Sea of Galilee Boat (Jesus Boat)

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If you are interested in purchasing one of these models please see my web page at SE Miller Guitars or Email me at: Scott@semillerguitars.com.  

The cost for a completed model with everything that you see here plus a wooden storage crate is $500.  I offer free shipping to congregations and evangelism missions.

I have listed a model for sale on EBay, please see the post at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=301059106954&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

I also have kits available for those who wish to purchase one and build your own.  The cost for these is $80 plus shipping and these too are available at the web site.

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These photos were originally posted on the now defunct Dry Dock Models forum back in 2006.  I've received many e-mails and requests for the details of the building of this model so I am putting them there on this blog where I know that they will be up for all to see.

The model is based upon plans found in this book.

The book details the amazing discovery of a first century Sea of Galilee fishing boat.  These boats were common on the Sea of Galilee and because they were so mundane, there were only a few images of them in art and pottery that had survived to this date.  The discovery of this vessel gave us new insights into how these vessels were constructed and sailed.  Later in this post I'll give a very interesting example of just how this plays out.

The model was constructed using a strongback as the mold for the hull.  The mahogany planks are glued to one another using thin CA glue.   The CA glue is not visible under a clear coating so any CA glue lines that you see in theses photos will vanish under clear shellac.

Interestingly, the hulls of these first century boats were made in a similar fashion.  Instead of building a series of frames and planking them (like we would today), first century boats were built by joining the planks together and later reinforcing them with internal partial frames, just like in this model.  The only difference is that they did not have CA glue...

When the hull was completely planked, it was cut off from it's attachement to the stongback and this is what it looked like.

You can see that the hull is tear drop shaped with the bow being the more pointed end.  Next internal partial ribs were added to the boat, just like in the original.  These ribs do not extend from sheer to sheer but rather only cover a portion of the hull's profile.  A plastic spaced was used to ensure uniform spacing of the ribs.

A support for the decks and rowing seats was now installed using a wooden spacer to make sure that it was correctly spaced down from the sheer.   And MDF "mold" of the cap rail was used to shape both cap rails to exactly the correct profile and the fore and aft decks were then planked.

 These boats were steered using quarter rudders.  These "steering oars" were lashed to supports on the aft quarters of the boat.  Here are the finished quarter rudders.

 

The sails were then sewn up.  I used spray starch to stiffen the fabric and a pattern of seams was printed on a piece of paper.  This paper was sewn to the sail so that the seams were properly spaced and striaght.  The sewing machine perforated the paper on the seams so it was easily removed.  Next, wire was sewn into the edges of the sail so that it could be shaped to look like it was holding wind.

Lastly, I made both linen and wire rope for the model.  The wire rope is shown in its unpainted version (red) and painted version (line on the left).  This wire rope is stiff enough to keep the base of the sail off of the mast so it looks like the boat is sailing down wind.

Finally the "small stuff" was made to complete the model.  This included a stone anchor, fishing baskets, ballast bags and a net (made from a party favor bag from a wedding that my wife and I had just attended).

Here is the finished model on its stand, it was good enough to take a Gold at the Midwest Model Ships Competition.

Earlier I had mentioned how the archeological discovery of this boat had validated certain questions that we had about this vessel.  Prior to the discovery of this boat, all we knew about them came from art work on few pottery shards and a few brief mentions of them in ancient writings.

In the new testament there is a story about Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee in one of the boats during a great storm.  This storm was so bad that it frightened the disciples, many of whom were veteran fishermen of this body of water.  The story says that Jesus was asleep in the boat with his head on a pillow.  Prior to the discovery of this boat this story seemed to not ring true for two reasons.  The first of which is "how could anyone sleep through a storm in an open boat?"  We are surprised to find that these boats were not open but had two decks which now makes it possible for someone to be shielded from the storm by being under one of them.

The second question still remains, "why a fishing boat full of scales, nets and baskets would have pillows in it?"  After all this was a working vessel, not a royal yacht.  It turns out that the ballast bags that were used for setting the trim of the boat are still commonly referred to as "pillows" to this day.  So now we can see that Jesus was asleep, shielded from the storm by the aft deck with his head resting on ballast bags!  Once again archeological evidence gives new witness to the fact that these ancient writings are valid.

Archtop Guitar Build - Opening thoughts...

I am tooling up to build an archtop guitar based upon the design from Bob Benedetto's book "Making an Archtop Guitar."  I first read this book many years ago and was struck by several of the cool ways that he goes about solving the many interesting problems presented during the building process.  Over the years I've often thought about the drawing in the book that shows how to use a drill press to make a series of holes at different depths in the top surface of the guitar top plate and then using these holes as indexes to guide the contour of the carving process for the top.  This is just one of the many interesting ideas presented by the book.  I recently worked on an archtop (see the Harmony post on this blog) and this is what got me re-started thinking about building an archtop.

It is telling that the last chapter is about marketing and I must say that Benedetto is unashamed about marketing.  The only color photos in the book are a gallery of shots of photos of his guitars and many pages are devoted to showing the "who's who" of people who own and play his guitar.  Be warned, you cannot make a guitar using just the book, you also have to buy the set of plans for the guitar since there is no full sized body template and there are no directions for exactly what contour the top should be carved to.  Oh, there are a set of templates but none are on cardinal locations for the top or even show a uniform baseline to work off of.  They are essentially useless.  Did I mention Bob is a good marketer?  Oh by the way he describes tapping the top and body at various stages of the build but how do you explain what to listen for in a book?  Did I mention that there is a video series also for sale?  I don't know what is on those DVD's since the library doesn't carry them and I don't want to pay the $130+ to find out...  Don't get me wrong, the book is great and the plans are worth the price but don't think you can get by with just the book.

There are subtle differences between the book and the plans, and I am going to stick with the plans in the case of any variation.  One of the tools used in construction of the guitar is called a "Safe-T Planer."  I'll post a photo once mine arrives but they are no longer in production so you will have to look to the secondary market for them.  They are currently between $130 and $220+ on E-Bay and they originally listed for around $50 so there must be quite a few people building archtops looking for them.  They look anything but "safe" but from those that I've talked to who have used them, they work really well so we will see...

There are three key goals to building a guitar: good looks, good sound and playability.  Of these three, the first is the easiest to achieve and the least useful if you plan on using the guitar for anything other than ornamentation.  Good sound is going to be a matter of building a bunch of guitars and learning what works and doesn't work.  Since I don't plan on becoming a full time archtop builder, I'm going to have to rely on Benedetto when he says that if you follow the plate guides "even a first time builder can make a surprisingly good sounding guitar."  Lastly playability is something that I can do something about.  A guitar can be thought of as a series of strings suspended between the nut and saddle.  Everything else (neck, body, bridge, fingerboard, frets, headstock...) is aimed at making these strings sit low enough to the fingerboard/frets to make for easy playing yet not so low that they buzz on the frets.  This is what makes a guitar easy to play and feel good to the player.  With that in mind, lets look at the archtop guitar as a whole.

First off, the archtop is an acoustic guitar that has a resonating chamber to amplify the sound.  We know that arches are stronger than flat surfaces so it would seem logical that an arched top should be stronger than a flat top.  What is really surprising is just how thick an archtop is!  A standard flat top acoustic will have a fairly thin top (well less than 1/8) that is reinforced with braces on the rear.  An archtop has just two braces that run in an "X" or "parallel" to each other but the archtop can be up to 1/4 inch thick!  This is massive for an acoustic guitar top.  How is this thing ever going to vibrate enough to make any sound, especially higher pitched sounds?  A thin 1/8" thick rebate is carved around the perimeter of the top to free the center section of the top so that it can move sort of like a drum head that is suspended by it's perimeter.  Very clever. 

It is also very important to keep the geometry of the final guitar in mind while working on the various stages of the build.  For example if you look really closely at the plans for guitar and make a contour map of the top, you will see that the highest point of the top arch sits just in front of the bridge position.  This is absolutely critical and if you mess up on this, I bet you will ruin the guitar because the bridge must sit on the upslope of the arch and cannot teeter totter on the crest.  If you messed up on this in the carving process (one of the first things you do) you will be in for a very rude surprise when you try to set up the guitar at the end of the build.  Trying to fix this at the end will change the arch and body/neck geometry and might not be possible fix.

Most guitars have the neck coming straight out from the body with little or no set back angle to it.  The large hump of an arch that we just talked about requires the neck to have a fairly substantial 4 1/2 degree set back because the bridge sits so high relative to the neck/body joint.  Again, everything depends upon that nut/saddle string relationship and this is a part of that equation.  Once again, because of that arch, the neck extension must be carved to clear the arch and the finger board must sit fairly high to reach the strings  You need to understand every process described in the book before you begin because if you don't, you might easily make a mistake early on (like the crest of the top described above) and not be able to fix it later.

I plan on using this guitar to play out with so I will put a pick up on it.  Benedetto's pick up mounts under the pickguard and the wires to the end jack run through the "f" hole.  His pickup is really spendy so I will try winding my own and encase it in a wooden mount just like his.  I also plan on standing up with the guitar and I don't like strap buttons mounted in the heel of the neck so I will have to add a reinforcing block on the inside upper bout to accept the strap button.  Since there is no access to the inside of the body (because of the small f holes) I'll have to do this before gluing the top and backs on.

I hope there is nothing else I'm missing here.  All in all this is a really cool project and should be quite a challenge!

Uke Stand

I made a set of two maple folding stands for the recently completed ukuleles.  They fold flat because of the wooden hinge at the top and have a movable brass bar that locks them into an upright position.  Here are photos of the stands and one of the ukes...

Guitar Neck Roller Support

I saw photo's of these in the Stewart Mac catalog and thought I'd make a pair.  They are made from 2x4's that were planed square and glued together.  The larger has a 5 inch radius for acoustics and the smaller a 3 3/4 radius for electrics and smaller bodied instruments.  A spindle sander made the recesses from the squared block and a band saw cut the profiles.  There is cork in the recesses for padding.

They seem stable and should make nice rests for routine maintenance like string changing.

Ukulele Build Part 16 Final

The bridges were glued to the tops using the cam clamps that were detailed earlier in this series of posts.  I used a template to find the exact location of the saddle and then marked the perimeter of the bridge with low tack masking tape.  This not only showed exactly where the bridge went but it also protected the top from excess hide glue.

The bone nuts were finished by filing the slots for the strings into them and the action of the ukes were set to the specifications in the instruction manual.   The fret boards and bridges got a coat of bore oil and the saddles were glued in place with white glue.  I made the mistake of stringing the first uke like a guitar (high end smallest string to low end largest string).  After consulting the directions I restrung the correct way to G-C-E-A and now they are ready for use.  The Grover tuners are much better than the through the head piece friction tuners that came with the kit and I'd recommend getting a set should you choose to build a uke.

I hope that you've enjoyed following along with the build.  Now I've got to figure out how to play these...

Ukulele Build Part 14

These are some home made cam clamps that will be used to hold the saddle in place for gluing.  They needed to have a fairly long throat to them so that they can reach through the sound hole to where be able to hold where the saddle goes.  The also needed to have sufficient clearance built into the fixed lowermost jaw so that it can clear the internal sound board bracing.  The principle is that when the cam is rotated outward, it causes the movable jaw to bind on the rail and compress the workpiece.  The are made from hard maple and plans can be found on the internet.

Pinewood Derby Matt Kenseth

Here is a pinewood derby car from several years ago that my son and I built.  The decals are made on an ink jet printer and coated in clear acrylic.  The shape of the car, sanding and painting were all done by my son when he was in the fifth grade at that time.  The car is a lot easier to build than it looks and that is beauty of custom made decals because they allow you the ability to make just about anything you like with a minimum of effort.  If you look closely you can see the "battle scars" on the rear spoiler from a fifth grader racing this car...

Ukulele Build Part 13

The maple bindings did not turn out as well as I had hoped so the ukes went back onto the binding router and the maple was routed off and plastic bindings were added.  The necks were trued up and custom fitted to the bodies.  The instructions call for mounting the finger board to the neck and then fitting the neck to the body.  I figured that the finger boards would get in the way with fitting and finishing so I opted to leave them off at this point in time.  Ukes have nylon strings and short necks so I figure that there will be minimal stress on the necks and little back bow because of the little string stresses.  This means that the neck should be flat in relation to the tops of the uke body.  It is critical that the neck joint be perfect because the action of the uke (geometry of how the strings lie in relation to the fret board) depends upon this.  I used the trick of using double sided tape to fix sandpaper onto the body of the uke and ran the neck up and down this so that the exact shape of the body was cut into the neck joint surface.  A single dowel was drilled into the body and neck to help strengthen the joint.  Here is a photo of the glue up.

Here are the ukes after the glue up was done.  I used CA glue to put the bindings on which is why there is shellac on both bodies to prevent the CA from wicking up the grain and marring the finish (it is not a sunburst finish, although that is not a bad idea...).

Ukulele Build Part 12

Here is the jig that I built for routing the bindings for the uke.  It is made from a Stewart Mac router base and guide.  The dremel is mounted in the base and is supported on the back end to take some of the stress off of the router base.  The base and guide are bolted to an upright board and an adjustable support is bolted through a slot in the upright board.  The router guide (brass piece on top) controls the width of the route and the support (triangular maple piece) controls the depth.  The reason why something like this is needed is because the tops and backs of guitars and ukes do not make 90 degree angles with the sides.  Because of this you cannot simple set the router base on the top or bottom and route around the instrument.  You must use the side of the uke as the part that is supported for the cut.

 

Here is a photo of one of the ukes on the jig for routing.  The triangle supports the uke and the brass piece in this case is riding on the back of the uke and is contolling the depth of the cut.   One key here is to make multiple shallow passes to not over burden the bit and cause chatter or tear out.

 Here is a uke with the binding channels cut.

 

Here is the other uke with the maple binding glued in place with masking tape to hold it is place till dry.

 

Ukulele Build Part 11

Here are photos of the linings for the two ukes.  The top photo shows the kit's lining system and the second is the one based upon a traditional guitar binding. 

The next two photos show the profiles of the linings for the ukes.  A piece of wood was made that had an arch cut into it that exactly matched the curve to the back piece for the uke.  When it was held up to the kit's linings it showed that they were so narrow that it made no difference if a bevel was sanded into the top of the linings or not.  However, a small gap can be seen on the wider traditional linings on the 002 uke as seen in the bottom photo.  Because the back would only be glued at the outside edge, the linings of the 002 were sanded to match the back's profile.

 Here is a photo of the 002 uke with the back glued on but not yet trimmed to size.

Here is a photo of the headstocks with the mother of pearl palm tree inlays after scaping them flush with the veneer.  As mentioned in the last post, you cannot see the router slip on the uke on the right because the epoxy mixed with wood dust hid it very well.  If you stare long enough you can notice an area where the grain looks a little different but that's about it (it is to the right, between the trunk and the lower most leaf).  These will have finish applied to tone up the wood color (the first coats of finish were used to fill the wood grain).

Ukulele Build Part 10

Linings were added to the top and bottom portions of the sides.  These linings increase the surface area for gluing the tops and bottom on to the uke.  The kit came with a set of thin basswood linings as shown on the left while I made more traditional "guitar style" linings for the 002 uke on the right.  We'll see which work out better on the final product.  I made a modification to the plans for the building jig by substituting a set of 1/2 inch dowels for the metal angle brackets.  This is much gentler on the side wood.

 Here is a photo of gluing on the tops for the ukes.  I used hide glue for this and really had to hustle to get the tops on before the glue started to gel.  It goes without saying but you need to do a dry run on each uke so there is no wasted time in the gluing process.  As you can see here, I have abandoned the metal brackets and added dowels to both jigs.  I think this is a better set up.

 Next the mother of pearl palm trees were added to the head stocks.  I used a glue stick to adhere the MOP to the head stock and then used an exacto knife to trace the outline of the palm trees.  Once the MOP was removed I added a little talcum powder as shown here.

 The talcum powder shows up the lines better so they are easier to follow when routing.

 Here is the start of the route.  Be careful not to let your attention stray for even one moment.  On the other head stock I looked up to see how the power cord on the router was laying and I neatly routed through the side of the palm tree trunk!  Not good, not good at all.  Fortunately there is a cheat fix that will work well so that only you and I, gentle reader, will know that the mistake is there...

 Add a little fine sanding dust to the epoxy mix to make the epoxy the same color as the finished wood.

 Glue the MOP in place with epoxy filling all of the route.

 Clamp with a caul and wax paper to seal in the goodness.  Let dry for 12 hours or so...

I left the MOP proud by a good 1/64th of an inch because there are machining marks in the face of the MOP and I am dealing with thin veneer here so I can't afford to sand through the veneer.  BTW adding saw dust to epoxy changes the epoxy's consistency (see the kayak build for more info on epoxy formulations).