, there would be light coming in, but i neglected it since not directly above.

 

The main issue for closing the lower gunports was for me that I don't like to much of the weapon showing out. I get a feeling of loosing the nice ship line. Also, I wanted to make a little different situation a usually. If you go to the, i think 2nd. or 3rd page if my log, you will find the HMS Prince, 1670 made by Mile Bijelić This model has also many nearly closed gunports. I will close most of mine on the lower deck  - close them completely and leave just three slightly opened - more opened than Mile did on his model. With this, I believe to get a more realistic situation and an even better ship line expression.

 

Still, I am going to represent all guns. Except the 36 pounder (lower deck), most of them will be still visible on the ship. I will show all guns once again near the model on the model stand - represented one after another in a row, including the 36 pounder - of each type one gun & bullet.

 

Dražen

[moha81]

Jan,

 

Normaly it should. I did bent it over slightly. The fixation is just for securing that no relaxation happens when getting completely dry.

 

Dražen

If you ask a carpenter about this method, he would say that it doesn't work . Well, I'm not a carpenter, I'm a physicist, and I know why. I saw many home-made tools such as the one presented here, I also tried them and nowadays I always use to say that they are almost completely inefficient, because the key factor of the process is not present. Yes, we need the steam in order to make the deformation easier. The problem is, in general, that the deformation itself doesn't change the cell structure of the wood, nor does drying out the wood at room temperature for days or weeks. It's just wasting time, since the strain won't relax, the wood tries to recover its original shape, independently from whether you apply a fixation method or not during drying. The problem may appear even YEARS later, if the curvature of the part is not fixed, sooner or later it shall go wrong. The old shipmasters knew this and they made the shaping over open fire! Why? The thing that can reorganize the cell structure at the deformed state is basically HEAT. The key point is to fix deformed shape by removing the strain (and not the water!) from the material. I usually take a pan of (cold) water and an old iron (which is fixed), plunge the wood into the water frequently then shape it on the surface of the hot iron. The ideal temperature of the iron is slightly over 100 C. It is cheap, fast, efficient and safe.

[Drazen]

I use iron (or soldering iron) when doing thin pieces. This would not be easy/possible with this one (thickness: 8.5 mm). I have overbent the structure (having thick working gloves on) right after putting it out of the "steam engine". The fixation afterwards was even not holding a lot. Now, the wood is out and has perfectly the same shape.

The steam engine has 100° C and the wood has been in it for approx. 1 hr. I (over)bent it right after getting it out.

 

What I also observed... I did cut these wood pieces somewhere in October. Till February, they bent significantly in one direction due to drying in winter months - in summer they would bend in other direction. That is wood.

 

Dražen

[moha81]

I use iron (or soldering iron) when doing thin pieces. This would not be easy/possible with this one (thickness: 8.5 mm). I have overbent the structure (having thick working gloves on) right after putting it out of the "steam engine". The fixation afterwards was even not holding a lot. Now, the wood is out and has perfectly the same shape.

The steam engine has 100° C and the wood has been in it for approx. 1 hr. I (over)bent it right after getting it out.

 

What I also observed... I did cut these wood pieces somewhere in October. Till February, they bent significantly in one direction due to drying in winter months - in summer they would bend in other direction. That is wood.

 

Dražen

Yes-yes, this is wood! . Fortunately I have my own resources, the wood comes from my carpenter friend. The wood I use is quite dry, it spent 10-15 years on the loft of the workshop. Ok, I did not want to be wiseguy, I just worry. Wouldn't have it been possible to cut the beams from the dry wood "as they are"? This is what I want to do.

[Drazen]

This would be possible to cut the curves, but wood has been bent also on the real ship. I think also about the direction of grain if the grain and the curvature are too strong. It is also more simple to put the piece of wood through the thicknesser (I use the Proxxon DH 40, excellent machine) and then bend.

 

Many top modellers (our Russian friends Dobrenko, Dr. Mike and others) and my Croatian friend Mile Bijelić (won gold on World Championship twice) do use this method. I do not have concenn.

 

Dražen

[Piet]

Hi Dražen,

 

Great progress you are making with your 7 P.  I enjoy the technical discussions of the different methods you and Gyula employ in building your models.  

Keep up the good works my friend.

 

Cheers,

 

 

 

[moha81]

This would be possible to cut the curves, but wood has been bent also on the real ship. I think also about the direction of grain if the grain and the curvature are too strong. It is also more simple to put the piece of wood through the thicknesser (I use the Proxxon DH 40, excellent machine) and then bend.

 

Many top modellers (our Russian friends Dobrenko, Dr. Mike and others) and my Croatian friend Mile Bijelić (won gold on World Championship twice) do use this method. I do not have concenn.

 

Dražen

Hi,

 

I agree. I draw the ship basically from the original contract of the 7P and the book of Cornelis van Yk as a reference. The rules presented there are quite useful and I can check the dimensions in the contract. A note: I always laugh at a quite frequent sentence of the book: the rules are these and those, BUT  the implementation depends on the dimensions of the wood we have. Congratulation, so the guys could plan a ship "theoretically", then happened what happened. Freedom rulez! The dutch ships were not standardized at all, there exists several answers for the question, depending on the possibilities. That's why we have the freedom.

[Drazen]

some steps I have done in between...

 

Installing binding strakes

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

... making the beams...

 

This came out from the bent wood we had a discussion before. The curvature is just slightly visible, but important..

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

... bending the inserts for the gratings...

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

... and here the beams with inlets for the gratings. I tried to show the slight curvature on the photo.

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

Now, the beams have been installed between the binding strakes.

 

Below the main mast hole, you can (hardly) see the small box for the ladders and the part of the lower deck I showed in previous postings. I just covered it with soft paper in order to protect from any glue drops or excessive dust.

 

Dražen

 

[Drazen]

... placing the deck planking.

 

The planks have been made very exact. Still, each plank needs to be "fine-tuned" in order to fit well (I do not like the word "perfect" since nothing is perfect ).

 

Dražen

 

[Michiel]

Nice progress Drazen.