Ahoy! Shipmates, one or two problems have cropped up on my build, mainly with materials. As soon as I removed the channels from their frets, they took on a curve, looking more like English long bows! The mizzen ones were more or less flat, but despite several attempts, I failed to flatten them, so this morning, after using them as patterns, they hit the bin. I now have fore & main channels made in boxwood & are flat. Some of the solid wood frets tend to break, especially cross-grain. When assembling the belfry the cross-beams of the 'H' section snapped, well, a cross-grain horizontal beam connecting two vertical columns is never satisfactory, especially when it's brittle walnut, so I remade the sides as 3-piece structures. I have just purchased a Proxxon DS230E fret saw, 'new'-unused, & half price, this to be used to remove parts from their frets. I have read some criticism regards this tool, but it appears to be solid, with no movement in the bow as mentioned, but it is fiddly fitting the small blades, the teeth of which I have a job to see! A test cut on 3mm Swiss pear produced a satisfactory result - as the man says; "Let the tool do the cutting".
