Mark Pearse

Almost like bought one....it looks like the top edge of the boot top line didn't have quite enough lift towards the bow, just the last part. I usually find that going back & adjusting something is less work than I expected, so I jumped in & started it. I scratched the black paint off, after carefully cutting against the side of the masking tape to give a sharp line to scratch off up to. Will undercoat, sand, topcoat, sand etc etc. A bit like the Spam song....

Bravo Vaddoc, a great result. I'd better start following the Hercules build....

Thanks everyone. And no longer a whiter shade of pale.... I'll give the Humbrol paint a few days to harden, but it seems less hard than previously. The unmasking went ok, quite a few small tears, even though I sanded everything between coats. I'll need to work on them, one tiny spot at a time. The paint mix ended up about 20-25% satin & the rest gloss, with a few drops of Penetrol. Black is quite unforgiving, it shows flaws more than paler colours. But I'm pretty happy with the most recent coat & I'll have a good look over the next few days.. The transom may need another coat, as the flatness is even more unforgiving than curved black.

Hi Wefalck, good points, I've never done it myself so I'm not sure - but they try to dive away from the boats when trouble is coming.

That's great to see the interest, I think they are very special craft & a very special sport. Hi Mark - she's with Coogee. It's one of the nearby alternatives & actually not great as there's not really surf there, but when there is swell it's nasty large dumpers on the sand. Yes, certainly the cold-moulded ones are nicer, but it's interesting the latest are not much different in shape - Hi Rick, not sure but the major surf club meets are a big deal & televised. The boats are just one of the sports. yes the surf is good for that I found some photos of the lifeboat style ones, I think this was the original type: Which developed (my guess) to this (note transom, albeit heavy boat with rudder): And this amazing shot, a clinker boat. The photo shows why the large rocker, trying to keep the bow up: thanks for looking

I was prompted to post this as our daughter has just taken up the chaotic & wonderful sport of surf boat rowing. The boats are unusual & interesting, & I'm not sure if the sport is done in other countries. The shape of the boats has become quite particular, to suit rowing out through the surf, round a buoy & back to the beach. It's pretty common for 30-40% of the boats to not finish a race & sometimes worse. The original boats were descended from double ended life boats, & during the 20C became the shape they are now, & even in the 1960s were used to rescue people. These days it is a sport only, as jet skis & surf rescue boards have taken over the rescue part. The boats have a very short & flared bow so they don't nose dive on a wave, & long tapering hulls & a lot of rocker. I imagine most people on the forum are interested in unusual craft, so here's one more. The still photo below shows the hull shape well, & something about what the boats are for, the video shows the fun & chaos of the sport. Incredibly, less people get injured than you would think....it gets pretty wild. summer wishes everyone!

Hi Patrick, An Arctic Char would be very very good - do you ever catch them? On ship matters, the interior of the forecastle is fascinating, I suppose they were never really empty on a ship of war - but it's almost a very modern piece of architecture.

The hull painting is underway. I used a good quality household undercoat (Dulux oil based primer-sealer), as it sands nicely. As the boot top line is white & the hull topsides black, I painted the boot top first, in full gloss oil based enamel (Humbrol gloss white). Humbrol seem to have changed the recipe, but it went ok - but 4 coats were needed to get a really opaque layer. The flow was nice straight from the tin, but the density could be better. The underwater paint will be a matt acrylic of some sort, pale grey, or pale blue-grey; the topsides oil based enamel. After the photos I'll put some thoughts on gloss level at scale. I left the masking tape on the timberwork as I'll start the black now. And thanks to Tim Moore of this forum for the recommendation to paint some clear coating on the masking tape joint to reduce likelihood of bleeding under the tape. I did a test to check compatibility - which might be an issue down the track but it seems ok for the short time since i did the test. Undercoated, sanded & with the boot top done: This one is included to show something that to me was an important detail: the way the stem resolves to the hull as a crease, which then softens to become a faired curve some distance behind the front of the keel. The shadows show it, & it's about right to the actual yacht. For the topsides paint, I am doing a mix of Humbrol gloss black, plus about 25% Humbrol satin black added, plus a bit of Penetrol for flow. I might have added too much Penetrol as it's looking a little thin, but I'll do one coat & then judge whether to change the balance. The white boot top was left full gloss, but black will really show the gloss & I think full gloss at scale should be backed off a wee bit. This might not be an issue for a pale colour, but black will really show the gloss level.

Very nice Tim. The colour are harmonious but also credible. And I like that you can see the buoys are actually solid timber -

I have been working away, heading towards painting the hull. There's been quite a few small & exacting jobs, not ones that give a huge sense of achievement, but necessary for a good paint job - & some bits that just had to be completed. Bowsprit / stem resolution (& boot top lines): Drain holes for the scuppers area around the cockpit: Stern apertures - the square ones are the cockpit footwell drains, & the round one will be the exhaust outlet; visible also is some filler to the inside of the planking / transom joint (hood ends??). I used sanding epoxy filler for that, & a tiny tiling wedge as a spatula - the end is such a nice combination of sharp & flexible for a tricky filling job. Plus a bit more timber to the lower aft edge of the keel, also visible. Also the lower gudgeon for the rudder, which required a careful setout.....the rudder blade setout is done very well & cleverly on this particular boat: you can see that the aft edge of the keel meeting face is concave & the rudder nests into it nicely - but they managed to also allow the rudder to have a full 90º swing. This is for picnicking, you take out the tiller & the freely swinging rudder doesn't knock against the hull all afternoon. The gudgeon is pretty simple but I had to sleeve tube into tube to suit the OD & ID, seen here with the piece that wraps around ready for soldering. Then shaped & dry fitted: & then glued in place & shaped, as it has been carefully faired on the actual boat The pintle below, & the spacer was a piece sawn off the gudgeon tube: And here's the rudder in it's home position, note the faired rudder to keel junction: And at 90º: And lastly, another build of these doughty yachts has been launched, Sunday 30th December, see below. Built by retired shipwright Ian Smith, & his freely available videos online, on boat building are really excellent. Well done Smithy & Trish!

Hi Steven, if you run short on White Oak, I have some small pieces doing nothing & could post to you.

agree, the finished awning is very good

is that a low compression diesel, & the hot bulb is like a permanent glow plug..?

Looks like a massive single cylinder putt-putt engine....

Hi Steve, Nice work on the wheels. Looking at the photos, the scolloped edge is fabric rather than rigid, so perhaps paper. Cutting that shape will be difficult though. I wonder if there's a craft scissors that do it, like the zig-zag ones but curved....Spotlight are good for stuff like this & just might have it.

Hi Vaddoc, Very nice, & your metalwork is especially fine work.

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