Fiddlehead model

This boat has no thwarts or seats. One sits on the bottom, maybe on a cushion, not on any built-in seat. One of the comfort accommodations is an adjustable footrest. Making it was something to do while waiting for the stems to set up. The footrest has a simple rail that’s screwed to the bottom and has several holes drilled for different positions. The rest itself has two holes for finer adjustment and a pin extended from the knob to hold it in place. This is another of the fine scale features, complete with simulated screw heads.

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The stem pieces are the same at each end and are gotten out of a single board. There are no splices or scarfs. As with many small parts that have duplicates, I temporarily glue two boards together and cut once. The challenge with the stems was getting them positioned correctly on the bottom. They are so small that it is hard to find a method that works well. The 1:1 version can probably be done by setting the stem in a vise and positioning the bottom over it. That didn’t work for the model because it’s too hard to see the joint that way, and the tolerance for a good fit is incredibly small.

It took three tries to arrive at the method shown. The bottom is aligned on a cutting pad, where we have lines drawn to ensure angular accuracy. That’s weighted down. The stems are then clamped to a machinist square and glued in place. 1:1 fastening is bedded with glue and fastened with two screws for each stem.

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Setup is always a boat building milestone. Whatever is used to define the boat’s shape gets affixed to a building base. Shape is usually defined by frames, forms, molds, bulkheads, sometimes temporary, sometimes an integral part of the structure. This boat uses the two watertight bulkheads and the mid-frame to define the shape. They are integral components, not temporary shape forms.

The building base for the 1:1 version needs to be any simple flat platform that is 12 feet long, about a foot wide, and on legs that provide a convenient working height. For the model, I used a strip of composite board. Part of one of the drawings is glued to the block to make parts placement accurate. A few strips of wood provide anchorage for the bulkheads and frame. The parts are placed on vertical boards to allow access to the hull interior as it is being constructed. This technique is used for the 1:1 version as well.

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