Rodondo's ketch

here in Norway we mainly use spruce and pine. they are soft wood, easy to work with, and hold very good. we do use oak and birch from time to time, and mahogany for the more fancy boats! but Spruce and pine is the main wood in almost every wood boat build here in Norway, and are also easy to get... oh the wood is also quit light compared to other wood.

a typical Norwegian vessel build in spruce:
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Rusel wrote:

Ah, I thought you must've had some chippy in you!
Man, the stories your family could tell! I built pole and stone houses for a living back in the 80s. Felled the trees, portable milled them and then built the houses up in the hills. Such a privilege to be part of the whole process.
I dredged this quote from info on the Dent Shipyards in Jervis Bay.
"Timber used for wooden-hulled boats was Ironbark or Spotted Gum for keels and usually Beechwood for decking. Spotted Gum was used because of its bending qualities for planking. The timber was passed through a steam box and bent to the required shape, then secured into position. Blackbutt and Ironbark were used for stringers."
I've spent many hours bushwalking through the area and the Spotted Gum forests are glorious.
How big a steam box will you build?
According to Forest Trees - Dry Weight density for
Spotted Gum is 1080kg/m3: warps easily
Swamp Mahogany is 955kg/m3: very durable
Turpentine is 1005 kg/m3: high shrinkage, one of the worlds most fire resistant timbers
White Topped Box 1020 kg/m3: very durable (Ive found it very straight grain)
Grey Ironbark 1120 kg/m3: very durable, difficult to work, takes a high finnish
And down your way of course the king of them all -
Red(Mugga) Ironbark 1220 kg/m3: extremely durable, difficult to work, interlocked grain but a beautiful finish.
If I was closer I’d offer a couple days a month to help build your beast, what a magnificent project!

Is it that obvious?

Nothing like building something with your own hands is there? Whereabouts are these house, sounds like Lithgow or Katoomba

I remember we had this beautiful tall eucalypt in the front yard of our holiday house, easily 130-140 foot tall, dead straight with only branches right up the top, proper crown tree. My grandfather planted when the house was built so it was a few decades old, kinda broad trunk, take two people to reach around it, sadly a storm two years ago took the crown off and it was found the trunk was really damaged from the break as well as recent insect damage so it was removed. I can't for the life of me figure out what type of tree it was, as the only other tall trees there are Radiatia Pines, nothing else (Might be an apple topped box or a blue gum(Maiden's Blue Gum) but thats purely speculative)

Might give Swamp Mahoghany a seriously look-over when return to the mainland, as well having a look into box species for decking, that stuff is fairly strong and comes in long pieces

heuhen wrote:

Looks nice, sadly here pine isn't really an option, being Radiata which rots quickly, the rest we don't have here, we have weird fireproof and explosive trees

_________________
Work list(Current)
Miscellaneous|Victorian Colonial Navy|Murray Riverboats|Colony of Victoria AU|Project Sail-fixing SB's sail shortage
How to mentally pronounce my usernameRow-(as in a boat)Don-(as in the short form of Donald)Dough-(bread)
"Loitering on the High Seas" (Named after the good ship Rodondo)
There's no such thing as "nothing left to draw" If you can down 10 pints and draw, you're doing alright by my standards

yup pine needs maintenance, but if done correct, all they need is some oil and paint every year.

heuhen wrote:

yup pine needs maintenance, but if done correct, all they need is some oil and paint every year.

True that, I've heard of a treated pine alternative called Accoya which i meant to be hardy but it's got the draw back of requiring only stainless steel as the preserving agent will corrode it over time

true that.

I have mainly build traditional pine boats here in Norway, by just using and ax and a hammer. so I know it can be hard to decide what's best for the you'r boat, and it ill be fun to see how you solve it.

my I suggest making an photo collage/diary here at "SB".

heuhen wrote:

Yeah, I'll mostly be doing things by hand with period tools (read here, stuff that dates back to prior to 1930) but when precision is required I have access to an industrial woodworking CNC

I'll definitely chuck some pictures up once I get some headway done

ah CNC is fun, work with them almost every day at work. making programs for them to. I have an project I am doing now, (it's my second project in my apprentice to become industrial carpenter) one of the thing I have to do is making a text. fun when you have to work on some of the older CNC machines that behave like they have just come home from party!

Looks great Rodondo! Where can I book a berth on the maiden voyage?

heuhen wrote:

Yeah, they are fun, though I do sometimes get lazy thanks to them. Your's run on good ol' Windows 98?

Rowdy36 wrote:

Looks great Rodondo! Where can I book a berth on the maiden voyage?

If I ever go to WA, you'll be the first to know

We have windows 98 and XP and some are using a weird OS from Biesse... Biesse probably one of the worse machines around. but we are at the moment upgrading to Bachi.

Shipbucket

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