Mark Pearse

Hi everyone, the yacht model I'm building would have mainly stainless steel fittings. Can anyone recommend a way of replicating the pale grey finish of SS on a brass part? I know that SS is really a silver, but at a distance - & especially on a used boat - it tends to look more grey than shiny silver. Any thoughts? thanks, Mark

Hi Mike I wonder if you cut a v out of the inner side of the corner, most of the way through, then folded it at that point....it would give a sharper corner & also hold itself in position for the soldering/brazing. best, Mark

I've been sanding the hull, there's still some detail sanding to do but it's now almost done. I may paint the hull while it's still on the frame, it will be easier to do the boot top lines this way. It would mean that I can use a builder's self-levelling laser to get a horizontal line, tracing it with a pencil by hand, & then adjusting by eye to suit the right curve. Sanding the inside edge of planking ends at the transom is especially delicate, & needs to be to accurate to give the impression of scale. I have done some of this sanding, but a few more hours of careful work required there. I did have to splice in a strip of planking where the garboard was down too low. In any case I need to place the mast, & the drawing son the design do not include any information on mast setout, spar sizes etc. I've sketched the sail plan below, which is based on the sailplan of the 24 footers, plus just my eye - for better or for worse.... I've noticed that there's a lot of different ideas about the gaff angle - this high peaked angle is typical here, you almost never see a low peaked gaff that seems to be popular in America. I believe that sail twist would be greater with a lower peak angle & especially with cotton sails, so I wonder if they used gaff vang lines from the peak of the gaff spar to the quarters - to control the twist...but that's another conversation. I also had another go at the line of the sponsons - the lower gunwales - & I've put more bounce into it. See the brown lines on the drawing. I probably rushed into a detail drawing before when a broader view was still needed. I'll sit on that one, & will do temporary ones when the time comes, to see how they look.

Hi Michael, I saw your question about a gaff mast size. I believe they need to be thicker; apart from the extra power of a gaff mainsail, the gaff spar has a lot of thrust forwards on the mast, a lot of load at one point. Below is a photo of our spars when we revarnished over winter, the mast, boom & bowsprit. The mast is the one on the left running down the shed & the slender unvarnished mast below it is a Folkboat mast, a bermudian mast from a similar length boat to ours. I think you can see the difference, which is slightly exaggerated by being further away from the camera, but standing next to them both the difference is significant. Also the taper is quite different, the gaff mast is tapered only a little up to the spreaders/gaff throat height & then tapers more above that. Above the spreaders, if the aft mast face carries the same line up, & the forward face & sides do the tapering, that looks nice. You can just make that out in the photo. Mark

Hi Dan, looks like a lot of enjoyment coming up. For your interest, the design is surprisingly similar to a lovely little boat that was very popular here in Australia, an 18 foot ply boat called a Hartley TS18. A friend used to go away camping as a child with parents, kids & dog in one....must have been crazy. They also sail very well. Best wishes for the build. MP

better with the name, so much personality deserves a name

I like the subtlety of the colours for the antifouling, topsides, deck & decking timberwork.

Michael, interesting thoughts - and I did get the idea for this building frame from your skipjack frame. The high moulds did allow manual access, but they did need to be braced a bit as the thin ply was quite flexible. It could be braced in a more thoughtful way than I did it, perhaps tensile bracing... On the planks, they are to scale & tapered based on the set out I did for the hull, & I didn't need to spile them in the way I read about in the planking primers - I think because the Huon Pine is so supple it allowed me to get the wood to the shape of the last plank. When a little twist or lateral bend was needed, I - like I see you did - used a heat gun & clamped the other end of the plank to a bench. There are a few wobbles if you look along the planks, & when painted I think that you will see some evidence of the lines of the planks through the paint, but you won't see enough to pick up the wobbles. A long rambling way to say that the stealers were based on the stealers in the full sized 24 footers. I'd like to do a model with an interior, there's a lot of pleasure in seeing a traditional boat hull interior - to model scale or full scale.

thanks guys, Bedford, I especially like the transom shape, at this stage it still looks similar to Ranger's (first blog entry has photos), but I think that when the transom fashion piece goes on, the planking ends are fined off & the hull sides are shaped to suit the raised deck etc, it will be the prettiest transom in a pretty good looking bunch. Mark

thanks all Planking completed & some rough sanding done. There are some planks where it may be easier to infill thin strips of timber on top of the planks than to sand it all back to the lowest part. You can see in one of the photos that this is the case for the upper edge of the port side garboard plank, the change in colour of the sanding highlights the recess. I think it would be pretty easy to thin down some timber & glue it on. Yes, Michael, I'm wondering about the next few stages...there's always the attraction of doing next the stage that will give the most dramatic visual change, over a more reasoned & sober reckoning. So, after sanding the hull, & probably undercoating & marking the waterline while the base it there holding the hull level, I will no doubt succumb to the most dramatic visual change & do the deck & the basic parts of the cockpit area. The model is still a bit scaleless with no parts to give the eye a reference of size, & I'm keen to get a sense of the yacht's design & feel.

Pretty boat, pretty model; hard to believe they are only 14 foot long, a big little boat indeed. Do they ever carry spinnakers?

One plank remains & it's the one with a stealer, but when I checked through some photos, it's actually not going to be as difficult as I was expecting. In one of the excellent forum primers on planking, it describes how to do a stealer plank on a ship. But I'm going to do it as in the photo below, from our boat Cherub - you can see where one plank stops & becomes two that take up the extra width further down. So I guess that's how they did it for this scale of boat in Sydney at that time. It will make it a lot simpler too.

thanks all

I'm still here, still working slowly away when I can. Planking is closer, 4 planks left each side plus a stealer .... & I'm still hoping that the clouds will part soon & reveal whereth should reside the stealer plank... But there's still time for that so I'll press on at my glacial pace & hope that it will all become clear at the appropriate time. Today we celebrated the 90th birthday of Bill Gale (son of the designer of the craft I'm building). Retired from sailing last year after 75 seasons; Bill with two lady admirers, Ranger (the boat that started it all) & our boat Cherub (further away).

nice; but who did those beautiful watercolours on the wall? I love the boat, but they are really great paintings...

Nice rig, looks great, & it would sail the bermudan version out of sight. Plus if you get caught in a blow you can halve the mainsail area in a trice, which isn't possible with a bermudan rig. It's a model I know, but I still get fired up. Mark

When you see the mast, it's amazing to see how small the keel area is in relation to it, I suppose it's possible because their likely minimum speed is quite fast compared to a traditional yacht - or do they have dagger boards?

thanks, that's clear; & those ropes are beautiful MP

Hi Barbara did you see this recent discussion? http://modelshipworld.com/index.php/topic/12198-what-is-a-good-finish-for-stained-planking-edited-by-admin/ best wishes, Mark

" Should a matt finish be appropriate for this kind of a model that accentuates the texture of woods while keeping the finish from dominating the overall appearance of the model ?" I'm new to this craft so I don't have much experience, but this is similar to a question that I've been chewing over. It seems to me that even the glossiest (full size) boat appears less glossy at a distance, it still looks great but the size & amount of reflections reduces the further away you get. So, my thinking is that a lower level of gloss will look in scale, even if you're replicating a boat that is high gloss. My eye tells me that when a model is done full gloss it looks a bit more like a model than a scaled down version of the real thing (trying not to tie myself in verbal knots....). That isn't to say that either is better, it's just the effect is different. My 2c..... Mark

does anyone use micro mesh for sanding their models?

golly, 1600 grit - I did't know it even existed Jay, can you use that for concave curved surfaces? I recently completed a table & was surprised by how when hand planing the tops down to 20mm thick, I was able to feel subtle thickness differences & work out where to remove next. However for some reason I'm unsure of this for a complex curved surface, but perhaps that is inexperience. thanks

Hi Vaddoc very nice, she looks absolutely lovely. One small technical point, but my option only - I see that you have reduced the tackle on the forestay, giving a smaller ratio. I think that this is probably more likely than the earlier photo that seemed to have 4:1 ratio or so. With this sort of rig you take up the slack in the forestay & not tighten it a lot, the forestay tensioning is done by the mainsail pulling back against the forestay. You shouldn't tension the forestay because the load pulling aft from the mainsail would vary a lot depending on the angle of sailing, even in a constant breeze. Mark

thank you, all of these are going to be a great help Mark

Hi everyone, I'm wondering what techniques others use to sand completed planking, where the basic planking lines are good but there is a certain amount of fairing to get down to a faired shape. The planks I've used are around 2.5mm thick, & most will be at least 2mm finished after final sanding with a few parts slightly under that, at maybe 1.75mm. I was thinking of gluing sandpaper on to some flexible strips - maybe 1mm styrene or thin flexible ply - & sanding at various angles. The strips sized for one hand or two hands ..... so that I remove outstanding timber & not sand down where it's not needed. Forum title searches unfortunately didn't really find anything that matched what I'm looking for. ideas ? thanks, MP