As the deck proceeds I am getting more settled in my opinion of it, that’s not to say I think it is brilliant but things have gone from “what the heck have I done to myself” with this hair brained approach and questionable results, to maybe it isn’t too bad.

It should be noted that the deck is intended to look a bit old as will the rest of the boat, this is due to it being a working boat not a pleasure yacht and even though some owners probably kept their boats in a well looked after condition I think there would be “weathered” areas and the deck would show weathering first I think and possibly within a couple of years could look a bit like I am presenting, at least that’s my guess.

I quite quickly worked out that using a small spatula to spread the glue mix wasn’t the way to go and started looking for an alternative. I ended up with a BBQ marinade injector that has 2 different diameter nozzles that I thought would be large enough for my thick mix to pass through and it was.

As I have progressed I have made the mix thinner, but still thick enough that it doesn’t flow readily, in the hope of reducing air bubbles which show up after trimming.

The first 4 rows of planks Port and Starboard, I prepared in one hit partly to get an idea of how they were going to look with regard to how much of a curve there would be fore and aft.

I now prepare two complete rows of planks, one Port and one Starboard at any one time this is to try and keep things even and when laying them I start at one end and work my way to the other end all in one sitting.

I have found there is a sweet spot for trimming the excess glue mix anywhere between 1 and 3 hours after laying, when the glue is not completely dry but not too wet.

Laying the deck is something I was looking forward to doing, I can say that I never expected the amount of concern it caused early on, I am happy to say that things have settled down and I am enjoying it more and more, except for the repetition that has crept in, well you know there is no pleasing some people.

One other problem on the horizon is how the forecastle center plank is going to look, the concern is how much of a taper is acceptable.

Ted says on page 77 in his book Tree to Sea, that there is a tapered plank forward and aft, though there is no mention as too how big it is and his sketch of a planked deck doesn’t show a tapered plank.

I made up a rough approximation of the amount of taper, in realty there will not be straight sides and think it is too wide at the aft end, I am going to wait and see how the planking looks when I get a bit nearer to needing a tapered plank.

I am also starting to have a go at modifying some 1/24th scale people, something I haven’t done before. Starting with the guy lying on his back, I want him to be standing though I am not sure of what sort of pose yet. This one is more for a learning experience, see how it goes when I get back to it.

Constructive criticism is welcomed...

More to come…

Thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen. 

Some more Rudder pics as requested.

Cheers,
Stephen.

Progress is fairly slow but steady.

I glued some pieces of thin ply as a gluing guide for the forward hoodway.

I have now got to the point where decisions about the center or king plank need to be made.

In Ted’s book on page 77, he says the center plank was tapered although there is no indication of this in his sketch's.

If I made a single tapered plank it would end up looking absurd in my opinion, I made up a card template to visualize it at it’s widest point the plank would be the equivalent of 2.5 feet wide.

After a bit of a search on the internet I found some deck planking photos that indicate a method of letting planks into the king plank and I think I will go for this approach although not as stylishly.

Here is a photo of my proposed method, letting 2 planks into each side of the tapered king plank to thin it down to an acceptable amount.

Lastly a few progress photos.

Constructive criticism is welcomed...

More to come…

Thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen. 

Decisions were made, for better or worse on the center planks forward and aft, now that it is done I wonder why I was so worried about how it was going to look with my interpretation of Teds description.

Making the forward and aft center planks was a very time consuming job.

Starting with some old school tracing paper to make a template. The paper was taped down to make sure it was flat then I used a sharp scalpel to cut the outline and wind up with a shape that is pretty close to being right.

Once cut out the template was stuck down on the board using a glue stick, then traced around with a pencil this ensured the plank would be bigger than needed (easier to remove material than put it on) then roughly cut out with a scroll saw.

Next came the slow part of carefully trimming down to fit inside the required space without gaps, then removing the required amount for caulking would be easier or at least that’s what I thought, didn’t quite work out that way on the first one, as I removed too much material, winding up with too much clearance I had a look at trying to save the plank by moving it forward to close the gap but in the end there was nothing I could do except make another one. Apart from the wasted time the most upsetting part was the waste of material.

Once the fore and aft center planks were done I pinned them in place temporally before removing them to enable gluing in place, when gluing I only caulked on one side to ovoid getting my glue and paint mix everywhere.

Once glued and half caulked I pushed glue mix into the remaining gap.

Each of the other center planks needed to be custom made either slightly wider or with a slight taper, these were quite quick to make and install.

Unfortunately gluing the aft cabin skylight in place before planking turned out to be a bad idea, I managed to damage the paint work several times with the drill chuck, you would have thought I would have learnt my lesson the first time, when the drill chuck hit the paint.

There is some cleaning up to do and I have been reducing the severity of some of the weathering to give a more unified look, this is more because when looking at the model I couldn’t help but think I had gone a bit far and it just looked poorly made.

Next time I start on Coal hatches.

Thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

Now that the deck is basically done it is time to look at the Coal Bunker Rings & Lids.

I am making the Rings & Lids from brass, 2 of them will be removable to gain access to the Cap Head screws that actuate the deck locking mechanism.

I have included a photo of the Coal Bunker Rings & Lids as drawn on the drawing and in the book on page 112 of Tree to Sea these don’t give any indication of some sort of pattern on the lids to provide an anti slip surface.

Before going much further I wanted to work out machining the hand recesses in the lids and machining the recess for a handle.

“O” rings have been fitted to create a water tight seal. As a side note personal experience with making components with “O” rings in them has taught me that you don’t need a lot of “squash” on the “O” ring for it to seal, in fact too much squash will only cause problems with “pinching” the “O” ring and damaging it, in this application there is less than .1 mm or .004 inch of squash on a 12.5mm diameter.

There is not a lot of information that I could find about these parts, I found a lot of photos of land based cast iron covers with a staggering array of different patterns on the lid face.

In a bit of a thought bubble I thought the surface may have been left purposefully rough, not hard to do with a casting so I did an experiment at creating a non slip surface.
Using some beads that you mix with paint to create a non slip painted surface, I brushed some Titebond onto the brass and dipped it into the beads, next day I painted half of it black to get a better idea of how it would look.

Or may have had something like a friend of mines Danny Boys covers, when I get time I will have a go at milling some grooves into my trial piece.

I realize OH&S was not exactly a thing back in 1919, but having a very slippery surface in the middle of the deck I tend to think would not have been done, so some sort of non slip surface would have been present I think.

With things returning to a more normal state, my hobby time has reduced significantly back to the few hours a week at most, therefore progress will return to a snails pace.

I welcome opinions/suggestions on which surface to go with on the Lids.

Thanks for looking in and reading my ramblings or just looking at the photo’s and stay safe.

Cheers,
Stephen.

I got some hobby time today and had a go at two different stiles of lid one having circular grooves cut into it the other having a cross hatch pattern cut in using an engraving tool.

At present I don’t mind the look of the cross hatch or the textured finish.
In reality they are only about 22 mm in diameter.

Again I welcome opinions on which surface to go with on the Lids.

Cheers,
Stephen.

I put some paint on the experimental lids to see how they looked and pressed my 1/24th scale person into service to highlight the sizes of things.

I also made up a disk with a locating pin to enable easy centering of the bunker ring hole around the cap head screw and scribed into the deck.

Again I welcome opinions on which surface to go with on the Lids.

Cheers,
Stephen.

I have had another try at chemically blackening brass. I had tried this a very long time ago without much success. I dug out a bottle of Krick Blackening agent and after reading some information online I thought maybe I hadn’t cleaned the Brass properly.

After cleaning a small sample piece as instructed and immersing it into a mixture of at a ratio of 1 part Krick Blackening agent to 1 part distilled water, after reading that other brands of Blackening agent worked within 15 or so minutes, well this certainly didn’t 12 hours later and things were happening 24 hours later and there was a good blackness to the strip of brass.

I then reduced the amount of water I added and added some soft solder to see if that would blacken as well, as expected the soft solder didn’t blacken at all.
This is a problem for me as I like to solder parts together when needed, this led to a search for something that would blacken a range of metals.

The product I ended up choosing is JAX Pewter Black, after looking for some online I found some at a Jeweler's supply shop that is located in Melbourne, so off to the big smoke for a day out with my wife and daughter, this turned out to be a bit on the expensive side, after having Yum Cha for lunch not that I am really complaining as it had been several years since the 3 of us had been for lunch in the city.

The JAX Pewter Black is a completely different beast, as it does seem to Blacken the Brass within 15 minutes to a deep black, haven’t tried it with soft solder yet, that will be next.

Back to the Bunker Lids and with photographic evidence that there was a ring pattern on the Lids, I had another try at some rings. On my first try I had the spacing too close winding up looking too busy.
I found that I could put 6 rings into the Lids without it looking too busy.
After I had done a couple of rings I altered the depth as I felt there wasn’t enough depth.

I would like to add that I am very grateful for all the input that people have made with regard to the Coal Lids and even though I did intend to seek more input I decided to just get on with the job, so that is what I did.

Again I welcome constructive opinions.

Cheers,
Stephen.

Whilst I haven’t had a lot of time lately to do much work on the Drifter I have been chipping away at it when I can.

Next step for the Bunker Lids was to open up the hand recesses a bit, although in hindsight I don’t think I improved them at all.

Then came soft soldering the handles on. Firstly I cleaned then carefully applying a small amount of flux to the areas to be soldered, assembled the parts and placed very small pieces of solder, applied some heat until the solder ran.

There was a bit of solder that needed to be cleaned out of the grooves after that was done the lids were cleaned up with wet and dry sandpaper until flat.
I made up a tool to remove the lids from some Stainless Steel MiG welder wire, beaten flat on each end then bent to shape.

Another job was to open up the holes in the deck, to ensure the hole was centered around the screw top I made up a simple jig and scribed around it. A small carbide burr proved to be the best tool for the job.

Next job is to make some Fish Hatches and Lids, I have done a simple sketch to help with building them. I might increase the hand recess up to 5mm.

Looking for photos of Fish Hatches and Lids on the without much success. Until I found an old video of the Lydia Eva luckily near the end of the video is a brief glance of the Fish Hatch and Lid that I took a photo of, sorry about the poor photo quality. It’s not very clear but shows there is only one handle in the center, which was to be expected considering the Lid is only 10” in diameter according to the plan.

Again I welcome constructive opinions.

Cheers,
Stephen.

The Fish Hatches and Lids have progressed fairly quickly I am happy to say. Construction is basically the same as the Coal Bunker Rings and Lids.

When I was looking at how deep to make the Fish Hatches and Lids I turned to Ted Frosts book Tree to Sea once again.

Now I am more a visual sort of guy, a simple drawing would have been much easier for me. Anyway my interpretation of Teds description on page 131, is that overall the grating and bearer height is 2 inches with the Bearers being 1 ¼” and the Splines being ¾” as I have written on the post-it note.

If I am wrong with my interpretation please let me know. I have done a rough sketch of what I think is being described.

I ended up making the Fish Hatches and Lids about 2.4mm deep which is a little deeper than needed but it should be alright. Note that .041” is 1” at 1/24th scale which is around 1mm or .039”.

I made the handles from .8mm Brass rod that was annealed then squashed in the machine vice until it was around .5mm between flats. I have found this is a lot easier and safer than trying to make fine strips on the saw.

After cutting the handles to length they were soft soldered in then cleaned up with some wet and dry sandpaper.

The wooden blocks that the Fish Hatches and Lids sit in were drilled then cut to size.
Before I started making the Fish Hatches and Lids I found a drill that would be suitable for drilling out the Huon Pine without destroying it, this drill determined the outside diameter of the Fish Hatches.

I made the wooden blocks a little bit bigger than the plans indicate mainly because I didn’t want a very thin section that may snap on assembly also I think it looks a bit more like the ones on Lydia Eva as shown in the previous post.

Thanks for the having a look.
Again I welcome constructive opinions.

Cheers,
Stephen.