Mark Pearse

Onwards... I have glued both gunwales to the hull, & the port side sponson. The timber has about 4 coats of brown-orange shellac, finished with steel wool. I will give them another go before painting. The plywood deck had a prominent change in colour of the veneers at the height the top edge needed to be, below the deck line. For the gluing, I had swallowed my pride & decided on CA glue, as I didn't want to put any mechanical fixings through the timber as I couldn't see a good way to hide them, & using CA did allow just enough time to make sure the strips were accurately placed. The sponson-gunwale relationship is critical to the appearance, so errors were just not on. The port side sponson went on quite easily yesterday, & I had a go at the starboard side, which didn't go well... I was fighting some twist in the timber & was struggling to get a good bond with the load of that twist. I've learned that with CA, you need to get a good bond first time if you can, & the struggle had gone on too long. So, I pulled it off & set up the heat bending frame with an inbuilt twist....It's not much twist, but these native hardwoods have strong opinions & this one needed more encouragement. You can see from the pencil line on the bench that the brackets were repositioned & the upper legs bent. So the sponson is in the same basic curve ....just with some twist. It's now clamped, heated (heat gun) & on the clamps for for a day. Tomorrow, I'll sand off the dried CA glue from both surfaces (vip in my experience) & try again.

Interesting lines: the boats look fat but the underwater lines look as fair as any 20C cruising yacht. The garboard looks to have a lot of twisting to do... Nice drawings too.

Thank you, all very helpful. I'll probably use epoxy glue rather than CA, & pin the timbers in position so they don't slide & set in the wrong position - which would be bloody terrible..... Then spot fill the pin holes. I'll research some suitable pins. Hi Ronald, thank you - the planking looks good at least partly as they are pre-cut & therefore constant width rather than tapered. The actual yacht is strip-planked (ie: wood/epoxy composite using narrow constant width planks, with fibreglass & epoxy resin over), & the model is following that in the planking.

Thanks guys, I appreciate the advice.

Hi Andy I'm no guitar expert, but that's a gorgeously classic shape. Understated & well proportioned indeed....

Hi All, I am building a 1:20 model of a small yacht. The hull topsides will be painted (black) & there's a gunwale & sponson on the topsides. The gunwale, at scale, is about 1.5 x 4.5mm, the sponson about 4 x 7mm. The setout of the sponson is important to the whole look of the yacht, so needs to be accurate. I can paint first, then glue the timber , or glue then paint. In the first case, painting is easier as there's less cutting in; in the second, getting the sponson setout right is easier. I'm posting this here to get some advice on this. I am probably painting with a brush. thank you all in advance...

The current progress is towards painting the hull. Concurrent with the work below, I am working on some test panels for a hull paint - but just a little on my thinking: black shows gloss more than other colours, & as a gloss object at scale will look more real if the gloss level on the model is less than the actual...I'm going to be a bit fussy on that. The sponsons need a bit of assistance to make the curve of the hull shape, & fortunately Blackbutt respond to some heat reasonably well. My method was to scribe the hull shape on the bench, adding a bit more curve to the shape. Set up some angle brackets, clamp the middle one & heat sections (with a hot air gun) away from the middle & progressively clamp them. I suspect this isn't as good as actually making a small steam box & then clamping, partly because you haven't got much of an idea what effect the heat is having on the timber. Anyway, it worked well. I also gave one half of the gunwale the same treatment & then put them on the hull in a temporary way. That's partly so they have somewhere to stay while retaining the curve. Looks great. The last part of the sponson near the stern droops a bit, but that can be tweaked later. One aspect I'm not sure about, & would certainly welcome opinions: whether to paint the hull then glue the sponsons / gunwales, or glue them & then paint the hull. Painting is easier in the first case, getting the timber strips accurately positioned is easier in the second. I am leaning ever so slightly towards the latter. It would be good to get whatever opinions I can, from you all.... I'll also do a post on the in the paint section of this forum... thanks in advance,

Following Keith's lead, I also went back to the first photos, & that cap railing looks very nice, & seems to be more in scale

Hi Keith I have done something similar for a picture frame. It never occurred to be to try that for shaping these. By 'craft blade', do you mean like a blade from an Olfa style knife? as below

A little more.... The sponsons are now shaped. Below is the method I use for holding the strips while shaping, & my tools of choice; which works for 1:12 but techniques that work at this scale obviously might be an issue for much smaller scales. The back of the sanding block is 240 grit, & I have some finer (the softness of fingers helps sand curves), also some fine steel wool. Here's the strips: 2x 700mm lengths of sponson, 1x 1m of gunwale (a thin coat of shellac, hence the colour).

I decided the next major job is to paint the hull, & before that I have to make & position the gunwales & sponsons. In particular, the sponson line is important to the hull's appearance, & must be just right. It's mainly about the tapering gap above the sponson, between it & the gunwale. Hence the need to do both. The gunwale position will be a constant distance below the deck line but the sponson is tricky. My plan is to use brass pegs as dowels to fix the final position, put them aside & install after the hull is painted. On the actual yacht, the timberwork around the cockpit is teak, varnished or unfinished; & the hull timberwork is Spotted Gum - a tough hardwood that steam bends well. On the boat they have faded somewhat so I have used some Blackbutt that I have, a length of floorboard from a building site. I ripped some strips off on a table saw & then used a well sharpened plane to bring the timber sizes down further, & then to shape them. The strip on the left is a future gunwale, about 2.5 x 4mm. And shaped, finely sanded & one coat of shellac wiped on. I'll do some more coats later. Below are the future sponsons, about 4 x 5.5mm.

A beautiful model, & an especially interesting journey to follow ....

Thanks all, Druxey, when I was still drafting manually, I used 5H on plastic film. Nice sharp lines & no smudging. Some progress with the same area, the vertical face of the raised deck. Some further detail, in response to Rick's question. Everyone has their own method, & I have done it this way: The removable side panels that sit either side of the companionway hatch have a flat centre panel with a recessed surround frame, & then rails top bottom & sides, like a mini door. I didn't chamfer the surround frame strips, just recessed them. Nice sharp knife, careful measuring & careful gluing is my approach. Important is the opti-visor, being able to see is essential. Then sanding on paper glued to acrylic pieces. One sanded & one not...the effect of some careful sanding is nice to see. An important part of model making indeed. Dry fitted, with the separating frames that will be fixed to the side rails of the hatch. There will be curved members that trim the back edge of the raised deck. The bottom edge is slightly raised as the cockpit seating is laid teak, I've allowed 2mm for that. I've realised that this work can't go further until the hull is painted. So I'll put this aside for now, I'm changing tack & will make the toe rails, gunwales & sponsons. Then paint. bye for now,

Hi Jim Looking back to the early part of this log, the change has been incremental but significant; & I was also reminded of how this project must be a meaningful completion of work started by your mate George. As an aside, I am lucky enough to have visited Åland (also called Ahvenamaa), & had a happy day wandering around in the warm sunny summer weather. Keep up the great work.

Having the tackle suggests the position or angle of the steering piece was adjusted, have you come across any commentary on that?