Oneida war of 1812 brig

Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)

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This will be a reload of the Oneida which I did back in 2001. The build log is reconstructed from old images taken from the web and from archives I had stored. Some of the images are low resolution and will be grainy and poor overall quality, nothing I can do about that so we will have to make do with what is available.

Back when I designed the Oneida the upside Hahn method of building in a jig was being criticized for the use of extra wood in building frame blanks and not how real ship were built. The Oneida project was designed to follow the trend at the time of building a hull right side up without the use of a jig. At that time the Oneida was the first model ship with all the frames laser cut.

Looking back to follow a trendy movement to build model ship like real ships was a bad idea. The art and craft of model ship building and the building real ships have little in common with one another when it comes to the methods of construction.

To start the topic off here is a PDF file on the Oneida.


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HI ALL I GOT THIS FROM DAVE A LONG TIME AGO, HAVE DONE ALL THE FRAMES KEEL ETC, BUT INCABLE OF FINISING IT FOR LACK OF JIG, JUST COULD NOT GET THE FRAMES TO SIT RIGHT ON THE KEEL, LOVE POF BUILDS DOING A LOT OF THEM LATELY, BUT WILL NOT DO ONE WITH OUT A JIG, MAYBE ONE DAY WILL COMPLETE IT A WONDERFUL SHIP TO BUILD. GOD BLESS STAY SAFE DON
 
the model you will see in the build log is long gone used as kindling wood. It began to fall apart because i must of used the wrong glue. As a matter of fact all my models are gone. Back in the day all the plastic ship models were floated in the pond on the farm and shot to pieces with a BB gun, model cars were set on fire and i have no idea what happened to the rest of the models. Even today my model building is not to build fine display models but to build prototypes just to see if the design process works.

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18 years ago walking in to fabrication shop and asking them to cut wood was a big WHAT? we cut 1/4 steel here never tried to cut wood. So the Oneida was a total guess they never cut anything as fine as the Oneida and i never created a cutting file. I had double lines or lines that did not connect.


Before getting into the setup and building of the model I would like to cover, in general, the use of lasers in model building. There has been very little done by hand in the fabrication of parts, almost all the work was done in a CAD program then parts were setup in a cutting file for the laser.

Photo 1 All the frame parts, deck beams, the back bone pieces and deck knees were nested as close together as possible on a 2 x 24 inch sheet of Boxwood. A small bridge is left holding each part in the matrix. A little twist of the part will break the small bridge and the piece will fall out.

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Photo 2 A close up of the parts show what appears to be a burn from the laser. Actually its not a burn at all but rather the smoke from the cutting process. This smoke can either be scrapped off with a razor blade or cleaned off with steel wool. The darker squares are the notches etched into the parts. These notches are for the ends of the carlings and ledges.

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These photos are an example of both sides of a laser cut when joined together. The first photo is of the front side of the pieces, when turned over the space is much wider due to the angle of cut on both pieces. Again remember this is very close up photography and the gap is no more than .008 thousands of an inch. The ridges in the back round fabric can barley be seen with the naked eye. Correcting the angled cut of the laser is a simple task of taking a file or sandpaper and filing along the edge. At the time there was no way to adjust the focus of the laser it was what it was.

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Photo 6 Very little material has to be removed from the joining surfaces to obtain a close neat fit. The seam in the photo is less than half the width of the ridge on the edge of a penny. There is no need to remove all the burn from the joining edges. Epoxy will bond to the edges with no problem.

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Photo 7 some edges with an angle are more critical than others. Looking down on the notches cut into the keel you can see a slight angle to the edges of the notches. Two or three passes with a file and the notches will square up.
It is a little blurred but you can make out the slight angle of the side of the notches.

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When this idea was introduced at a Nautical Research Guild conference it was said the idea would never work because to much wood is removed when the parts were cleaned up and nothing would fit. Well, that is not the case. At the time the biggest problem was not the char but the focus of the laser and it cutting on an angle.
What is seen on the edge of a laser cut piece is not a burn but rather the resin from the wood. There is no burnt or charred wood along these cuts. I measured a piece before and after the resin burn was removed and only .003 of wood was actually removed. When the parts were laid out for laser cutting the width of the beam was taken into account and the actual cut was offset. The model is designed within a tolerance of .006 of an inch.
 
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The Plans

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In general, most plans for wooden sailing ships contained only the very basic information such as the principal dimensions of the hull, which is the length. The width and the depth of hold. Added to the principal dimensions is the deck layout and the hull lines which give the builder the shape of the hull. The rest of the needed information is left up to the knowledge, skill and imagination of the shipwright. In order to draw up a set of working plans and to reconstruct a historical correct model of the Oneida we will have to rely on other sources besides the original plans. A primary source of information on the construction of a naval vessel such as the Oneida is the navy’s “establishments” or specifications for the building of naval ships. The establishments list every part that goes into a ships construction and the size of the piece known as scantlings. Next we will use the archaeology information gained from the wrecks of the Eagle, Jefferson, the wreck found at Misery Bay alleged to be the Niagara. First thing done is to digitize the original plans into a CAD program. With that done we now move on to drawing 1.




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DRAWING 1

What we are looking at here is called the disposition of frame. Simply put it’s the location of all the whole frames in the body of the ship and their sided dimension. This information was found in the establishments under the term “room and space” which means the distance taken up by one frame and the space between the frames. In modern terms it means the frames were set 24 inch on center. As for the width of a frame, that is also found in the establishments under the sided dimensions of the floors and first futtocks, this totals 16 inches. When 16 inch frames on 24 inch centers are drawn on the original plans of the Oneida the frame locations match up to the locations of the gun ports. This is as close as we can get to historicaly correct without finding the wreck of the Odeida and measuring the framing. The Eagle a larger ship had an average of 20 inch frames on 24 inch centers, the Jefferson also built by Henry Echford had 17 inch frames set on 22 inch centers. with the location of the frames set we now move on to drawing two.


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DRAWING 2

This is the sheer plan which gives the shape of the hull. The sheer plan was digitized from the original Oneida plan. The green lines are the center of each frame. The blue lines at the bow are the cant frames. The purple line , black line, magenta line and the second black line are the waterlines. These lines are set on the original drawing ½ inch apart. The red line is the deck and the blue line is the sheer at the caprail. These two line float, or move up or down according to the location of the frame being lofted. The sheer drawing will be used to generate the shape of all the frames. The red line is the location of frame number 9. Snipping out a section of the sheer drawing at the red line we can demenstrate how a frame shape is lofted in drawing 3.


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DRAWING 3

The first illustration in this drawing is a snip out of the sheer plan. What has to be done is draw a line from the center line up to each of the waterlines, deck line and the sheer line. In CAD the lines are rotated and the four waterlines are placed ½ inch up from a base line and ½ apart, the deck and sheer line are placed at the proper height which is taken from the profile drawing. Draw a line starting where the center line and the base line meet continuing to the end of each waterline. This gives a general shape of the hull at frame location 9. In the third illustration the line just drawn is faired to a smooth curve. Each frame is lofted in this manner and placed in the body plan. With all the frame shapes in the body plan each line has to be adjusted so they don’t cross or touch the line next to it. A final faired body plan is shown in drawing 4. A frame is drawn by taking the outside shape from the body plan and the inside shape from the molded dimensions found in the establishments. Looking at the illustration of a frame you can see small lines located along the frame shape. These lines are the molded locations for the frame. Starting at center the establishments give the first molded dimension as 11 inches, the next line is located at the floor head and its molded dimension is 9 inches. Moving up the frame the molded dimensions are 11, 9. 7, 5 and 4. Finally the frame shape is mirrored, the deck line drawn in and the knees added.


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DRAWING 4

This drawing is the inside profile and the body plan. In this drawing are the shapes of the keelson, keel, stem, apron and deadwood which make up the backbone of the ship. Also is the location of the deck beams, capstan, sky light and hatch ways. The body plan has been placed in front of the profile and sits on the base line so the deck line and sheer line can be moved to match its proper height along the hull.


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DRAWING 5

Finally after hours and hours of lofting frames its now time to spend hour and hours breaking the frames down into their component parts called futtocks and placing them in a cutting file for the laser cutter.


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DRAWING 6

Here is the deck layout with its deck beams drawn in black and the smaller beams called ledges drawn in green. Carlings are the beams running from bow to stern, used to support beams and ledges where they break to form a hatchway. From archaeological information it was found the Eagle and the Jefferson were built by Eckford and both ships didn’t have deck knees. Deck beams were held to the sides of the ship by sandwiching there ends between a heavy deck clamp and a heavy waterway timber. If this is the case for the above two ships then why are deck knees shown in the deck layout of the Oneida? Eagle and Jefferson were built durning the war when speed in construction was an issue and the navy dept. would tend to overlook short cuts to get the ships out on the lakes. Jeffersons deck broke away from the sides of the ship durning a storm, she was repaired and sent back out on the lake. Both the Eagle and the Jefferson as well as the brigs built on lake Erie fell apart soon after the war ended. The Oneida was built unrushed three years before the war and was still sailing twenty years after the war. No doubt she was built strong and as woosley said “only the best white oak was used so you know the Oneida was built to the high standards of the Naval specifications of the Establishments.



DRAWING 7

Oops there is no drawing seven. But if there was it would be of the cant frames in the bow as well as the hawse timbers. There would be an expansion of the stern and all its parts. These parts are the counter timbers, wing transom. Lower transoms , filling pieces, fashion timber and its supporting wing transom. Its not that I got lazy with the drafting its because the bow and stern of ships were “dubbed in” which means the pieces were made from patterns and cut to fit as the hull is being built.

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the final working plans for the model
 
to jig or not to jig that is the question?

Back when i designed the Oneida project Harold Hahn was in the spotlight of plank on frame model building. It was a great concept because the hardest part of framing up a hull was keeping everything square, straight and in it place while under construction. The idea was not without its critics and their thoughts on the idea.
Issues with building frames from framing stock and building upside down in a jig did require more wood than building frames like a real ship futtock by futtock. I decided to go with the trend and did not design the project to be built upside down in a jig. I did however draw out the frames and laser cut the parts to save on wood.
 
BUILDING THE FRAMES

This shows the components of a frame, which consist of nine pieces. When the frames were laid out in a cutting file, the inner and outer edges were given a .030 offset. In other words, the frames were cut 1/16 larger to allow for fitting and finishing.

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This photo shows the sequence of how each part is fitted. A five minute epoxy was used to build the frames. There are a number of other glues that will also do the job. I like the epoxy because you don't have to clamp the pieces together and the epoxy set up fast allowing an assembly line building process. I will glue the first futtocks to the floor timber on perhaps ten frames. When I finish the last frame floor I can go back to number one and glue up the second futtocks. The gluing and assembling process is a messy job; you will get epoxy on your fingers as you line up the pieces. By the time the frame is built, there will be epoxy smudges all over it. Don't worry, the epoxy cleans up very nicely. If you don't feel confident to build your frame free hand, you can stick pins along the edges of the frame patterns and set up your frames against the pins.
Building the frame freehand is a matter of feel, you are lining up the edges. the edges of the floor timbers line up with the floor then the next frame piece lines up with the part sticking out beyond the floor.

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Not all the butt ends of the frame pieces will be at a 90-degree due to the angle of the laser cut. To insure a nice tight fit, I will use a file with no teeth on the edge. Just a couple passes against the end of the futtock will bring the edge to a 90-degree without the file cutting into the surface below. When a frame has been assembled, the inside and outside edges are sanded to remove some of the laser burn. The fore and aft faces of the frames are scraped with a razor blade and brought to a smooth finish.

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As you approach the bow and stern the frames will begin to take on a "fat" look. These odd shaped frames are cut full to allow the bevels to be shaped in later.


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The area penciled in is the bevel. On the left side of the frame shows the outside bevel on the right side of the frame shows the inside bevel. With the bevels drawn in you can see the true shape of the frame. Some builders will cut the bevels before installing the frame, and some builders will rough in the bevels first. I used the frames as "fat" and shaped the bevels as I sanded the hull.

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This photo places you inside the hull looking to the bow. You can see the stepped frames before the bevels are cut in.

This is an old grainy image but you get the idea.

You can pre shape the bevel on the frames and save yourself some work having to grind away at the hull. Or maybe take off some of the extra wood. The thing is if you try and shape each frame to the exact bevel you will have to build the hull exact. By leaving a little extra on the frames give you a little room just incase you do not set the frames exactly in place.

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Looking at the bow straight on from the outside, you can see how the hull steps down from frame to frame. The exposed face of each frame is actually the penciled in area. The finished frame shape is behind the frame in front of it.

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When the frames are first installed the transition from frame to frame look as if the hull couldn't possibly take on a smooth shape. However, in the photo, the hull was given a rough sanding to knock off the front edge. There was a lot of material left on the original frame shape to allow for the final shaping.

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Here is a view from the inside of the hull looking aft. This photo clearly shows the stepping up of each frame. This will be sanded smooth once all the frames are in place.

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SETTING UP THE HULL

in any framed hull there are different points you have to keep in check in order to end up with a proper hull. Just placing a frame on the keel is not enough to insure the framing will be correct. The first point is where the frame sits on the hull but the top of the frames will move and not line up with each other.

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you can add spacers along the top of the frames but that will not insure the hull is being built right because any slight lean of the the frames will result in the entire hull taking on a slant.

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each and every frame has to be square to the keel or you will end up with frames going in different directions


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the frames also have to be level from side to side

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if they are not all level this will happen the sides of the hull will be uneven and the hull will take on a twist

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it does seem scary to build a frame free form and not in a jig many things can go out of whack when you are dealing with a lot of frames.

so how do you deal with keep each and every frame square, level from side to side and not leaning forward or backwards?
 
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When setting up the framing for a hull there are three basic points of reference. When these points are kept in check you will get a fair and even hull. First, each frame is set at 90 degrees to the keel; secondly the frame is set at 90 degrees to the surface so it does not lean forward or backwards. Third the frames are set level from side to side. The keel notches and the use of spacer blocks assure frame spacing.

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To begin, the keel is sandwiched between two blocks set on plate glass. This basic setup gives the needed 90 degrees to the surface and the 90-degree to the keel.
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A ruled line was set up in the computer. Any program that will draw a line will do the trick. I set mine up in CAD with lines spaced out at .030. This is then printed out and glued to foam board. Evenly cut the foam board at the bottom line. This keeps the lines parallel to the surface.

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The first frame set up is in the center of the hull. Starting in the center of the hull and working in two directions to the bow and to the stern greatly reduces any chance of error down the entire length of the hull. If you were to begin with frame one and work your way to the stern any frame that had a lean will continue from frame to frame.

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Taking a close look at the frame set up; you can see the top of the frame touches the same line on both sides. This simple process levels the frame from side to side. Another way to accomplish this is to use a line level, which is about two inches long. Set a piece of wood across the top of the frames. Place the line level on the wood to make sure your frame is even from side to side. Using a level works as long as the base your building on is level.

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With a little dab of 5-minute epoxy in the keel notch, the frame is set in place and rubber banded to the backing board.

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When the first frame is glued into place, the keel is slid out to the next notch. The next frame is set in the keel notch and the keel and frame are pushed against the backboard until the frame stands square. Frames were set up in groups of three. A frame was skipped and the next set of three were set up. Each set of three were held together by the gun port sill. This worked to maintain the proper spacing but proved to be to weak when it came time to sand the hull. Some of the joints between the port sills and the side of the frames broke. To correct this, a small spacer block was glued in the space under the sill.

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BUILDING THE HULL



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If i set up one frame and continued any slight error would just keep going or get worse as more frames are added. What i did was setup three frames and skipped a frame and setup another 3 frames. Each group of frames were checked and rechecked to make sure they were square and level to one another.
Once two sets of three frames were completed, the skipped frame was added. Spacers were placed between the frames at the bulwarks and the two units were banded together with rubber bands. This created a solid, strong and square midsection of the hull.



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From this point, frames were added fore and aft of the midsection one at a time with spacers at the bulwarks.
i used a big rubber band to hold the added frames tight to the mid section.
once again the poor quality of the images are due to the fact they are a low resolution. The originals are gone.




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The notches in the keel were filed square, which made them slightly larger than the width of the frames. This slight difference between the frames at the keel and the spacers at the bulwarks caused the frames to tilt fore or aft. Longer pieces of the spacer wood were used between frames to keep the space even from the top to the bottom of the frames.



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Installing the half frames at the stern was accomplished by pulling them against the last full frame with rubber bands. At the bulwarks, the space is the same as the rest of the hull, but at the foot of the frame the space is narrower. If the space were equal there wouldn't be enough deadwood to attach all the half frames. To locate the position of the half frames, the flat edge of the frame rests against the deadwood and the bottom edge is set at the top of the keel.



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Cant frames at the bow are installed in the same fashion as the stern half frames. The difference between bow and stern framing is that where the cants meet the deadwood there is no space between the frames.
 
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The most important point in setting the cant frames is the angle where the frame meets the deadwood. This angle becomes more acute with each frame as they approach the stem. To determine the angle, the first cant frame is pulled tight to the last whole square frame. Next a spacer is put between the frames at the bulwarks. The angle will appear at the junction of the cant frame and the deadwood. you can see the angle in the last frame, what i will do is test fit each frame then remove it from the hull and sand the angle a little at a time until the foot of the frame sets flat against the deadwood.
This is done with each cant frame.


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With the spacer in place, the foot of the frame is sanded to the proper angle. It is a slow process of sand and fit then sand again until the frame fits.
 
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The first piece to fit is the bollard timber. One sits against each side of the stem, its foot is cut on an angle to rest flat against the cant frame. This timber serves as a landing for the ends of the planking to be fastened to, and the top creates a landing for the bowsprit to sit on.




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An outside and inside view of the hull shows how the three timbers fit to one another. The knightheads are epoxied to the surface of the bollards. The hawse timber acts as a wedge and is places between the knighthead and the cant frame. At this stage of fitting the timbers, focus is on the angles on the foot of each timber, and how they fit together.


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With the timbers in place the bow is shaped and finish sanded.
 
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Gluing 30 grit sandpaper to the bottom of a scrap piece of wood makes a sanding sled. This sandpaper is very thick and used in auto body shops to grind car bodies. The hull was given a preliminary shaping before the half and cant frames were put into place. This was done so the inside of the forward frames could be reached from the open end of the hull. The rounded shape of the block allows it to ride up on the edge of the forward frames shaping the hull as it goes along. Looking close at the surface of the frames you will see this first sanding is very course. It doesn't take much to sand the hull to shape. By the time 120 grit paper is reached, all the score marks are gone and the surface is as smooth as marble. When the cant frames and half frames are added, the hull is given another sanding. As far as the bevels on the forward frames are concerned, they are shaped when the hull is sanded. There was no prebeveling or preshaping of the cant frames before they were added to the hull.


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actually things are out of order and this should be mentioned before the bow and stern frames were done. The order of building the hull is to set all the whole frames in the hull then install the deadwood pieces and from here proceed to install the bow and stern frames.

Before the half frames at the stern and the cant frames at the bow can be built into the hull, the keelson and deadwoods have to be set into place. The keelson goes in before the deadwood because it is sandwiched between the deadwood timbers. When all the whole frames are set in the keel notches they will not be exactly even, some will be a slightly higher at the floors. When the floors were set up for laser cutting, the inside and outside edges were offset .030 to allow for fitting and finish sanding. This offset will keep the ends of the keelson from resting against the deadwood when it is set on the frame floors. First the inside of the hull was sanded down to even out the floors; the keelson notches were deepened






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like the notches in the keel the notches in the keelson will have a slight angle to the sides.
By using a vice with hardened tool steel plates on the top of the jaws, it is easy to set the depth of the notches. Set the keelson in the vice to the depth of the finished notch. Using a file, to clean up notches until the file hits the surface of the vice. The steel is so hard that the file will glide across the surface without damage to the file or vice. You do not have to have an exact and tight fit of the keelson over the floors this area is buried deep in the hull and the fit will never be seen. So close is good enough
 
BUILDING THE STERN





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The stern was built off the model for the simple reason there are too many angles to deal with all at once. The transom piece is set on a flat surface and held in place with a weight. A square block will be used to stand the stern timbers up straight. Notches for the stern timbers were cut into the surface of the transom.


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A template was made from the drawing and will be used to hold the stern frame in place while the epoxy sets up. This template also insures each stern frame is set to the proper angle.


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When the stern frame is glued into place a rubber band is used to hold the frame against the block and to the proper angle.



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The back edge of the transom is cut on an arc, as each frame is set into place its located by pushed its foot against the front edge of the notch.
 
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