Preparing for sea, Proa physics and a new rudder. Balkan Shipyards

[rael dobkins]

https://youtu.be/oYDzodsRouE

[Ian R]

Great video as usual.  Nice to see your trad. workshop kneedeep in shavings and your drawings.

Drawing is integral to the creative making process. I myself learned to draw by making, learned to make through drawing.

Hand and eye and brain is drawing and making. Your stuff is the most Wharram -like making I have found to look at, though Sven Yrvind with his micro-boats is good at that too.

My trad. workshop will soon be in action again. I have just bought a 50 kva Perkins generator and my Sedgewick planer and 1950 Wadkin spindle will be rolling again soon. Two fingers to EDF in France who won't allow me a 3 ph supply because I'm a retired professional "amateur"....and not a registered "business". (I have solar too but that hasn't got the power I need for the big-boy machines.)

Thanks to the profiteers, my 10 tonne stock of 10 yr air dry oak has rocketed in "value" ie price, but I won't be selling it.

Thanks to the profiteers, the trees in my wood have doubled in "value", but I won't be selling them.

Life is not money. Keep on drawing, thinking, making, and shunting.

[rael dobkins]

  Interesting stuff Ian, happy u like the Balkan Style.

Sven is amazing!!! love his boats, though too slow, maybe when I get older...

Crazy French politics you deal with, I never heard such stupidity, I spose a geni will work, but it's a hassle.... Keep u fit, anyway.

Wood is rocketing, the other day I bought 20 sheets of OSB for a small shed I'm building for a client, it has doubled! not 20% increase, not 30% it just went to double or nothing over night. Not looking good, since I haven't noticed anyone getting double the wages, next comes people that can't afford materials.... The same people I suppose won't need a tradesman soon to work with the materials they can't afford..... 

A bunch of pigs are running this planet, they wrecked it with their greed, and now Billions of innocent people will have to pay for that greed.

Keep your forest Ian, Jenia my wife always said "If I was rich, I would buy a big piece of land and plant a forest."

The Dark Side is strong these days, yet the Force is everywhere in great numbers....

 

The Force is strong my friend, Keep Shunting

Balkan Shipyards

[Dean Wilkerson]

      Three phase is really a  non issue....... I've built numerous inverters for various people...... including myself over the last 30 years or so.  It's incredibly simple to produce usable 3 phase ..... assuming your equipment isn't 480V.  Most of my inverters have been rotary.  L1 and L2 go to the motor that serves as the rotary inverter, and on to the switch for the  load along with the 3rd leg from the inverter motor.    I put run capacitors (big oil filled capacitors) across between the artificial leg (L3) and one of the two mains beyond the load switch, and usually fire the inverter motor using a start capacitor across the same two legs on the mains side of the load switch.   A big knife switch on the mains energizes the inverter motor, and the slack in the handle allows it to hit a microswitch just long enough to briefly give L3 a jolt from the start capacitor via the relay.     I've powered things from about 3 HP up to 7.5 hp....... though there really isn't a limit.   The inverter motor can be as small as 1/3 the size of the load motor...... or as big as you want it, and the run capacitors make up the difference.   For a given inverter size, a smaller load will require fewer capacitors, and a larger load will require more.   The commercial "add a phase" units are pretty much the same... Just a motor (with no exposed shaft ends), and a bank of capacitors.................... Simple stuff, and cheap, because used three phase motors are often easily had and cheaply from salvage companies, etc.      I have one inverter that runs a lathe and a 300 amp constant potential welder, another that operates 7.5 hp air compressor for when I need a lot of air.... It starts automatically....... both inverter and compressor, and another running a 5 HP Dewalt radial arm saw.    Most of the ones I've built for people run lathes or milling machines.   The factory built ones I've worked with run center pivot irrigation systems including pumps and run on 480.  The power company just installs a 480 single phase service, and the installer runs it into a big inverter.  

      I also maintain two 70KW Whisper Watt generators........ with Izuzu diesel engines that together run a bunch of pivots and run 24/7 all summer long....... Great generators, great engines.  I rebuilt both engines at about 24k hours within the last couple of years, and put new bearings in the generators......... they were still starting and running fine, but 24K is "time".   

[Ian R]

Thank you so much for your very detailed explanation Dean.  I am a woodworker who has run 3 ph machines for most of my working life- traditional ones: a joiner friend of mine in France calls them "pig iron". They are there to be repaired and used, almost indefinitely.  They make little demand on resources other than power, about the same as modern machines. We know that we must stop constantly making and buying new products and throwing old ones away, even when some products are supposed to be more "efficient". I have replaced capacitors on machines, but my technical knowledge stops there.

What is wrong with a human operator? (general question) I actually like shoving timber through machines and watching it come out the other end in another form, but we are supposed to be obsolescent. Would I prefer doing stuff on a computer screen - no. Am I fitter than 99% of other retired people - yes.

Rael's video shows us a repair he has done on his "old" but serviceable car.  The car dates from an epoch when we could maintain and repair things ourselves. I run an old car almost as old as that. It is almost as sparing with fuel as a very modern petrol car, but just smaller than most of the new ones - nevertheless equal to what is demanded of it.

This is the essence of the simple but essential point that Rael makes in his videos and through what he is doing:

The questions and answers ask questions, which us what we find when we think Zen. Rael thinks aloud in his videos.

For example: with my 10 tonnes of oak, what shall I make?

I will be ripping down big beams, very dry beams with shakes in them. I can still shift many of them by hand, because I have learned how to use the point of balance. I can make furniture from them. Some of the shakes will inevitably remain in the wood. Are these oak tables (for example) going to be any less oak tables than those made from newly felled round oak timber purchased in France, transported to China, converted there and kilned, made into furniture and reimported to Europe? Do I have to say my tables are "antique" to sell them? Why do we regard a smooth French -polished finish as the height of the art of cabinetmaking?

Sven Yrvind makes the same point: why do we need to shift a "caravan" or boats built according to racing rules  through the sea when we are only wanting to shift one or two bodies with essentially limited requirements, and why do we need to get from A to B "fast"? Sven enjoys being on the ocean, why should he be desperate to get home quick? Why do we have destinations? Does it matter? Do we go around in circles anyway?

For my own part, I quite enjoy surfing in my boat @ 15 knots so I have a Wharram catamaran, but with small cabins which are for sleeping or sheltering in.

Back to the 3 ph. You are clearly an expert with these motors and their requirements. I rely on my electrician who wired my place up for 3 ph before EDF cut me off, and who repaired some switchgear on my machines. He has also fully tested the Perkins.  I have a container full of more "pig iron" languishing in a nearby builders yard. Among the machines is a French four-cutter (planes all round in one pass) which has 5 motors and needs a lot of power (sorry to be vague, but 30kva is what I recall from last looking at the manual) to start. I'm hoping to fit that in my workshop sometime.

I'll try to translate your account for my French electrician friend and will be interested to see what he says. He has fitted up a lot of big gear in factories etc.

So what you are saying I totally empathise with, even though my skills would be lacking....

Cheers   Ian

Dean Wilkerson said:

      Three phase is really a  non issue....... I've built numerous inverters for various people...... including myself over the last 30 years or so.  It's incredibly simple to produce usable 3 phase ..... assuming your equipment isn't 480V.  Most of my inverters have been rotary.  L1 and L2 go to the motor that serves as the rotary inverter, and on to the switch for the  load along with the 3rd leg from the inverter motor.    I put run capacitors (big oil filled capacitors) across between the artificial leg (L3) and one of the two mains beyond the load switch, and usually fire the inverter motor using a start capacitor across the same two legs on the mains side of the load switch.   A big knife switch on the mains energizes the inverter motor, and the slack in the handle allows it to hit a microswitch just long enough to briefly give L3 a jolt from the start capacitor via the relay.     I've powered things from about 3 HP up to 7.5 hp....... though there really isn't a limit.   The inverter motor can be as small as 1/3 the size of the load motor...... or as big as you want it, and the run capacitors make up the difference.   For a given inverter size, a smaller load will require fewer capacitors, and a larger load will require more.   The commercial "add a phase" units are pretty much the same... Just a motor (with no exposed shaft ends), and a bank of capacitors.................... Simple stuff, and cheap, because used three phase motors are often easily had and cheaply from salvage companies, etc.      I have one inverter that runs a lathe and a 300 amp constant potential welder, another that operates 7.5 hp air compressor for when I need a lot of air.... It starts automatically....... both inverter and compressor, and another running a 5 HP Dewalt radial arm saw.    Most of the ones I've built for people run lathes or milling machines.   The factory built ones I've worked with run center pivot irrigation systems including pumps and run on 480.  The power company just installs a 480 single phase service, and the installer runs it into a big inverter.  

      I also maintain two 70KW Whisper Watt generators........ with Izuzu diesel engines that together run a bunch of pivots and run 24/7 all summer long....... Great generators, great engines.  I rebuilt both engines at about 24k hours within the last couple of years, and put new bearings in the generators......... they were still starting and running fine, but 24K is "time".   

[Ian R]

rael dobkins said:

  Interesting stuff Ian, happy u like the Balkan Style.

Sven is amazing!!! love his boats, though too slow, maybe when I get older...

Crazy French politics you deal with, I never heard such stupidity, I spose a geni will work, but it's a hassle.... Keep u fit, anyway.

Wood is rocketing, the other day I bought 20 sheets of OSB for a small shed I'm building for a client, it has doubled! not 20% increase, not 30% it just went to double or nothing over night. Not looking good, since I haven't noticed anyone getting double the wages, next comes people that can't afford materials.... The same people I suppose won't need a tradesman soon to work with the materials they can't afford..... 

A bunch of pigs are running this planet, they wrecked it with their greed, and now Billions of innocent people will have to pay for that greed.

Keep your forest Ian, Jenia my wife always said "If I was rich, I would buy a big piece of land and plant a forest."

The Dark Side is strong these days, yet the Force is everywhere in great numbers....

 

The Force is strong my friend, Keep Shunting

Balkan Shipyard

Quick reply for the moment Rael. A couple of months ago I was talking to a retired builder who had his business in London. He had cashed up and moved to Lincolnshire, E England. He had visited one of the main importers of timber into the UK (most UK timber is imported) while down in London and noted that the yards were so full of timber the stacks looked dangerous. He asked the obvious question. The answer was that they were holding the stocks back for as long as the price went up......

We are indeed manipulated by greedy swine...

Keep shunting!

[rael dobkins]

  Ian, our planet has come to be a herd of Zombie sheep following a pack of foxes dressed up as wolves....

People are controlled by greed, which is implanted in them via media, if the neighbor's grass is greener then one would buy more land to compensate, since quantity has become a higher value than quality....

Old cars rule, I have never broken down on the way, Boyco has crossed Europe east to west, a couple times, things happen on the way, I fix them and go on. Passing broken down cars waiting for a tow truck has become the norm. Modern cars with plastic water pumps, electronic gadgets that need a laptop to find the problem, are a step in converting the herd into Zombies that rely on the saviour.....

At sea the herd relies too on the saviour, Sven doesn't, he knows his boat! He navigates on paper charts and understands the zen in his way, the modern sailor is far off relying on GPS and a plastic boat, he leaves a boatyard to maintain.

Here in Bulgaria Ian, I build freestyle furniture where cracks and knots are part of the landscape.... you're welcome over.... A client asked me to make a table using the original oak door of their house, 1867 was carved on the door, I bought kiln dried oak, with wire brushes on angle grinders new oak got old, knots and cracks were used to add age to the table, a sheet of 10 mm glass covered the old door and a table was born... The clients love it and anyone that enters that house notices it, only traditional wood joining and not a single fastener. What you say is crystal clear, yet the herd wants modern flat straight and shiny. Big factories smoke away as they produce cheap temporary furniture, shiny flat and fake designed to last a decade and go to a landfill... wood is cut and abused, fine logs go through monster machines that chew them up for chipboard production, then we are lied to that chipboard is made of offcuts... Far from true, quality Balkan Beech and pine goes for chipboard production

It is what it is I suppose... yet you surf away at 15 knots.... I hope a day comes and I too will hit such speeds, for now each in his way, will just keep ticking, watching reality take over, yet we watch from the outside, we are lucky I suppose since we have the power to choose between right and wrong..........

Keep Shunting, Ian, the force is strong.

Rael  

[Ian R]

Hello  Rael thank you for your reply.  I think we understand each other and hope to meet you.

I am half -Polish and trying to get back my EU citizenship but it has taken a long time and a lot of money and I am still waiting.

In Britain- what a mess: the fools are falling into a repressive State where the individual citizen will be worth nothing.

My philosophy of work:

I am developing that to write something for the existing craftsmen/women and the future ones.

I went to Cambridge University along with the perpetrators of the Iraq war ...

My contemporaries also went into merchant banking, they emerged from that into commerce and politics:

a kind of mafia, and the financialisation of our society.

I rejected that and self-trained as a wood craftsman,

I have done almost everything in the wood/construction trades.

Now  we are sought-after!  I don't work for rich people any more, just the poor I can help for nothing.

Did the rich enable me to do that? No- they created the problem.

Keep building, keep drawing, keep shunting and you will always think for yourself.

[Ian R]

I forgot what you said at last:

"we have the power to choose between right and wrong"

Here in Britain they have made an environment of no morals, no ideals: this is to make a playground for themselves.

Britain is not what it was, post-war. There are no ideals, no community, just a convention of greed  tooled up to use as individualism.

Bannonism has degraded and fouled all debate, as was his plan.

When I say, think for yourself, clearly that is not selfish individualism but thinking clear of all that.

The marinas are full of boats no one sails.

[rael dobkins]

Andrew J. Swenson said:

Prep Aring is one of the most fundamental elements for sailing small or medium size boats in the sea.  This is work greatly to keep its balance up and maintain speed.

Most of all, come back safe..... Going over a ship could prevent failure at a very bad time in a very bad spot....