Making Some New Strakes.
Hardwood Strakes.
I like to see strakes on the underside of my model power boats (where appropriate) and some hulls such as the deep “V” hulls and the Fairy Marine hulls in particular would be lost without them.
Anyone who has tried to buy any small triangular section hardwood in recent years will know that they have not been produced for a very long time .
Some have tried using balsa wood as triangular section balsa is still available for use by the aero modellers. This is easy to cut, shape and glue, but making it hard enough to be durable enough for everyday use is not something that can be achieved readily - even after soaking with various resins etc.
Glassing-over the balsa strakes could work, but it takes a lot of time and effort and some of the shape definition would be lost.
Unfortunately even the hardest grades of balsa wood are still quite soft when compared with a hardwood such as obechie that was used to make small triangular section wood from in the 1960’s and 70’s when it was freely available from any good model shop.
The only way to get any triangular hardwood to use for strakes is to cut some yourself.
I have not made any strakes since the Covid lockdown-down time period, but I was asked by a local club member if I would make some from the 6mm sqaure hardwood strips that he already had.
The wood looks like it could be obechie (but I am not too sure) so when I went home yesterday to mow the lawns etc, I took his hardwood strips with me in the hope that I could quickly make some for him.
As is often the case, this “quick job” did not turn out to be quite as “quick” as I had hoped!
Bob
I like to see strakes on the underside of my model power boats (where appropriate) and some hulls such as the deep “V” hulls and the Fairy Marine hulls in particular would be lost without them.
Anyone who has tried to buy any small triangular section hardwood in recent years will know that they have not been produced for a very long time .
Some have tried using balsa wood as triangular section balsa is still available for use by the aero modellers. This is easy to cut, shape and glue, but making it hard enough to be durable enough for everyday use is not something that can be achieved readily - even after soaking with various resins etc.
Glassing-over the balsa strakes could work, but it takes a lot of time and effort and some of the shape definition would be lost.
Unfortunately even the hardest grades of balsa wood are still quite soft when compared with a hardwood such as obechie that was used to make small triangular section wood from in the 1960’s and 70’s when it was freely available from any good model shop.
The only way to get any triangular hardwood to use for strakes is to cut some yourself.
I have not made any strakes since the Covid lockdown-down time period, but I was asked by a local club member if I would make some from the 6mm sqaure hardwood strips that he already had.
The wood looks like it could be obechie (but I am not too sure) so when I went home yesterday to mow the lawns etc, I took his hardwood strips with me in the hope that I could quickly make some for him.
As is often the case, this “quick job” did not turn out to be quite as “quick” as I had hoped!
Bob
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I handed-over the strakes (that I had converted Ian’s unidentified 6mm square hardwood into) when we met at the club this morning.
Hopefully there will be enough usable strakes for him to complete his Sea Commander hull with as the conversion had not gone quite as smoothly as I expected it to.
The “doner” hardwood strip were not as square as I would have liked them to be and so the cut size of the triangular strips were not as consistent as they should have been when they were split in half.
This first became obvious when I started to feed the square wood strip into the jig. Sometimes it was quite a loose fit and sometimes it needed to be forced through the square shaped jig entrance, so it did vary in size along its length, and between different strips of wood.
The result was that the two split halves of the wood did not always match each other perfectly. Some were quite good (and probably very usable) but others were a slightly smaller (these could probably be paired together and used on the hull of a smaller craft).
Either way, I plan to fit a new 16TPI blade onto my Record BS9 bandsaw and cut some more strakes from some fresh 6mm square OBECHIE strip that I hope will be as accurate as I expected these to be.
When the new strakes are cut we can see if they are any better than the ones I have just cut if and replaced if they are not good enough to use.
Bob.
…. four fitted; two each side … photo to follow
many many thanks
Ian