Landlubber Mike

First, the clews are created and attached. I made them using 0.25mm natural thread from kit. I ended up making them a tad longer and ran them into the sail and up along the outside edge a bit farther than necessary to ensure that the clews were visible when the dog-ears were folded down. They were attached with fabric glue. Next step was to bend the sail to the yard. I didn't take pictures while this was in process, so hopefully the following description makes sense. I used 0.25mm thread here as well. First step was to mark on the front of the sail the points where the thread would be run through the sail - I marked points 5mm apart. Second, I used a running knot to attach the line on one end of the yard. Third step was to run the line from the front into the rear of the sail, then as you loop it over the yard, run it underneath the prior line and repeat til the end. It got a bit tricky with the yard horses and blocks, but after a while you get the hang of it. Once the sail was fully attached, go back and tighten the lines by pulling the vertical line towards the other end of the yard, and down along the top of the rear of the sail. Next step was the first fold. From the front of the sail, the bottom half was folded up so that the bottom line between the two dog ears was at the top of the sail. Next step was to fold the bottom corners up and in, to help add more volume to the middle of the yard, and reduce the volume at the ends. Next step was to furl the sail and attach the gaskets. From my research, when furling the sails, the sails were "gathered up" such that the sail was folded into an accordion type of pattern with the final fold up and against the top of the yard. That was a bit hard to do at this scale, so I ended up just folding and rolling the sail up from the front until it was tight against the yard. Took a few tries, which helped I think to get the cloth more relaxed to get a tighter furl. Then the gaskets were installed. I started with one in the middle, and then added three to each side roughly evenly spaced out. These were fairly easy to do using a running knot, and then using tweezers to help tighten the furl as the gasket was tightened (sometimes with the help of some fabric glue to help keep the material furled). After a few final adjustments, the knots were sealed with diluted PVA, and then the extra lines cut off. Finally, using fabric glue, the dog ears for the clews were bent downward and glued into position. There you have it - the no sew method of furling sails. I spent an inordinate amount of time researching and thinking about how to do these, so hopefully these look relatively authentic. I know that opinions differ on whether sails should be attached or not, but I think furled sails add a nice touch and are a good compromise given the scale issues with adding full sails - plus, these are sailing ships after all I think there were lines running from the clews downward which helped to keep them in their downward orientation (and probably keep the furl tight). I haven't figured out where those lines go, so if anyone has the answer, I would love to hear it The topsails and courses will be a bit trickier, given that they have blocks for the bunt lines, and yard horses. I'm thinking that I will pre-rig the bunt lines by gluing a portion of the line into the sail to be furled, which will eventually be run through the blocks. The instructions have the line started at the block by knotting one end of the line before it is run through the blocks - I think, however, that the line is technically started at the buntlines in the sail which are run through the blocks on the yard. Haven't fully figured that out yet, so again, would love to hear from anyone with answers on how that works. I also have to do a little more research on the spanker and jibs - the spanker should be relatively straightforward, but how to reduce the sail to remove bulk while maintaining the brail lines will be tricky. The jibs are are complicated, in that there are hanks, jib stays and travelers that need to be attached. All part of the fun I suppose Thanks for looking in!

Thanks very much everyone. I ended up doing an amalgam of things from other furled sail resources that I found. Here is a pictorial of how I proceeded. I wanted to find a way to furl the sails without needing to do any sewing - given that the sails are tightly furled, I think you can drop off a lot of the lines (hems, reef, etc.) which was why I went the furled route. Hopefully this looks convincing. Also, please excuse the pictures against my hobby cutting mat, which has seen better days The cloth I used was the thinnest weight cotton (muslin I think) that I could find at JoAnn's Fabrics. Frank (riverboat) was very kind to send me a sample of the cloth he used on his Supply, which I was able to find at my local store. After washing and ironing, it was soft and thin enough to use. Thanks very much Frank! Others use tissue paper and silkspan which are thinner, but likely need to be painted afterwards. I wanted to avoid using paints, and thought that the fabric I found had a nice natural color that worked for my build. The first item was to draft the sail plan for each of the sails. Much of this was guesswork from using the plans with distance between the yards. The Caldercraft plans have the topmast and topgallant yards in the lowered position (note, however, that the lower yards are always fixed), so to I had to draw the plans with the yards in the raised position to create the plan for the full sail. These were sketched out on paper. Next step was to reduce the size of the sails to avoid them looking too bulky. Tightly furled sails should be about the size of the yard, so resources I've seen said to reduce the sail by 1/3 to 1/2 or more. As you'll see, I ended up reducing the sail to probably only 1/3 of the full sail volume. The shape may seem a bit odd, but it's intended to reduce the sail volume as you get closer to the ends of the yards, as well as include the clews which are the dog ears on the bottom. The sails will be folded twice to not only get the dog ears to the top of the sail, but also to pull more volume of the sail to the middle of the yard. The pattern is folded a bit as I practiced how those two folds would work. Next up was to cut out the sail using the pattern. Hems are usually added to the edge of the sail to avoid issues with the cloth fraying, as well as to give a stronger area on which to sew the various lines (so the thread doesn't pull through and rip the thin cloth, especially where the sewed holes are close to the edge). I found a way to avoid all that - anti-fray adhesive It worked very well in not only preventing fraying as the cloth was cut, but it also stiffened up the fabric a tad bit to make cutting the cloth in straight lines very simple and strong enough to sew close to the edge without needing a hem. I also used Aleene's fabric glue in various steps to glue the cloth - it is thicker and much tackier than diluted PVA, which made for much quicker gluing times without needing pins or clamps to keep the glued portions together - a few seconds of holding them together did the trick. Both adhesives glued clear, without any sheen, and without stiffening the cloth much at all. It's probably worth trying them out on whatever cloth you use as a test to make sure you get similar results. Next post will show how the sails are bent to the yard and furled.

Thanks John and Frank, I really appreciate it. Thanks for the tip on brushing them with the diluted PVA. I was wondering whether I should given that they are tightly furled and tightly brailed with the gaskets and aren't going anywhere, but it's probably a good thing to to

After delaying on creating the furled sails, I finally took a stab at doing one this weekend and furled the main topgallant sail. I ended up coming up with a process that involved zero sewing, aside from running the thread to bend the sail to the yard. Hope it looks somewhat right - it's probably a tad bulkier than it should be, but I think it came out better than I expected. I'll try and detail my construction process with the next one. Thanks for looking in.

Hey Hamilton, looking great. I have the Amati Hannah in a bottle as well that I've been working on in parallel to my Badger build. It's a bit tricky to work at that scale to say the least I'm just about done with mine, but decided to make things even more difficult by adding water to the bottle. It's a fun little kit though.

Thanks very much Greg and David, that's very helpful. Greg, that book is one my buy list - I have the first two volumes and really like them. Thank you!

Hey Robert, thanks very much. I did change my MSW handle - I thought this was a little more distinctive.

Wow Ian, incredible! Like I said before, it deserves its own showcase!

Hi everyone, I've been thinking about upgrading to the Sherline lathe from the Proxxon DB250. The base model comes with a bed that is 8" between centers. Is this long enough for mast making? The Proxxon enables you to slide the mast through a hole in the system opposite the tailstock (not sure exactly what you call it), so you can work with longer pieces, you just have to flip them around. Is that the case with the Sherline as well, or is it just better to go with the longer bed that is 17" between centers? Thanks!

Hi everyone, I am researching adding furled sails to my Badger build, and am trying to figure out how to add the jib and flying jib sails. I found a copy of the sail plan for the Badger online, which if I remember correctly, is taken from the Chapman book: Flying jib: From the sail plan, it looks like the flying jib is attached to a separate stay that runs from the fore topmast to the jib-boom. This is a little different from what is in the Lennarth Petersson book where the flying jib stay runs from the fore royal mast to the jib-boom - then again, the Badger doesn't have royal masts. So, I guess the question I have is should I run a flying jib stay from the fore topmast to the jib-boom like in the plans above? If so, would the flying jib stay be of about the same caliper as the fore topmast and fore topgallant stays? Jib: The sail plan has the jib attached to what looks like the fore topmast stay. The kit's plans only show a fore topmast stay, and no fore topmast preventer stay. On a brig like the Badger, would the jib sail be attached directly to the fore topmast stay? Or would the jib be attached to a separate jib stay? The Lennarth Petersson book is not too helpful here in that it shows the jib stay running from the fore topmast to a point midway or so along the jib-boom, but the Badger is a smaller vessel and the sail plan above indicates that the jib is attached to a stay runningfrom the fore topmast to the end of the bowspirit. It looks like I'll also have to figure out how to create travelers for the two sails as well (thanks Frank for the tip!). Hopefully this wasn't too confusing. Thanks very much in advance!

Thanks very much Aldo, really appreciate it. Nice work on the Triton I've been researching how to do the furled sails, and have some confusion on how to approach the jib and flying jib sails. It looks like I'll need to add jib stays and travelers. Didn't realize it would all be so complicated, but I think I'm too stubborn at this point to drop the furled sail idea (especially after all the research I've been putting in). I asked for some help at the post below in case anyone has any ideas: http://modelshipworld.com/index.php?/topic/3761-adding-jib-and-flying-jib-sails-to-badger/ Thanks!

Very nice work Mobbsie. I like the fact that on this kit you can plank the small ships, rather than paint the plastic shells. Looks much better in my opinion

Excellent work Chris - matches up nicely with the boxwood.

Gorgeous work Len - very nice!

Thanks John! I'm keeping an eye on your Morgan build which is coming out fantastic, as that will be the next ship I work on (probably work on it as a parallel build with the Corel Unicorn). I'm actually considering avoiding paint completely on the build, and using ebony for the hull and some light colored wood (maybe holly) for the masts and spars. I'm also considering adding sails to it as well. At the rate it has been taking me to finish the Badger, it will probably be a 15 year process for the Morgan

Thanks Ian - I couldn't be more pleased the way the color came out. Didn't realize that acrylic paints would act more like a wash on clay than actual paint. Jason, I appreciate the kind words but if anyone does any copying, I'll be shamelessly copying from your Snake build - very crisp detailed work. B.E., thanks for the compliment - it means a lot coming from you. I'll be curious to see which approach you take, as I'm sure I'll be able to learn for my second build. Frank, so sorry to hear about your eye. I hope everything gets better. For the size of the buoys, I just guessed from looking at pictures of other builds that I saved from online, as well as from the Monfeld "Historic Ship Models" book (which is fast becoming one of my favorite resources). Based on the other pictures, I tried to approximate the buoys as a little less than half the length of the stock of the anchor. I think they are about 15mm in length - any smaller and it would have been close to impossible for me to do the harness. I originally made two other pairs, but visually they looked a bit too big. I'm attaching an article I found online on how to build anchors, which had a section on anchor buoys. I pretty much followed his approach, except that (1) I used black clay as the medium for the buoy, and (2) in doing the harness bands, rather than building the band and slipping it on while using rubber bands, I just took a piece of thread and knotted it as I went around the buoy. I wasn't sure of the scale that the author was working in, but I used 0.5mm black thread for the harness and I think the buoy came out to around 15mm in length, aside from the rings at the top and bottom. Anchors.pdf

Nice work on the gun rigging and catheads! Stropping and running the small blocks on the cannons was probably the most frustrating part of my build - was a relief to be able to jump from 2mm blocks to 3mm blocks for the rest of the build

Well I had a little time the last few days, so thought I would ease back into the build by building the anchor buoys. Let's just say they took me probably four or five times longer than I thought they would I have to clean them up a bit, but here they are. I was fairly pleased for the first attempt at making them. To build the buoy, most people I see use wooden dowels. I started down that road, but ended up switching the black sculpey clay. I used that clay earlier on the build for the mouse stays - it's easy to mold, quick to bake in your oven, and comes in various colors. I was able to make a bunch of different sizes until I got to the size that I thought worked best, and it was much quicker than working with dowels by hand or on my lathe. Once baked, I painted them with brown acrylic. The acrylic ended up acting more like a wash than a paint on the clay, which ended up giving it the look I was hoping for (not solid, but sorta worn and weathered) without using different shades of brown and black as I first thought I would end up having to do. The buoy harness (if that is what it is called) was probably the biggest pain for me. There are eight ropes running along the length, and two rope bands that go around the width. The bands only are knotted at the four ropes that start from the opposite end of the buoy, and lay over the other four that start at the end closest to the hoop (hope that makes sense) I started by first making a "spider" with two lengths of rope that crossed each other with one of them making the harness loop at the top. Glued the spider to the top, and the first half portion of the "legs" down the length of the buoy. Then I repeated with the other side. That was fairly easy, but figuring out the bands was tricky. I tried doing pre-made bands to slide onto the buoy, but they never looked right. I ended up taking the approach of cutting a length of thread, and tying each of the four knots one by one working around the diameter of the buoy. Once the knots were done and dabbed with diluted PVA, I cut the extra lengths, and glued the legs and the bands onto the buoy. That part took me a few hours to figure out how to do, but they came out ok I think. Next up - furled sails (finally).

Wow Ian, this is incredible work. Please tell me that this will be visible on your build If not, it deserves it's own special display case!

Wow, beautiful Mobbsie. I love your work!

Really gorgeous work Rod! Very impressive! I love your case too. Just out of curiosity, did you cut the plexiglass yourself, or did you have it cut professionally? I'm trying to figure out what to do with my case, and weight is making me lean with plexiglass. I bought a case from Model Expo for my Badger, but I have to source the glass. Thanks!

Gorgeous work! I really like your display case - where did you get it? I plan to start my Unicorn at the end of the year. I need another couple of months to finish my Badger. Will be nice to work alongside you and Ian.

Hey Daniel, your Mercury is looking great. I'm just about done working on the Amati Hannah SIB, which is difficult given the scale but thankfully is mostly all photo-etched parts - the fact that you scratched built this ship is really impressive. Really nice work. Are you going to put it in a bottle with water? I'm using fake water from Vallejo, which has been even more difficult than I imagined given the shape of the bottle and narrow bottle opening.

Hey Chris, hope you and the twins are doing well Your build is looking fantastic as always. I bought the Le Gros Ventre book/plans off of eBay this summer for a good deal. Looks like a fun build. I probably need another couple of models under my belt before progressing to it, but that's on my list too.

Very nice Frank!