Kenchington

Different prototypes too. The Model Shipways dory is a model of a longer, hence proportionately narrower and shallower, boat. Trevor

I have been following your discussion with interest, though without enough detailed knowledge of McKay's creations to judge amongst the disagreements. However, there is one point at which I fear a misunderstanding has crept in. Maybe it's just terminological confusion but I think those are two entirely unrelated things. "Hood end" usually means the end of a plank that fits into the rabbet on stem or post (or else a similar end elsewhere in a ship's structure, such as on a wing transom). I have no idea of the etymological derivation of that. Maybe from something Dutch?) In contrast, "Navel hood" seems to have originally meant a "hood" (analogous to a head covering) around the hawse holes -- though I do not doubt you are right that McKay extended the decorative elements of the original into a covering for timbers bracing the upper stem -- timbers replacing the old "cheeks of the head", between which the original navel hoods filled a space to prevent the cables from chafing on the angles of the cheeks. "Navel", in that setting, probably meant simply "centre" (from which English separately derives the anatomical navel), as in "between the cheeks". Which brings me to: That is to say that, at the load waterline (hence far below the navel hoods) the horizontal angle of the outer planks, relative to the centreline of the ship, was so narrow that it continued the bevel of the cutwater. It's a bit of a meaningless, almost journalistic, superlative, as the cutwater could readily be given a 45-degree (or even wider) bevel. What is clear is that it has nothing whatever to do with the navel hoods. Likewise for: That describes the bolting of the ends of the planks -- each pair (one starboard, one port) through-bolted with the bolt passing through the stem. Nothing to do with navel hoods. Trevor Related (by marriage) to Nova Scotian McKays -- though from the opposite end of the Province from Donald's birthplace!

Yup. Especially if you wrap them around the bit of tube, as the instructions suggest. Trevor

Very nice!

It does look a bit lifeless, while the link between blade and shaft looks weak, for something that has to transfer the oarsman's pull. The vase images present some interesting blade shapes, probably stylized but maybe something to work with in developing a shape. Otherwise, oars always look better with the shaft, loom and handle suitably tapered. But that's a lot of work with so many to make! Trevor

You're getting ahead of me, Venti! I'm still trying to shape a piece into the tiller I want for my pram. I'm not sure that anyone else has either. I should be ready to try this weekend. If it works, I'll explain my solution in my log. If it doesn't, I'll keep the swearing private! You'll have seen how the kit instructions keep swerving between describing the model and describing the full-size prototype. I'm fairly sure that "bolts" is intended to mean the full-size equivalent of the kit-supplied nails ... except that most of the kits that have reached MSW members seem to have been supplied with a size of nail far too large for the task! Trevor

That is Ensor's reconstruction, rather than contemporary evidence. For the latter, you could look at the many drawings by one or other of the van de Veldes, many of which are now available on-line. One example: No notches in gunwales that I can see -- not even on the elite barge (towards the right foreground, with its awning over the passengers). Many of the tholes are, however, of the ornate type that Endsor chose for his reconstruction, rather than simple pins. Maybe that's enough to settle the question for the era of the 1670 Prince but Dan's stated interest is in the War of the Spanish Succession, near half a century later. Whether the notched-gunwale version was in use by then is a whole other question. While I'm writing: Is there evidence that English warships carried their boats on board in the later 17th Century? Earlier on, the boats had often been towed, leaving much more space on deck. Later, boats were certainly carried aboard but on skids or beams above head-height for men working on deck. I haven't gone looking for the practices followed in the 1670s. Trevor

Nice!

Hi Allen, I would be very surprised if there is any contemporary written information on the deck planks of Elizabethan ships. (There was very, very little written about any English ship structures before 1700.) There may be good archaeological data, much of it from study of the Gresham Ship. I ought to get a copy of the report on that work but I don't have access to it so I can't confirm what they may have found. There may be more detail from the Mary Rose, though she was a generation earlier. (I do have 3 volumes of her report but not the one on ship structure! Back in the day, the publisher failed to fulfil my standing order.) For what it's worth, the contemporary Basque whaler excavated at Red Bay, Labrador (for which I have the full report) had deck planking of 25 to 35 cm width and 3 to 4 cm thickness. None survived in its recognizable position from the upper decks but dimensions could be deduced from fastening holes in the beams and the thickness of other pieces that the planking butted up against. At 1:60, 0.5mm thickness and 5mm width would be about right for the decks visible in a model. The outer planking of that ship was white oak, as were the structural parts, but wood fragments interpreted as remnants of planking from the upper decks included pine and larch. I don't think that the archaeologists' report drew the conclusion but I'll guess that the upper-deck planking had not survived because it was (less durable) softwood. If so, the colour should be about the same as in the holystoned pine deck of a 19th Century Yankee clipper. That being said, please take note of the variable plank widths on the whaler. Whatever else, she did not have evenly laid, parallel-sided deck planking. I'll add another guess based on other evidence from her time: Much of the visible "deck" probably wasn't planked at all but was one long opening, mostly covered by gratings, running down the centreline, with planking only on what we might call "side-decks". In short, reproducing the appearance of the real Golden Hind, as seen from above, would need a lot of study followed by some sweeping assumptions. If you're not looking at going that far, then there may not be much point in worrying excessively about plank widths and colours. Trevor

I love the way the thwarts and floorboards stand out against the red paint! I understand, but you did make a better job of those boards than I did. It is a much, much trickier step than it looks at first. Trevor

Why, than you, Alan! I am glad you are enjoying it! Trevor

Not necessarily "faux". English vessels of the size of Ranger but built a few decades later had stanchions separate from the top timbers of the frames -- in contrast to contemporary big-ship practice. I have never heard why. (There were cases of rails torn off by boarding seas, leaving a line of holes where the stanchions had been. Not a good thing to have happen.) Those kit pieces represent the stanchions and I'll guess that they are as accurate (in spacing and scantlings) as Chris W. could reconstruct from the available surviving information. Trevor

Noooooo!!!!!!!!! Model Expo's Norwegian pram is quite enough, thanks 😀

And "xx" could mean more than one (entirely different) boat or ship type, at the same time and different places or different times at the same place. (Anyone wan to try a universal definition of "frigate"???) Meanwhile, type "AA" could be called "xx" at one time and place but "yy" somewhere (or somewhen) different or if the same hull was put to a different use, even if given a different rig. Ain't technical terminology fun? And no two ships were ever built exactly the same way, even when the same crew of shipwrights worked on both. I've sometimes wondered whether we couldn't identify both the yard which built a wrecked ship and the date of her building by examining details of surviving wreckage, and do so with at least as reliable results as the fine-art people get when determining which great master did a particular portrait, if only we had reference collections for each yard. Boats are more likely to be mass produced, as with banks dories from the larger builders. But they can vary too: These's an interesting paper in "Mariner's Mirror", from a good few years back now, describing how a boatbuilder in one English town (on the River Dart, IIRC) would get on his push-bike and cycle to a nearby fishing village, where he and his client would look at the boats on the beach. The client would say something to the effect of: "Like that one, but a foot longer, and with a wider stern, like the one over there". Then the boatbuilder would keep that in his head, cycle back to his home and, a few weeks later, a carter would deliver the completed boat, looking a lot like all the others on the beach but subtly different from each of them. Before Nova Scotian lobster boats were popped out of plastic moulds, you could see the effects of a similar process at work: Most boats in one harbour would have a lot in common, but subtle differences from one another, while those in the next harbour (where the fishermen patronized a different builder) would again have a lot in common with one another but more detail differences from the boats in the first harbour. Then again, there's a neat study of one community in Newfoundland (Winterton, on Trinity Bay), where the most skilled boatbuilder was himself a fisherman. Each winter, he would build himself a new boat, which he would sell to one of his neighbours the next year, as he worked step by step towards his own notion of a perfect boat for the local fishery. In all that, when we say something like "yawl" or "battleship", we impose a rigid terminology on the continuously varying products of technological evolution and it just doesn't work well. (Doesn't work as well a most people suppose when we do the same with the outputs of biological evolution either, but that's not a topic for MSW!) Trevor

That was my guess before I started and I'm reinforcing the notion as I go forward. How much it matters depends on the kind of model, of course. At one extreme, a diorama with crew figures on board can go badly wrong if you don't know what the people on board the full-size prototype did -- and what they did under what circumstances. (A Dreadnought battleship at anchor might have officers strolling on the quarterdeck but they would not be there as she steamed towards Jutland. Nor would common seamen be lounging about in the exclusive preserve of the officers, even in harbour!) But I think that even a simple model of a simple boat, such as the pram, will benefit from the builder understanding what the people who own, maintain and sail the full-size version do. And not only what they do but how and why. Trevor

Fascinating to see a 3-dimensional interpretation of one of these ships! It's one thing to re-draw ancient vase images in 2D but quite another reproduce a miniature in (approximately) the original materials. Trevor

I am glad you found it useful, MBerg! I don't like to come over as lecturing to MSW members, so many of whom know far more than I do about ship modelling. But if anyone finds my postings helpful, it makes them worthwhile to me. Trevor

Thank you, Mark! But I still have to make the tiller that you already endorsed, sight unseen!

I am trying, in this build log, to provide a practical dinghy-sailor's perspective, to help those future builders of the pram who do not have direct experience of such boats. As my last post included all of the belaying of the pram's (very limited) running rigging, maybe this is a good time for me to add something about belaying lines to either (horned) cleats or pins. As with anything else, there are right and wrong ways to do it, hence right and wrong ways to show a belay in a model. There are other things that lines can be belayed to, such as timber heads or bitts, so the overall topic is large, but keeping things (relatively) simple, there are three "rules" for a belay to a pin or cleat. The first is absolute and should never be broken. It is that the line, on being brought to a pin, should pass cleanly to and around its top or bottom and never across the middle: That's not some fetish. Done right, quite a light grip on the line (the short end in that diagram) will hold a considerable load (at least with high-friction hemp or manilla, maybe not with slippery, modern Dyneema or Spectra), yet a gentle easing will veer some line if you have pulled too far, while you can readily catch and then hold some slack, if your shipmate is sweating up the line. Rule 2, to be followed any time that it won't force a violation of the Rule 1, is that the first pass of the line behind the top of the pin should be from left to right: OK, that is partly just a fetish but the idea is that, on a dark night, someone releasing the line gets a bit of a tactile warning that it is close to coming free, hence to be ready to take whatever load is on the line. Rule 3, to be followed when possible without violating Rules 1 & 2, is that the first turn around the pin should be a round turn, with no crosses (as shown above). If the rigger who set up the boat (or ship) did their job properly, all three rules should be followed, and should fall into place easily, in most cases. However, that cannot always be done, whatever the skill and care of the rigger. The clew outhaul on my pram, as I have it rigged, cannot be belayed according to Rule 3 if Rules 1 & 2 are obeyed. It could have been if the sailor was left-handed and the cleat on the port side of the boom. A right-handed sailor, pulling the clew towards the end of the boom, will naturally want the cleat on the starboard side. It has to be on the boom, of course, hence necessarily below the level of the clew -- and that orientation prevents all three rules being followed simultaneously. There is no such compulsion with the halliard or tack downhaul, which can be belayed following all three rules. Next, after getting to the point shown above, the line should be taken diagonally across the pin: then behind the pin and diagonally the other way: and repeat so that there are two diagonal passes in each direction. And that's it. No need to build on layer after layer of turns around the pin -- unless you're working with Dyneema (or, in a model, the lousy, slippery cordage that Model Shipways provide!). Though, if the tail of line is long enough to trail on the deck but not long enough to coil, you could take an extra couple of turns to use up the length neatly. The end result looks something like: Note that bringing lines down from the masthead to pins both port and starboard means that Rule 3 has to be ignored on the starboard side. Ditto for the tack downhaul, with its cleat displaced to the starboard side of the mast (and note also that that is placed at a slight angle, to make fulfilling Rules 1 & 2 more natural for the sailor's fingers). If you are working with the sizes of rope usually found on a sailing ship, even those on my 22 footer, there is literally nothing more to be done (aside from coiling -- which is a whole other topic). In a small boat like our pram, however, you can't rely on gravity to hold the loose end of the line in place. Besides, you may get a lot of water on board and that can wash a line off its cleat. So it can be a good idea to create a locking turn by passing the end of the line under the last diagonal turn -- as with the gantline on the pin next to the mast on its port side in that photo. (That has both ends of the gantline on the same pin, hence the double appearance.) At full-size, there's no need to tuck the long end of a halliard, say, under the diagonal. Rather, the last pass around the top of the pin is given a twist and dropped over the pin, leaving the locking turn. And that's all there is to it ... aside from working with forceps to pass miniature lines around model belaying pins, then repeating the process a hundred times for those who aspire to build full-rigged clippers 😀 Trevor

As Druxey said: It's looking good !

It will depend, amongst other things, on what effect you are aiming for. If I was going to build full-size Norwegian prams for sale and wanted a model that I could display at boat shows and the like, I think the Model Shipways approach would go well. The sail comes out as a flat, rigid board but that would still show off the advertised product. On the other hand, if I wanted a diorama of the Muscongus Bay sloop, with her owner/skipper hauling his lobster traps, I would want the sails either curved and full of wind or else shivering and shaking, as the sloop rounded up into the wind and shot alongside the buoy marking the next trap. Soaking cloth in diluted PVA wouldn't work for that. One day, I hope to build a Vanguard Erycina, with her trawl on the rail and her other fishing gear on deck. If that became a diorama, maybe I would have her at anchor, waiting on a wind, with sails furled. They would certainly need to be dyed, to simulate dressing of the canvas, but maybe that would be the only treatment required. As for Ranger (and with all respect for Chris Watton and his magnificent kits), I would question whether her sails should be dyed at all. Robert Hewitt (head of the company by the end of Ranger's career) wasn't just a fishing boat owner. He was a noted racing yachtsman, a one-time Commodore of the Prince of Wales' Yacht Club and later Rear-Commodore of the Royal Thames Yacht Club, while the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) was Commodore. When (in 1864) Hewitt re-structured his company (what would now be almost a reverse-takeover), to raise enough capital to build steam cutters, he had sufficient connections in the right places to persuade Lord Alfred Paget to be Chairman of the new company. Besides being another member of the Royal Thames, Paget was a Member of Parliament, an officer in the Horse Guards and Queen Victoria’s Chief Equerry – as well as a son of the late Marquess of Anglesey, commander of the Allied cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo. Another of the Directors was Rear Admiral George Wellesley, soon to be appointed Admiral Superintendant of Portsmouth Dockyard and later First Naval Lord. Wellesley was a nephew of the late Duke of Wellington, the victor at Waterloo and briefly Prime Minister. When Hewitt's cutters proudly sailed up the River to Billingsgate Market, with fresh fish from his fleet out in the North Sea, all packed in ice (an innovation his father had brought in around 1850 -- then a first for European fisheries), those vessels were mobile advertisements for the family company and the men who led it -- led it to familiarity with the highest in the land. So I suspect, though I cannot prove, that the cutters sported "classy" white sails, distinguishing them from the spritsail barges and other such lesser craft that crowded the River, there being an unspoken but potent social hierarchy in such things. Indeed, as America had introduced English yachtsmen to the advantages of cotton canvas in back 1851, I'd not be surprised if, by the end of her time as a cutter working with the Short Blue fleet, Ranger's sails were bright white, rather than the creamy tone of conventional flax & hemp sailcloth. Trevor

Thank you for the "wow", King Derelict! Not sure that is deserved but it's welcome all the same! Today: Setting the sail: There was one point in the kit instructions' suggestions for the mast that I had skipped over: There is to be some "copper" applied where the boom jaws bear against the mast. I hadn't forgotten that but other build logs have reported trouble when the "copper" was applied while building the mast and the boom later rested higher or lower. So I wanted the boom in place first. The instructions suggest representing the "copper" with painted paper. I know that some model builders have used real copper, beaten thin then glued on. I opted for the simpler alternative of using a tiny piece of adhesive-backed copper tape. In the end, it hardly matters as the piece can barely be seen around the mast jaws. With that done, I could set the sail properly. The instructions talk about belaying the tack downhaul first, then the halliard. That's a bit of a reversal, as the halliard has much more scope for adjustment, so you need to fix that first, thus setting the height of the sail up the mast, then do the tack downhaul. (At full size, hauling on the halliard is a fight against gravity and friction, so best not done when also fighting tension in the rig. In contrast, it is easy to throw your body weight onto the boom, get as much tension as you wish in the luff, then belay the downhaul.) There was really no difficulty with either in the model, except that even my larger mast cleats were too small for the material I had chosen for the halliard. I had to glue turns onto the cleat before adding more turns. Full-size, the downhaul needs no more length than needed to belay on the cleat, so that one can get clipped off short. The halliard has to be long enough to the drop sail and yard into the boat, of course, so there's a whole lot of extra length around. I will have the "fun" of coiling the excess later. In the meanwhile, all looks quite nice: I fastened one end of the sheet to the "becket" on its lower block by the same CA-glue and sail-twine whipping approach (masquerading as a served splice) that I had used on the standing rigging. This time, I worked with the sheet loose in my hand and put on a common whipping (rather than a westcountry) to see whether that would be less lumpy. Then I passed the rope horse through the traveller block and put the ends through the holes in the stern quarter knees (which had to be re-drilled first), tying figure-of-eight stopper knots in the hidden ends. I made the horse much longer than I had expected to as I wanted to be sure that it would always clear the tiller. Maybe I will shorten it later. That will be easy to do, if necessary. The sheet has to be long, as it must span twice from the horse to the boom end, when the boom is freed off against a shroud, with yet more length to bring its end to the hand of someone sitting amidships. All of that length had to be rove through the boom-end block, then through the one "shackled" to the horse and everything pulled gently taut: There's tidying up still to be done (with the end of the clew outhaul, in particular) but I'm happy with how it's going. And that crazy forward rake of the mast doesn't look so crazy now, with the limited space between boom and hull. Trevor

The pin vise that came with my Model Shipways combo was almost useless but I baulked at the price of the Starrett. I picked up a much cheaper one at my local hobby store and it has not let me down yet. I'm not certain but I think it is the Excel one -- $20 Canadian here and probably available for much less where you are. I can't offer any advice on drill bits, though I see that Otto Frei sell them in packs of six of the same size. They must expect their customers to break bits frequently! Trevor

I don't think I have ever seen (full size) dory oars leathered. For one thing, there's not much need, when they are worked between (rather soft) thole pins, versus metal crutches. For another, in the days when dories were rowed in the ordinary course of a day's work, the oars were disposable items. (Even the dories did not have long working lives, when battered about on the decks of schooners.) Each to their own, of course, but I didn't leather the oars of my dory model. I will leather the ones I put into my pram. Trevor

Really nice paint job! Too many look rough when viewed close up but yours looks great. Trevor