HMS Endeavour AL 1981 :: View Single Post

I hope this is the right area.

I want to share with you my experience of building the HMS Endeavour (and its long boat) from an AL 1981 die-cut kit.

At the moment I am in the research stage of the project, but I have started to build the associated long boat.

Being die-cut, I find the pieces are not symmetrical and the 3 ply is of poor quality in that the core of the ply seems to want to disintegrate at every opportunity. I tried cutting the pieces out with a hobby knife, but the pieces were so flimsy that I was frightened that they would break. The solution has been to use a very fine scroll saw blade in a fret saw. I found that using this method, the side of the ply that is not die cut chips on the down stroke - to fix this I inserted the blade in the holder so that it cuts in the up stroke - this means that the side of the ply that is not die cut has a perfect smooth finish and the die cut side is perfect as well because of the compressed fibres caused by the die. The other good thing is that you don't have to meticulously guide the saw around the pieces as the saw blade follows the path of least resistance which is the die cut.

I hope this makes sense.

I had to make a fret saw table and a sanding block - but that was fun. I will have a go at uploading a photo.

B