Dreadnought's post (thanks Dreadnought
) sent me peeking at the cat boat thread and the beautiful work therein . . . . .
And slowed me down on my own rabbet cutting!
But I got to thinking . . . .
For those of you out there that are taking the first steps into scratch building and following full size practices in cutting rabbets etc. things might seem a little odd looking.
You've spent hours pouring over the ships lines on your drawing and you trust the naval architect's lines and curves implicitly and all seems well and right and your ready!
Then you come to the point of putting chisel to wood, you've plotted things out carefully and the lines drawn on the wood are perfect the chisel edge is sharp.
But yet it hovers over a proposed cut and those little alarm bells are clanging away in your head!
It seems like a minefield of strange curves and shapes!
That shape can't be right! it looks odd!
Calm down!
grab a cuppa (or maybe something stronger
) and go back to the drawings.
They are there to help you.
If you are unfamiliar with how an open rabbet looks without its cladding of planking to hide it, the shapes and angles will seem strange and odd looking and your sure the planks won't fit.
Relax!
Use the station lines and water lines and make template for places your not sure of.
Taking tracings from the drawings, cut templates from cardboard making the angle from the side face of the stem to the angle that the planks meet it for each water line.
Don't panic if your lines are to out side of planking as mine are. The outside face of the planking and the inside face will be parallel so the angle at which it's faces meets the stem will be the same.
Place the template perpendicular to the side face of the stem at its plotted position line marked on the stem side, this will now give you the correct angle at which the chisel will make its cut into the wood.
Make a vertical cut at the rabbet back line and make a shallow cut to meet it matching the angle of the template but close in to the rabbet back cut just made.
Take another slice, and another and another working back towards the bearding line and all the while matching the angle of the template and deepening the vertical cut at the rabbet back to match each new slice.
Eventually you will have cut out a wedge shaped hole as in the photo above right back to the bearding line.
Take a piece of planking stock and rest it on the top edge of the template and slide into the cut you have just completed. If your cut is too shallow as in the photo above, light will show through between the plank and the template (better too shallow than too deep).
You need to cut a fraction deeper at the bottom of the cut but nearer to the rabbet back face taking nothing away from the bearding line.
Try the trick above again until no light shows between the template and the test plank.
Now you can cut out the bit from the rabbet line down to the correct position of the rabbet back line as above and viola! the rabbet is complete at LL1
Do this at all your water line positions and along the keel at the station positions, you will then have a clear visual clue to cutting and completing the rabbet between these points.
The more keels you cut, the more you will become familiar with these strange shapes and later when the planks fit snugly into the rabbet groove you worked so hard on. . . .
It will all suddenly make sense!