Nautical Research Journal 295
5. T e keelson and inner stem held in place. T e loose piece is the bent part for the second model. Rib positions are drawn on the plug but may be hard to see in the photo.
pairs of screws in the middle of each section, and sawed it apart vertically at each station. I then drew the body sections on the resulting pieces (Figure 3) and started carving. T is was relatively easy as the sections provided their own templates and all I had to do was work down to the lines while maintaining a nice, smooth, fair surface. I used an assortment of microplanes and a small spokeshave plus some coarse sandpaper and, because the hull did not have any serious concavities, carving was fairly easy. I also chiseled out a groove where the keelson would fi t and relieved the bow to account for the model’s inner stem. (Figure 4)
T e keelson, inner stem, and ribs
All these parts were made of birch as that nicely mimics the oak of
the original in this scale. T e
keelsons were relatively heſt y, around 3/8-inch wide by 1/4-inch thick before shaping. I rough shaped them in the fl at and hand bent and formed them
with the aid of really hot water. Once held onto the plug to dry and set, (Figure 5) they maintained their shape nicely with relatively little spring-back. Clamping things while building these models proved to be a problem as there were not many convenient positions for clamps to grab. Many, many rubber bands eventually were used to hold parts in place and I was able to hook them over tapered pegs driven into the spaces between the sections of the plug or onto the ends of the ribs, which I had allowed to overhang the plug’s bottom. I laid out the positions for the ribs on the plug using narrow paper strips and then notched each keelson (before bending) to accept their ends. T e notches were made easily with a small carbide cutter in a modelers’ drill press. (Figure 6) For each model an inner stem was sawed to shape, fi tted under its keelson, and bonded in place with thin cyanoacrylate adhesive (CA), the glue I used exclusively throughout these builds. T e keelson and inner stem at the bow needed to be fi nish shaped at this point. T is was easy to do aſt er the ribs and a fi ller strip were added to the plug. T e proper taper
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