Disclaimer: reposting the old messages from the original log started on MSW 2.0 back in 2014. As-is, with original mistakes, misconceptions and a lack of experience. Hope that journey would be useful for some readers!
Will miss all the banter and very supportive comments from the community and followers, just want to say it was very motivating and productive! :)

Why scratch?

I always had a high requirements for a wood quality and fitting quality. Unfortunately, even expensive kits were never that close. After getting a first pack of boxwood, I would never go back to any inferior wood. Hence, only scratch. Not that scary though, I do most of the parts from scratch anyway.

It's a pity that kit producers do not other a wood upgrade. For a serious build, cost is spreading over a number of years, so is it really so important?

Speed of the build is not important, I enjoy the process. As Remco says - "Treat each part as if it is a model on its own, you will finish more models in a day than others do in a lifetime".

Why Hahn?

For a weird reason, don't like the realistic framing style, like David Antscherl suggests. First - you don't see anything between frames, and second - uneven spacing and shape of frames make me feel dizzy when I look on them. Physically. I know it sounds weird, but I just can't. So - frames would be spaced evenly, even if it's unrealistic. So what, I'm not adding a rocket engines to my model ;)

Also, Hahn's method for a frame construction looks easier. Yes, the wood usage is higher, but again - why that matters? I will build it for 5 years at least, so paying a bit extra for additional wood is not a problem. And I truly like the design of Hahn's jig!

Why Oliver Cromwell / Beaver's Prize?

This ship has no honourable history. It was built in 1777 in Philadelphia, started a pretty good career - capturing 7 ships in 3 months after a start - but then was defeated by British HMS Beaver. Was downgraded from 24 cannons to 12, and served remaining time guarding British coast. Was lost in a hurricane after a number of years, slowly degrading and having a continuous problems with discipline onboard.

But there is something in the lines of that ship that touches me. Look on the model - hull proportions are pretty nice. It's not too high, and not too low, and I was looking for that photos a lot, admiring its beauty:

Credit: dlumberyard.com where the timbering set is from

And here is what you get inside the timbering set from The Lumberyard.

Various planking and frame wood. Notice that wood color is pretty varying, so needs to be sorted.
Framing, keel, deck beams/knees would be in swiss pear, planking - boxwood, fittings - mixed.
I also got beech, walnut and cherry for some parts, but not sure if I'll use them. Will see!

Laser cut parts. Planning to make my own deck beams with a cute scarfs, instead of using these. But they are a good backup, if my scarfs will turn into failure:

And plans, lots of them!

Don't mind the small size of the photos, it's 11.5 kg of wood!
Let's unpack the blueprints and make some sawdust!

Finally finished most of the renovation works in the apartment, and here is my modelling corner!

All the tools are in a large drawer, only most popular ones are stored in the table itself.
The band saw is hidden under the table, it would be rarely used. The drawing is a Cromwell plan from NMM, but it is purely for decoration - Hahn plans are much more detailed.
Since my wife occupied another corner for her knitting stuff, it is a time to rename the "living room" into a "hobby room". But hey, isn't hobby a big part of our life?

(Yep, I know that furniture is quite not in same style, will slowly fix that over time)
So now I can finally start cutting the frame blanks! Finally! Time to make a first bucket of sawdust

Started to make a frame blanks. Discovered that my table saw is not precise enough, but luckily frame blanks do not require a lot of precision.

First - edge gluing on a flat surface, with a blueprint under the glass to make sure that everything is assembled correctly:

Second - laminating. Many thanks to Mark for making a good thread where hidden traps of lamination are discussed. I used a thick plexiglass and a lot of clamps:

Even with a small layer of glue, that is pre-dried, wood warped a bit:

But after 10 hours it looks close to normal, no warping:

To reduce the gap, will need to apply more glue - but that will case even more warping. Or try to polish the surface of blanks even more before gluing (I sanded them with 240 and 380 grits)

By the way, quality of wood for blanks is, khm, questionable. Width varies a lot (might be ok, it is just blanks, but makes it harder to cut with an accurate angle on a tablesaw). Thickness is also very random, will need a careful thickness sanding when frames would be cut. Colour of that swiss pear is also very different, from very pale to bright pink. The most strange thing is that all laser cut parts are much darker than planks for frame blanks, but they are expected to be same wood (swiss pear). Luckily, this time colour difference is actually good, I was worried that frames would be too dark. And having a darker keel and keelson might be ok. But it would be good to have a consistent colour of the wood inside one package.

Plus a lot of planks have a pretty visible grey areas, around half of the planks are affected.

Worried that they might be visible on a frames. Like this:

I understand that it is perfectly natural for the wood, but that's the whole point of buying a milled wood for modelling - it should not have such imperfections... Or I might be just spoiled by a wood package from Hobbymill 😁

Applied much more glue this time, glue was pre-dried (small can left opened for 24hr). Looks much better, warping is minimal, and I used some extra clamps, stronger ones.

As it turned out, the lamination was ok - no sign of gaps or warping anywhere when the frame is cut.

Cut the test frame just to verify the process. It would not be installed on a model, the goal is only to practice.

First question: what is the proper margin, how far should I cut from the lines? If I cut too far away - frames would be either fat, or there would be an enormous amount of sanding later on (and with too much sanding the final shape of a frame would not be close to a proper lines). If I cut too close - frames would be too small after sanding. What is the golden rule of thumb?

Here is the side of a frame. Glue layer is slightly visible, but I guess that is expected? Or not?

A lot of sanding and scraping to bring the frame down to desired 7.2mm thickness.

Note to readers - avoid using a heavy grits, even if you need to remove a lot. Sanded with 60 grit and got some deep scratches, very hard to remove. Good that it is a test frame, would be quite sad otherwise :)

And the end result is:

When sanded with a fine grits (1200 => 2000), the colour difference between various part of the frame is striking. Not sure what to do with that.. Well, in the end it is not plastic, so it is quite expected from wood to have a different colour naturally

Please post any critics, it is very important to get the technology right on a test frames. I am posting detailed process pictures hoping that somebody will spot a mistakes and share a good advice before I will produce 40 frames using a wrong technology 😅

Finished 4 frame blanks and cut 4 frames in total.

Last blanks were laminated using really strong clamps, that squeeze the glue under blanks like the previous clamps were not able to do. Surprisingly, I cannot find any difference in lamination quality when I look on a cut frames. Thickness and consistency of lamination looks the same. Probably I was overthinking it

What turned out to be more important is an edge joint of a blank pieces - they should fit really tight, my table saw can't give such a clean cut, so on a last few blanks I used a belt sander to make sure that joints are perfectly tight. And that is visible on a frames.

However, I will need to trash one frame. It is all due to the ugly grey spots on a frame blank stock. When sanded, they look even uglier. On a right side of a photo - healthy swiss pear, on a left side - smoker's pear:

Seriously, why are they included in the timbering package? What am I expected to do with such wood? It is not suitable for a modelling, I will just trash all the wood with that grey areas, and there are quite a lot of planks with that defect

Or I am being picky? Don't think so, the defects in the wood are striking

Ok, I probably was too emotional while writing previous post. Reviewed all planks today, separating them into "normal" and "trash it" piles. 31% of planks are defected (big grey areas, etc). Luckily, on most of them defect takes around half of the plank, so in total I am going to trash around 15-20% of planks. That would be probably ok, because I am hoping that there was a reserve for whoopsies.
Close-up of defective wood

Normal wood:

Even without grey spots, note the colour deviation on a "normal" pile. It is clear that Lumberyard have a "prime" wood, that is used for laser cut parts. They are really good - quite consistent dark colour, amazing

For some reason, for frame blanks Lumberyard use second sort pear. That is fully understandable, with Hahn method most of the wood package is a wood for frame blanks, and using cheaper wood probably makes a big different cost-wise.

Will continue with that wood for a while. If after 10 frames it would be obvious that this wood is too bad - will recycle all frames and make a new ones with a wood from Hobbymill. I saw their swiss pear in a various build logs, and it is very consistent in colour. And I have boxwood from Hobbymill, which is the best would I ever saw. No problem with it, happy customer.

P.S.: I have no intention on blaming Lumberyard, but it would be fair to post a photos of a wood that you get in a package. Sorry for rant, but it is quite disappointing to feel the second rate customer, who got the second rate wood.

Removed the nasty laser char. In hindsight, it is good that I selected a timbering set without laser cut frames, the char removal process is messy and definitely not pleasant. In his youtube videos, Dave recommends to remove the char using the shaving blade. It works only to small extent, because char is pretty deep in the wood.
Here are the laser cut pieces in a different phases of cleaning

Another issue is a bad precision of a laser at some lines, they are cut with "steps", so lots of wood should be filed away to make that surface smooth:

Some joints are too wide - they fit tightly with char, but if you start to remove the char (and the "steps") - then the joint is too weak:

So I cut away that joint and scratched a new one :)

Another improvement was a deadwood - supplied laser cut deadwood was made of a single piece, which is too far from desired level of correctness. So I made a better one. But it was a hell of a job to nicely fit all the curved timbers together! It is easy to make a tight fit when parts are straight, but when they are curved - it really needs a skill. Here is how ugly it looks when just cut:

Next time will try to cut smoother... It took around 4 hours of sanding and filing and sending and filing to make them fit.

Resulting fitting is not great, but next time will do better:

End result:

Now the fun part - cutting the rabbet. I do not have any power tools to do it, so will make some hand jig and will slooooowly cut it with chisel and knife. Now when the keel is assembled, it would be a pity to ruin it by making a bad rabbet.

After a lot of experimenting with scrap wood, it turned out that scrapers will not give a straight enough line. There should be something that ignores the grains and goes straight. So I ended up with a following process, not saying it is the only correct one. Use flat chisel to set the straight line for the rabbet, making two cutoff lines.

Cut away the wood between those lines with a blade:

Use triangular file to shape the rabbet. Do straight passes:

That triangular file was the key part, it keeps the straight line, not going sideways due to a wood grain. Also if you need to add an angle to the rabbet - just change the angle of the file:

Before it, would be hard to determine the proper angle of the rabbet, how planks will go. I am not going to glue the frames before they are all cut anyway 🙂

Assembled all parts on a framing jig:

It nicely decorates the modelling area 😁

Luckily that model will have just 40 frames, due to a bigger (non-correct) spacing between them, so hope to make it in 3-4 months. Winter is coming! 😃

Making around 5 frames in two weeks, can't spend more then 20-30min every evening ☹️ But it is a pretty good relaxation. However, the result is frustrating. Yep, the wood colour difference again.

It looks like a frame built with three different kinds of wood, where only one of them is pear, and others are only technically pear, not something you consider as pear for a modelling.

Got really tired of that. But then I found a promising build log - La Belle by Hans Christian, where pear looks like pear! And colour is not varying, and finish is already nice. Thanks Hans for providing better photos!

His wood is from ArkoWood - www.arkowood-shop.de

Ordered new frame blanks there, all 60 meters of a cute pear. They do custom milling, and the order processing time is just 1-2 weeks.

The price is ok, just 150 EUR / 190 USD, plus cheap shipping, plus no import taxes or customs (because it is inside EU).

Will report when I will receive it, looking forward. It would be great to have a high quality supplier nearby, at least 4 out of 5 stars on a HobbyMill grade Truly hope it is my last whining about the wood quality.

Installed 7 frames around midship to see how the all look together.

Now it is starting to look ship-alike! Very curious how the edge of a frame will look like when faired and sanded... A shot inside the hull promises that there would be a lot of fairing to make it smooth

Finally got in the right mood to make a rabbet. Was pretty scared, one mistake - and need to replace a section of a keel (which would be a good reason to add some joints though. However, so far it works out pretty well.

Started with a slow and gentle cutting of a straight line, using inner line of a keel as a base

That give a straight and parallel lines. Another proof that good jig means a lot. Then cutting away a strip in between, and smoothening it with a triangle-shaped file:

Decided not to make a big fat rabbet, will either widen it later, or shape the edge of a gardboard plank, so it will tightly fit into the rabbet. It is anyway better than an ugly gap between gardboard and keel, if rabbet is too wide.

Position against the frames is ok, just a minor adjustments required for some frames:

How to make a nice curve - no idea. Can't come up with any jig idea, because there is no baseline to attach to.

There is no chisel to make such curve. Trying to scratch it by hand will fail due to a wood grain. Thinking of making an acrylic template, and scratching the line using that template.

Looks like I am becoming a hand tools fetishist.. There is something nice about working with a high quality chisels and knifes - no noise, no sawdust, and you feel like making a pinocchio 😄

Especially surprised with the knife - it is the sharpest knife I ever held, it make a clean cut without any pressure, and it is heavy and sharp enough to ignore the grain direction! But it reminds that as with any hand tool - you need to practice and learn a lot to use it nicely...

The shape of a rabbet was asymmetrical to meet the planks on a proper angle:

Result is not perfect, there are a few ooopsies, luckily most of them are on the inner side, which would be invisible.

I will not cut a rabbet on a side that would be fully opened. Not able to cut it smooth enough to make it fully exposed.

Hooray! Received my new wood for frames. The colour variation is much smaller.

Arkowood one is creamy and pink. Same colour as on Lumberyard laser cut parts, where the "prime grade" pear is used.

Maximum thickness deviation is around 0.05mm (0.002 inches). My micrometer have a 0.05mm precision, so it is basically as correct as I can measure..

Number of planks with defects (grey spots, etc) - 5 planks out of 60 (just 8%), which is quite ok. Wood is already sanded with a fine grit. Small wood deviation together with fine finish means a lot of time saved on sanding the frame to the uniform thickness and smooth surface. Planks are perfectly straight and not curved - saves some efforts when trying to cut the frame blanks on a proper angles.

But better look on pictures. Both woods are called the same, it is swiss pear aka steamed pear.

Box on top - Lumberyard, box in the bottom - Arkowood.

Left - Arkowood, right - Lumberyard. Notice the finish difference, Lumberyard wood is very rough, looks like sanded with 60 or 80 grit. Arkowood looks like sanded with 300-400 grit, or maybe even higher. It is very smooth!

Also ordered some sheets, just to try.

Left - pear, center - Castello boxwood, right - ebony

Ok, now I am finally happy with the wood I have, time to redo 9 frames that I already assembled ☺️

Cutting frames...

Using belt sander to make sure that edges of frame blanks are straight. it is not very suitable for that job, but do not want to buy disk sander just for that..

In a meanwhile, looked critically on a laser cut keel. It has some grey spots (that are not dirt, but wood defects)

And some funny shaped "stain" inside the wood right on the stem

And more important - it looks too simplistic / unrealistic for my taste. You really can't build a ship with a stern made of two giant pieces of wood. I miss a complex joints, tar simulation using black paper, etc.. Stem would be very visible, and it should be done right.

So decided to re-do it using new pear (to match the colour of the frames). Since I had no drawings of keel structure for exactly that ship - I made a mix based on some photos from other build logs, AOTS book about Pandora, etc.

Loooots of sanding ahead! Maybe I really need a proper disk sander 😉

Ok, got the toy: http://www.proxxon.com/en/micromot/27060.php

Thanks everybody for the comments, now making a straight and correctly angled edges is soo easy!

And it will definitely help with making a keel parts that tightly fit together

The build is going slow so far - had guests, then few trips, had no chance to build for some weeks. But progress is quite boring anyway - producing frame by frame.

Found a thing in my parents' basement - a model that I tried to build when I was around 12 years old.

Locked in a summerhouse, with some plywood, sandpaper and a manual scroll saw ok, I also had a book and some blueprints.

Full scratch, I had no internet at that time, and haven't heard of any kits. No modelling societies either.

Looks veeery ugly, but hey, the only tool was a manual scroll saw.

It had a functioning rudder (lost, but it was there). It was rotating in its copper pintles and had a tiller. For some reason it was very cool for me back then and I felt extremely satisfied by making a working rudder 😁

Planks were also cut with a scroll saw: draw a straight line, cut the wood, smoothen with sandpaper.

If only I can have soooooooo much free time as I had when I was 12... The power of teenage boredom 🤣

Then I got released from the summerhouse, so switched to other stupid teenage activities 😅

Minor status update. Not so much going on - building frames when I have a time. Just around half of the work is done for a mere 10 frames in that batch

The keel structure is roughly cut and shaped, but waiting for TFFM books to arrive before I will fine fit and assemble it - want to make sure that it would be done correctly, at least on the parts that would be visible.

The set of instructions for that kit finally arrived!

Replaced the table of my disk sander - stock one was nice but not flat - slightly rising right near the disk. It was a problem when shaping the keel parts - they are thin, and sanded on a wrong angle due to skewed table.

Did not bothered to contact proxxon for replacement, plus I wanted a smaller gap between the table and the disk.

Looks weird, but works pretty well - it is flat at least! Disk sander made a big difference in the frame blank production speed. It takes like 30sec per blank to to set a straight edge with a proper angle. And allows to cut blanks on a bandsaw, freehand, with less accuracy and precision - it does not matter, sander will make it straight anyway. Amazing!

It took me just 4 hours to make the next batch of blanks, which would be used for the next 10 frames.

(Left side - for planked side, right side - for opened side, finely selected wood pieces)

While assembling frames, started the keel assembly (to replace the laser cut keel that I used before).

Joint is blackened with a tissue paper. Castello treenails reinforce the joint, because paper makes it a bit weak. The treenails would be completely hidden by the false keel, so they have a purely structural purpose

Hope that the paper line would be more accurate after a final sanding.

20 midship frames are cut (which makes it 50% of overall frames!):

Looks ship-alike!

Starting from the midship ones because other frames are much more complex, I can get some skill and experience on an easier midship ones.

Overall build status:

(the frames I currently have installed on a model would be replaced by the newly produced - they are made out of different wood, more yellow-ish)

Next step is nasty, and I am trying to push it down the road - sanding the face of every frame on a sanding board. Produces lots of dust, takes around 20 min per frame..

So will switch to the keel instead, then simulate the iron bolts with monofilament, then...