Getting Jiggy!

Between thinking up terrible puns for blog post titles I've been making a jig to hold the ship while I'm working on the deck initially and then doing the hull planking.

I shamelessly stole the design from James' blog linked in a previous post. It is a very simple design, but does just what I need it to do and was very simple to construct for someone as inexperienced as me!

I took a trip to local hardware shop recently and picked up some very cheap cuts of wood and a hacksaw! I also went a bit mad buying clamps of varying sizes, which I am sure will come up more and more in future blogs!

First up I had a quick look at James' design, took some measurements of the keel and drew up a very rough plan of what I needed. It is simply four blocks of wood attached to a chipboard sheet which allows the keel to slot in the middle. I measured the widest part of the keel (where the strengtheners are) and this gave me the required distance between the two sets of blocks. I then measured the distance between the two closest bulkheads which gave me the distance that the two blocks in each set needed to be apart. The plan looks like this:



I transfered these marking with the exact measurements directly onto the chipboard sheet so that I would have a guide when sticking the blocks on:



I then measured and cut the blocks of wood using the following setup:



I wasn't too concerned about how clean or straight the cuts were as I don't think the jig needs to be too precise. As long as it keeps the ship steady then I will be happy.

Once I had the four pieces I simply glued then onto the plywood sheet using standard wood glue and am now waiting for the glue to dry:



I did make a pretty big mistake when buying the wood. The jig as it stands now will be fine for fitting the deck etc, but the blocks are not high enough to hold the keel while I am hull planking. I'm going to be a bit slack in solving this problem I'm afraid, I think I will just cut another 4 blocks and glue them directly on top of the others! This won't be as sturdy as I'd like but I think for the job it needs to do it will be OK. Of course if it turns out to be a disaster I will probably look to build another one.

As I'm sure you can see my basic woodworking skills are pretty poor and my tool kit is only juststarting to grow. I'm sure this jig could have been made much better, but for now I am happy with something very rough and ready as I know I will only be using it up until the point that I finish the hull planking.

Slow progress as usual as I am still waiting for the next installment of parts, but hopefully once they arrive I will have plenty to be getting on with. In the meantime I continuing to work on the plastic cutty sark model and having fun with shrouds so I may post some pictures of that if I get the chance.

Happy sailing!

Jonny.