Mark Pearse

Hi Pat Ha! Yes the submarine 'Platypus Trophy' is a curious one for a sailing club. I don't recall what the connection is.... A couple of the grander sailing clubs have some very nice models - if you're in town, The Squadron (Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron) & CYC (Cruising Yacht Club of Australia), up in Pittwater the Royal Motor Yacht Club - they all have great collections. Notable is the CYC's half model of every handicap winner of the Hobart.

And now the half model, with trophy name plate, is up on the wall of our sailing club. It has some interesting company.

best of luck sorting that out, good that you picked it up now You will be very happy to know that the thing you used to get the floor shape actually has a name - it's called a joggle stick

Hi Vaddoc It's exciting to see the planking commence. I hope you get some more time to build in the near future. Are you planning to set up any battens or thread to sight the planking lines?

that looks excellent, & it's very unusual - what do you use for the clenching?

Hi Silverman. Nice clean work there. I also used dry heat to bend timber, mainly with a hot air gun. I did use boiling water once because it had to be softened along it's full length at once - but I don't think the timber was more flexible from that technique than just dry heat. For planks I would look at the twist required & then clamp one end of the plank, then apply hot air & twist the timber with the other hand...let cool & check...twist some more etc. Mark

Thanks everyone Hi Druxey, I proposed this Trophy (most sailing clubs have a lot of trophies, so additional ones are not always welcomed) to encourage classic yachts from other clubs to sail with us (The Sydney Amateur Sailing Club). We have a Sunday non-spinnaker classics series, & one race from this series becomes an 'invitational' race, so open to casual entries from anyone. To make it more interesting a bottle of whisky & your name on the trophy are both on offer - so at the annual prize giving day you get to have the trophy on your table & take the whisky home. It's pretty amazing what people will do for a bottle of whisky & some sparkly silverware, but it's all part of the fun. When the trophy is up on the wall, I'll post a picture of it.

I wonder if they used the yoke to lock the rudder off while rowing, & used it for steering only while sailing. Wefalck seemed to be pointing to this.

Hi Roger, Good question, & the answer is a bit long perhaps.....I decided to do that cutaway for the propeller when, fairly late in the build, I looked back at the drawings & saw that the cutaway is shown. So although parts of the boat as shown are speculative (the drawing doesn’t show the rig, cockpit aperture, rudder/tiller or centreboard), I wanted the hull to be as accurate to the design as I could make it. If the model is for myself I could do what I wanted - but in this case the model will be with other half models on a wall of our sailing club, where the designer was a member for most of his life. So, I have been mindful of the place of a model to be a kind of history. Few people will take the trouble to look at the drawings but lots will see the model. It’s a minor detail, but I was swayed by the knowledge that having it the same size & shape as the drawing would be an indicator of the effort to be accurate in the hull.

many thanks Vaddoc and best wishes for your two current builds.

thanks Steve, Yes the bowsprit as a boarding plank is a good one. It would have been a small boat for a family with 4 strapping boys. Not surprised that Ranger came soon with its generous cabin size (relatively speaking)

thanks everyone I completed the supports this morning - if you want more details there was a post that sketched the design. The photos below show if from the wall point of view. The wall plate is the lower split batten, pre=drilled for up to 8 fixings. The weight of the model is held by this. The model is dropped onto the wall plate, then the side screws, visible below, are put in. They really stop it from being accidentally bumped off, or the opportunistic thief (that isn't carrying a large flat head screwdriver....)

Thank you for the detailed & patient explanation of this fine model. I find the tiller yoke question intriguing. Is there any evidence that they might have used metalwork fittings that integrated with the timber piece you showed? I find the rope idea unsatisfying, the leverage doesn't look quite right. Mark

Thank you all. I think the model is finished now. Some finishing details: I scribed some lines to indicate water, I think it looks quite good. The trim is from Australian Red Cedar, which is not a pine timber. It's light & looks like Mahogany, & also takes shellac well. I cut some 9mm strip, rounded the front edge & finished with brown shellac, screwed with bronze screws because the colour goes better. I painted inside the hull a dark grey, it looks better than plain timber. As the half model will be a trophy for our sailing club, there will be a plaque below the hull, & I realised the centreboard would interfere with the plaque, so I cut the centreboard down just so that the visible sliver indicated it's presence. The reflection works quite well, the boat really seems to float in the air. And from some angles you see the hull shape very well. The bowsprit is quite wide, but the story from the designer's son (now 95 & I spoke to him today, but unfortunately I now can't visit him tomorrow morning to show him the model) is that Cliff got so sick of rowing the kids back & forwards to the shore when they went picnicking that he put a bronze shoe on the forefoot of the bow to protect from sand grinding, made a wide bowsprit so he would pull the bow onto a harbour beach & the kids would use the bowsprit to get on & off. So, that's why it's wide & flat. Lovely bow lines. Fine entry & plenty of volume to give lift in waves. Cliff sailed this boat the 10 or12 km ocean sailing to Broken Bay, & this little boat apparently did some trips in difficult conditions. As noted at the beginning (& photo), he had a removable cuddy cabin made for this sort of use.

The stainless steel backplate went very well. Using the metalwork section of this forum I asked for advice (https://modelshipworld.com/topic/28771-polishing-stainless-steel-sheet-to-mirror-finish/) & the method I used is explained in more detail there. The good news is that I am more pleased with the result than I expected to be. I did get a mirror finish, but the effect is a lovely soft sort of mirror finish, just the thing for a half model of a 1930 design - the mists of time etc.... The photo below shows nicely how it looks, the reflection of my drill has a soft ghosting effect. And yet the reflection is nice & clear. I started on the mounting brackets - below is the back of the backplate. It follows the design a few posts ago. Essentially its split battens & then screwed to hold it there. The side strips will also visually cover the split battens from the side. I glued the stainless steel sheet onto this plywood, using some sikaflex marine sealant I had left over. I think it will work better than epoxy...will see. I ended up fixing the timber by screwing it from the back & not using glue.