Fifie - Scottish Fishing Boat POB by Amati

Joined
Feb 8, 2021
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402
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278

Location
Victoria Australia
"FIFIE" just docked after 8 days from Turin to regional Victoria. When it is taking a week to get a letter across Australia I reckon DHL are absolutely amazing and the freight charge was only 25 euros.
Opened the box, plans look good, instruction book looks good as well. The wood needs comment. The planks look fine,to be fair they look good.. almost all of the structure is MDF in 3mm 4mm and 6mm, thats all the keel, bulkheads, and deck sub structure.I have mixed feelings about this, as it is very accurate, flat and stable, goes together excellently....but breathing in the sawdust probably isn't the best plan. It is clearly a cost saving measure, the only parts which are not MDF are the planks, the deck furniture and cabin (very thin 1mm ply) and masts of course. So overall it all looks good and capable of making a good model provided you dont mind the MDF. I dont want to be nasty but it is just as well they cant make planks out of MDF, but maybe that's a cheap shot.
 
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Bulkheads glued in, deck and bilge parts dry in place to locate the bulkheads correctly. The frame is somewhat over engineered for a static model because of the RC provision I guess


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Where is bulkhead 10 do I hear you say..? well it is on the desk having it's portside tab reglued as i knocked it off...what was I saying just above..?
 
Faired and fitted the stern and bow fairing pieces. I nearly made a very silly mistake but caught myself in time...the stem and the stern on this boat are both vertical and at this early stage you have to be careful not to get the ends mixed up. I started off intending to put the four bow pieces at the stern... duh.

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The planks are provided at 600mm and the run of a plank is about 780mm so you have to join them. Lots of complaints about this but get over it.. the real boat would have had 20ft timbers if it was lucky which would see about 4 sticks to every run. Yeah I know POB isnt correct to that degree but 1 join is not an issue IMHO. Planking is good wood and joins well. This is only inner planking. I am going for a bit of authenticity as in Chris Watton's introduction where he emphasises that the real boats are painted top and bottom and the example model is only "clear" to show materials used . So if I am painting I might only have to do 1 layer of planks...woohoo...

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Remainder of keel setup... a bit complex aft because of the need to provide for prop shaft if going RC which I am not. So far these parts fit perfectly. The laser cutting on the MDF keel and bulkhead parts is noticeably finer than my previous Amati build.

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Chris Watton says that the provision of MDF has nothing to do with economy. It is a response to issues with plywood quality, most importantly the tolerance on thickness. Using mdf allows the fitting to be much more precise and predictable, and variations of a few tenths of a mm in thickness make accurate laser cutting impossible. Best to look it up, I am not fully quoting his whole argument. I just finished Amati Lady Nelson hull and I thought the MDF part fitup was awesome. I had to learn how to fair it without damaging the edges though. Not hard to do.
 
I really like to spot glue a piece of 2 x 3mm to help getting the planks to land in a nice straight line at the stem. It just snaps off.
Nice model. It was on my short list when I bought Terror just recently, so I am watching with interest. Are you making a kind of false rabbit with that temp piece then?
 
Nice model. It was on my short list when I bought Terror just recently, so I am watching with interest. Are you making a kind of false rabbit with that temp piece then?
No..it just provides a straight edge to bring your plank ends level more easily and a ledge to stop the clamps springing off whjen trying to clamp the ends on their slope.
 
Chris Watton says that the provision of MDF has nothing to do with economy. It is a response to issues with plywood quality, most importantly the tolerance on thickness. Using mdf allows the fitting to be much more precise and predictable, and variations of a few tenths of a mm in thickness make accurate laser cutting impossible. Best to look it up, I am not fully quoting his whole argument. I just finished Amati Lady Nelson hull and I thought the MDF part fitup was awesome. I had to learn how to fair it without damaging the edges though. Not hard to do.
Agree all that, fairing is a little tricky but fit is fantastic.
 
Taken from: www.realtor.com/advice/home-improvement/what-is-mdf-furniture/

Health issues with MDF board By Adriana Velez | May 15, 2017​

MDF board is raising some health concerns because it's made with an adhesive containing urea-formaldehyde (or urea-methanol formaldehyde), which "off-gasses" into its surroundings. One study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that high levels of this formaldehyde can irritate the skin, eyes, nose, and throat. Worse yet, it estimates that high exposure levels could increase your lifetime risk of getting cancer, with an anticipated 6 to 30 extra cases for every 100,000 people per year.
 
Absolutely, wear a mask for ALL wood (or any) sanding. Wood dust itself from various species can be very harmful. But, unless you live in a very old house, you are surrounded by hundreds of kilos of formaldehyde off-gassing plywood, OSB, and maybe MDF. And don't even think about flooring and carpets. That new car smell? Glue. So, aside from dust, a few ounces of MDF seems insignificant. MDF sourced in Europe may be E0 grade.
 
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