I spent the weekend in the shipyard doing some initial repairs, then some new work. Because Augie hadn’t been able to work on the Confederacy for quite some time, it had collected a little bit of dust and had a small amount of disrepair, including some deck planks that had separated a bit and seemed uneven. So I cleared off some of the cannons and fittings, resurfaced the deck, filled in gaps with sawdust from sanded down Swiss Pear, then applied some tung oil and a light coat of satin poly. I also ended up touching up some of the black and red paint that had been negatively affected by dust, etc.
During the course of that – I noticed that the steering wheels that had come with the ship, well – just weren’t that awesome. After doing some searching for bits and pieces, it turns out it’s actually pretty difficult to find good wheels that are not metal and painted. So I set about creating new ones.
For Attempt #1, I cut off part of a dowel that was 15mm in diameter – the same diameter as the existing wheels. I mounted it onto my Dremel vertically, using a small screw attachment to create a version of a lathe. Then I used dental tools to notch and carve the piece giving it texture.
However, because the kind of wood I used was hard, but a little too porous and brittle, it crumbled when I attempted to cut it off the end of the dowel with it’s new shape. Drat.
For Attempt #2 I used a softer, but more dense piece of wood for the framing of the wheel. This wood is actually from an old pen case that I had from somewhere. You never know what you’re going to dig up in the extra supply bin.
I cut it square, rounded the edges, then mounted it on the Dremel as before. I smoothed out the top and bottom and used my mini level to make sure it was even. I used miniature files to care out the edges and give the wheel some shape. For the spokes, I used a strip of boxwood, split it to 2mm, then rounded it with sand paper. Once again mounting it into my Dremel Lathe, I used a miniature file to shape the spokes.
I then mounted them around a center piece, and sanded my frame out to fit, notching the edges slightly to give room to the spokes. For the outer handles, I used the same process, and notched the frame out to fit the pieces.
Finally, I lightly sanded and added a cherry mini-wax stain. When it’s dry, I’ll sand it out with 1000 grit sand paper.
The Lehman Shipyard 