Last week Fiona said to me that she could not believe the number of steps involved in soldering the fishing boat hulls, masts and sails together. She said it could be interesting to document the steps. This prompted me to contemplate three blog posts on the 100 fishing boats: making the hulls; making the sails; and soldering the bits together.
This blog records most of the steps involved in making a hull such as the one in the opening photos. The process starts with developing a prototype and templates - below.
Because I'm making at least 100 hulls the next step marking out 100+ blanks and cutting them in the bench top guillotine. Lovely patinated copper from a hot water tank.
Each blank is folded in the vice - I use a trick with aluminium jaws for this.
The folded metal is marked up using a folded template; and then cut using the guillotine again.
Each cut piece is hammered on the anvil to create the curve of the keel and ribs of the boat. The photo below shows some forms hammered and others to be hammered.
Five 'tools' are used to form the boat from this stage - see photo below.
The hammered forms are progressively opened using: oyster knife, cooper's barrel chisel, brass weight and 30mm dapping tool.
The final forming is done with a soft nylon faced hammer on the panel beating stake. The shape is 'tweaked' along the way with metal shearers.
The formed hull is then ground to finesse the shape and remove sharp edges.
And the final product is what appears below.
Kudos to Fiona for prompting you to document your steps in this way ... I now have a much greater appreciation for these seemingly-simple boat forms ... and am looking forward to the next steps
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