Woodshop 101

Terry and Alicia supervising the glue up

Rob uses a panel jig to square up the ends

We travelled to Florida for a week of golf and other fun in the sun.  I was able to convince my brother to help in making the hull for the HO Scale bulk carrier to PoLA.  The technique we were to use is a modified bread-and-butter technique. The bow and stern will be built up using wood layers as in normal bread-and-butter construction. The parallel mid-body that connects the bow and stern will be a simple box.

My brother has a complete wood working shop with many interesting tools, including some hand planes that he made from scratch.  That is he made the

Some of Rob's homemade tools

master forms, had a foundry cast the iron, and then he finished them. Yes, he is a serious wood worker.

Cutting the layers on the band saw

I sent him a bill of materials before we arrived. He bought the slabs of poplar, planed them and glued them into boards that were 0.75 inch thick and 11 inches wide. He also used his table saw to square up the ends.

I drew the templates for the layers at home and printed them on my large format printer. I transferred the templates to the poplar wood. Rob used his Inca band saw to cut the layers.

Templates for layers

As each layer came off the band saw, I used a spoke shave to carve the flared end of the bows. The spoke shave works great for this type of carving. Rob made the spoke shave handle from a piece of Mesquite wood.

Using a spoke shave to to carve
the flared bow. Yes, Rob made the
spokeshave too

We used wood screws and  locating dowels to align the layers.

With the bow and stern glued up, we ripped a piece of poplar to the exact width need to make the freeboard of the mid-body hull.

We used the table saw to cut the transom

Then we used the table saw and router to rabbet the bow and stern sections to accept the parallel mid-body.

We will carry the pieces home for the final finishing. The overall size is 60 inches long by 10 inches in beam.

Rob looks over the hull as we wrapped up for the night

The rabbets for the mid-body pieces are
visible in this image