School for Shipmodel Building School for model ship building

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

Adding the wales depend on the wood you select and the type of hull a solid hull, plank on bulkhead or plank on frame. It is clear a framed hull makes holding the wales in place much easier than trying to hold them against a solid hull. Because wales are thicker than the planking it helpful to soak the end in hot water. Here you see the difference in color before the orange clamp and after the clamp. The end section was soaking in hot water for about 15 minutes.



The advantage to a frames hull or a hull built as a solid shell, you can clamp the wales to the hull.



so for the wood, because wales are usually black builders will try and use Ebony. Which was used by mater builders. The problem with Ebony is it does not like to bend, it is somewhat brittle. What Hahn did was to laminate thin ebony to a bendable wood. A wale at the bow not only bends along the hull but it also has a twist so Hahn created a positive and negative "mold of the bow and clamped the wale between the two.



You can see on some of his models the laminate wale.



Other solutions is to use a bendable wood and stain it black or use a darker wood besides Ebony. Some woods just do not like to bend while others bend well. What you see being used here is Red Maple also called Soft Maple which is really not that soft, but it takes bending quite well. In general, the softer the wood the better it will bend but soft wood when soaked in water will dent from clamping. hard wood will not dent as easy but harder to bend. The answer is not too hard and not to soft. There are woods in the rosewood family that are dark and will bend, the problem is gluing, they have an oil in them that glue will not hold. Thickness also plays a roll in bending wales. The thicker the material the better chances of it bending. That sounds counter intuitive but the thinner the wood is it gets to a point its structure becomes weak and it will break before it bends.

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

Wales can be one timber or made up of a number of strakes.

OH! another ship term lets define it before moving on

On a vessel's hull, a strake is a longitudinal course of planking or plating which runs from the boat's stempost (at the bows) to the sternpost or transom (at the rear).

lets take a look

here is a wale made up of one large plank



here are wales made up of a number of strakes



here is the Niagara and the wales have 5 strakes

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

The big problem builders run into is the fact a wale not only bends along the hull but it has a twist to it. Let me show you what i mean.
Looking at the top edge of the wale it bends nicely along the hull sitting tight to the frames.



But when you look at the bottom edge it is a different story the wale does not sit on the frame.



if your planking the hull this may not matter because the plank butting the lower edge of the wale might cover the void. but if you not planking the lower hull that void will show. How do you fix this? you can try to twist and clamp the wale but you run the chance of denting the wale from the pressure of the clamp plus the fact the wood your using may not take the bend and twist.
The solution is the "strakes" here you see a wale make up of one timber and what your trying to do it bend something that is straight to conform to a curves surface. If the wood is pliable enough you might succeed but that is a big maybe. The other example is breaking the wale into strakes now the narrower pieces will conform to the curved surface of the frame. to make this work the edges of the strakes have a bevel so they fit tight to one another.

Planning the wales there is a limit in the number of strakes you can use in model building. Planking in model building is thicker than what was actually used. A two inch thick plank at 1:48 scale is .040 quite thin and depending on the wood at its limit of strength for bending. Using slightly thicker helps from sanding through the planking and thicker is stronger. Breaking down a wale into strakes you do not want the thickness to exceed the width because then you will be trying to bend a timber edge wise which is harder to do. The limit is square.

 

[Dave Stevens (Lumberyard)]

ok class dismissed

chance are there will not be a class next Saturday because the wife and i are going on vacation to celebrate 45 or 46 or 47 years together i lost count a long time ago. We are leaving tomorrow with an open end of returning. No model work this coming week.

 

[OlivierF]

Enjoy your honeymoon which ever year it is!