And so the process continues, rinse and repeat.

I have tried to make the length of covering board to what I think would be possible in real life so the longest boards are around 20 feet long and from material that is not very wide the boards with a lot of curvature are shorter but wider.

A couple of problems have arisen, the first one I noticed a few weeks ago, this being that there is a gap between covering board and stringer because of the deck camber, bit of an oversight on my behalf. I had a few ideas one was to use filler to build up this area though I think it better to use strips of wood glued down then fared with a file or sanding block.

The other problem is how to make the tug stern this presents some challenges along with a rethink of build procedure, I originally thought I would make and fit the stanchions + covering boards then plank the bulwarks and lastly plank the deck, this has been scrapped and currently I am thinking of fitting covering boards and deck planking then fit stanchions and lastly plank the bulwarks, subject to change.

One reason for this is the aft stanchions lean inboard considerably therefore cannot be done the same way as the rest, if I tried to I would drill a hole through the hull not a good idea, some of these stanchions also have knees that straddle the covering board and a bit of the deck planking so as in real practice according to Ted Frost’s book the deck needs to be laid first.

In Ted Frost’s book he says the stern covering boards were made from 4” thick Oak due to this area being subjected to large amounts of pressure at times when going up to or in port, this being the whole reason for the tug stern.

I made a card template of the 3 last covering boards and glued them together to form one.

Then cut my interpretation of the scarf joint that joins the 3 pieces together, I am not sure if it is right though I think this joint might help prevent the pieces moving inwards if pushed from the outside.
I made a former to steam bend the center section on.

At the end of the day I had cut and pinned the 3 pieces in position though there is still some material to remove, better to sneak up on the final shape.

One thing that has been troubling me is the difference in thickness between most of the covering boards and these beefy stern boards, my main concern being how did the deck sit up against the thick boards was it flush?

The plans show a raised stern piece.

I was going to simply put a chamfer on to blend the two together, then while packing up for the day I looked at one of the sketches in Teds book and to my horror/surprise the thicker boards remain at deck level the extra 1.5 inches being let into the hull. Why hadn't I noticed this earlier, the only concession is nothing is glued in place yet.

From old photos earlier in the build, ( I had forgotten what I had done ) I should be able to remove some material without compromising the strength.

That’s it for the moment, thanks for having a look.

I welcome any helpful comments and suggestions.

Cheers,
Stephen.

More surprises and a sideways or backwards step.

After I had worked out that I needed to alter the stern, which was a something of a shock another thing I found later is that a long time ago I had cut the stem too short!!!! How I managed to do that I have no idea, can’t blame the apprentice.

I thought I would check how fare the stanchions were by removing the covering boards and using a long piece of spruce to check them, now there is always a chance when you check things that a problem will show up and it did.
I was expecting there was a fault as I had done a quick check earlier but I wanted to remove the covering boards to do a proper check. I ended up replacing 18 stanchions and I may still replace some more, “O” the joys of scratch building.

After I had recovered from all that shock and unhappiness, without placing any progress expectations on myself, next job was to make and fit packing blocks this was a fairly simple process and went smoothly, I allowed the glue to set overnight before faring using a file and sanding blocks.

Next day I went back out to the workshop without much of an idea on how best to remove the 1.5mm from the stern any ideas I had had were going to be quite difficult to do.

Before that I trimmed of the three stern covering boards.

Then remembering I have a Proxxon router attachment I dug it out and found a 1/8” Carbide burr, I know that is quite a small cutter but my limited experience says that it is better to use the small easy to control cutter than a large hard to control cutter when doing this sort of free hand work.

After carefully setting the depth, this method turned out to work wonderfully in removing most of the material followed by several hours of hand fitting and refitting. Unfortunately I had removed a bit too much depth right aft so some packing was glued in place.

With the new packing pieces fitted the stanchions didn’t sit well so I set up the sander and trimmed the bottom edge, I wanted to do this now to make sure they sit down in place.

Next I tried refitting the covering boards I will have to trim most of them, unfortunately the two forward boards weren't going to work, even though I did try opening up the clearance between the board and stanchion there was too big a gap worst of all there wasn’t enough material to trim on the inside edge, so I will need to remake those at that point I had had enough for the day, even starting to think about other jobs I could work on.

That’s it for the moment, thanks for having a look.

Cheers,
Stephen.

I began by remaking the 2 forward covering boards, even though I had a good template (the old ones) this still took quite a while, but I got there in the end.

I re-did some more stanchions swapped others and opened up the clearance between covering board and stanchions on most of them, meaning there is more clearance than I would really like, though if I don’t tell anyone no one will know. 😁

Moving away from the covering boards and stanchions, while still not quite complete, I still need to trim the inside edge of all the covering boards.

This deviation is partly because I don’t really know what to do next, I still have concerns about the stanchions, currently I am considering making up the capping rail and temporally fitting it.

I thought I would make a start on the main fish hatch coaming. Firstly consulting Ted Frost’s book to get material thickness, then making up the required material, I chose what I think is Kauri pine because I have plenty of it and I find it quite nice to work with.

Going by Ted’s sketch there was also an opportunity to have a go at some miniature joinery, something I don’t have any real experience with, one thing I did find out is Kauri pine is not really well suited to miniature joinery.

After several hours of enjoyable work I had the beginnings well under way and with a reject/spare front piece that nearly turned into two rejects/spare front pieces, I trimmed too much off the side of the first one and the second one ended up too short so there was nearly a third one made though after some careful consideration small packing pieces were added to the second one, of course the aft part of the coaming joints were a beautiful fit first time.

Next I wanted to make the angled rebate where the covers locate into. To do this I dragged out the Proxxon router attachment once again, I found that I wasn’t happy with the fence on this so I machined it flat on the mill.

Next I made up a block with the correct angle to use as a guide, then stuck it to the fence with double sided sticky tape.

I cut the rebate in several passes not wanting to try and cut it all in one pass.

That’s about it for the moment, more to come soon ( I hope ).

Cheers,
Stephen.

As the Hatch Coaming has progressed I have decided to make the covers and centre beams removable as in the original following the description in Ted Frosts book Tree to Sea, the idea being when displayed, some or all of the hatch covers can be removed to revile fishing nets and net floats.

Although the main fish hold won’t be the full depth I am hopeful there will be enough depth to create the illusion of depth, hopefully this will add a point of interest.

One trouble with this idea is it adds to how much work is involved and the level of accuracy goes up significantly to create it, nothing new there. 😁

After accurately finding the center of the end pieces I machined a groove, then squared off the end using a scalpel.

Next I glued the outer parts together and left them overnight.
Then carefully measured and cut the center beam into two parts and assembled them.

Next was the hatch covers there being 6 on the main part and 2 on the aft part, these would need to be accurately measured and cut for it to work.
I wanted hatch covers to able to be put in any order.
Teds description of the hatch covers indicates the grab handles are flush, with a recess chiseled out.
This represented a bit of a challenge, firstly these grab handles need to be in the same relative position, of coarse this called for a simple jig to fix the location, once made the jig was attached to the vice using double sided tape.

A test run on a piece of scrap showed the orientation to be wrong, after a quick modification this was rectified and using what I would call a small woodruff cutter, 3 cuts were made to get the required height, this was repeated 32 times.

Next comes the handles themselves this is proving to be more of a challenge than expected and will be included in the next update.

As I am inching slowly closer to needing to apply some finishes, I have experimented with a locally made hobby Acrylic Lacquer the brand being SMS.

I bought a starter pack that includes Black, White also Gloss and Matt Clear. I soon found that I could thin the black to something more like an Ink and when sprayed onto some stanchion off cuts that had been glued together it did a great job of weathering the Huon pine, so far I am very impressed with this product, more experiments to come.

The two photos of my test block, one showing solid black through to very thin ink like black with a clear over the top and an unpainted piece for comparison, the other photo showing stained and clear coated with a just stained piece for comparison.

That’s it for the moment, thanks for looking in and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

The hatch cover handles started by cutting a small groove using an even smaller woodruff cutter than before to rough out the width and length, reusing the jig made for making the recess.

One little trick to find out when the cutter is getting close to touching the job is to use a piece of paper, as you slowly move the job towards the cutter it will start to grab the paper then you know you are getting close.

I set the stops on the mill to give me a repeated slot length, this was done with a bit of back and forth try a bit and check taking my time, even though I had a couple of spare pieces I didn’t want to stuff any up.

Next thing was to get some brass strip that was 1.3mm x .5mm something I didn’t have in stock, though I had some Brass sheet .5mm thick, all I had to do is cut some strips 1.3mm wide.
I know from previous experience that cutting such thin strips is problematic I therefore decided to use one of the zero clearance saw table inserts I bought with the saw.

Using a .5mm wide slitting blade I cut through the insert until I got to a height I was happy with then removed the insert and carefully added a very small amount of clearance so the slitting blade would not rub.

When it came to cutting the .5mm sheet I stuck it to an old piece of ply wood using double sided tape to provide some support, set the required thickness and cut a few strips.

After cleaning up the double sided tape which was by now getting quite ordinary because of the cutting oil I used when cutting, I started cutting it into the required lengths.

To do this I used 2 pieces of scrap to trap and support the strip while I cut it, this preformed 2 functions one to prevent the piece from deforming the other to prevent it flying across the room at the end of cut, these 2 things I have learnt the hard way in the past.

Now I had the handles made and having roughly cut the slots on the mill for them to sit in I needed to finish off the slots, after making a bit of a mess of the first one, I then had a look around the workshop trying to find a suitable tool with no luck.

Then I decided to modify a scalpel blade and turn it into a little chisel, this was quite easily done using a bench grinder, being careful not to overheat the blade.

Then the process of cutting all of the slots to size began, this took me quite a while as I wanted a good fit for all of them.

Once all the slots were finished off I began gluing in the handles using Titebond 3.

There are a couple of workers that came along in their Sunday best for a photo in the ship yard, they are quite happy with the progress.😁

At the end I am quite happy with the end result even though the handles seemed like a bit of an anti climax, what seems like a lot of work for little reward.

Still some more work to do on the Hatch coaming, and eventually painting blue.

Next up Fore room Hatch coaming and covers.

That’s it for the moment, thanks for looking in and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

With the main hatch almost done I turned my attention to the Foreroom fish hatch and it’s covering boards.

Starting with the Coaming I decided to have another go at doing something of a joint, with the experience gained from my last attempts it turned out quite well.

Firstly I found the angle using the protractor off the saw then cut 4 pieces to length allowing enough length for the joint to be cut.

Then I cut a rebate on the side pieces for the covers to sit into using the saw, with the optional fence extension.

Next back to the saw to cut most of the material away, finishing off the joints by hand.

When it came to assembly I didn’t want some sort of weird shape with unequal angels so I set the assembly up on my saw and with a bit of fiddling got the result I wanted.

Once the glue had dried work started on the covers, these need to be a nice fit so care was taken when measuring and cutting, making then slightly longer and using the sander to carefully trim, I am quite happy with the fit hopefully enough clearance for paint.

Next up cutting the recesses and grooves for the handles re-using the jig for main hatch boards.
This went much the same as last time however I wasn’t able to hold these ones very well due to there smaller size consequently some chattering occurred causing a poor machined finish.

All sides were sanded and cleaned up then the finishing touch of making up “cleats”.

These need to be made from stronger material than either Pines I have been using, one thing dad told me was that old good quality wooden rulers were made from quality wood even Boxwood, dad saved old rulers and I still have them.

Now I don’t know if the wood I used is Boxwood but the stuff I used is very fine grained and quite strong.

The donor ruler was cut in a way to make a profile that could be then cut to length making more than enough “cleats”, the only down side is the grain isn’t running the best way for strength, so much for my bright idea, luckily the wood is quite strong enough even with the grain running the wrong way.

Before cutting to length a radius was sanded on.

After setting up the saw cutting off “cleats” was easy, the photo doesn’t show it but I put a piece of scrap over the “cleat” to prevent them flinging off into who knows where.

With enough “cleats” cleaned up I marked their positions as per drawing and added some masking tape to help align what are quite small parts, then they were glued on.

That’s it for the moment, thanks for looking in and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

I should point out that I intend to plank the deck in as close to original as possible, okay I know there are nowhere near enough deck beams, but....

On most working models more sensible people put a ply sub deck usually without camber and plank over it, I don’t want to do that, bending ply in two directions at once I don’t think that’s a good idea and if you hadn’t noticed I like to do things a bit differently.

Planking the deck as close to the original as I can, means in my mind I need to support each end of the plank and seeing I don’t have a full complement of deck beams I need some other way of supporting each end of any deck plank, therefore with deck penetrations like the Foreroom coaming/hatch I need a support for planks around it.

This leads me to make up a support that I can glue into place and plank up to the edge of the structure.
Referring to Ted Frosts book (I don’t know what I would do without it) most of these penetrations were cut into the deck after planking, so I want it to look like that has been the case.

I made a piece up to extend the Stem to it’s correct height then glued and pinned it in position.

Back to the Main Hatch, I glued in the dividing wall, unfortunately I forgot that there was a bit of slop in the groove it slid into something I did know, I remembered the next morning when I went to put the smaller of the hatch covers in finding they were quite tight, no real problem a bit of sanding fixed that.

I made up and attached some support beams on the inside face of the main fish hatch end pieces.

Next up was the Wheelhouse Coaming, after some head scratching and thinking about how I intend to build this structure.
The main thing that had me stumped initially was the radius at the forward end, I decided to make a ledge for this to sit on this ledge is flat and extends around the periphery, this means the Wheelhouse will sit on this ledge.

I next made up the coaming from ply.

I don’t intend to remove the Wheelhouse normally but I want to be able to if something goes wrong with my locking mechanism this should never happen considering the lengths I went to in manufacturing the mechanism, though if it can go wrong it may do some day.

Next instalment, Aft accommodation light/ventilation box, okay I don’t know what you call it.

That’s it for the moment, thanks for looking in and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

Aft cabin skylight and ventilation (still not sure what it is called), on the plan this is shown as a simple box with 2 portholes one either side.

I didn’t think the simple box was quite right thinking that the skylights would probably be angled towards the sun. I did a quick check in my collection of other Drifter trawler photo’s, I could only find photos of models that showed some were a simple box while others were not, this indicated to me that a simple box might have been right….

I decided to make the portholes first.
Some brass bar was put in the lathe chuck and turned to the required shape.

Next some Acrylic/Perspex bar was put in the lathe and machined, to get a nice clear looking window I sanded with wet & dry then polished both ends, finishing off using Tamiya polish to quickly achieve a nice finish.

When I was parting the Acrylic/Perspex I used a pipette to drip water to prevent overheating.

I then set about making a simple box from Kauri pine.

When it was finished I thought it wasn’t bad until I red Ted Frost’s description in his book on page 135, describing the Skylight as being of steel construction with a pitched roof, rounded top with 2 portlights either side and a Mushroom vent at the forward end.
One problem with this was Teds side elevation sketch on page 164 of Formidable at sea shows only one porthole, not that I wish to question Teds memory but it is possible that some of these details are not quite right and unfortunately I don’t have any photographic proof to prove either way….

Then I remembered there is a restored Steel Drifter called the Lydia Eva, maybe I can find some photos of her Aft Skylight, the photo shows clearly a pitched roof, flat top with 2 portlights either side and a Mushroom vent towards the forward end, bugger!!

Moving on from that for a moment, I thought I would have a go at ageing some deck planks using a very diluted mixture of SMS’s Black lacquer paint, my initial quick test a while ago showed great promise using an airbrush but then when I tried to do it again now it didn’t look anywhere as good, don’t know if it is just me but that seems to happen a bit.
I thought I would try a soft brush instead of airbrushing, this worked quite well. I also found that using a Scotchbrite pot scrubber I could remove some paint where needed.

I started adding some White to the Black, my thinking at the moment is to make several shades of Grey for painting the deck planks and mix them up at the end so there is not a uniform colour, this is because in photos I have looked at there doesn’t seem to be much reason to which deck planks are dark or light, my initial thoughts were that shady areas would be darker than exposed areas while this is partly true it doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule.

I have started on the forecastle hoodway and nearing final assembly I have run into a similar problem to the Aft cabin skylight.

So I have a question which sketch is more likely for the Forecastle hoodway, both are possible. I started making mine to the isometric sketch on the plans.

Then there is an isometric sketch on page 128 of Ted Frost’s book, the main difference and point of contention is how the sliding hood is represented. On the plan it is shown to slide under the fixed portion which works but how do they stop rain/spray finding it’s way into the Forecastle accommodation?

Where in the books sketch the sliding part seems to overlap the problem for me is this is probably more vulnerable due to the outer part not being supported?

Or maybe I am getting too anal about the whole thing, then again I like to try and present something that would have worked in reality and once it is built it is there for a long time...

Next well you know what is coming ,Forecastle hoodway.

That’s it for the moment, thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

Okay I had a change of plan and stopped work on the Forecastle hoodway. And went back to the Aft cabin skylight and vent, with the thought that the changes won’t take long. Haha.

Well things got off to a good start.

The skylight sides were modified fairly quickly.

Then I had the bright idea that I could improve the portholes quite a lot from the first attempt and that wouldn’t take long or would it, turns out it would take a while. Using the photo of a couple of portholes on the Lydia Eva as a guide.

I machined up some new Brass blanks, then started on making a drilling jig from steel.

Next the rotary table was centered, then one axis moved out the correct amount, to start drilling the 6x.7mm holes.

The 2 blanks simply go into the jig one at a time, for the first hole to be drilled and have a pin inserted so the position is fixed to start drilling the next hole.

New holes were drilled in the Skylight to receive the portholes.

Now the tricky bit, small rings to simulate the outer ring with glass were turned and polished then a small ring was Silver Soldered in place, I used my little trick of a turned down pencil lead to locate the small ring, as I am finding out this is not always a good trick as any carbon from the pencil stops the solder from flowing to places where you want it, although when it works it is good.

Next came the hinge pin, when working on small parts it is always best to have them attached to bits you can handle easily until the last minute , this is what I did with the 2 pins I needed to make, Silver Soldering was used again.

Then after cutting off and a bit of fileing they were Soft Soldered into place.

A piece of brass needs to be made up that will be Silver Soldered onto the porthole ring, then shaped into a fork like shape.

You may ask why use Silver Solder the reason is the colour is very similar to brass and when polished it will be hard to tell where the solder is.

Once soldered in place a hole was transferred through, then a bit of polishing and cut off, trimmed then some more polishing and cut a slot then some more polishing.

Next Job was to make 2 little pins with a ring Silver Soldered on one end, trickier than first thought but I got there.

Lastly fitting the portholes into the skylight fairly straight forward just transfer all the holes right, it took a while to get things lined up, I would say I was quite happy with my efforts until the next day I couldn’t find one of the pins, not a problem I’ll make another one, well I got there on the 4th attempt, still haven’t found the runaway pin!!

With the new pin in place and the assembly sitting roughly in position I was happy again.

On further consideration I decided to leave the Mushroom vent off as in my opinion it wouldn’t have looked quite right.

My guess is that the Lydia Eva is a bigger Drifter than Formidable and therefore has a larger aft skylight.

Next Forecastle hoodway.

That’s it for the moment, thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

As previously mentioned I stopped work on the Forecastle hoodway, mainly due to confusion setting in.
With the passage of time and some extra information I happily returned to it’s construction.

One added complication is this Hoodway needs to be operational in that a fan is mounted underneath to draw fresh air into the hull and another fan will be mounted aft to pull air out creating a forced draft.

Here it is from the start.

Recapping with the isometric sketches that have formed most of the guidance for the Forecastle Hoodway.

Because there is no side elevation on the drawing I did a rough sketch then decided to do a drawing on CAD which is fairly rough as well, mainly intended for my use.

I have some small blocks of what I believe to be “Boxwood” what ever it is it’s very hard with a very fine grain.

I cut some thin strips and glued them to make a larger pieces these will form the sides.

I then cut them down and temporarily glued them together so they wouldn’t move around, marked them out and even pinned them so there was no risk of movement while cutting to shape.

I set up the saw and cut some slots into some material from an old ruler, these would become recesses for a removable board.

Next I made a former to make the roof and sliding cover, these were made from 2 pieces of .5mm Aircraft ply glued together on the former, once dry they hold the shape quite well.

Most of the parts are made ready for assembly.

Next I made up a hasp and staple, I am not sure if this would have been on the real boat though it might have been, there is an indication of something like this on the plan.

Starting with what I think would be the hasp, bent an oval and soldered it closed. Then soldered another piece at right angels for a pivot then very carefully soldered some small bits of tube to a plate with the pivot installed, I was quite relived when I was able to freely move the hasp, just needs some cleaning up.

That will do it for this one, next time assembly and maybe some painting, thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

All the best for the festive season and happy new year, lets hope next year is an improvement on this one.

Cheers,
Stephen.