guillemot

That sounds a pretty good likelihood. where the wood was exposed it has gone a greyish brown, guess it takes a while! Just had a look on Google images and yeah, looks like it.

Cheers,

Fraser

Nothing like a bit of problem solving to while away the hours, and days....

F

Sculpey is great stuff, and pretty tough once fired. Good luck!

Dave: Thanks for theKind  offer. In fact I have had an initial reply from the museum to the effect that my request has been passed to the relevant department...so we'll see if anything happens!

Christian: ?? a joke? Or is this some sort of comment on what I'm doing?

Got it! I know what you mean, back in about 1980 I bought their 'Harvey' - Baltimore Clippers are the dogs wossits - back then the bulkheads were hand cut...and quite a few didn't match the drawings with the kit. My Local shop (The Modellers Den in Bath) sent them back and they were replaced with a slightly more accurate set. The wood supplied for the deck was rubbish, so I forked out for a load of Lime planks. About this time I found a copy of 'The Model Ship Builder's Assistant' By Charles Davis....So everything from the bare hull onward was scratched. Deck houses, Tiller (found a bit of Holly to carve that and the Bowsprit out of - wish I could find some now!) masts and rigging. Coppered the hull...Kept redoing bits until they were as good as I could do. Converted it into a double tops'l job.  Sold it at Auction. Since then I've accumulated a reasonable reference library which includes Rigging Period Fore-And-Aft Craft, a most useful book! Back then I was living in a bed-sit and had a Dremel tool and a Dremel saw I picked up at the Model Engineers exhibition. Things are a bit better now.

F

Bear in mind, the photo is rather larger than life, in a small section it's rather less than Mahogony, but garish! Might be good for a case or a base.

Cocobolo has a much wilder grain. I think the answer is to take it up to a neighbouring village, Cancela where there is a hardwood importer...has lovely wood but doesn't sell much to the general public, unless you can buy a few cubic meters!

F

Nice one! From the Artesania Latina kit, yes?

A trip to Scotland would be great...but.... I think I'll try and contact the museum today and see if I can beg a bigger Jpeg. Looks like he indicated coppering on the hull, too.

Fraser

Thanks. I had originally thought Sapele, except the colour was so intense. Purple heart was a thought too, But it's use in window frames... Utile looks too light in the pics I've found on Google...there are so many tropical timbers, and of course Portugal, where I live, has strong ties with Brazil...

Thanks, guys. Mark,the problem is that I'm going to plank the bulwarks which means the stanchions need to be in place which, being tiny, need the planking to stabilize them. Thinking about it, you may have a point: perhaps what would work would be to get all the holes in the planking cut/drilled and then plank. Then It would be just a matter of placing the cabin trunks and hatches etc. I'm very much feeling my way with this build. I'm also wondering whether she was built with a wheel or a tiller. MacGregor's reconstructed drawing shows a wheel which he bases on a slightly later and similar Schooner, Nonesuch, which did. In the Aberdeen museum there's a model of her built by one of her captains. Sadly the picture is tiny but I could swear he built the model with a tiller...I suppose she could have started with a tiller and had a wheel as an 'update'...dunno

F

You do know...that back at the turn of the 19th-20th century a respected marine biologist found a strange corpse on a Florida beach. I twa, he worked out, an enormous octopus, measuring at least 90feet across the tentacles. He took samples but was ridiculed out of the profession. more recently the samples. having languished on a shelf somewhere in the Smithsonian, came to the attention of a couple of young biologists who did some work...They came to the conclusionthat  the maligned Marine Biologist was right...

So there y' go. I shall enjoy watching this build

Fraser

A friend was helping a client with some renovation which included re-doing a few windows. He noticed that the old frames were some kind of tropical hardwood and has given me some. When you cut it, it's the colour of fresh raw liver! almost purplish. Here's a jpeg. - doesn't do it  justice.

This ample is about 20mm wide. It's quite hard but I cut a thin strip on my  trust proxxon and itsq' uite flexible as well. You wouldn't want to do a deck out of it but for decorative stuff... Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Fraser

Ah, well, I've thought of that. Lime and the like are scarce here. Everyone is planting eucalyptus like there's no tomorrow. In general there's not a lot of diversity here: Pine, Medronhero, lots of Olive - great if you want to blunt your tools. Oak - 4 or 5 types and some chestnut. Nothing in the way of fine grained stuff. A Byrnes sawis  something i've drooled over but I'm retired on  a UK state pension which really doen't allow for that kind of extravagence. Customs here really hit stuff from outside the EU and one could be looking at nearly 100% duty....

Afternoon, all. Well, time marches on and inbetween trying to keep our trees from dying and other work I've managed to find time to start on the deck furnishings. Bowsprit bitts and the windlass, which MacGregor reckoned was the old handspike type. Took a few attempts, and I know it's not perfect, but it's about the best my skill level allows, this time.

I want to get all the deck furnishings on before I start in on the bulwark stanchions and bulwarks etc. as they'll be a bit fragile so it's probably best if the deckhouses and all are there first.

F

Okay...some progress. The deck.

Cutting the waterways with their notches for the bulwark stanchions proved a tad challenging and tooks everal attempts...as is the whole build! For simplicity I laid whole planks, end to end. Now I need to spend a few minutes working out the buts... Not to mention some fettling still to do!

Thanks for looking, I'm going to pour a drink, been a long day!

F

Anyone know where I can get Lime sheet down here? I'm stuck for wood at the moment Up till now I've been having to import all my wood, usually from Cornwall. The postage makes anything less than a bulk buy uneconomic! Can anyone help{

Cheers,

Fraser

Thanks, gents. Dunno about a full on Diorama, but she'll at least have a sea base.... I read that her boats were clinker built...o joy....my masochism must be showing...

Forgot to put in the title - 1/8th scale! First off, thank you everyone who helped when I was looking for info to draw up plans. I've decided that I've come to a point where I've got enough drawings to get on with it, actually I reached this point about ten days ago, but was somewhat reluctant to start a log till I felt reasonably confident that I would at least get a hull out of it!  

Balsa infill - for lack of anything better available...

Sanding the naughty bit...always tricky getting the shape fair

OK, this is as far as I've gotten as of yesterday. Today I'm building a screen door from a kit....much less fun.

As always, constructive cricism, comments and suggestions gratefully received!

F

One problem I see with plywood bulheads is tumblehome, on a lot of older ships anyway, the the bulwarks curved inward slightly, more so towards the stern...at least on the hull I'm trying to figure out! At 1/96th (1/8th =1ft.) scale I'm planning to use 1mm or 1.5 and am hoping it'll handle a curve in two directions, always fun! Any thoughts? It would probably be better to use individual stanchions, but at this scale they're rather small sections.

F

I bought their Dos Amigos last year. The hull is inaccurate. I have a set of Admiralty draft copies and she does not measure up. For one thing the deck house is way too big. They've simplified the stern to a transom stern rather than counter and transom as on the original. etc. etc. A lot of the wood is just not nice at all. I did have a build log on the forum before it went pear-shaped, so it's no longer here. basically, I used their hull planks, but replaced the deck with Lime, rebuilt the stern - and the stem. A lot of work....

This thread got me delving into my 'library'. Looking at all of the 19th and early 20th c. pictures I could, I'd have to say that most show the deadeyes pretty close to level, any discrepancies I could see were rare and small. Now I think I'll rest my strained eyeballs!

Fraser

Ta for the reply. I've been trying to work out a way to do it and was thinking along the lines of bending a spline to get actual lengths needed, and, as you suggest doing a stiff paper template. There's a helluva lot of work in producing a plan you can work from, from a set of lines! This I found out when reworking an Occre Dos Amigos hull for accuracy. I may as well have done that one from scratch! Fortunately I have a reasonable library of how-it's-done books now...though most of it is about P.o.f building. One of the great things about this hobby, really: you're always learning!

I'm working up plans for a scratch-build of Scottish Maid, and I'm wondering about the best way to do the Bulwarks. It occurs to me that at the scale I'm probably going to work at - 1/96th it might be worth making solid bulwarks from 1mm ply, then planking over. The alternative, of course, would be to just plank it. This isn't going to be a plank on frame job. I'll probably cut bulkheads and fill between with balsa or lime.

So the question is: How do I produce an expansion of the bulwarks - with or without software. The only software I have is Xara - about the best vector drawing platform I know.

Thanks,

Fraser