monkeyman

Thank you, my friend! This is my first attempt on clinker and it looks not bad indeed in real life. And, as promised, here's a little tutorial on clinker planking. I'll just describe steps I do myself. Clinker build tutorial 1. Put planks in the water for a while or use any other soaking method you like. Planks just need to be more flexible. 2. Glue the first plank's middle part. Use a hair dryer for a minute - it'll dry the wet plank a bit and glue as well. Fix the middle with clamps or nails, if you want to. I didn't do fixing, because I built the deck first. But when you have only a skeleton, it's a good practice to fix planks to ribs. 3. Put a large amount of glue on one side of the plank, use hair dryer and fix with clamp. Do the same for the opposite end. 4. Cut the plank at the ends according to your needs (watch the keel). 5. Repeat the same for the plank on the opposite side of the boat. Do NOT continue with the same boardside or hull misshaping may occur. 6. Sand down the edges of the planks on both sides, so your next plank will fit properly. This is how ot should look at the edges: A few advices: Manual tells you to use fast glue (one second glue or how do you call it in your country), but it's not necessary. I always use white (carpenter's) glue for wood, because it becomes transparent, when dried and easy to remove excesses. Don't be greedy and put a decemnt amount of glue, especially at the ends. You'll have your time to remove excesses. You can put your planks anyway you want, depending on your boat's blueprints and your own likings. For example, I have 7 mm planks and use overlapping method, leaving 5 mm at the middle and around 4 mm at the edges. Since the plank is wet, you may vary these measurements easily. Don't cut the first plank at the ends right away, wait for other one to follow. The best way is to do a raw work for both planks and then finish them simultaneously. You'll likely spoil your keel during planking. I simply ignored this and decided to restore the keel, when planking is finished (see further posts). I use this tool for sanding planks and find it very handy:

I didn't do carvel yet. On one of my previous (unfinished) models I used double planking technique as manual suggested. But clinker seems pretty straightforward to me: glue the plank, sand it at the edges, glue another, sand it as well, etc. As for the flow, I might not understand you correctly here. Do you mean shaping under "flow"? Curves and such.

I already did raw sanding, just need some finishing with smaller grain, that's it. It looks pretty good in real life, but photo amplifies impurities :-) The main trick is to sand each plank after glueing. Here's a good picture, which made my mind: As you can see, the last plank is not handled yet, but previous ones are. I do the same: sand down each plank at the ends, when it's fixed. Am I missing something?

Thanx, mate! Trying my best and spend too much time on little things sometimes. This boat will take forever to build :-) I've started with planking at last. Pretty time consuming work, but it will pay off, I'm sure of it. I've spent the whole evening yesterday trying to figure out, how to do the clinker built. There's a bunch of single advices and not a single tutorial, which explains important stuff and provides step-by-step instructions on planking. Guess, I'll make one tomorrow. Will do some photos about my planking method. Actually, I've just found several pictures of real life boat building and made mine the same way. Saw online a couple attempts to build Titanic lifeboat and all had problem with planking the hull. So yes, I'll add a simple tutorial in case anybody wants to make this model as well.

OK, I admit: can't make myself start with planking, keep adding stuff to the interior! Spent a couple evenings on several small things: Seventh improvement Kit contains a mast stand, which you have to glue to the flooring, but completely misses mast fixation on the bank. Weird, because other lifeboat or longboat models were pretty much correct in this part. Eighth improvement Also there're 10 planks for leg rests (you know, those horisontal bars, which you put your feet on, when rowing, for better grip). But there're no leg rests themselves. As fas as I understand, they were put, only when rowing, and were detached, when not. So I've created them, glued the fore and aft leg rests and will put the others somewhere on the boat floor, when finished. Ninth improvement According to the manual, you have to make and glue fore and aft drawers (parts 43 and 44): But I wasn't able to find anything about them on photos or blueprints. There were, indeed, similar drawers or older lifeboats, but none on Titanic/Olympic ships. Moreover, these boats were like some kind of Lego kit and could be disassembled almost completely. Having any king of drawers in this case would be weird. So instead of drawers I put a couple "shutters" (vertical planks on both sides of fore and aft banks), which you can see on the original picture: Blackening In case anybody interests, I use Birchwood Casey's blackening liquids to make brass and aluminium parts in black color.

Boats without bulwark walls (thanx for the term by the way) are smalller ones. I'm building a 30 ft lifeboat, and smaller ones were 25 ft. You mean the square openings on the picture with keel? They were cut by default and I covered it with planks, since there were no such openings on the original boat. Manual calls them "drawers" and I guess they were taken from some generic lifeboat. There's a bunch of other faults in the model, which I'm trying to fix and describe one by one (I call it "improvements").

Thanx, mate! This model is indeed not very popular due to its simplicity. But if you put some research and love to it, things get much prettier. I'm loving this boat right now :-)

Almost done with boat's basic interior. Made some more improvements as well. Let's start with original photo of lifeboats one more time: And here's my boat in its current state: Banks Model authors were pretty harsh with banks and even forgot about some of them. So next improvement is pretty obvious. Fifth improvement There's nothing about fore and aft banks in the manual. None. Zip. They simply don't exist and only 4 other banks are described. I've added 2 missing banks and some blocks at the center of them. I'm not sure about their purpose, but looks like they were holding poles with a bar at the top of them. A "parking" canvas spar, I guess: Sixth improvement This is a very minor improvement for a second aft bank: 2 fixation planks (see the first pic). Guess, they served to hold different stuff like compass on the bank. * * * There's a room for more improvements with banks, because original model lacks fixation frames for mast and canvas spar poles (see the first pic). I'll add them after planking. Need to blacken my brass stripes first. Keel I've also decided to rebuild a keel once more. The original one appeared to be absolutely unsuitable for future planking, even its modified version. Here's a new keel (will sheathe it with veneer sheets later) : Woodstain & Varnish In case anybody wonders, which woodstain and varnish was used or looking to buy some, I use Ronseal Quick Drying Woodstain. It's a woodstain and varnish combined. Rich in colors, dries indeed very quick, no need to add varnish at a later stages. Totaly love it.

Yep, I thought about fender, but had doubts, because it's detachable (there're a bunch of photos with the same boats without fender). I always thought fenders are firmly fixed to the boardside. Wow! Thanx for the detailed story. Actually, there're a lot of pics with Titanic/Olimpic boats, where you can see fenders attached. However, there're even more pictures with the opposite, so indeed this might be just installation.

I was talking about some thick white bar, attached to the boardsite of the boat (round, conic shape at both ends). It's detachable, as I can guess.

Can anybody tell me, what's on the side of this boat? I saw some fixing hooks on boardside, right behind this thingie. Looks like sail, detached from mast.

Ah, I see now, thanks. I actually thought, that everybody imitates that carvel thingie with double planking. It's seems much easier, than single planking carvel.

I've finally decided to build basic deck first and then start with hull planking. In case somebody wants to buy the same model, I'll provide some explanation about improvements, which can get your build closer to original. First of all, here's a colorized photo of Titanic's lifeboats: Deck All four parts of the deck combined on the skeleton: First improvement Manual suggests you do the planking first and then use mini-drill to sand down timbers, fore and aft. Since I've decided to build interior first, I did all this sanding right away. Never had a drill tho, used a file and sanding paper. Pay attention to fore and aft in the manual (right bottom part of the picture) — they have incline. The original boats didn't have any (see the first pic). So you'd better do more sanding until the whole deck is straight. Second improvement Also, according to manual, you have to glue some magic planks (15) to the ends of the fore and aft decks (14): Again, there were no such parts in original boat (see the first pic), so I had to lengthen a bit side parts of the deck, becase they were delibirately made shorter. Minor planking improvement Manual tells you to do the planking on fore and aft bases (13). I've added a black paper between planks to make them look more real (see the last pic in this post). Somehow manuals never tell you, how to imitate cracks between planks. Side walls Next thing is side walls (drawers, I guess): Manual never says to put them in the water first, but you should or they'll break when glueing to the deck. I put them in a water and then clamped to the hull for a while to keep rounded shape. Third improvement Side walls also should be planked like fore and aft bases (see the first pic), which is not in the manual again. Right now I'm outta suitable planks, but will do as soon as I get them. Fourth improvement According to manual, side walls have drawers and thus they've made a square sockets for them, in which you have to put covers with small holes: However, there weren't any drawers in these places (see the first pic). At least I didn't find any ones on photos or blueprints. Only small holes in planks, but no drawers, so I gonna skip them. Flooring Manual suggests you build the floor right in the hull, layer by layer. I did it another way and built the whole flooring block separately, then simply cut and sanded it. I don't say it's the best way, but this will make things less messy. I'm always worried about excessive glue, so the less you put your finger/brush/whatsoever with glue inside the model the better :-) Colors I've also finally decided not to use paint, but instead use woodstain. I have teak and pine woodstains. Titanic's lifeboats were brown-white, so I'm gonna use teak for brown and highly diluted pine as white (very light yellow, actually). Here's a quick peek on how it's gonna look assembled (parts not glued yet):

Yep, and thank you for all feedback. Really appreciate that, especially I'm not mastered shipbuilding skills yet and need any kind of advice. Under carvel you mean double planking? Like when you first do it raw, fill the holes, sand and then do clean one?

I don't worry about my English in general for I can speak and understand pretty good. Problem's with terms like "aft" or "yard" - not much into them. But I hope you'll correct me, if I'm wrong. As for decades of logging... well, this sounds a bit crazy. I hope my log will be shorter :-) However, fine planking my take some time. It sounds easy in the manual, but people say it's much worse in RL.

Honestly, I've tried to build several models vefore that: Victory, San Juan and Mayflower. Ended with a dilemma: either build by the book, or improve the original model. Since I prefer to improve, I always spend a bunch of time on research, but fail to implement some stuff due to the lack of skills. This makes me impatient and leads to unfinished job. So I choke my pride and started with the basics :-) I'm Russian, but currently live in Lithuania. It's a small Baltic country, former USSR region.

Thank you, my friend :-) I'm trying my best, however I'm definitely not a professional model builder. Yet. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I'm mostly honing my skills on this model. It's a cheap one and good for experimenting stuff. Someday I might try Confederacy as well - looks sexy :-)

Just finished preparing model to planking. Did some research in process and found out, that model authors changed the keel shape. It's identical on both ends (fore and aft) and rounded too much, but should be like this: So fixed keel looks like this now: I've alse made a replacements for metal life savers from the kit from stopwater (a laying, which plumbers use in their work), thick thread and red electrician's tape (unglued a bit on a picture. sorry). Here's a new version of live saver: Manual suggests planking on next step, but I don't like it. I've put deck details without glueing and looks like they don't match hull skeleton perfectly. If they really don't, it'll be much harder to fix, when planked, so I decided to build deck first, then do planking stuff. According to information from blueprings and photos I've found, it would be wise to add to thge kit the following items: mast; yard with sail; water barrel (maybe even 2 of them); ration boxes (2 pcs); boat hook. Original models has a bunch of flaws like deck inclining at fore and aft (should be straight), black painting (should be brown and white), absence of oar locks etc. I don't know, why model authors made all this, but since there're plenty photos of Titanic lifeboats, I'll try to make this model better.

I'm quite new on these forums and well... medium-new in ship building. After several unfinished projects I've decided to create something simple and complete it this time. I'd also want to train several technics, which will be used on my next model — Endeavour's Longboat from AL (it has some flaws, which require improvement). So I bought RMS Titanic's Lifeboat to train these things: planks overlaping (clinker); timbers imitation (sorry, if I named it wrong — English is not my native, so I may miss some terms); hull painting. But let's start with the package contents: Nothing special here: a bunch of different planks, some threads, some metal stuff and buckets of two different sizes. Colourful manual included. I have a couple questions before I start building. 1. Among cast things there're 4 life savers, which look pretty bad in metal: How can I replace them and with what? 2. This kit contains several equipment items: life savers, set of oars, couple fakes (from threads) and a grappling hook. What else can be added? I saw rations box on some picture of Titanic's lifeboat, but not sure about it. Will gladly accept any advices and corrections in terms. I know them in my native language, but it's a bit hard to traslate specific stuff.