HMS Warrior 1781

So my wood arrived today – Holy smokes, I don’t know what I was expecting but that was one big package of dead trees.

Unpacked and stored on some hanging shelves I installed just for that purpose:

I chose Pau Marfin for the keel, (as recommended) and Cherry for the frames. I hope the two don’t clash too much, the Pau Marfin is quite yellow when laid up against the pink of the Cherry (and which will only get darker with age). The color difference isn’t as striking in this picture as it is in person.

The wood isn’t milled to a real exacting standard and will all have to be fed through the thickness sander to get it to the proper dimension, for example; the piece of Pau Marfin for the stem post should be 9/32″ thick but is actually closer to 19/64″ and so will need to be taken down 1/64″ to get it just right. I imagine this is by design so I can finish the piece to my own standards (at least I hope that’s the reason) as the surface is still a little rough.

One of the problems I have when using the thickness sander is that I tend to lift the wood when pulling it through and end up taking too much off the ends. I had some hardboard laying around the shop left over from making the frame cutting jigs and, so I put it to good use and made an extension for the table of the thickness sander to support the wood as it comes through ( I love that stuff):

It’s a pretty simple construction and just clamps on to the back part of the table making it as long as the front.

I cut out the center so I could see the adjustment wheel. I have since found that spring clamps hold it more securely than the brass clamps in the picture, but I’m too lazy to fix the image. Works well though.

So, the jigs are all done, now I’m just waiting for my wood supply to arrive. I figure it’s a good time get some scrollsaw practice in. So, I bought a few pieces of basswood and glued the stempost patterns to them, and started cutting. I’m glad I did this, as I really need to refine and practice my scrollsaw technique. OK, here’s a couple of things I ‘ve “discovered” that have improved my scrollsaw abilities. I was originally looking at where the saw bit into the wood from about a 45 degree angle, I’ve found though if I get right above the blade and look straight down it, I tend to cut much more accurately. Two other things I’ve found (after much experimenting) is that slow is always better (my wife might agree with that statement too), slow blade speed with a slow feed and leave as much wood around the piece as possible so you’ve got something to hold onto and maneuver. At first I was cutting everything away from the different sides and angles, now I try to cut the piece out from an intact piece of wood (that is, like a jigsaw puzzle piece). Some of these pieces are quite small and difficult to manipulate otherwise. Now this may strike some as stupidly obvious, but………well there you go.

I gotta admit, after cutting out about 3 practice stemposts, I’m getting better.

Y’know, chapter 4 is completely schizophrenic. The good Rev. is all over the place in this one – he skips around from topic to topic, he comes back, he starts over, he tells you to glue it all up then tells you not to, sand the rabbet, no don’t sand the rabbet, cut on the line,no cut to the outside with the edge of the blade down the center of the line, he repeats himself, he contradicts himself. And to top it all off what’s the deal with the advanced and beginner level keels, Hahn method and contemporary? If you ask me the one isn’t that much more complicated or difficult to construct than the other. The whole thing is just one big confusing read. I think I’ve finally made sense of it, but I wish he would have gone back and collected his thoughts better – makes you wonder about his sermons. (Just kidding Rev.)

The workshop (if anyone is interested):

Ok, as of now the blog is up to date, that is, this is exactly where I am in the practicum. I have spent the past few days posting what I had already done. Everything from here on forward happens in “real time”, so to speak.

The next step in the practicum is making the keel, however, I am still awaiting my wood supply from the Lumberyard.

Which brings me to another point that I failed to mention, wood.

I went back and forth on this point and even had an extensive on-line conversation with Rev. Romero about it.

The practicum recommends using Redgum for the frames, however this is pretty much unavailable now that Warner Woods West is no longer dealing in lumber. There is absolutely no source for this wood that I could find anywhere.

Padre Romero recommends against using Maple or Swiss Pear as he says they are very hard and difficult to work with, I have had others tell me this isn’t true – I think it must be a matter of personal preference. I chose to to make the frames out of Cherry – it’s not too hard and I love the color of the wood. Dave at The Lumberyard was very helpful in talking with me. I went with the recommended Pau Marfin and Mansonia for the keel.

The Rev. tried to get me to try my hand at milling my own wood, and I came very close to choosing this as an option, but then I got thinking. I’ve never made a real POF ship before, there is enough to learn and enough opportunity to screw up (ahem, which I’ve already managed) without adding an added level of complexity. Perhaps later on in the practicum I’ll try milling wood, but right now I think I’m better off using pre-milled wood. Interestingly, I have a friend who makes Uilleann (Irish) bagpipes for a living, he cut down an American Pear tree and has been seasoning it for a few years now. He has offered me the wood should I want it in the future. It’s highly figured, but maybe………………. someday……………….

Here’s a pic of an uilleann pipe chanter he made from the wood (from www.kirklynch.com):

Incidentally, if you tool around the images at his site, you can see my set – the mopane chanters and the drone set with the antique cherry mainstock and cocobolo drones and regulators.

Ok now, here’s the tie in to British warships and the uilleann pipes. If you watch the movie “Master and Commander”, there is a scene where the sailors are having a sing-song on the deck. The fellow sitting down and playing the odd looking instrument is playing the uilleann pipes. Watch closely though because you only see and hear him for a few seconds.

That is all, carry on men.

The practicum provides templates for building the frame cutting jigs (and the frames as well), however if you are building in 3/16″ you have to enlarge these 150% (just like the plans), fortunately you can also buy this absolutely HUGE supplementary plan from Rev. Romero with all of the jigs and templates drawn out for you to scale. I bought one, then took it to Kinko’s and copied it so that I would have a clean backup copy (especially since you have to cut the templates out of it. Here’s a picture of the plan – it’s 8 feet long (the amazing thing is that the large format copier could handle it), you can see the frame cutting jig templates in the middle portion of the plan:

The practicum doesn’t make any really strong recommendations for what to build theses jigs out of (I think he used 1/4″ plywood). I chose 3/16″ hardboard instead for a couple of reasons; it’s cheap, very stiff, has a nice smooth surface on one side to attach the templates to, and since it has no grain, long straight cuts in it are easy with the scroll saw. I love the feel of the stuff too. I cut out the blanks first with a table saw, glued on the templates with rubber cement and then cut out the slots with the scroll saw – reverse cutting, pin-end blade. Here is a front and back picture of two boards, I was a little worried how the rough side would slide over the table saw, but it moves just fine:

If you have a Preac saw, you must build an extension to the table to accommodate the jigs in 3/16″ size, however the table of my Byrnes saw is 10″x12″ and easily supports them without any extensions (score 1 for the Byrnes saw). I cut the miter gauge adapter bars from strips of 1/2″ pine and then sized them in the thickness sander (damn that thing is handy). I tried fitting them like the Reverend shows in the practicum by pushing the jigs up against the blade and drawing lines on the under-side and readjusting – I just could’nt keep everything still enough to do this with any accuracy. Then I remembered the rip fence on the Byrnes saw – that thing is ram-rod straight and ridiculously accurate. I dropped the blade, brought the rip fence over and was able to easily glue each miter gauge adapter bar to the frame cutting jigs very easily, very accurately, and very quickly – another point for the Byrnes saw.

Setting the rip fence:

Gluing the jig to the miter gauge adapter bar, each slot in the jig is up against the rip fence:

The stack of finished frame cutting jigs:

I departed a little bit from the practicum when building the box for the framing jig. The practicum recommends 1″ x 6″ pine, I chose to use 1″ x 4″ pine instead to make the whole thing less bulky. It is important that the whole construction lay flat without any wobble to ensure that the frames are lined up correctly (or so I believe). Once I got the frame assembled there was a small amount of wobble in one corner. Despite using “select” pine and looking for the straightest pieces, there was a little warp to one of them. To fix this, I inserted 2 brass washers along the edge with the screws  – the whole construction now lays perfectly flat. Here’s the corner in question:

There is also a length of plywood placed inside the box and up against the framing jig board, this forms a “floor” to keep the tops of the frames all even. Rev. Romero says to cover this with tin foil to keep the frames from sticking to this board when they are glued in place. I think this looks goofy, not mention that foil is fairly fragile and tears easily. I decided to use clear packing tape instead, you can just see it reflecting the light in the following picture:

Here’s the finished box from the top (you can see the clear packing tape in this image too) :

and from the bottom:

Ok, so I made a few changes in finishing the framing jig “box”, hopefully they won’t come back to haunt me later.

Since I had decided to start over on the framing jig and do it right this time, I needed to come up with some 3/8″ cabinet grade plywood. That’s a lot easier than it sounds. I dragged my shaggy ass all over town looking for this stuff. I must have visited 20 different lumber dealers. I was ready to give up, but then I remembered we have a Woodcraft store here in town – I usually don’t think of them because they tend to be expensive and feature a limited lumber supply. Well they had it, a nice 5′ x 5′ piece of 3/8′ Baltic birch plywood board for about $30. That’s twice as much wood as I need, but at least I had back up in case I screwed it up again.

So…………. I took the plans to Kinkos again and made another copy of the framing jig and mounted it on the board. This time I pre-drilled the board in several spaces to facilitate changing blades as well as changing directions and removing large pieces of the center portion. If you look closely in this pic you can see where I’ve put some pencil X’s on the plan where I want to put the drill holes. There are a few “stepped” points along the jig where it is just easier if you stop there and reposition the board (click the image for a larger version of this picture) :

Rev. Romero shows in the practicum that in order to cut the whole board out and maneuver around the limitations of the arm size of the scroll saw, you will need to mount the blade backward to cut out the second half of the jig. Well, I don’t know what kind of saw he has, but mine allows me to mount the blade either front/back or sideways. So I mounted the blade sideways and was able to cut the whole thing out without having to worry about the arm getting in the way. I used a reverse cut pin-end blade to cut the center section out.

The good reverend recommends cutting the frame notches out by hand with a jeweler’s saw. That’s nuts, not only would it take forever and be interminably tedious (I know, I tried), it’s just not necessary. I was able to do the whole thing on the jigsaw. I switched to a crown tooth plain-end blade, mounted it front to back and cut all of the “verticals”, then I re-mounted the blade sideways and cut out each of the horizontal sections in two pieces just like he shows in the practicum. It took a couple of hours tops, if I’d have done it manually, well…. I’d still be doing it.

I’ll tell you what improved my scroll saw abilities immensely. I was at a woodworking show this weekend and one of the vendors was selling foot switches for tools. What a difference that makes, step on the pedal and the saw is on, let up and it turns off. It really gives fine control over the cutting process without having to fumble for the on/off switch with the blade running. Nice.