Good evening. I have to agree with you. Not only that but the guys here are really helpful and friendships are formed across the world.This will be a weird, mostly unrelated post.
I am on 2-3 other forums, all dealing with another couple of my hobbies; archery and rimfire rifles. I've been visiting those regularly for twenty years.
I've only been on the ship building forums for several months or less.
I mean the following with great respect and even admiration. The vocabulary of many of the writers on this forum is very impressive and without bluster! I find myself having to look up a few words like "febrile" by Alex as he describes his intermittent phases of excitement over his long-term build of the Enterprise.
Of course this is also the most civil and respectful forum I've ever experienced.
Kudos to the crew.
(Look at me, using a ship term (crew?) in a sentence!
Good evening Allan.Thanks for this. I have tapered, however more needs to be done to achieve the measurements indicated the contract. Thanks again - I do value your input and encouragement.Grant, will you be tapering the knee of the head? From the contract:
The knee of the head to extend to the upper side of the upper cheek, to be 11¾ ins thick at the stem and 6 ins at the fore end
which is quite noticeable. When this is not done the figure heads look quite bowlegged.
View attachment 504520
Good evening Russ and Paul (@dockattner ).Grant, I ran into the same problem with the Oseberg. Just barely (and I do mean barely) cleaning up the laser-induced taper caused the two halves of my keel to differ in size by quite a bit. This seems to be an issue that is lost on kit producers. They "precision" cut the parts with a laser exactly to size - and yes, the bottom face is to size, but the top face of the part is smaller. Leaving it alone either causes unsightly gaps and poor glue joints, or crooked joinery. Squaring it up makes the overall part too small.CNC routed kits would be a possible solution, but at the same time, those end mill cutters are such a small diameter that as they dull, they will deflect also, creating taper as well. The advantage though, is that the deflection would generally make the part larger on the bottom face, allowing you to square the parts up to exact size.
CNC vs laser parts. My Victory was a CNC kit and I did prefer the process better than with this laser and char removal. I am being a little finicky about the char removal and squaring up as on the whole everything is coming together pretty cool. It Looks exaggerated in the close up photos and I am leaving plenty sanding and finishing for later.
Cheers Grant
. Cheers Grant