Kenchington

Step 15, inwales, completed; Step 26, rubbing strakes, largely done; Step 40, display stand, begun The pram has the upper edge of the sheerstrake sandwiched between 3/32-inch square-sectioned "inwales" (ugly term but I don't think there is a better, standard one) and 1/8-by-3/64 "rubbing rails" outboard, lengths of appropriate stock being supplied in the kit. The former need to be steam (or alternative) bent and I should have set that up to dry overnight. However, they are so thin that they dried quite swiftly, without loss of time. I bent them along the outside of the sheerstrakes, which worked well. Getting them to fit inside was more tricky, as there has to be a 3-D bevel at each end, to fit against the transoms, while the length has to be just right to put both bevels into place. After a long job with the first one, I evolved a better solution: With the bent inwale loose in my fingers, I held one end against the edge of the transom and drew a pencil line where transom and inwale crossed. After bevelling to that line, I worked by trial and error, first adjusting the second dimension of the bevel, then perfecting the fit (or close enough to perfect to satisfy myself). I then turned to the other end of the inhale and shaped the much more awkward bevel against the bow transom. That gave me a bevelled inwale but one much longer than the space available. I dry fitted the bow end in place, clamping to the sheerstrake and working aft, until I could go no further. The surplus end of the inwale projected outboard of the stern transom and above the sheerstrake. I penciled a length mark, removed everything, cut at the mark and then aligned the cut-off end with the new cut. With the old end as a guide, I started the bevel of the new end. Because of the rake of the transom, there has to be quite a bit more shortening, in order for the aft end of the inhale to drop down, flush with the top of the sheerstrake. That shortening gives plenty of opportunity to perfect the bevel. So I clamped the forward end of the inwale back in place, gently pried the aft end away from the stern transom, sanded the bevel, dropped into place, lifted, sanded some more, dropped back ... and on and on until everything fit. Compared to all that, applying glue and clamping in place was easy: (I bought all those pegs because that's how many the hardware store sold in one pack. Never thought I would us them all at the same time!) The instructions leave the outboard rubbing strakes until later in the build but I decided to complete the strengthening and stiffening of the upper edge of the hull at one go -- not least because it will simplify sanding everything flush. So, once the inwale glue was set, I removed the clamps, glued and place the rubbing strakes and re-clamped. That was almost too easy: No need for pre-bending, as the stock is so thin, no worries over length, which was trimmed after, not even any char to remove. Just glue in place with the upper edges of the three layers flush. Even that need not be exact, as the combination will have to be sanded later. The combined effect looks good, though only a small advance in the past 24 hours: While waiting for the inwales to dry in their new curves, I made a start on the display stand. When building my banks dory, I wanted an unobtrusive stand that would not draw the eye away from the model. What I ended with was a fully functional stand that is downright ugly. Not a problem with a model that hardly needs a stand at all but a lesson for the future. The pram has a long daggerboard, which necessitates a tall stand that cannot be hidden. The model should turn out to be a pretty thing but without much point except its prettiness, so the very visible stand needs to complement, not detract from, the appearance. The kit stand comprises two shaped cradles elevated on dowels, rising from a simple baseboard -- simple, cheap (as it should be in a beginner's kit) but not attractive. The cradles are necessary and I will use the kit ones. The instructions do suggest replacing the dowels with clear acrylic rod. $10 to Amazon is bringing me enough for a dozen pram models. I also have the good fortune to be within easy reach of a specialty timber importer, where they put the offcuts from orders of exotic lumber into bins that locals can rummage through. $5 bought me more than enough jatoba to make a good, thick plinth (with a nice, rich colour) on which to mount the kit's baseboard. (For $35, I could have had genuine ebony but that would be hard to justify!) So, today, I put a 45° bevel around the kit-supplied base. Tomorrow, I'll paint that and run the edges of the plinth past a suitable router blade to give them some interest. If all goes well, I'll glue the painted basswood to the jatoba and add the acrylic at the weekend. Trevor

Step 14, bottom frames, completed; Step 22, mast step, commenced The design calls for three pieces (not really "frames", closer to "floors"), spanning from garboard to garboard or a bit further. The midships frame (also called "number 3" in the instructions) goes in first and doesn't pose much trouble. Mine only needed removal of char, followed by a little adjustment (to compensate for minor errors in the placing of the planks), softening of the exposed angles and a general clean-up. Then it could be glued in place, tight against the after side of the daggerboard case. It does have to be at right angles to the centreline of the hull. I laid the boat on my cutting mat, aligned with the marked grid, then eyeballed the orientation of the frame in alignment with the other direction of the grid. That seemed to work. I had tried inserting a plug into the hole left by the over-long slot in the keel plank, but basswood proved too breakable for anything so small to be pushed tightly into a hole. So I put the frame in first, then flipped the hull over, filled the remaining hole with glue and dropped a tiny fragment into the mess. Once set, I snipped off most of the excess and sanded down the rest. That seems to have worked too: If the midships frame went in easily, the next one did not. Challenge #1 was figuring out where to place it along the length of the hull. The instructions offer a paper "measuring strip" but that is clumsy and its distances do not correspond to the design of the full-size pram (maybe because it was been scaled down during the printing process). Fortunately, the kit material also includes a (very small) reproduction of the original design's longitudinal-section drawing, which has enough measurements given to figure out the required spacing. From that, I determined that frames 2 and 3 are supposed to be 37 3/4 inches apart (centre-to-centre)at full-size or 3 1/8 inches at scale (to the nearest 1/32) -- call it 80mm, for those enlightened ones who only work in metric. With that set on a draughting compass, the distance of the forward edge of frame 2, ahead of the forward edge of frame 3, could be readily marked on the planks. The only tricky point is keeping the measurement parallel to the centreline and not following the run of the planks. It is important to mark the position on each plank. It would be all too easy to install frame 2 perpendicular to the keel plank. That was fine for frame 3, as the plank is parallel to the waterline near the daggerboard case. But the keel plank slopes up towards the bow and a frame installed at right angles to it will have its heads angled aft. As others have found, that plays havoc with positioning later pieces. Marking up the hull was, however, the easy bit. It was then necessary to bevel the frame to match (by trial-and-error) the slopes of each plank that it contacts -- a very fiddly task which I fudged enough that the poor fit will not be noticed. After the usual clean-up and final preparation, frame 2 was glued in too. "Clamping" was by means of two blunt thumbs pressing the piece into place. The bow frame is much smaller and much more steeply bevelled but a simpler shape and perhaps easier to work on. Or maybe I just wasn't so worried about a neat fit. Its distance from the midships frame should be 51 1/4 inches or 4 1/4 (108mm) at scale. Much more important, its distance from frame 2 has to match the length of the mast step. I therefore constructed the step and had it on hand for dry fitting to confirm the spacing. There's a problem here that has caused some grief to other builders of this kit. The mast step is made of two layers of wood, glued together -- one spanning across the two frames, the other filling the space between them. The instructions say that "The top layer has the hole for the mast foot and the lower layer is solid for it to rest on". However, the kit comes with two identical pieces, both of a length to span across the frames and both with mast holes. On top of that, both have the grain of the wood sheet in the same direction, running across their widths, making them vulnerable to splitting where the sides of their holes are narrowest. One solution is to pass the mast through both holes and let its heel rest on the keel plank. That would be a mistake (at full size). The whole point of having a mast step supported upon two frames is to spread the load across the thin planking. It's not just the weight of mast and rig. There is also the downward portion of the tension in the rigging -- which has to be several times the forward force conveyed to the hull through the shrouds. My alternative was to cut a new bottom piece for the step from the same sheet of basswood, making it as wide as the laser-cut top piece but shorter by twice the thickness of a frame. I made sure that the grain ran along the length of that bottom piece, then glued it to one of the kit-supplied mast-step pieces (centred along the length of the latter). After final shaping (the instructions call for a 45° bevel on each of the upper edges), the mast step was ready for dry fitting in checks of the position of the bow frame. The end result looks like: The mast step (dry-fit for now) is: And that's enough for tonight. Completing the rest of the internal hull structure occupies steps 15 to 22 and will likely take me a few days. Trevor

And that's the point of building the dory: To learn techniques -- learning from your own mistakes, if that's the way things turn out. Which means that you've made great progress! Looking forward to seeing what you make of the pram! Trevor

There's no denying, she's a beautiful ship. And that's even a good video, which isn't something I will often say of modern productions. Long ago, I once asked if I could go aloft -- and was denied. But, much later, I did get to work aloft in Stad Amsterdam, which has a close approximation to a 7/8 copy of Cutty Sark's rig -- and at sea under sail. Magical! Trevor

That's good to hear! A racing yacht without her sails seems a bit like an eagle with one wing missing. Trevor

Step 13: Daggerboard case I started on the interior of the pram last night. The daggerboard case came out well: That was more by luck than judgement, though. I rushed the job, carelessly, which is always a bad mistake. Fortunately, all is OK. The case is simply four pieces: 2 sides and 2 ends. The ends are long and project through the slot in the keel plank: A bit out of focus but it makes the point. The projecting ends will need trimming later. The sides of the case are not square. The instructions don't say but the longer dimension runs fore-and-aft. No problem figuring that out as the long sides are as long as the ends (leaving nothing to project into the keel slot). What is more challenging is that the bottom of each side is very gently curved. I missed that with the first side, sanded off the char against a straight sanding stick ... and had to re-create the curve in parallel to the side that I had not messed up. Bad mistake but recovered. By shining a flashlight through the keel slot and holding each case side in place, any deficiency in the curvature would be easily seen. Mine did not need further shaping. The instructions also don't say but the curve isn't symmetrical. It leaves one end shorter than the other. The shorter end goes forward, making the case vertical even though the keel plank curves up towards the bow. To glue the pieces together while keeping all square, I followed an idea in another build log and assembled the four pieces against the weight and perpendicularity of a pair of mechanics squares. I added some weight while the glue set, though I don't know whether that was needed: The instructions then say: "bevel the top edges and corners, as well as the vertical sides". That would be a mistake and its consequences can be seen in too many build logs on MSW. The reasons why will come into play later in the build, so can best be explained here. When a full-size version of our pram is sailing on the wind, that wind would push her sideways. Almost the only thing stopping her from sliding across the water's surface (making extreme "leeway", to use the technical term) is the deep, narrow daggerboard. The hydrodynamic force is considerable (balancing the aerodynamics of the sail) while the shape of the board gives that force a lot of leverage. It is transmitted from board to hull through the case alone. So, if the case wasn't well braced against side forces, it would break free of the keel plank, resulting in at best a nasty leak, at worst disaster. There are various ways that the bracing might be provided but, in our pram, it depends entirely on the midship thwart -- which is notched to fit around the upper, aft corner of the case. Thus, the joint between thwart and case has to be tight and the case should not be bevelled nor rounded where it meets the notch in the thwart. Moreover, when the pram is being rowed, the oarsman will usually sit on the midship thwart and must have his/her backside on the centreline (to keep the boat, and the pull on the oars, balanced). Lumps and bumps there would not be welcomed. The vertical front of the case could and should be well rounded (not bevelled). There is timber enough to make it semi-circular in section (so long as that isn't carried all the way down to the keel plank, or a leak would open in the corners) but I didn't go that far. The outer edges of the top of the case cannot be curved quite so much but something more than a softening would be good. The case is, after all, the thing that our intrepid sailors are most likely to bang into. Doubly so at the top of the case front, which needs three-dimensional curvature and can be well rounded. The back of the case can be rounded off a bit too, but only below the thwart and above a frame that will later fay against the case. However, the case back will be under the thwart, so out of harm's way. Fortunately, all that shaping was easily done with sanding sticks. Another thing that the instructions do not emphasize applies as much to model as full-size: It is critical that the case is installed upright -- in a thwartships (port/starboard) sense, when the hull is upright. The long daggerboard will be a prominent feature of the finished model. It would look awful if angled off to one side. Since the thwart and its notch where available, I simply used that to hold the case in position while the glue set. Also, and as others have found before me, the laser-cut slot in the keel plank is longer than the case. I opted for the common solution of placing the case at the forward end of the slot, leaving a gap abaft it: Under the next step, that will be covered by the midship frame. I will insert a fragment of scrap from the same sheet that the case parts came from. I was thinking of doing that after the frame is in place but I think it would be easier to glue in a longer piece, then slice it off both inboard and out, while also trimming off the outboard excess lengths of the two case ends. And then on to Step 14: Bottom frames Trevor

Maybe parallel purposes. Baggywrinkle mostly keeps sails away from contact with rope to protect the canvas from wear. It forms a thick layer, to hold the sail at some distance, such that you don't need to encase entire lengths of rope in the stuff. Service mostly keeps stuff (solid stuff but also water) away from the rope within. Since service is usually coated in tar, sails have to be kept away from it where possible -- hence baggywrinkle over a served backstay, for example. I usually think of chafing mats as being more for where two rigid things would otherwise rub together, such as between two spars. But Dr.PR is right: Chapelle used the term for the baggywrinkle on schooner topping lifts.

Three different things. Dr.PR's arrows point to baggywrinkle. "Service" is twine (usually tarred marline) wound very tightly around a larger rope. Chafing mats come in multiple forms but they are rope mats. Ashley's shows them all. Trevor

I may be the only person who bought his first Lego set after passing 70!

Hi Venti, Good to see your dory coming along! My Norwegian pram is progressing nicely (just took it off its building board this morning) but I'll not deny that it is a whole step more challenging to build than the dory. Still, that is kind of the idea of taking the three Model Shipways kits in sequence. The pram kit instructions are part of the problem, but the build logs on MSW can guide you through those complications. As to lapstrake ("clinker" in the UK) versus smooth-skinned construction in wood: In the full-scale world, lapstrake became standard in northern Europe during the Iron Age, when the many nails needed (to join the strakes together) became affordable. It's not the best way to build a large ship, so was gradually replaced with "carvel" (plank-on-frame) construction, but remained in use for small craft until the coming of plastic boats. Any kit worth building will reproduce the construction of the full-scale prototype. So, if you want to build a small, open boat from the 19th Century or a Viking longship of the 9th Century, you will need to build in lapstrake. If your aim runs to something larger and/or more recent, even a Maine lobster sloop of 1900, then it will likely be carvel -- though usually simplified to plank-on-bulkhead. Trevor

Like others who go to sea, the major part of what I have learnt is that there is so much more that I don't know. However, most of such as I do know, I learnt the way teenagers usually do: By doing it and sometimes listening when the adults told me I was doing it wrong. For those who don't have that opportunity, I would recommend "Hand, Reef and Steer", by Tom Cunliffe. It's directed at those who want to sail gaff-rigged yachts but tells much of what might be shown in a model. As our immediate subject is a fishing schooner, I would also recommend Captain Collins' account in Section IV of Goode's 1887 "The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States" (especially the part beginning p.130). That details the handling of clipper schooners but it will serve well enough for the earlier sharpshooters and later indian headers. Better still, the whole work is available on-line for free, courtesy of your federal government! Trevor

Steps 12 (fitting the skeg) and 13 (bilge runners) completed The pram has a large centreline skeg aft. The instructions say that it is to protect the rudder and supplement the daggerboard in resisting leeway, when sailing on the wind. It would doubtless help with both of those, but its primary role will be in providing some directional stability when rowing. Any good rowing boat tends to track straight, so that minor differences in the forces exerted by the oars do not make the boat yaw. (When there is a need to change course, the wide reach of the oars provides plenty of leverage for the turn.) Without its skeg, our pram would be a mere cockleshell, spinning around whenever one oar catches a wave and the other misses or if one oar is pulled a little harder than the other, while it would weathercock even in a light breeze -- much to the aggravation of the oarsman! The instructions explain how to sand the upper surface of the skeg, so that it matches the curvature of the keel plank. That was not necessary in my case and probably won't be in any build that had the moulds and transoms carefully set on the building board. Hence, it was mostly a matter of cleaning char, softening edges etc. until the skeg was ready to glue in place. The only elaboration I added was to round the forward and aft lower (with the boat upright) corners, as those are the points which would most strongly encounter obstacles on beach or trailer. Gluing the skeg in place (with its aft end aligned with the aft face of the transom, both ends on the centreline of the keel plank) posed only one issue: How to keep it perpendicular to the keel plank. I turned once again to Lego blocks. The pram also has two bilge runners (which the instructions curiously call "bilge keels"!), to protect the planks when the boat is ashore but also to give it stability when sat on a flat surface. Those also fit easily, after cleaning up and having corners softened, with only some extra rounding of the ends for the same reason as with the skeg. I did break one, through overly enthusiastic sanding of char, but it went together again as both parts were glued to the hull (though needing one extra rubber band). I glued runners and skeg in one operation: When the glue was set and the bands off, it was finally time to slice through the holder for the bow transom and release the boat from its building board! Internally, there is some excess glue and marks from the moulds to clear up, but not much: Those pesky plank ends don't look bad either: At the bow, one sheerstrake will need more glue, while I am adding other pieces there. The asymmetry in the 2nd and sheer strakes is visible but probably not to the casual viewer. The kit instructions include a rather cryptic direction to "Sand the outer surfaces [of the runners] vertical". One MSW build log states that the plans for the full-size version of this pram call for the runners to have a 5-sided section: Square to the garboard plank where the two are attached, but parallel to the waterline at the bottom and perpendicular to that on the outer faces. I was just going to leave the ones on my pram rectangular (as the runners on my full-size boat are). However, that would leave the model perched on the angles along the inner edges of the runners. So I lightly penciled the lower faces and got busy with a stiff sanding-stick, laid transversely across the two runners, continuing until the pencil marks were gone. There is no need to extend that sanding to the forward or aft ends of the runners, as the curve of the hull and the presence of the skeg prevent the model from sitting on those ends anyway. The result is a nice thwartships flat, which lets the pram sit level and stable on my cutting mat: It has, however, created an acute angle between the new flat and the outer side of the runner. That's where the vertical sanding is needed -- on a full-size boat if not also a model. Maybe I will address that further when finishing the outside of the hull. But the next tasks will concern the interior of the boat, until the rubbing strips go on (under step 26 of the instructions). Trevor

Exactly so!

Completed all planking, hence instruction steps through to #11 (aside from a bit of trimming and tidying). Today's effort began with releasing the two ends of one plank that had drifted out of position yesterday. Those went back on with no real trouble, except that the bow end got the reverse error and ended slightly too high off the building board. I doubted I could do any better with a third attempt, so left it as it was. Then it was on to the sheerstrakes. The moulds and stern transom needed little attention before providing properly aligned surfaces for those last planks to lie against. The bow transom did need some serious sanding to bring the bevel for the sheerstrake into line with the bevel on the mis-positioned 2nd strake. That gave the pram a slightly asymmetric transom -- hopefully not noticeable, but time will tell. As that change moved the location of one sheerstrake away from the building board, the other had to be narrowed by a millimetre or so, to keep their upper edges at the same height in the finished hull. Aft, I found (as have others before me) that both planks rose too high up (i.e. towards the building board) the sides of the stern transom. Holding the two planks together (for symmetry), I narrowed them by nearly 1/10 inch (call it 2mm), by sanding, running that width-reduction out to nothing over 5 inches (125mm) along a straight line. After assembling everything, I see that I have produced a very slight hump in the sheerline. That will be easy to correct later. Close inspection showed that the starboard sheerstrake did not need any gains cut. The bevel on the 2nd strake on that side made a smooth surface with the bevel for the sheerstrake on each transom. In contrast, the port side did need deep gains, both fore and aft. I matched them with short rabbets in the ends of the 2nd strake, worked out of its bevels. The gain+rabbet at the bow seem to have fit very well, the stern pair maybe less so, though I doubt that any gap will be visible. What I should have done at that point was to soak the sheerstrakes in boiling water again, get them exactly into their final positions and live them to dry overnight -- probably meaning two nights, as it would be hard to get both into position at the same time, without using glue. After rebounding, they might have fit comfortably and easily. What I actually did, however, was force each one into position, with an elaborate complex of clamping tools. One wrinkle that would have been needed either way built on a suggestion gleaned from a previous MSW build log: I inserted Lego blocks between build board and strake to hold it up against the pressure of the rubber bands. As the strake curved towards the board at each end, the blocks could be slid a little, fore or aft, until they held the strake at just the right height: It's not yet quite time to remove the boat from its board: I still have to trim the sheerstrakes where they project beyond the transoms, then fit a skeg and two bilge runners to the outside of the hull. But that's for the morning. At least I have the hull shape complete! Trevor

Beautiful job on the stem to bottom-planks joint! The transom/knee/bottom should be fine once planked over, but it does confirm the worry I had earlier. But those frames! I am so glad that the Model Shipways dory had frames secured to a building board. I do not envy you having to sand and bevel with them standing up like that. Trevor

What would we do without our spouses! Great that you could so swiftly correct the trouble. But it is good to know that the kit manufacturer was not that badly out with one bulkhead. That would have shaken my confidence in all kits. Trevor

Your Bluenose looks lovely, Doug! I'll have to build one some day. Of the model for sale, though: The trouble is, if you are going to portray some evolution in progress, you need to get it right. A gaff sail has to be hoisted with the gaff horizontal, until the throat halliard is belayed. Otherwise, part of the weight of the spar bears down on the gaff jaws and jambs them against the mast. (Been there, done that!) Then the topsails can't be (or at least: shouldn't be) run up to the topmast heads until the gaffs are up, nor the fisherman's staysail begun to be set while the other sails are part way. Errors like that make a model look as wrong as if the anchors were carried on the stern, a fishing schooner was given a winged keel or ... In short: Represent a vessel in a formal, static pose and you only need get the technicalities of hull, rig and gear correct. Portray something more active and you'll need to study how the prototype was handled too. Trevor

Thanks, Mark! But I can't see how a little pram is as challenging as recreating Mosquidobit from the Lynx kit. Your skills are well beyond mine.

I don't see anything but that looks a very big offset to be an error in the kit's manufacture. Is there any other part to go in that might explain it -- structure around a hatchway, perhaps, or support for a mast or something? You have probably read through the instructions and checked everything but, if not ...

Continued progress today but not much to say about it. I released the after end of the garboard that had got misplaced, then glued it where it should be. The kit instructions do hint at the difficulty of getting the planks into place and I know that other builders have had similar problems. Mostly, it is a matter of care and especially careful placement of clamps. I continued custom cutting of the gains. The two second-strake planks (one each starboard and port) barely needed anything at all at the bow but both needed deep gains at the stern. Then it was on to gluing of first one, then the other. The first of the two slipped low at both ends -- by much less than 1mm but still enough to produce gaps at the transoms. I will fix those in the morning. Final step was to put on the sheerstrakes, to dry overnight: All being well, I will finish planking tomorrow and maybe complete the external work, then release the boat from the building board at last! Trevor

Looks like they take the fore tack to a block on the end of the cathead:

Ouch!

Bumpkin: Townsman's insulting term for an unsophisticated countryman, without whose labour the townsfolk would have starved. Possibly from a Dutch word with similar meaning. Modern Dutch has Boerenkinkel, literally "Farmers kink" or "twist". Boomkin, commonly pronounced Bumkin: Literally "baby boom" or "child of a boom", used of a spar projecting from the hull of a boat or ship. And yet both Smythe and Paasch, in the 19th Century, offered the "p" spelling as an alternative for the nautical meaning. Falconer and Blanckley, in the 18th, did not.

Leatherwork project completed yesterday, so I could turn back to the pram today. Before tackling the gains, I tidied up the moulds, the bevels of the bottom planks and those on the transoms which, together, must take the garboards. At first, I thought that I would have to sand a lot off one of the moulds but then realized another detail of the geometry of this build: There is no problem with the mould (shown below in tan) projecting beyond the edge of the bottom plank (orange), provided that the garboard (brown) sits on the bottom plank's bevel. The remaining gap (blue) will be an air space. The same will be true between the garboard and second strake or between the second strake and the sheerstrake. However, that is not true at the transoms, where the blue would a route for water to enter. So the moulds can (and do) project beyond the edges of the planks, before angling away to take the next plank, but the transom bevels must be sanded until they meet the edge of the previous plank. (Then the upward step shown above in orange is accommodated by the gain cut in the brown plank.) Maybe everyone else saw that long ago but it came as new understanding to me! With the existing structure of the model as good as I could get it, the time had come to nerve myself to cut gains in the planks. In the end, I hardly used the miniature chisels but (almost) only the little blocking plane. I did not attempt to follow the kit instructions, except in making each gain an inch in length, but rather custom shaped each one to suit the place where it had to fit. Each of the four was quite different in width and/or depth. At the bow, I could have carved away the garboards to nothing, so deepened the bottom-plank bevels instead. Only afterwards did I think of developing those bevels into rabbets (as Chapelle explained for full-size boat building). If I had to do it again, that is what I would do. With the bow-end gains cut, the point along the garboard where it would cross the stern transom could be found and marked, then the gain shaped, starting one inch back from there. As the gains can barely be seen, even with a magnifier, I did not attempt to photograph them. With the gains cut, it was time to glue a garboard into place, let that set, then glue the other one. I did not attempt to do both together. The instructions suggest gluing only from the bow back to the forward mould, letting that set, then doing the next length and so on. The trouble with that is that you may need to adjust the forward part of the plank a little in getting it to fit further aft. I glued and clamped, then glued further and clamped further etc., but did not wait for one length of glue to set before continuing. I did use a lot of pegs to ensure that the joint was tight, without placing too much pressure on any one point. I found that the clamped plank wanted to flare outwards, away from the moulds. Bands around those cured that tendency. Otherwise, all went well, except that the first garboard fitted drifted off position at the stern. I delayed fixing that in case I had a similar problem with the second one, when they could have been cured together. In practice, a clamp on the transom tamed the trouble: Tomorrow, I will let isopropanol work its magic and re-set half the length of the one plank. meanwhile, it is just nice to see a model begin to look like a boat! Meanwhile, I checked the two second-strake planks, which were nicely symmetrical, without the problem with the bevel line seen in other planks. So char could be cleared off, bevels shaped ... and the last task tonight was to wet those planks and mount them to dry overnight. More tomorrow.

Capt. Kelso, I saw your fabulous dory diorama while scanning build logs, before starting my own Model Shipways kit. Left me wishing I had a fraction of your skill at weathering! Since I don't, I went for a different representation. There's a couple of other aspects to the question that PqLear posed, though. For one thing, unless a ship is shown on the building ways, in dry dock or (for some) dried out on a beach somewhere, all realistic ship models should be waterline models. The underwater bodies of ships are simply not visible under normal circumstances (not even by SCUBA divers, as water is too opaque for an observer to take in a whole ship in one view). So, unless we are content with the waterline option (and few are), then any model can only be an unrealistic abstraction. That's even more true if we want to represent two or more ships, because those who operate real ships make sure to allow plenty of searoom between themselves and anyone they might collide with. Consider a squadron of five Jutland-era battleships steaming in line-ahead, with a cable-length between ships -- very close for ships at sea. The squadron needs nearly a mile of ocean, about 5 ft at even 1:1200 scale, so we either model single vessels separated from all others or else place them far too close together. 1:1200 enthusiasts often go for dioramas but, at larger scales, those are hardly practical for ships at sea and a ship in harbour rather loses her point: Ships are essentially seagoing. Then there is the problem of any static representation of the fluid medium. It can be done but it is not encouraging to most ship modellers. So we generally accept that our models cannot really look like their prototypes. That being so, presenting them as pristine piece of technology makes sense. Not that it diminishes the alternative option of weathering in any way. Secondly, we do have "traditions", or at least expectations, of a sort. Some 350 years ago, the "Navy Board" models set a standard that later generations have tried to emulate. Yet those models showcased the work of the shipwrights in the Royal dockyards. The early ones were not rigged (which would have emphasized the work of other men with other skillsets), nor were they armed -- guns being the responsibility of the Ordnance Board, not the Navy Board and certainly not the shipwrights. The ships were represented in pristine condition, for who would want to display their product in a damaged condition? So the gold-standard of ship models was set as a whole-hull, unweathered, unmanned (hence quite unrealistic) representation. Skipping forward to the 20th Century: Shipyards had enormous models of their prouder creations in their company offices, as advertisements. Naturally, those models showed the ship as the yard would wish it to be seen, with everything perfect and the whole of the hull represented. The passenger-liner companies used the characteristics of their ships in advertising too and had models built. Naturally, they showed everything in idealized form, for who would want to pay for tickets on a rust-bucket being tossed around on a stormy sea? I suspect that a desire to follow those precedents leads to a common (though not universal) expectation of what a ship model should be. Though I still wonder whether they touch something deeper in at least some of us. Trevor