HMAS/m AE2, Scratchbuild

[grahamwalker]

like your work shop,, BUT      my old woodwork teacher will be turning in his grave  He said " Walker if I ever see you store a plane like that I will kick your bottom" ever since I store my planes on their side Never resting on the Blade.

 

[hendie]

I thought he was making a submarine.  

 

 

 

Planes is a different forum.

[Kris B]

With every update it looks more like submarine. Periscope waterline is top idea. 

[Bandsaw Steve]

17 hours ago, grahamwalker said:

my old woodwork teacher will be turning in his grave  He said " Walker if I ever see you store a plane like that I will kick your bottom" ever since I store my planes on their side Never resting on the Blade.

Dear Graham,

 

This is gold - absolute gold!    Thank you so much for posting your concerns.  I am going to enjoy writing this just soooooo much.

I too had a difficult relationship with my woodwork teacher. Perhaps the main reason that he really didn't like me was because I was (and perhaps still am) a right little know it all, with an answer for everything...

Allow me to illustrate.  There are at least three reasons why a woodworking plane should indeed never be left resting on it's blade:

1. The blade can be blunted.
2. The blade can be chipped and damaged, especially when the tool is being placed down.
3. The setting of the blade (how far it protrudes and the exact angular setting) can be unintentionally changed.

It is therefore very bad - very bad indeed  to leave a plane sitting like this - let alone to actually build a spot for it to sit like that permanently... 

 

It's clearly an outrage and your woodwork teacher has every right to turn in his grave and curse my bandsaw name  

No plane should ever be left like this - ever!

 

It should always be left like this - always...

But wait a minute - what's that little semi-circular ditch there in the shelf?

 

Is that a specially cut slot so that the weight of the plane never actually rests on the blade?

 

Why yes - it is... and it was there all along.

 

So Graham your woodwork teacher can go back to resting in peace.

 

Please don't hate me for being such a smart-acre  I can't help myself.

 

Best Regards,

Bandsaw Steve,

Protector of the blade...

[bar side]

Love the grove below the plane.  Sheer laziness though - I always had to check that the blade hade benn retracted back up so was not protruding before the plane could be put away.  That wasn't from my teacher, that was my dad!

[Bandsaw Steve]

Laziness is becoming something of a recurring motif in this thread! 🤔

[Bandsaw Steve]

Project Neodymium

 

According to Theodore Gray's excellent coffee table book 'The Elements - A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe' Neodymium (Nd atomic number 60) is the key element in the strongest commonly-available permanent magnets.

 

I bet there's a heap of the stuff in these little guys. 

These are wargaming magnets bought from my local hobby shop. The idea is that you can stick them onto the hands of your favourite Orc or Troll or whatever and can then easily remove one hand-held weapon and replace it with another.

 

Now that's a great idea and it can be applied to sticking all sorts of things to all sorts of things.  I was keen to try this because I was struggling to get sufficiently accurate holes to align doweling with both the hull and the conning tower.  In the photo below almost all of the holes you can see are failed attempts at getting the correct sized hole in the correct place at the correct angle.

 

With magnets however, there's no need to drill a deep straight hole, all one needs is a shallow circular pit of the correct size in the correct place.

 

Into each pit we glue a magnet (using good strong two part epoxy).

 

Measure off the correct distance to the next pit...

 

and repeat the exercise.

 

I then held the conning tower in a (non-ferrous) vice for a few hours for the glue to set and to make sure that the little magnets were pressed right down flush with the base of the conning tower.

 

Filled all of the ugly old failed holes with, yet more, plastic wood.

 

And so to the inevitable 'Project Neodymium' Blofeld monologue...

 

'Project Neodymium is a  complete success Mr Bond.  Here you can see me lift the entire weight of a submarine using nothing more than my super magnets! There is nothing you, your government or anyone else can do to stop me now!!!!' etc etc etc

 

And here is my home-made kitset prior to dry fitting. 

 

And here it goes temporarily put together. Conning tower on nice and straight and able to be removed and replaced at will.

 

Those little magnet things are really good! I will definitely be using them again. They would be ideal for attaching aircraft weapons onto pylons for example.

 

Next up - I have to fill that anchor locker and have another go at the flood-vent holes.

 

Best Regards,

Bandsaw Steve

 

 

 

[longshanks]

Nice one .....

 

3D Jig Saw wicked

 

Only just got a sense of scale from your pics

Your parts are really quite small

 

Kev

[hendie]

and I thought this was a family site.

 

nice out of the box thinking with the metal attraction devices.   However I feel I have to correct you on your technical terms.

 

11 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

and it can be applied to sticking all sorts of things to all sorts of things

 

shouldn't that be 'applied to sticking all sorts of things to all sorts of other things'? 

[grahamwalker]

sounds like our teachers went to the same uni

 

[bar side]

14 hours ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

 

Those little magnet things are really good! I will definitely be using them again. They would be ideal for attaching aircraft weapons onto pylons for example.

 

I feel a sideline in magnetic pylons, sdewinders & drop tanks coming on.....

[Nigel Heath]

For filling big holes like the anchor locker I would recommend car body filler (like Isopon P38) rather than plastic wood (which tends to shrink when it dries and can be a bit granular).

[Bandsaw Steve]

3 hours ago, grahamwalker said:

sounds like our teachers went to the same uni

 

I'm not sure my old woodwork teacher would even know how to spell unnivercity. 😁

[robgizlu]

Loving how this is all going to together and am sufficiently intimidated by the skill set on show

Rob

[Bandsaw Steve]

You are quite right to be intimidated! With my neodymium super magnets I am now completely invincible! 🙃

[Bandsaw Steve]

^{The Illusion of depth}

Sometimes it is necessary to create the illusion of depth. Generally when I have do this I just say something like  'It's the rhythm of Shakespeare's language that is the real root of it's power' and that seems to do the trick.

 

Making holes in a submarine's hull 'look deep' however, is not quite so easy.  Here's how I've finally done it.

 

On 11th of August 2017 - I left you with this picture. It's probably taken a bit too far away to show clearly but suffice to say there is no depth to the flood-vent holes at all, except in a couple of spots that fortuitously lined up with some spots where I had drilled a whole heap of holes for a mid-war configuration.

 

The first step is to fix the plastic sheeting that the revised flood vent holes are cut in - into the correct location. Just drill holes so that the new sheet is held in the right spot by the same dowels that hold the other components together. 

 

See - all lined up nice and straight. But as you can see there's just wood showing through beneath the plastic - we want to make it look like these flood / vent holes lead somewhere.

 

Mark onto the 'centre bit' where the flood / vent holes sit.

 

Take a scoop chisel and remove the wood that was sitting directly under the surficial holes.

 

 

Pretty ugly bit of woodwork this - especially with the blobs of plastic wood filling the old holes.

 

Clean up the gouges with some sandpaper - not looking quite so dreadful now.

 

This is the basic idea - now you can look into the flood / vent holes and see a deeper hole beneath. Note that there is a good reason why this has not been done to the  square hole on the left - you will see why in a later post.

 

Now slap some black paint on the gouges...

 

and stick the submarine back together again.

 

As you can see, each of the flood / vent holes are now nice and deep-looking even though they are actually quite shallow. Just like my personality...

 

Best Regards,

Bandsaw Steve

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[brianthemodeller]

By ‘eck that’s clever!

[Kevin Aris]

i love seeing others peoples build logs on boats, but after serving on them for 30 years it is just not a topic i fancy, looking forward to your next update

[hendie]

1 hour ago, KEVIN_ARIS said:

looking forward to your next update

 

you'll probably have to wait a while.  He got a reputation for disappearing for weeks on end for the slightest diversion.  Must be lots of squirrels down where he's at.

 

 

Nice scalloping Steve.  and glad to see the dangerous tools back in hand

[Bandsaw Steve]

On 16/09/2017 at 21:07, Bandsaw Steve said:

 

21 hours ago, hendie said:

 

you'll probably have to wait a while.  He got a reputation for disappearing for weeks on end for the slightest diversion.  Must be lots of squirrels down where he's at.

 

Actually there are no squirrels in Australia, and as it happens I am not easily distrac...  oh look is that a kookaburra...

 

[Ripaman]

Very nice Steve, lots of likes 

 

Regards

Richard

 

[Bandsaw Steve]

Commercial Time

 

A few days ago Mr Nigel Heath wrote this:

 

For filling big holes like the anchor locker I would recommend car body filler (like Isopon P38) rather than plastic wood (which tends to shrink when it dries and can be a bit granular).

 

Now it just so happened that Mr Heath had just bombarded this thread with several 'likes'. I therefore concluded that he must surely be a man of great education, taste and insight and so I decided to act on his recommendation. This, apparently is the equivalent stuff in Australia. Now I'm sure that many of you will be familiar with this stuff - but I was not and now that I have used it, I must say I am mightily impressed.

 

Just in case there are any other 'car bog' neophytes out there I'm going to show you what I learned in just one afternoon.

Firstly - the stuff is two part. The main can comes with a small tube of hardener that makes it 'go off' or 'cure' when mixed in.

 

The recommended mixing ratio is 50 to 1.  I just eyeballed it. I guess after a while you get a feel for it.

 

Mix it up until you get a nice uniform fleshy colour - I think this is about right.

 

First job was to try to smooth out all of those rough bandsaw marks on the saddle tank.

 

Don't use a kebab stick for slapping it on like I did. A popsicle stick would be much better.

 

As Mr Heath so knowledgeably claimed, it's fantastic for filling holes. Much better than plastic wood.

 

Its capacity to bridge gaps is fantastic. I was thinking that I would have to reinforce this oversized anchor locker that needed filling - but nope - the bog just stretched from one side to the other and solidified beautifully.

 

After a few minutes work here's what I had.

 

After a couple of hour's curing time the stuff sands beautifully.

 

Leaving a nice smooth finish where there were several rough bandsaw marks. I'll give it another coat soon just to remove the last traces.

 

This posting is probably a bit of a non-event for many of you who are already familiar with the delights of automative bog filler - but for me this stuff is a revelation and is yet another 'must have' item in the factory.

 

Consider this a commercial for the stuff.  If you haven't got some - get some!

 

Just tell 'em 'Bandsaw Steve' Sent Ya!

(It won't make any difference)

 

 

 

[bar side]

Yep, I swear my Dominie scratch build was basically shaped car body fller.  Use it for most filling these days

[Bandsaw Steve]

That Dominie was epic!

[bar side]

1 hour ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

That Dominie was epic!

Was good fun - more than I thought scratch building would be.  Must do another one some time.  Meanwhile, below the water......