King Tut's Votive Read online

  Clamp Box. In here you’ll find wooden clothespins, adjustable bar clamps, bulldog clamps and paper clamps. Almost hidden in front of that are a couple of ship model planking clamps- I have many more, and they are very handy.

  Sanding Wands. I’ll describe these later. There are also some emery boards, a round, small wand and one scrap of many scraps of sandpaper.

  Micro files. Sharp and broken-off round, plus the normal assortment. Very handy.

  Fences. These are metal rulers, a machinist’s rule and a machinist’s square. All stainless steel, to stand up to the knife blades.

  Loupe. Only handy if your eyesight is as bad as mine and the work is tiny. (It will be tiny as we go along.)

  Glues. CA gel, craft and wood glue. Mandatory.

  Template Bin and wire. All small templates, subassemblies and small parts I’m working with on a given model go in here or they’ll get lost. We won’t be using that much wire or brass rod.

  Pin Board. This once was a piece of foam craft board that now has hat pins and various other pins that I use for marking, gluing, clamping and other things that I forget until I need a specific pin. Stuck into the side are sewing needles of various sizes- there is no logic to explain how they got there.

  Scissors. Any sharp pair will do.

  Step gauge. You can’t see this too well, but this homemade gauge is cut (stepped off) in 1mm increments from 1-5mm. I have another one stepped off in 1/32nds. As you’ll see when we stab-mark and cut thin strips of basswood these make the job simple and repeatable. If I know I’ll be working in large increments like these, this is also how I measure and cut at the same time.

  Tweezers. Large and small, and sooner or later you’ll be filing the tips because they just don’t work right until you do. The tape on a couple of these is to disable the locking feature- sometimes that feature is good, but the spring-loaded pair on the right is usually better.

  Masking tape and Q-tips.

  Rigging needles. I use two types- the “big eye” and the twisted steel beading needle. The beading needles are much easier to use on small diameter threads.

  Saw (draw) blades. Fine (54 teeth per inch) and medium (40 teeth per inch). You’ll need both.

  Blade pack. I rarely use anything but X-ACTO #11 blades and I buy them in bulk. This pack of fifteen might last for years or for weeks.

  Knives. I keep two of them on the table- the one on the left always has a clean, sharp blade, and the one on the right (red paint) always has a used, not-as-sharp blade for applying glue, breaking out pieces, cutting paper, etc. The red one is the one I use when I know that I’m about to wreck a blade somehow.

  French curves and pattern templates. The curves are indispensable.

  Dividers- Map (rough) and student (fine). You can’t transfer or repeat any measurement accurately and repeatedly without them.

  Beeswax. Handy for preventing lint on cotton line, but indispensable for creating a release when gluing.

  Forceps. I also use hemostats, but this is my go-to pair.

  Compass and Angle rule. Both very handy. Both are worthless for tiny angles and tiny circles.

  Hand gouge (chisel). Indispensable for breaking glue joints, I keep this razor-sharp, because it comes in handy as a cutting/punch tool as well.

  Rigging scissors. Cuticle scissors, suture-removal scissors and optical surgical scissors. Each is valuable for a particular rigging task.

  Large toenail clipper. The flatter (or convex) the better.

  Large T-square. For squaring cut card stock. We’ll be using a lot of card stock, and I like to keep my scrap square.

  Calipers. I still use the plastic one for very rough measurements, but a digital caliper spoils you for any other type.

  Miniature linemen’s pliers. Also, a heavy wire/rod cutter. The flat face comes in very handy for breaking pieces away (mistakes) once the glue has set.

  Pin Vises. I use the pair because I usually drill a pilot hole before I drill a finished hole. These have bit storage in the handles, so you can’t see my drill bits. I suggest you start with a standard 20-bit set (#61-80, You’ll quickly discover which ones you break, lose or otherwise need- buy a few of those at a time and store them in a secure place. In my case they’re in the handles- one for 1mm and smaller and the other for larger.

  Oriental (decorative) toothpicks. I forgot to put these on the table, along with bamboo skewers. Indispensable for gluing, making small parts, etc.

  Paint Brushes. I didn’t include my paint brush collection because it might depress you. I’ve cut off handles to make spars, used junk brushes to apply glue, and generally destroyed many of them. And you’ll have to decide what brush material works best for you. I can say that you’ll eventually need brushes down in the 00 range for detail work- in this case buy the best brush you can find. I have about 4 brushes that I care about, and the rest were purchased as sets (and I probably kept one out of every set and wrecked the others).

  The very small tools go into a large tackle box that also contains hundred of little gil-guys, pieces and parts. If it’s very small or very large and isn’t used often it goes there. Everything else goes into a rotating divided hexagonal thing that I found at a garage sale. Whatever it once was, it’s perfect now.

  Let’s discuss the large sanding wands. I make these out of wooden paint stirring sticks (paddles). By applying contact cement to the stick and rough (60 grit) sandpaper to the wide and narrow edge on one side and finer (120 grit sandpaper) to the other two sides I have an easy-to-find tool that is also handy for everyday use. Simply cut a piece of sandpaper to a slightly larger width than the stick, apply contact cement to the paper and the stick and when it’s ready, fold the paper onto the sick. Use a sharp knife to trim the bare edges: this is now a huge emery board and a very accurate straight-surface sander. It will be a great loss if these paddles ever disappear.

  At the extreme, these paddles are made from clear (knot-free) pine. They are very exact, well-made and free, but getting harder to find. (I’m guilt-free because of the small fortune I’ve spent on house paint.) They are very handy for drilling and other experiments- as a matter of fact I think it might be fun to build a complete model from a single paint paddle.)

  Note that the work board I use is about 18”x24” from a piece of scrap ¼ inch balsa-faced plywood (generally available at homestores). It has many holes drilled through it that act as holding dogs, a cutting and clamping fence and has rounded corners. The balsa accepts things like pins and knife blades while the plywood ensures a flat and, when needed, rigid frame. (This board replaced my earlier one that I made from a sheet of birch veneer plywood. On that one I had glued (contact cement) a 1/8th balsa plank in front of the cutting fence. It worked well for about 20 years until I found the balsa-faced plywood.) If you look closely, you’ll see that I’ve covered the area in front of the board with 1/64th aircraft plywood because it has gotten so chewed up.

  A very important feature of any work board is that small cutting and clamping fence. Mine have either 90- or 45-degree angles cut into both ends and they’re the right size for any number of cutting and clamping tasks that require a sturdy brace and guide. (The 90 is on the able. They are screwed-in from the back) The holding dogs (holes) elsewhere on the table are used when the fence is not the right size or shape- dowels or other things can be stuck into the holes to hold odd shapes or an entire model.

  This size fits between the arms of a comfortable chair and goes wherever I feel like working- including outside on a nice day. Also, trying to work at a heavy traffic location like a dining table can be a domestic disaster unless you can move all your work all at once.

  And keep in mind that even the right or most expensive tool might make the job easier, but not better.

  I built this model using scraps that I had in my inventory. My advice is to build one of the other models first, and you’ll wind up with enough scrap to build it.

  Another note on the subject of tools, methods and materials. I’m assum
ing that you are building this model after either building or reading the texts on at least the whaleboat. If you’re jumping in at this point you’ve missed such subjects as sanding wands, marking, drilling, materials, etc. So if you come to a step where the process seems to appear from left field, the reason lies in a prior base of experience, processes and materials. You may be well-served in these cases to go back to the beginning and perform text searches in the earlier books. I may get to an annotated index someday, but that isn’t today or tomorrow.

  The Mold

  The diagrams that follow were first drawn on paper that will not reproduce properly on a web page. So the original has been cut and pasted so that the individual schematics can be printed on card stock or other thick paper and traced, cut, etc.. This will cause some distortion, but by following the measurements, a model can be built to the same approximate size. In this case we’re rounding to the nearest cubit, not the nearest millimeter.

  Let’s start with the mold braces.

  The middle mold brace is a notched affair. The notch will allow pieces of reinforcing strips to be fitted and glued to what for a lack of better term I’m calling the keel plank. In practice, based on the Cheops boat, this part of the hull would have been constructed of multiple cedar planks. The depth of the notch doesn’t have to be too precise, since stringers will fit into it, but it does have to be square.

  As usual, I have fabricated the mold from paint stirring sticks that were compliments of a local home improvement store. ( Since investing a small fortune in house paint I’m not the least bit guilty about this.)

  The base started out as a 5-gallon -sized stick. The width and length of the base is not important so long as it can accommodate the keel assembly with room for twisted rope (string) clamps.

  When it’s complete, the base should look like the next photo. Note the centerline. The end line (left) is marked at exactly 12 inches overall: the middle mold brace is glued at dead center. The end braces are spaced at 95mm from dead center.

  I also added 1/8 x 1/8 braces for no particular reason initially, but they provided needed support during various periods of abuse.

  The Keel (Plank)

  The keel plank shown in the photo is cut from the following template:

  The exact measurements are: width at centerline-35mm, length at centerline- 284mm(5 ½ inches). The sketch above is obviously a half-sketch to save space- if you cut two copies and tape them together they should equal these measurements.

  First, let’s steam and form the keel plank on the mold.

  I’m using 1/16th basswood, and I‘ve cut out the keel plank and steamed it a bit more than usual. After drawing a line, end pegs are inserted at 125 mm off center, and a large peg is glued at 25mm below the centerline. To avoid squaring the plank I butchered a sewing bobbin to ease some of the midline pressure, creating a 35 mm total distance from the centerline.

  The plank dried overnight. Any rounded object will create a graceful curve, but using a thin or square mandrel as a bending fulcrum will create a messy curve.

  The keel plank braces, formed from 1/8th square strips are formed using the same frame, but with a spacer to raise the center 17 mm ( slightly less than ½ the beam) off the surface of the bending frame.

  I’m using planking screws to anchor sets of wooden clamps at either end. This is a complex curve, and the braces will try to naturally twist toward the center curve. Since these must lay flat when they are fitted to the keel plank, they must come out of the mold flat. Pins or other clamps will work just as well so long as the ends are forced square.

  This is probably a good time to point out that you might be tempted to call these braces by their more modern name, stringers. But the author I mentioned earlier has provided drawings and pictures of a boat that didn’t use a keel or stringers. Rather, the hull planks were very thick cedar planks elegantly tooled with scarfs and rabbets, so when they were eventually rove (lashed) together, the woven lashings held the planks together. A stem-stern beam, stanchions and ribs supported the deck, but the boat could have sailed without these. From an engineering standpoint this accomplished the same goal as the keel-keelson-rib-rivet-stringer-nail construction that westerners know well, but was probably much stronger.

  This lashed construction is consistent with the Egyptian evolution from shaped papyrus rafts, and while my building reference is very different, that simply means that I‘ve been hanging out with people who didn‘t study practices that are still common on the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf.

  So the braces that we are bending did not exist on the Egyptian boats, but will contribute to the illusion that the model is, in fact, a replica of the real thing. That is one license granted to the model-maker so long as the philosophy of the model remains true to the original. If we’ve taken a leap of faith with the basic definition of a votive we might as well go all the way to hell with a few details.

  Once dry, each brace should be fitted to the keel plank allowing for a 1/16th rabbet along the outside edge to accept the strakes. This will require an angled cut at each end along the centerline, and some gentle sanding and fitting so the keel plank looks approximately like this:

  As you’ll see as we go I have marked lateral centerlines on everything. I glued a piece of scrap in the mold notch I mentioned earlier- by using the exact thickness, this is the lazy way of insuring that the notch and the keel braces meet the mold more or less perfectly.

  Also note the mason twine and lever. The Egyptians used various cordages for drilling, lashing and moving heavy objects, so the twist clamp that I’ll be using is not just a historical nod, but also a practical one.

  It may not be obvious, but the levers on each end are held in compression using pins. As you will see later, these twist clamps work well but they started to dimple the wood, so look ahead a few photos and you’ll see that I inserted a strain pad between the keel plank and the string.) The bobbin is still on its peg but isn’t touching anything.)

  The Strakes

  The garboard (strake) is measured and cut from the following diagram:

  I’ll be using 1/4x1/32 basswood strips for the strakes, so sanding to a fairly precise fit is not difficult, but mark these with a pencil, not the knife, so you can sand down to a fit. First, rough-cut the garboard:

  First, clamp and glue the center section. I’m using a planking clamp and brace, but a wide-headed pin will work just as well. The garboard will fit into the keel plank groove, and there will be a remaining space between the mold and the garboard- that will be filled shortly.

  I’ve taped the ends of the garboard so that the entire glued strake is forced into the plank/brace groove.

  On to the second strake. To help hold the second and third strakes in place I coated the middle mold brace with beeswax and glued a ¼ x 1/32nd center strip to the inside of the second strake.

  Fitting and gluing this strake is a two-step process.

  First, mark, cut and trial-fit the second strake. Apply a bead of wood glue and clamp it to the garboard and the center strip. Both ends should be free.

  In the photo, both ends are free (unglued), and the bulldog clamps are positioned at the ends of the glue line. The centerlines line up, and the second strake is forced into a tight fit with the garboard and the center strip using another planking clamp.

  Let this dry. Note that I have started to use pads between the keel plank and the string clamps. These pads have holes for the strings, and the same twist levers, and a btter view of them looks like this:

  In the photo above, the second strake has been center-glued and the clamps have been removed.

  The next step is to force and glue the second strake into the garboard and keel/ braces:

  This will require some square scraps to hold the ends in place while the glue dries. These may not be obvious in the picture, but they’re there, and the center strip is now obvious.

  The third strake takes a 3-way journey- around the chine angle on the mold, upward to match the sweep on the model
at the bow and stern, and inward as a glue-joint. There might be room on the mold to attach it, but the basswood can only be bent so far.

  So some complex steaming and forming is in order. First, cut two 11-inch 1/4x1/32 strips. Next, construct a bending/press form. In my case I am using the bending board as a base and a stir stick as the other half of a forming vise/stamping mold.

  To help with the next step, this sketch may be helpful:

  There should enough dimensions on the diagram to sync your actual to the picture’s actual. This will help form and place the third strake.