FN France - The Black Death

Working on cutting the windows a little bit each night. The hull is nice and thick. I hate cutting fiberglass though so this may be my last fiberglass boat. I much prefer wood.

 

Yes.... Yes, Glorious! My hopes of our forest reaching our timber sale volume target increase with every wooden boat built!

 

The hull could have been cut if you felt strongly, I know a guy haha. Not sure if you’re already doing this, but I do all my Dremel/dust producing work with a shop vac hose in the other hand. I cut one hull 15 years ago without a vacuum and that was enough for me. Using a vacuum with adequate breathing/hearing/sight protection makes the process not too bad in my opinion

 

My main limitation is the dremel overheating. I cut till it gets warm then quit.
Yeah I think you mentioned the vacuum somewhere else here and that's how I do it. Dust isn't that bad at all. Cutting fiberglass hulls just isn't my thing though. Lol

 

laugh's on you. Birch Veneer's pouring off of the Chequamegon-Nicolet and the Chippawa.
a lot of that "Baltic Birch" is American paper birch. Paper Birch Veneer is pretty high quality no matter where you get it. it's all in the grade of the log. Export Grade Veneer Logs make the real "Baltic" stuff look like total junk.

The Questionable Fart Project is going to be almost 50% Chequamegon Paper Birch. I hope to one day follow a tree I mark and cut, grab veneer off of it, and make a boat out of it. Won't be too hard to pull off. I just have to get in good with the Veneer Mill north of here.

 

Made a little progress today. I marked out the ribs and stringers for the other side of the hull and drilled out most of the corners. I cut out as many windows as I could before the dremel overheated, then quit. I feel like I made some decent progress though.







Once the hull is fully cut I can then add reinforcing fiberglass underneath the subdeck and from there I can work on installing the removable stuffing tubes.

 

Hull is 95% cut. All that remains are the casements and one little window that was too thick to get with the dremel.

Here's the hull with the masonite deck in place with two wing turrets placed in their approximate position.

 

Working on reinforcing the molded subdeck to the hull with fiberglass. Three quarters of the way done. Just one more side.

 

Hopefully this doesn't cause a lot of controversy, but I have a question on the casement rules.
My question pertains to the "casement impenetrable beyond 1/2-inch" rule, shown below.

16. On ships which have casemate mounted guns, the cupolas may be constructed
of impenetrable material. A 1/8" wide strip on each side of the cupola may also be
impenetrable. If a flat bulkhead area between cupolas is inset more than 1/2" from the
edge of the gunwale the entire casemate area (cupolas and all flat bulkhead areas inset
greater than 1/2") may be made impenetrable.

So am I correct in my assumption that this means the 1/2" is measured off the edge of the deck rim, since the gunwale is the top edge of the ship?

 

Caleb don't you know that now a days its impossible to ask a question without causing controversy?

casement gunwale is the deck the casements are sitting on (from 14.b), so you measure from that edge inward. There is a picture right after 16.a

For the onlookers, reminder that this is model boats, not debate club

 

You don't have to remind me. I've been meaning to ask this for a while, just now had the courage to go public.

Ok. The rule didn't make mention which gunwale was being used so I wanted to double check. I will probably get these blasted casements cut this week.

 

Also I believe it is supposed to be based of the plans not the hull, because hulls can be prone to small inaccuracies.

 

Yeah Caleb better triple check, might have deformed during shipping My type to build ratio is way too low to get those things right

Casements are about as accurate as the lines on the 1913 plans signed by some dude called "le directeur des constructions navales," probably a pre-WWI sea lawyer anticipating our hobby

I typically add about 1/16" of extra of penetrable area beyond where it goes 1/2" in to make my boats extra compliant

 

Yeah, and they were translated by some guy who took french class from a Haitian man who openly said "My french is not the France french." So your mileage may vary.

 

I say that because some folks have come under scrutiny in the past for the disparage between plans and hull if I recall correctly. I know I wouldn’t want to fool with someone trying to call me out.

 

The dimension has little significance on these boats, the only potential impact would be a sliver of hard area forward of the casements, probably no more than 1/8” longer or shorter than the scale length of hard area. Don’t think it would raise eyebrows pondside either way from even the most scrupulous of rule enthusiasts.

The casements come back within 1/2” between the 1st and 2nd rounded portions, I decided to put a 1/4” rib in the 1/4” gap between the 1/8” strips adjacent to the curved section to avoid drilling another hole. Again, might get a bb or two through there over a Nats, holes like that I typically don’t bother patching on my other casement boats.

The rule referencing plans really only has a meaningful difference on ships like the Baden, where for a while boats were built with the casements (and maybe even some plans according to rumors) 1/2” back, vice scale location. Diagrams made by Tim certainly help with this. Also good plans are harder to come by. Makings rule compliant Baden would be a PITA, but I don’t feel bad about captains having to work a little for the maneuverability

 

This in particular was what I was thinking of from back in ‘10-‘11 or so.

 

One of the plusses of the molded deck is the excess can be trimmed for the casement overhangs. Gotta be accurate!

 

Casements are all cut. I threw what SS I had printed on her for a picture.


Next step is to install shafts. I plan to do the same thing I did with Tromp and make the shafts removable. I like being able to remove things from my boats for maintenance and repairs. Shafts are no exception.